Web Moves Blog

Pay Per Click Search Engines are without question, the fastest and most cost effective way to generate immediate traffic to your site, regardless if you’re a newbie or a seasoned veteran at online marketing.

Today, I am going to discuss all the attributes of using pay-per-click advertising and give you some useful tips to save yourself some money.

What is a -Pay per Click- search engine?

Well, simply, it is very much like an auction site, where you bid against other marketers for top placement under your selected keywords. You control where you want to be placed based on the keyword(s) you have chosen and price you are willing to pay. (more…)

What’s Up?
Getting your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory (DMOZ) is vitally important as far as search engine positioning is concerned as Google gives a lot of importance to sites being listed in the Open Directory.

In this article, we focus on how you can get your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory. Even if your site is already listed in the Open Directory, you should read this article to find out how you can get multiple listings in the Open Directory. (more…)

Getting Framed
When it comes to framed sites and the effect that the use of frames by a site has on its search engine ranking, there are two schools of thought. Some people say that framed sites, if done properly, have no problems in getting good rankings in the search engines. Others claim that if search engine optimization is important to you, never use frames.

In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere in between. Yes, the use of frames does throw up a few issues when it comes to getting good rankings in the search engines which don’t understand frames. Hence, when you are designing a new site, I would recommend that you avoid using frames, unless you have a specific reason for doing so. However, if you already have a site which uses frames, all is not lost. You can still get good rankings in the search engines even though you have used frames. Furthermore, using frames also has its own advantages when it comes to search engine placement, as we shall later on. This article assumes that you have a working knowledge of frames. (more…)

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here’s a list of the 10 most common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1) Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords

The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won’t bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?

In order to learn how you can choose the correct keywords for which you should optimize your site, see my article on this topic. (more…)

Here is a glossary of commonly used terms in the world of search engine ranking.

Alt Tag
The alternative text that the browser displays when the surfer does not want to or cannot see the pictures present in a web page. Using alt tags containing keywords can improve the search engine ranking of the page for those keywords.

Bridge Page
See Doorway Page.

Click Popularity
A measure of the relevance of sites obtained by noting which sites are clicked on most and how much time users spend in each site. (more…)

A question that I frequently hear is “Do I really need to have my own domain name?” The one word answer is “YES”. If you put up your site with some of the free web hosting services, the only company who benefits is the web hosting company. The last person who benefits is you. There are a number of reasons why having your own domain name is a must:

1) When you have your own domain name, the address of your web site will be of the form http://www.yoursite.com. On the other hand, if you put up your site on one of the free servers, the address of your web site will be something like http://www.somefreewebsite.com/yoursite/. Which of these two sounds more professional? Which of these two is smaller and is hence easier to remember? I leave you to make the judgment. (more…)

Introduction
Once you have established the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines; it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in the search engines for those keywords. The solution is to create Keyword Rich Pages (KRPs) – pages which provide good content and in which a particular keyword is repeated a number of times so that the page gets a top ranking for that keyword.

This article is focused on how you should create these KRPs. I am assuming you have a working knowledge of the different HTML tags like the Title tag, the Meta Description tag, the Meta Keywords tag, the Heading tags, the Alt Tag etc. If you don’t, just go to this site for a good introduction to such HTML tags. (more…)

Breaking News
News broke this week that Yahoo has purchased the Inktomi search engine for around US$235 million. This is an interesting development in the search engine industry that may impact greatly on exactly where sites get their traffic from. Another new development in the past few weeks is the change to the HotBot service but first, I’d like to look at the ramifications of the Yahoo/Inktomi deal. (more…)

From: Bill Treloar

Jill —

In a recent newsletter, you said:

“As you know, the advertising side of search engine marketing isn’t really my forte, since I concentrate my efforts and knowledge on the optimization side of things.”

I do the same, but I’m sure you’re better at articulating “why.” I’d be very interested to learn about that. Good topic for the newsletter?

Cheers!

