Web Moves Blog

The first 5 SEO tips
From the obvious to the “Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before”, here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.

1. Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

2. Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?

3. Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.

4. First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won’t follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on:
http://www.dotcom-monitor.com/web-site-monitoring.asp .

5. Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?

5 more SEO tips
6. Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else’s article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)

7. Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.

8. Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

9. Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, “Gumbo Pudding Pop”
occasionally, “Get gumbo pudding pops” as well, “Gumbo-flavored pudding pops” some other times, etc.

10. Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of http://www.lastminutevillas.net is like a mini-site map?

There you have it: 10 of the 52 Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don’t Get Banned By the Search Engines:
http://www.thehappyguy.com/SEO.html

There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.

Author Bio:
David Leonhardt of the Happy Guy is an online and offline publicity specialist who believes in getting in front of the ball, rather than chasing it downhill. To get your website optimized, email him at info@thehappyguy.com. Pick up a copy of Don’t Get Banned By The Search Engines or of Get In The News.

Top Ten Reasons to Write Articles to Publicize your Business
If you have spent time and money down the drain waiting for “word of mouth” to kick in, or multiple hours on networking meetings, you may want to investigate this number one way to publicize your service. Beginners welcome. And, once you learn the skills, you can delegate it all to your office assistant.

Here’s the Top Ten Reasons:
1. It’s totally free.
Once you subscribe to 5-10 opt-in ezines such as aabusiness-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, aainet-subscribe@egroups.com, or free-content-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, you can start submitting your professionally edited articles that relate to your service or products. For a list of many more ePublishers in all categories, check out the “How to Market your Business Online” eBook.

You will get many emails from other authors too, so make your articles’ email a separate one from your business account. This number one free publicity will bring many targeted visitors to your site where you present a link to information about your coaching services.

2. You can reach from 10,000 to 500,000 of your targeted audience each day that you submit an article.
These people subscribe to the opt-in ezines and surf the top sites in their fields to get free information. When your articles get published, you will be at the top of well-known online small business people who provide a great service.

Remember Bill Gates prediction: After 2000, you either take your business Online, or you won’t have one.

3. You will spend far less time promoting Online than more traditional ways.
When you spend your time each week writing a short article from 300-800 words (about an hour for each), you can then delegate the submissions to your low-cost office computer assistant. Total time promoting? Less than six hours a week.

This is the best money I spend because after the initial submissions, my assistant’s time to submit to ezines is less than 10 minutes per time. And that’s to 60 plus opt-in ezines. Submitting to Web sites takes more time, maybe 10-15 minutes for each site. We have a list of 20 plus top Web sites who want my particular information. We submit two articles at a time to save time, and many sites carry up to 100 of my articles. The more, the merrier, because these not only put you in the top ten sites through the search engines, but bring you many new potential clients.

4. Submitting articles is 7 times as effective as any other promotion because when you submit many articles, you become known as an expert.
You may start with just two or three, but each week after creating a new one with a different angle or audience, this outstanding viral marketing technique will bring many new opportunities because many of the people who read them will contact you to publish on their site. See how the good word spreads?

Submitting articles is part of the “Big Three Marketing Machine.”
A special report that illustrates how you can succeed far more than you dreamed of by coordinating your sales-driven Web site, your articles, and your service and products.

5. You can raise your own ezine subscribers from 10-25 every time you submit an article to multiple opt-in ezines.
If you submit four or five articles a month to 15 ezines, each with about 1000 subscribers, you will reach 60,000 readers.

The beauty of this benefit is that your ezine and articles work as a team, both catapulting your eventual sales successes. When you put your free offer for your ezine in your signature file that accompanies each article you send out, online lookers become online buyers eventually.

After reading six or seven of your ezines, your targeted audience who came to you through these articles, trusts you more, believes in you, and finally becomes a client or customer.

This list could go on, because as one person sees your articles, they make offers you can’t refuse. Writing and submitting articles is the friendliest way I know of promoting Online. When you are ready, give it a chance. Part two of this article is available at www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles/article-120.shtml.

