Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
The motive of search engine optimization and submission is to attract targeted traffic by attaining very high positions in the search results. This can be done by using the most appropriate keywords relevant to the content of your site. This article suggests strategies to optimize your web site and improve its search engine ranks for the appropriate keywords, together with search engine optimization and placement advice and tips.
In the past, it was enough to tweak some of your meta tags and certain on-the-page factors to attain top search engine ranks. Today, search engine optimization is not that simple. It is not enough to simply modify meta tags and submit your site to the search engines. When optimizing a web site, there are thousands of factors to keep in mind. (more…)
Getting listed on Yahoo should be without doubt the most important mission on any Internet marketers mind.
Yahoo is the biggest of all the search engines, well actually that’s not true, you see Yahoo is not technically a search ENGINE it is a human compiled directory of websites and does not have a spider bot going to sites and indexing them. But for the sake of this article when I say search engines I am referring to all ‘search sites’.
Did you know that recent estimates show that Yahoo is currently capturing an amazing 40% of all search engine traffic online? Do you know what this means? That means that almost 1 out of every 2 people that do searches on the Internet use Yahoo, everyone on the Internet has done searches some time or another. (more…)
What Are Pay Per Click Search Engines?
Pay per click search engines (also called pay-for-performance, paid listings among other names) are engines which allow site owners to determine their sites ranking in that particular search engines results by bidding on keywords. Usually the first 3-5 search results are used by a network of partner search sites. The result for the site owner or webmaster is a lot more highly targeted traffic and a lot more sales.
So the underlying idea to pay per click search engines is that you find keywords related to your website and then you bid (how much you are willing to pay for each visitor that visits your site through the search results) and buy high positions on your chosen engine. The more times a word or phrase has been searched for the higher you will have to bid to get high rankings. The only limitation is that your site must be at least vaguely relevant to the keyword you want to bid on. These engines allow you to skip all the search engine optimization stuff and simply pay for visitors. (more…)
A recent study of New Zealand’s Top 100 Companies by us here at Web Rank Ltd has revealed that every single one of New Zealand’s leading companies have web sites that sabotage their ability to be found by Internet users.
How did this happen? The study reveals that each site belonging to the Top 100 contains design elements that in some way negatively impact their compatibility with and visibility in search engines. As a result, many of New Zealand’s leading companies are not found listed in the search results of the most popular U.S. and New Zealand search engines, impacting their potential online revenue. (more…)
A Brief Introduction To Link Popularity
As webmasters research various ways to get more traffic to their site one method that is gaining more and more publicity is Link Popularity. Link Popularity is the number of links that point to your website as measured by the search engines. In theory if your site has many sites linking to it then it is considered to be a valuable resource on the particular topic so the search engines will give it a higher ranking.
The Problem
As with many rules/laws eventually people found a way to manipulate it. Sites were created solely to build the link popularity of other sites. These sites are called ‘Link Farms’ and contributed to the pollution of search engine results. They increased the search engine rankings of many sites that did not deserve the position they received.
Eventually the search engines caught on to this deception and some such as Google adjusted their algorithms accordingly. Google now penalizes websites associated with Link Farms imposing penalties they deem appropriate based on the site and the scenario. Many people that felt the effects of this penalization were fairly innocent, well that is if you consider ignorance to be an alibi. They simply did not know that what they were doing was wrong; some even paid for SEO services and were victims of bad services.
As the search engines change their algorithms aiming to reduce fraudulent activities by webmasters, more and more ways are conceived to manipulate them, and so the battle continues.
An Honest Link Building Strategy
Getting quality links to your site from related resources is not always as easy as some make it sound. The key word here is ‘quality’. It is a very time consuming process and involves the following steps:
* Search for quality sites that are related to yours.
* Contact the Webmaster of the related site.
* Wait for a response from them.
* Swap links if the response is positive.
There are also some automated methods of doing this that speed up the process, however, I would not recommend any of them and hence won’t list them in this article.
So you have started your link building campaign and are hopefully seeing the results. Now you say this is great but how can I make this process more efficient and effective without risking your good standings with the search engines.
Here is the solution.
The Smart Way To Increase Link Popularity.
One thing webmasters are always looking for, and find hard to refuse, is good quality content. If you are knowledgeable on a particular topic that is related to your site, writing informative articles is a great way to gain your website additional link popularity. If you are reading this article and are not reading it on http://www.webmoves.net/blog// then there is your proof.
If you don’t consider yourself a writer don’t worry, you don’t have to be. Get your article in the best shape you possibly can and then have others, who you consider to be better at writing than you are, look it over. Make your edits and there you go.