Bill

Jill’s Response To – Search Engine Marketing vs Search Engine Optimization (more…)

The Google Toolbar
Like many other useful toolbars out there so is the Google Toolbar. I consider this toolbar a must have for any serious search engine optimizer and anyone who searches the internet on a regular basis. Here’s why…

The Google Toolbar has grown significantly in features since inception. It now features several new useful features but the main focus of this article is on those that aid in search engine optimization. So without further ado here’s the Google Toolbar unfolded.

PageRank
Upon installation of the full Google toolbar you will notice a small bar near the center of it that may or may not be partially filled with a green color as displayed in the diagram below.

Google Toolbar

This is the Google PageRank indicator. PageRank is one of Google’s ways of rating your website and plays a role in the position of your site in their search results. This value is calculated based on several variables including the PageRank value and the number of sites that link to that page. Sites with a higher page rank tend to have better rankings than other sites if all other things are kept equal. I have personally noticed a significant increase in the search engine placement of http://www.webmoves.net/blog/ whenever our Google page rank is increased.

The Google toolbar enable you to, at a glance, view the PageRank of your website as well as your competitors’ sites. This helps when looking for sites to engage in with link building as more links coming from sites with a higher PageRank than yours help to increase your site’s PageRank. It is also said that when looking for site to link to yours that you should aim for sites with a PR 4 or higher. LilEngine personally accepts links from any useful resources, however, links from sites with a PageRank of 4 and above are an added bonus. Visit http://www.webmoves.net/blog//submit.php if you would like to contact us about exchanging links with our site.

A side note
There are times when the Google Toolbar will display your website as having a PageRank of 0 or even no rank at all. If your site previously had a PR greater than 0 and you notice this, watch it for a while or close your browser and reopen it to check as there are times that this feature seems to be a bit buggy possibly due to updates etc at Google.

Cached Version
When Google spiders your site it records the latest version of your site that it has spidered and this can be viewed using the Google Toolbar by going to the Page Info button and selecting cached version. Your browser must be on the page you would like to see the cached version of at the time you choose to do this.

How can this help you with your SEO campaign?
If you have optimized your website in hopes of increasing your search engine results in Google, this will indicate whether or not Google has updated their database with the new version of your page. If the Googlebot visits your site regularly the cached version of your site will be updated more frequently than otherwise.

Backward Links
The Google Toolbar also has a pretty useful feature that displays all the web pages that link to your web page, which Google counts towards your PageRank. This information isn’t regularly updated and can’t be expected to take between 1 – 3 months before changes can be seen. Backlinks deal with quality and not quantity. A site with 1000 mediocre backlinks may not have as high a Page Rank as a site with 800 high PR backlinks.

Highlighting
You have the option of adding a highlight feature to your Google Toolbar that highlights all instances of your search term on the web page reached from your search. This can help you see how many times your competitors use specific keywords on their pages and you may modify your SEO campaign accordingly. You may also use this to check your own pages and see if you are or are not using enough of your target keywords on your page for optimum search engine placement.
Besides those features listed above there are also some other cool tools on the Google Toolbar such as:

Popup Blocker: This only works in IE 5.5 or later but is a great addition as we all know that there are many sites on the web that bombard you with popups. Some of these even go as far as almost preventing you from going anywhere else as more and more windows keep popping up. Annoyance factor 10/10.

Google Web Search: You can easily search the web using the Google Search Engine via the Google Toolbar by typing in your search terms in the search box area and then clicking enter or clicking the ‘Search Web’ button on the toolbar.

Translate: Easily translate sites into English that you may be interested in for one reason or another.

Unfortunately there is no version of the Google Toolbar for browsers other than Internet Explorer 5.0 and greater but hopefully they will be adding this in the near future.

There are many more features available with the Google Toolbar. Learn more and download it here, Google Toolbar.

Author Bio:
©Copyright LilEngine.com.
Alec Duncan is the founder of LilEngine.com a Search Engine Optimization resource belonging to the NetVisits, Inc. Network. Visit LilEngine.com for search engine optimization tips, tools and strategies.