Author Bio:
Judy Cullins: 20-year author, speaker, book coach Helps entrepreneurs manifest their book and web dreams www.bookcoaching.com eBk: “Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Your Book Online” To receive FREE “The Book Coach Says…” or Business Tip of the Month go to www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml Ph:619/466/0622

The New & Improved Yahoo
On February 18th, Yahoo implemented serious changes to its search directory, in an effort to better compete against Google and, to a lesser degree, MSN.

Since the 18th, I’ve carried out extensive testing with Yahoo and, so far, I like the new features implemented on their search property. I think the changes represent some positive improvements, both in the quality of the results and in their relevancy. Using a ‘spider robot’ that crawls the whole Web, in a similar fashion that Google does it, we need to change Yahoo’s category from search directory to a real search engine.

If you would like a peek ‘under the hood’, Yahoo has a new crawler known as Yahoo Slurp, similar to the Inktomi Slurp bot many webmasters have been seeing in their logs over the past few months. Yahoo Slurp works very much like GoogleBot (Google’s crawler). Yahoo Slurp is designed to follow every text link found in a website.

Some of the changes implemented
Among the positive changes I have noticed in Yahoo:
• For sites with direct RSS feeds, a link to the feed URL is now available with this new implementation. If required, you can even add the RSS feed to your My Yahoo page with a click of the mouse.

• Like Google, a cached version of each Web page is now available.

• AltaVista and AllTheWeb continue to use separate search functionality, using an independent search index. (Note: All the Web and AltaVista are both owned by Yahoo).

Note that a customizable and uncluttered (read no ads) entry point to Yahoo’s various search databases has been available for some time at www.search.yahoo.com.

I’ve also observed that Yahoo seems to be analysing similar page content and features as Inktomi does, despite the results being displayed today are somewhat different. Important criteria such as keyword frequency, keyword density and features such as keyword-rich title tags and key phrase placement appear to be important factors in Yahoo’s current algorithm.

We have also seen some sporadic Google results popping up from time to time. This is very likely a temporary measure to ensure search-continuity, as Yahoo engineers continue to develop and continuously improve their search algorithm.

Recommendations to site owners
Remember that all search engines crawlers, including Slurp, are incapable of following hyper links imbedded in a frame, in an image or graphic, and certainly not in a site that was created using Flash technology as its only means of presenting information.

As I wrote about the importance of usability in one of my articles two weeks ago, by making certain that your site is search engine-friendly, it will usually rank higher in the search engines, including the new Yahoo.

If any of you missed that article, you can follow this link to read it: usability & SEO.

If you want your site to rank high in any search engine, and if your site includes frames, remember that the correct use of the tag is very important. For more on how to optimize a site using frames, just follow this link: optimizing framed sites

For sites that are database-driven, Yahoo Slurp will try its best to follow dynamic links, but as a precaution, Yahoo is advising site owners and webmasters to place static pages with text links directed to certain parts of their sites that have any kind of dynamic content. For more on the correct way to optimize dynamic links, go to: optimize dynamic links.

Finally, just like Google, the description meta tag is a critical aspect in Yahoo’s algorithm. For maximum benefits, site owners and webmasters are encouraged to write keywords in their title tags, descriptions tags and body copy for each individual page in their sites. As always, quality and relevancy always yields the best dividends.

Stay on-topic for maximum efficiency in the results pages. Remember that Yahoo, as well as most of the major search engines always look at the ‘theme’ of any individual page, and will use its algorithm to determine what the topic is about that page. If the keywords used in the title tag reflect the same keywords used in the body of the copy, it will usually grant a higher ranking for that page than if the page happens to be inconsistent with the proper placement of its main keywords or key phrases.

Conclusion
Yahoo, as any other search engine, is only interested in one thing: quality and relevant results for its users. If your website delivers that information in a consistent and clean manner, it should do well in the search results pages. All recommended SEO techniques and procedures that have been taught for the past two to three years still hold, both in the case of Yahoo and the others.

Build and integrate your site in the most logical way, make it search engine-friendly and create great content are three of the best ways to significantly improve your rankings. If you can add new content every day, your site will be perceived as one that is well maintained. Search engines prefer sites that consistently feature fresh and new content, when compared to other websites that don’t change much and are somewhat dated.

Here’s a tip of the hat to Yahoo for a job well done!

Author Name: Serge Thibodeau
Company: Rank For Sales
Email: info@rankforsales.com

How to find good keyword phrases
Finding good keywords is a never ending quest, so here’s a couple of links and an example on how to use them to find good keyword phrases.