How is writing articles efficient and effective?
Well-written articles do take time to produce but as you write more you will get better and will find that it starts to take less and less time. This method offers several more benefits than the linking method listed above. These are as follows:
* Articles are, in most cases, permanent additions to sites.
* Writing Articles demonstrates your knowledge of various industry related topics and this helps to build credibility.
* If users are interested enough to read your entire article then there’s a very good chance that they will click on your link to visit your site in hopes of learning more or even just out of curiosity.
* You are able to include several links with articles. You can have several links in the resource box also known as the bylines as well as in any ‘appropriate’ spots in the article.
* You have the ‘option’ of including your affiliate links in the article if it includes information on that resource.
* You also get to add this content to your own website.
* If you include reprint information in the bylines then others that read the article, and feel it would be a valuable addition to their site, will add it and then it becomes almost viral. It spreads even though you are not doing a thing.
Link Building Summary
Building link popularity is a vital part to your search engine ranking and should be approached in either of the two methods listed above that you feel is more appropriate for your individual situation. The benefits from writing, however, far outweigh those of requesting reciprocal links in most situations. Hopefully this article has helped to shed some light on this and will encourage more knowledgeable people to start sharing their knowledge with others.
Author: A Duncan
From: Colleen
Hi Jill,
I am a small business owner who would like to improve my ranking. I have been contacted by a company who “guarantees” top-10 rankings on 6 major sites within 180 days for a fee. Can you please tell me if these types of companies are legitimate, and which ones you would recommend or avoid.
Thank you!
Colleen
Jill’s Response To – Legitimate SEO Company or Not?
Hi Colleen,
This is a very good and timely question, which I get asked a lot. Many companies receive numerous unsolicited emails or phone calls offering similar “SEO” packages. (more…)
More and more is being said about Pay for Inclusion (PFI) and Pay per Click (PPC). Today, there are a good number of ways that search directories and search engines are charging companies trying to get their web sites conveniently listed on the Internet. What is really important to underline when talking about this popular topic is that funds invested into most PFI programs go mainly in getting your web site indexed into the various search databases. There really isn’t much more to it. Some promise you to be listed within seven days, others tell you it may be sooner.
Companies can pay these directories as much as they feel like it, but PFI will not yield those web sites higher placement in the engines. It would be foolish to believe that the mere inclusion of a URL in such directories will propel any web site in the first position. Business people should be extremely careful of hyped promises to be at the top, with just a directory inclusion. As you are about to find out, it takes a lot more than that to be at the top in the search engine results pages (SERP’s) of any major search engine. (more…)
Staying Ahead Of Your Competitors
Speaking of competition, have you checked the websites of your top competitors recently? While making fine adjustments to your campaign is great, they cannot be successfully accomplished without reviewing the efforts of your biggest competitors. Which products are they targeting; what press releases have they issued? Knowing your competitors’ movements will not only help you with your SEO efforts but also prepare you for theirs.
If You’ve Added Content, Did You Optimize It?
Chances are, you have added or will add new content or products to satisfy your visitors over the Christmas period. While your older, established pages have probably received attention; it can be difficult to keep all your new pages optimized. Take time now to review them to ensure that they at least have unique, keyword-rich title and Meta tags. (more…)
Professional Search Engine Positioning
If you need to write for the search engines and your site visitors too, the following nine tips can be of good help. Always remember that all search engines are like humans: they want good relevant content that will help everybody in the end.
Step No. 1:
First, start by writing attention-grabbing tag lines, written using H1 or H2 tags. This will help you a lot with the search engines. Google gives additional importance to title tags in bold H1 or H2 tags. Additionally, most people are overwhelmed with information from just about everywhere they look, so they “scan read”, particularly on the Web. Always remember that if your headline doesn’t get their focus and attention, everything else you write may go unread. Your title and headline must highlight the features and benefits of whatever product or service you are trying to sell on that particular page. (more…)
The Google Dance
Just how does Google update its whole index? This is a rather broad question, but we will explain each and every step that Google takes every month to ensure its database is the most relevant and of the highest quality.
Quite a good number of people and companies realize that, in order to obtain the best Google rankings early in their search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns, it is important to take all the necessary steps before and carefully plan ahead. In respect to non-fee search engine submissions, Google happens to be one of the very few left. It’s also one of the earliest to include it in its database. As/of July 10th, 2003, it is widely estimated that the worldwide Google database consists of over 3.4 Billion pages! And that is only a fraction of all available web sites, as some of them are not open to Google, ie: those sites are not to be visited by a search crawler or spider. (more…)
