Search Engine Optimization(SEO): 2009

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Three things you should NEVER do

A webmistress asked me recently how much I would charge to optimize her site for the search engines. I took a glance at her site, and the first thing I found was a hidden link to an association she was part of.

I asked her why the link was there. She told me it was "for the search engines." It never ceases to amaze me how much really bad - I mean absolutely horrible - advice is floating around the Internet.

She never did hire me, but she did walk away with one free piece of advice that I now share with you: "Remove that link ASAP." Hidden links and hidden text are big trouble and something you should never do.

A hidden link is simply a link the search engine robots would follow, but is not visible to the naked eye. It could be a one pixel by one pixel graphic the same color as the background. Hidden text could be keyword written in the same color as the background.

If a search engine detects text in the same color as the background, it might penalize or even ban your site. In fact, one search engine expert has even suggested that if your background is, say, white, and you have a black table with white text on your page, that search engines would read that as hidden text (white background, white text) even though the text is clearly visible in the black table. Hmm. I will have to revisit my own site's colors.

Why are hidden links and hidden text bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.

Duplicate pages are also a no-no. Search engines like original content made for human visitors. Five pages with the same article are seen as spamming, even if you did change "bicycle repair" to "fix your bike" in the second version and to "bike repair" in the third.

I was asked to exchange links with four websites this one person owned. The sites are very wholesome and I believe the webmaster is too. But the link pages on each website are identical: same introductory text and same links in the same order with identical wording each. All it would take is one complain to get all four sites banned, or at very least, severely demoted at Google and other search engines.

Needless to say, I turned down the offer, so that my site would not be associated with a "bad neighborhood".

Why are duplicate pages bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.

Doorway pages are also bad. A doorway page is a page carefully designed to do well on search engine results, but is never meant to be used by humans. Often there is then a link to a website or there is some form of redirect.

Why not just optimize your site for the keywords you want, rather than try to trick the search engines? It probably will cost you less to hire a good search engine optimizer, and your website will not get banned.

I was approached by someone offering a combination of doorway pages and link farming (another no-no!). He did not call them by those names, even insisting they were not doorway pages. He wanted a few hundred dollars a month. There's nothing like your friendly neighborhood mortician coming to call when business is slow and bearing his own special brew for you to sample.

Why are doorway pages bad? Because they try to cheat the rules. Cheating is bad, and search engines do not like playing with cheaters.

By the way, "doorway pages" should not be confused with "entry pages". I get lots of my traffic entering through one or another of my articles. But these are real articles with real content, designed for human eyes and optimized for the search engines. This is a good tactic, because it adds content (which is what search engines are looking for).

Hidden links and text, duplicate pages and doorway pages are just a few of the "clever" tactics that can land you in the "Search Engine Slammer". If you spend much time on the Internet, you'll be approached about many others sooner or later.

Here is a simple question to ask yourself: "Would this be helping the search engines deliver the best results, or would it be trying to cheat their rules?" If it feels a little funny, don't try it. Or ask someone who knows.

Search engines are your friends. Be nice to them, and they'll be nice to you. You might just land yourself a berth atop Mount Google.

David Leonhardt is an effective, professional seo consultant and a website marketing consultant. For a free quote, call 613-448-3931, or send us an email.

Five SEO Tips To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

I can't promise you gazillions, but there are a few things you should do to make it easy for search engines to find you. I assume you have already decided to submit your site to the major search engines and directories. I assume that you will develop some sort of linking strategy (hopefully a better strategy than most websites use today). I also assume you will have picked key search terms for all the pages on your website.

Beyond that, here are my top five tips for making your website easy for those "gazillions" to find it.

http://www.seo-writer.com/reprint/five-seo-tips.html

A picture might be worth a thousand words, but search engines don't read pictures. Make sure your key search terms are written out in text, not part of a graphic title you hire somebody to prepare for you. That also means you should not just show pictures of toys, but also write out the names, and possibly a keyword description with the title.
Have several pages of articles related to your website's topic. Use a different keyword search term for each article. For instance, one article might use frequently the term "safe toys for babies", while another might use the term "baby safety".
What's the URL of your website? Your name won't help you there. Your key search term will. In this instance, I might pick www.baby-toy-safety.com, for example (if that is one of your top keyword phrases). Hire somebody who knows what he is doing to develop the right keyword strategy for you BEFORE you choose your domain name.
What's the title of your page? I don't know how many times I see titles such as "Article" or "Contact us". Don't expect the search engine robots to get all excited about that term. And don't expect anybody to search for that term, either. Much better to title your page "Free article on safe toys for babies" or "Contact the *Baby Toy Expert* today". By the way, this is the single most important place to include your keyword phrases.
What about that navigation menu that appears on every single page of your website? Does it say "Contact the baby toy expert?" Or "about the baby toy expert". Or links about baby toys?" Need I say more?