If you’re trying to optimize a page for a popular keyword that has alot of competition, take a close look at the related keyword phrases.

Let’s say you wanted to optimize your page for the keyword marketing, that was searched for over 240,000 times on Overture alone in the last month, there are nearly 42,000,000 competing websites on Google, the keyword marketing is FAR too general, sure if you got ranked #1 (very doubtful!) you’ll get alot of traffic, but it won’t be targeted traffic.

Be more specific, target keyword PHRASES.

Let’s try internet marketing which was searched for nearly 80,000 times on Overture and has 550,000 competing sites on Google, that’s far better, not brilliant, but at least you’re more targeted now.

Now, under the keywords internet marketing over at Overture, people also searched using these phrases:

79764 internet marketing
6087 internet marketing online
4635 internet marketing strategy
2733 strategic internet marketing
2603 internet marketing consultant
2384 internet marketing consulting
2378 internet marketing service
2355 internet marketing tool
1929 internet marketing company
1855 internet web site marketing
1631 internet marketing san diego
1429 internet marketing solution
1327 internet marketing research
1183 aggressive internet marketing
1178 internet marketing plan
1165 internet marketing business
1058 internet marketing ebook
1026 internet marketing email

There’s a whole lot more but I think you get the picture…

OK, the keywords marketing, and marketing online are obviously going to have their fair share of competition, however, using the tools above point you in the right direction on how you should build your pages and show you the specific keyword phrases people are using and allow you to check the competition for those keywords.

Let’s go one step further and see what other keyword phrases we can find from our example, take internet marketing strategy for instance, here are the other keyword phrases people used:

622 corporate internet marketing strategy
451 developing internet marketing software strategy
191 hosting and internet marketing strategy
66 internet marketing strategy uk
65 marketing strategy internet strategy
65 internet marketing strategy tactic
55 colorado internet marketing strategy
50 boulder internet marketing strategy
47 vancouver internet marketing strategy
46 ebook internet marketing strategy
33 internet marketing strategy edinburgh
33 internet marketing strategy ireland
31 city internet marketing strategy twin
28 minnesota internet marketing strategy
28 internet marketing strategy plan
27 charlotte internet marketing strategy

Now the above list has really narrowed it down, OK, they’re not very popular search terms, however, if you were to weave these phrases into your pages, meta tags and links etc, you will dramatically increase the chances of your webpage getting found than you would if you had just concentrated on the keyword marketing that we originally used in this example on your site.

Here’s some links to help you find your phrases:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

www.wordtracker.com
At the wordtracker site, click on “trial”.

http://conversion.7search.com/scripts/advertisertools/keywordsuggestion.aspx

www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
Use ranks.nl to check your keyword density.

Author:
Neil Moran

Success Guaranteed With Your Opt In List
Some time ago I was thinking about the best and most foolproof way to earn great income on internet. I came to conclusion that success in internet marketing can be reached with my own opt in list. That is why I wrote this article.

In my search for ways to build my own successful opt in list I came to several conclusions how to build an opt in list that buys. In this article I will reveal you four ways to add subscribers to your opt in list and profit from them(guaranteed) Read on…

The 4 ways to build your opt in list that I’m writing about you’ll be able to use in your own opt in list building efforts. Read this article carefully because it may show you a way to profit from internet like you never thought you can before.

Here are the four ways how you can build your opt in list:

1) Buying or renting a list of subscribers for your opt in list.

You can buy subscribers for your opt in list or you can rent a list of emails for one mailing. This is the fastest method to build your opt in list.

2) Signing up for co-registration services.

With co-registration services other people build your opt in list for you. They usually cost $0.10 – $0.30 for a subscriber. With them you can expect 50 – 300 subscribers to your opt in list daily.

3) Build your list using articles.

Using articles is my favorite method to build my opt in list. You can write articles and give them to newsletter publishers to publish them. This way you gain instant exposure and have new subscribers sign up on your opt in list.

4) Using joint ventures to build your opt in list.

Joint ventures are an effective way to build your opt in list. When used right they can add hundreds of subscribers to your list daily.

The best part – they are 100% FREE.

Each of these points illustrate how you can build your opt in list.
There’s really not a way you can NOT earn money from your opt in list. If you build your opt in list and keep relationships with your subscribers your opt in list WILL bring you income.

The greatest way I have found to build relationships with subscribers is offering them a free course. There are lots of places you can find FREE prewritten courses which you can offer to your subscribers.

The prewritten courses that you can send to your subscribers contain in context links to affiliate program / programs you are affiliated with. You earn income when the person follows your in context affiliate link and buys from it.

What I wrote in this article reflects my experience with my opt in list. I hope you find this article worthwhile and learned something from it.

Remember, if you build your opt in list and are persistent there is really no way how you can not earn money on internet. Keep that in mind and also sign up for my list building course.

Author Name: Afilla
Company: Afilla

Author Bio:
If you liked this article and you are interested in building your own opt in list then the FREE opt in list building course in the website below is right for you: http://www.affila.com/course.htm Sign up Now!

Growing Your Website Business
A synopsis of Philippa Gamse’s Presentation to the National Speakers Association, Washington DC chapter on Saturday, January 10, 2004

Someone had asked Philippa why Websites are such a ‘pain’ in a pre-seminar question. Her opening reply was simple, yet powerful, “when you stop improving your site, you stop growing.” She believes that Websites are a work in progress much like a business plan or one’s own self-improvement. In fact, the first question you should ask yourself about your own Website is, “What does it really do for people?”

The second question is “Who is your audience?” You see, websites are really a lot like a business plan! If you are trying to attract prospective clients, then each individual page on your site should offer something of value to your audience. The number one way that Philippa adds value to her audience is through her articles. The best way to keep getting top listings with the most popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN, is to constantly change or add content. Her articles add value to her audience and are her number one search engine strategy. Maybe this is why she doesn’t cold-call. Her customers tell her that they have seen her name in multiple locations before they call her directly.

She said that we should think about the emotional connection that our website makes. How does your website represent you when you are not there? Unfortunately most websites are not a true reflection of what we do and who we are. The reality is that our websites need to become an expertise center. We need to show a clear benefit such as how our programs will increase the creativity and balance of a prospective customer. Every page should have a strategy, a way to increase our database and provide a call to action.

Philippa also believes that each web site should have a dynamite testimonial across the front of the homepage, because testimonials are the least-viewed section on every website! She recommends that we pull out our testimonials and sprinkle them throughout our site. And when we think of testimonials, we should be thinking about the substantive ways that we have helped our customers. If we attempt to be clear and specific about our program benefits, why not be clear and specific about their outcomes from real customers. She recommends that we have specific testimonials for specific programs. Talk about maximizing our congruency!

In order to get started, Philippa wants to know what we have done today to improve our website. Two days after her seminar, I added a question and answer section and submitted my site to a dozen search engines. My next step is to write another article. What are you going to do today to improve your web site, your business and even yourself? She encourages you to contact her about the changes you have made.

For more information on how to improve your website further, Philippa recommends that you download her tip sheet, “Twenty-Three Proven Tips and Ideas for On-Line Marketing” at http://www.cyberspeaker.com/tipsheet.html. Philippa can be contacted directly at her office in Santa Cruz, California at 831-465-0317 or pgamse@cyberspeaker.com. If she doesn’t get back to you immediately, it is due to her ongoing quest to find the best deli sandwich outside of New York City.

(c) 2004, Mark Sincevich. All rights in all media reserved.

Author Bio:
If you liked this article and you are interested in building your own opt in list then the FREE opt in list building course in the website below is right for you: http://www.affila.com/course.htm Sign up Now!

Yahoo no longer using Google
I am glad I am not a betting man, or I am sure I would have big guys named Vinnie and Freddie knocking on my door looking for their money. I have been trying to guess when Yahoo! was going to change results providers virtually since the time they bought Inktomi over a year ago. I even made a couple predictions, but in the end I was wrong.

So, what is all the fuss about?
Well for one, they didn’t use pure Inktomi results. In effect they didn’t replace Google with Inktomi; they replace Google with a Yahoo! brand of search. The Yahoo! search is new and uniquely different from everyone else.

So what does this mean to search marketers?