If your website is about life insurance, you have little hope of hitting the front pages of any search engine. "Life insurance" is such a competitive search engine marketplace. Unless, of course, people are searching for a very specific and rare niche. Even then, I suspect you will need much more than these five tips.

In fact, there are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do to win the search engine race. These top five search engine optimization tips are a great start, whatever your website is about.

David Leonhardt is an effective, professional seo consultant and a website marketing consultant.

How Search Engines Connect Sellers and Buyers

Maggie knows how to find what she wants. She lets her fingers do the walking - not in the Yellow Pages, but at Google.com. She wants to learn about bread baking, and you have just written Bread Baking Made Simple, and you sell some great baking tools. The good news is the Google and other search engines exist for one simple reason: to help Maggie find your website.

Google will show Maggie 534,000 resources on "bread baking". Unless she fails to find what she wants on the first page, or top 10 results, she will never find your website listed 124th in the results. (Actually, if she does not find what she wants in the top twenty or thirty results, she is likely to refine her search to "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking").

How do you get into the top 10 results so Maggie can find your website? You might have heard a lot about "search engine optimization" and "ranking analysis" and "algorithms". It all sounds very complex, but it really works on a simple 1 - 2 - 3 principle.

A search engine will show Maggie only resources (websites) it has on record. So make sure to submit your site to the key search engines and directories. You do not need to hire somebody who will charge you big dollars to do this. Nor should you fall for any of the auto-submit software or services. This should be done by hand, and anybody can do it. You can do it yourself.
The search engine will rank highest those websites it feels are most "important". This means you have to show that your website is most important. There are a few simple things you can do. First, make sure you have content. Text content equals importance on the Internet. Links, both coming in and going out, are key. Connectivity equals importance on the Internet. Get listed in the major directories (DMOZ.com, Yahoo.com, Zeal.com, JoeAnt.com, etc.), as this also is a measure of importance.
The search engine will show Maggie the most "relevant" high-ranking resources. Google might rank http://TheHappyGuy.com relatively very high, but it is totally irrelevant to a search for bread baking. How does a search engine know which websites are most relevant for Maggie's search? By the number of times "bread baking" shows up in text on your web page. By the variety of ways it shows up on your page. By number web pages you link to and that link to you with the words "bread baking" included.

Are you ready to roll? Possibly. Some of this you can easily do yourself. But there are three places that are worth spending money to help all the Maggies out there find your website and your book.

The first is choosing the right keywords. It might look simple, but "bread baking" might not even be the best keyword phrase to focus on. It might be "easy bread baking" or "home bread baking". The most searched terms might not be the best, nor the term with the least competition.

The second is to prepare a link strategy. The "link exchange" pages that are getting more popular each day are also becoming less effective each day. Here are just a few of the linking factors that will affect whether Maggie discovers your book:

The total number of incoming and outgoing links
The importance of the sites you link to and from
The relevancy of the sites you link to and from
Which pages on their sites and on yours are being linked
What you include in the incoming and outgoing links
Where on the page the links are placed
How many links are on those pages
How many pages are linked to or have outgoing links
The ratio of links to content on the pages involved

You can implement the strategy yourself, but it is worth hiring somebody to put it together for you. Ask the person what factors she would consider when building a strategy for you. If she does not mention several of the above, your money is better spent elsewhere.

The third place to invest is to have somebody knowledgeable review your html code. Chances are that you have missed numerous opportunities to let the search engines know your website is relevant, and possibly some opportunities to show it is important.

David Leonhardt is an effective, professional seo consultant and a website marketing consultant. For a free quote, call 613-448-3931, or send us an email.

The 52 Top SEO Tips - Here Are 10 of Them Read more: http://www.seo-writer.com/reprint/top-seo-tips.html#ixzz0ZD0E9inn

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.

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.

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. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.

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?

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

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 this web site monitoring page

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?

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.)

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.

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.

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 Last Minute Florida Villas 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:

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.