Well, while you used to have to pay to be listed in the Yahoo! directory, it doesn’t appear that you need to pay to get indexed by Inktomi. In fact, if you check your visitor logs, you’ve likely noticed a lot of activity from either Inktomi’s Slurp or Yahoo!s Slurp spiders.

So how do you know if you’ve been picked up in Yahoo?

If you’d like to see how many pages are indexed, you can go use the advanced search options (http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced). If you put in 2 sets of double quotes (“”) in one of the “Show results with” boxes, followed by your domain name in the “only search in this domain/site” box, you will see what pages are indexed in the new Yahoo! index.

What does all this mean?
Well, it’s hard to say what the impact of Yahoo!s organic product will be. We already know that they can account for about 1/3 of most sites’ traffic. But how Yahoo! will deal with crawling and indexing is another story. Since they just switched over, we will have to see what happens.

We do know that, at this time, there is no place to add a URL to their index, so we must assume that at least for the time being a paid inclusion is required to be indexed in Yahoo! Or, we may find that a submission to Altavista or Alltheweb may help a site get indexed. Although this is doubtful, it is not out of the realm of possibility.

One speculation is that Yahoo! will use a similar submission strategy that Altavista has employed. That is, you could submit for free, with no guarantee of if, or when, the site would get indexed, or you could pay for guaranteed inclusion. In this case, the submission fee is definitely worth it considering the 30% reach that Yahoo! currently has.

So what does this mean for Google?
Aside from the obvious – that Google’s power has been cut in �, not much. Google is still striving to have the best search out there. Whether Yahoo! is a part of that or not, shouldn’t really concern them. Sure it is a hit to the bottom line, but Google is large enough that they will survive, at least until the rumored IPO.

Now what Google has to do is stay ahead of the pack. They have developed a reputation for the best search. They have to maintain that reputation. The fact that Yahoo! has entered the algorithmic search market after 10 years on the web does help Google in that they have some catching up to do. But the fact that Yahoo! can afford to catch up could be a concern.

They also have to consider that Yahoo! is only the first of the “big players” to foray into the highly competitive algorithmic search market. MSN still has to display its entry, which will also be later this year.

But for now they only have to consider Yahoo!s impact. While it will be great in terms of volume of search lost, it is too early to determine what the true impact will be. Launching algorithmic search is one thing, convincing people to use it is another.

Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists

Lycos Leaving Search
There are few internet web properties that were making news in 1998. Lycos was one of them. Once a powerhouse in internet search (and one of the hottest properties on the web) Lycos was soon bought by multinational Terra Networks to become TerraLycos.

Since that day in October 2002, Lycos seemed to have lost focus on what it was – a really good search engine. Instead they got into many other internet markets and performed even more global expansion. In fact, even today Lycos is more popular in some countries than any other search engine or portal.

If you were to review their press releases from 2000 and 2001 you would that they were acquiring properties back then that are considered hot now. Job finding sites, travel sites, music services and more.

While other players like Yahoo and MSN were coasting (and Google was sneaking up from behind) Lycos was building its world internet presence.

Lycos Losts Its Appeal
But something happened. Lycos lost its appeal to the majority of internet users. While they were still hugely popular in Europe and other places around the world, in North America they were all but forgotten.

Around the time of the tech stock crash, Lycos faded, much like many other big internet names, and never recovered in the US.

More recently, they have cut staff drastically and have put up “for lease” signs in their California offices. It was only a matter of time before Lycos search disappeared.

Today Lycos announced that it is getting out of search. Instead they are going to focus on the latest internet craze – social networking. Social networking is the new gathering place – A place to go hang out and meet new people, or maybe even meet that special someone.

Many other players are getting into social networking – such as Google – which led to rumors that Google will incorporate social networking into search.

But for Lycos, this could be their last attempt at some kind of web supremacy. They realized that they could not compete in search. In fact, they were so far behind, it would have taken years to get caught up even to where search is today. So they chose a new route.

Hopefully, for the company’s sake, this new path turns out to be the right choice for them. They are getting into social networking at its infancy. As long as they can capitalize on its current popularity and make it work, they may stick around for a few more years.

Author Bio:
Rob Sullivan
Production Manager
Searchengineposition.com
Search Engine Positioning Specialists

Even if Google has been tweaking and fine tuning its search engine algorithms almost daily since it started last November, one thing remains constant: there are things in SEO that you need to do and others that you absolutely need to avoid.

Here are my 10 commandments of rigorous SEO techniques that I practice. As fast and furious as Google ‘dances’ have been lately, these 10 commandments have, to this day, kept my clients out of trouble while helping them to continue enjoying priority rankings in the results pages.

I strongly believe that if you practice ‘safe SEO’ such as the ones described in these 10 commandments, then you should get equally positive results.

SEO Commandment Number One

Thou shall not write invisible text

It continues to surprise me that some people are still trying to get away with this! Just last week, we had to ‘clean up’ a mess that somebody else did who had inserted lots of invisible text on most of the pages in that site. As a result, and as might be expected, the site got banned by Google. We had to remove it, properly optimize the site for its main keywords, utilize Wordtracker and resubmit to Google and the other search engines.

Just to be certain, I also wrote an email to Google advising them of the ‘clean up’ we conducted, with a thank you note for their consideration in re-instating the site back in their index.

SEO Commandment Number Two
Thou shall always use Wordtracker

If you are really serious about getting your site higher in the rankings, don’t waste your time with tools that are just not accurate enough. The only serious tool by today’s standards in the SEO industry is Wordtracker. Optimize a site with the wrong keywords and you will end up with a site that ranks high, but for products or services your company may not even sell! Correctly identifying your ‘right’ keywords and search terms using Wordtracker is the ONLY way you will be successful at targeting your real audience, and your real prospects.

SEO Commandment Number Three
It’s a known and proven fact. I see it everyday. Sites that continually add new content and new pages everyday ultimately get the best rankings all the time. What’s more, when search engine spiders visit your site and find newly added or updated content, they will come and visit you more often! The more often they come, usually the higher and better your rankings. Always remember the search engines are always on the lookout for fresh new ‘meat’ all the time. Surprise them everyday with new content and watch your rankings go higher.

Also, and this is a very well kept secret in the SEO industry: With all else being equal, the greater the number of pages in a given website, the higher the PR (Page Rank). This is a mathematical formula. In combination with the number of links pointing to your site, Google’s Page Rank algorithm uses the number of actual pages in a given site to calculate its final PR value. This is performed once a month during every major Google dance. Contact me if you need to know more about it.

SEO Commandment Number Four
Thou shall never link to bad neighbourhoods

You can’t control who links to you, and, for the most part, no search engine will ever penalize your site if someone links to you, since they know you have no control over it. But you do have control of the sites YOU link to. If you happen to link to a site which some would call ‘a bad neighbourhood’, you might get penalized by some engines for linking to them. Examples of this would be sites that have been penalized in the past (or still are) for prohibited techniques such as invisible text, invisible links, gateway (or doorway pages) or, in some cases, sites that are really nothing more than a bunch of affiliates sites that are heavily cross linked.

If you feel suspicious before linking to a site, it would help to make a few investigations on your own. Make a search of who’s linking to them. Are they penalized too? I like to think it is ‘Linker Beware’ and proceed cautiously before you do, just to keep safe.

SEO Commandment Number Five
Thou shall not spam the meta tags

It’s a known fact that most search engines today don’t even care to look at meta tags anymore, since they were spammed and abused so much in the past. The only search engine today that places some importance on meta tags is Inktomi. Since Yahoo is about to drop Google’s search results any day now, it will exclusively use their own search results produced by their own search property, Inktomi. If you decide to write your meta tags, just write your main keywords that are on that particular page. If the page is about blue and red widgets, then that is all that should be written in the meta tags. Don’t ‘stuff’ them with useless words that have nothing to do with the actual text written on that page.

SEO Commandment Number Six
Thou shall not use Doorway or Gateway pages

You should never even think of using doorway or gateway pages, since they are frowned upon by most search engines. If you implement any kind of software or program that needs to know the IP address of a search engine robot, you are making use of spam tactics that will have your site penalized or banned. Gateway pages serve different pages to search engines than they do to real human visitors, which is a big No-No in the SEO industry!

Some people suggest ‘trusted feeds’ or XML feeds or similar variations. Depending on the exact nature of such implementations, such techniques could be accepted, if certain basic conditions are met. But in almost all the cases I have seen, doorway (or gateway) pages are a bad idea and you should always stay away from them. To give you an example of how doorway pages are hated by the search engines, on January 25, Google changed most of their IP addresses in many of its data centers, as ammunition against this sort of practice.

SEO Commandment Number Seven
Thou shall build the best site you can

Last week, I wrote an article about the importance of usability in any website. If new visitors visit your site in good numbers but then leave just as fast, there is something very wrong with your site! High rankings won’t compensate for a site that has little usability features. Does your site take too long to download? Did you know that even today, about 80% of people are connected to the Internet using slow dialup modem phone lines? This is especially true in rural areas and in many parts of Europe.

Did you know that if your menu system isn’t clear or if your homepage fails to give the slightest clue as to what your website has to offer, they will leave faster than you can say goodbye!

SEO Commandment Number Eight
Thou shall write compelling sales copy and body text

Writing for the Web is a bit different than writing for print. If you want visibility in the search engines, you will have to include your important keywords a few times at strategic locations in your pages, writing text that flows well, but at the same time that is rich in keywords and key phrases. Without sounding repetitive, a normal page with about 750 words on it needs to contain from two to three times your keywords for that page. Also, as stated in the following commandment, make certain you write a proper title tag that is descriptive of that page, and be sure to include your keywords in the title tag.

SEO Commandment Number Nine
Thou shall always write good title tags

This is one of the most neglected activities of SEO, and yet it is still one of the most critical because it can make such a big difference! A well-written title tag has two functions: it helps your users know what the page is all about before they click on your link in the search results pages (SERP’s) and it also helps the search engines better index your page.

To get a better idea of what I mean, type in any meaningful keyword or key phrase in Google or Yahoo and look at the first 10 results that you see. Note that most (if not all) of these sites have a good description of what the page offers, all in the title tag. The title tag is the underlined snippet of text that you actually see written for each result. It is also what you see in your browser at the top.

SEO Commandment Number Ten
Thou shall always keep up to date in SEO news

More than ever today, the search engine optimization (SEO) industry is advancing at a breathtaking pace. Just witness what has happened over the past year and you get the feeling that it will continue to accelerate.

Whether or not Google goes public, the search industry today is one of the fastest growing industries and it is revolutionizing the way companies advertise their products and the way consumers buy them.

Subscribing to good SEO newsletters, reading search engine industry portal sites such as this one and staying current of the news in this rapidly growing industry and you will be certain to remain one step ahead of your competition.

Author:
Serge Thibodeau of Rank For Sales

Introduction
Building a successful SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaign requires a lot of time and hard work. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms and it’s up to you to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate these changes. Keeping track of all of your optimized pages can be a daunting task. However, you can avoid unnecessary confusion by organizing your optimized pages in a streamlined fashion. Although not common practice, this is one of the most important steps in any successful SEO campaign.

What do I mean by “organized?” Simply, that you should develop a clear plan on how your pages will be named and where they will be situated on your web site. You need to be able to easily identify and track what pages have been indexed by what engine and what pages need to be updated. One way to achieve this is to adopt a “naming convention”.

Example 1.
Your company web site sells widgets. You have a list of 5 of your most important keywords and you’ve optimized these keywords for 4 search engines. That’s a total of 20 optimized pages. You have a robots.txt file set up to prevent search engine ‘A’ from indexing pages that are intended for search engine ‘B’ and so on.

Let’s examine the drawbacks to this naming convention:

Keyword Page Name Engine
widgets widgets.htm Google
blue widgets bluewidgets.htm Google
red widgets redwidgets.htm Google
black widgets blackwidgets.htm Google
purple widgets purplewidgets.htm Google
widgets widgets2.htm MSN
blue widgets bluewidgets2.htm MSN
red widgets redwidgets2.htm MSN
black widgets blackwidgets2.htm MSN
purple widgets purplewidgets2.htm MSN
widgets widgets3.htm AltaVista
blue widgets bluewidgets3.htm AltaVista
red widgets redwidgets3.htm AltaVista
black widgets blackwidgets3.htm AltaVista
purple widgets purplewidgets3.htm AltaVista
widgets widgets4.htm Hotbot
blue widgets bluewidgets4.htm Hotbot
red widgets redwidgets4.htm Hotbot
black widgets blackwidgets4.htm Hotbot
purple widgets purplewidgets4.htm Hotbot

1. The words in your page names are not very distinct. This is important because a search engine cannot determine if bluewidgets.htm is made up of two distinct words “blue” and “widgets.” You need to find a way to separate these keywords in the page name or you will not get credit for the keyword in the file name.

2. Your page names are not easily identifiable. When you run a Reporter mission, you will see your pages indexed with the number appended to the keyword phrase in the file name. At first glance, this doesn’t tell you the engine for which the page is optimized. You need to be as descriptive as possible.

3. Using a robot.txt file can diminish your exposure throughout all of the search engines. I explain this in the next section.

Now, let’s take a look how we can modify our page names in order to get credit for the keywords, and allow you to easily identify them in the corresponding search engine while gaining maximum exposure.

Example 2.
Below, you’ll see an example of how I have added hyphens to separate keywords in the page name. Also, I’ve appended an engine indicator to the file name, so it will be easy to distinguish what page is optimized for which engine.

Keyword Page Name Engine

widgets widgets.htm Google
blue widgets blue-widgets-gg.htm Google
red widgets red-widgets-gg.htm Google
black widgets black-widgets-gg.htm Google
purple widgets purple-widgets-gg.htm Google
widgets widgets-ms.htm MSN
blue widgets blue-widgets-ms.htm MSN
red widgets red-widgets-ms.htm MSN
black widgets black-widgets-ms.htm MSN
purple widgets purple-widgets-ms.htm MSN
widgets widgets-av.htm AltaVista
blue widgets blue-widgets-av.htm AltaVista
red widgets red-widgets-av.htm AltaVista
black widgets black-widgets-av.htm AltaVista
purple widgets purple-widgets-av.htm AltaVista
widgets widgets-hb.htm Hotbot
blue widgets blue-widgets-hb.htm Hotbot
red widgets red-widgets-hb.htm Hotbot
black widgets black-widgets-hb.htm Hotbot
purple widgets purple-widgets-hb.htm Hotbot

I respectively use abbreviations such as “gg” for Google, “ms” for MSN, and so on. You don’t have to use my abbreviations. However, make sure the naming convention that you implement is consistent. That’s the most important thing.

Tip: Please be careful when creating an “engine indicator.” Do not spell out the entire engine name in your filename. For instance, avoid naming your page like this:

blue-widgets-google.htm

Although it has not been proven, Google and other crawlers could potentially flag this page as a doorway page because it thinks you are creating it specifically to rank high on that engine.

You might be thinking, “I’ve created a robot.txt file, so I don’t have to worry about search engine ‘A’ indexing pages that are intended for search engine ‘B.’ Yes, that is correct. However, if you use a robot.txt file for this purpose, you could be cheating yourself from gaining maximum exposure across all of the search engines.

If you do not use a robot.txt file, you will notice that search engine ‘A’ will index pages optimized for search engine ‘B.’ This is exactly what you want. In order to do this, you must be very careful because you do not want to have similar content that could be flagged as spam.

It is completely possible to optimize several different pages that target the same keyword, and create content so unique that you will not be flagged for spam. As I mentioned, this will maximize your exposure across all of the search engines, while allowing you to increase the overall unique content of your site.

I can’t tell you how many times engine ‘A’ has picked up pages that I’ve optimized for engine ‘B’ and ranked the ‘B’ pages higher than those I specifically optimized for ‘A.’ So, if at all possible, only use a robot.txt file to protect your confidential content from being indexed.

One final Tip
Try to avoid creating sub directories solely for the purpose of storing optimized pages for a specific search engine. Storing all of your optimized pages in your root directory gives you a better chance at higher rankings because most crawlers give more weight to pages found in the root directory. In this case, it is better to sacrifice the organization and shoot for the higher rankings.

Author Bio:
This article is copyrighted and has been reprinted with permission from Matt Paolini. Matt Paolini is a Webmaster/Tech Support Specialist for FirstPlace Software, the makers of WebPosition Gold. He’s also an experienced freelance Search Engine Optimization Specialist and Cold Fusion/ASP.NET/SQL Server developer/designer. For more information on his services, please visit http://www.webtemplatestore.net/ or send him an email at webmaster@webtemplatestore.net