Resource

How to Get Good Links

ot surprisingly, getting good-quality links to your site is more difficult than optimizing your content with keywords. Often, you can’t control if, how, or when another site links to yours. And it takes time. You can’t expect to get dozens of quality links overnight. You can buy links, but Google and other search engines frown upon such “black-hat” tactics. And in extreme cases, the practice can actually cause search engines to penalize your site.

Nonetheless, there are “white-hat” strategies to follow to get links to your pages. Here are some techniques to try.

Create link bait. Write informative, useful, provocative, newsworthy or otherwise “viral” Web content and get the word out about it (more on that topic in a minute). Once other people discover and appreciate your content, they’re likely to post links to it on their own sites.

But don’t make your content overly sales-y. “Eighty percent of searches are done by people looking for information, rather than looking to buy,” says McGee. “A really useful page offering recommendations about how to use an acne treatment will more likely get linked to than a page that simply sells the treatment,” he explains.

Include links to relevant pages on your social media updates. Once you’ve created that fabulous content, spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed or other social network and include a link to the content. Sites such as Ping.fm allow you to post to multiple social networks simultaneously and will automatically shorten URLs for you.

Write and distribute press releases. If you’ve got news to share about your company, write a puff-free press release and include a keyword-rich anchor text link to a relevant page on your site. You can submit your release to PR sites, such as PRLog and PRWeb, for free or a fee (depending upon the site).

The release will be posted to the PR site, so you’ll now have a link from that site to yours. News organizations, bloggers and others may post your news on their sites with the link or, even better, interview you for an online article.

Suggest the anchor text. If a blogger or someone in the media writes about your company, give them the URL of an appropriate landing page on your site as a link. Suggest the anchor text for the link too; use a keyword you want to rank highly for in search engine queries. They might ignore your request, but it never hurts to ask.

Link to others as you’d have them link to you. If you link to sites in a positive way, those sites are likely to return the favor. Contact people you know with Web sites and discuss how you might legitimately link to one another. In other words, be generous with links yourself and use old-fashioned networking skills to build links to your site.

Do competitive link-building. Do your competitors have more links than you? If so, it’s time to try some competitive link building, Fishkin suggests.

Here’s how: Perform a search in Google, Yahoo or other search engine using a keyword or phrase for which you’d like to rank highly. Examine the first page of search results. From among those results, copy a URL of a competitor’s Web page.

Next, go to Yahoo Site Explorer. Paste that URL into the blank search field at the top of the browser page and click the Explore URL button. Under Results, click the ‘Inlinks’ tab to get a list of external Web pages that link to the URL you pasted.

In effect, you’ll then have a road map of external pages that link to your competitor’s Web page. Armed with that information, you can contact the Webmasters of those pages. Tell them about your site, explaining why it may be of importance to their readers. Ask the Webmaster to add a link to your site, too. This can be time-consuming, so pick and choose the sites to pursue carefully.

Submit your site to one or more directories. For free or a fee, you can get your site listed, with a link, in one or more online directories, such as DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, Business.com and Yellowpages.com. CitySearch and Yelp can also provide SEO-boosting links to your site. Consider submitting your site to your local Better Business Bureau and Chamber of Commerce directories, too. Look for directories particular to your business or industry as well.

Organize and sponsor events. You’ll increase the chances that bloggers, Facebookers, tweeters and others reporting on those events will link to your site.

Leaving blog comments might — or might not — help. Many Web sites and blogs have dedicated areas where visitors can leave comments with embedded links. Some believe this is an effective way to get external links to their sites and, hence, boost their search result rankings.

The truth is, many spammers use this technique. The result: Most search engines place less trust in these links than in links contained within genuine editorial endorsements.

However, regularly leaving comments can be a great way to get on a blogger’s radar, says McGee. The blogger may end up writing about you — and include a link to a relevant page on your site.

It’s All About Attracting Customers

Ultimately, your goal should be to acquire lots of keyword-rich links to relevant pages on your site from sites that are trusted, popular and authoritative. It’s not easy, and it won’t happen quickly. But when combined with your keyword SEO efforts, you can boost your site’s ranking in search results. And that’s an important step toward attracting potential new customers online.

Resource

James A. Martin is an SEO content writer for businesses and the co-author of Getting Organized in the Google Era

SEO Tips for Small Business: How to Get Good Links‎

The most important factor to improve your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) might surprise you. According to the 2009 SEOMoz.org survey of top SEO experts, keyword-rich links from other Web sites (that point back to your site) do more to bump your page rankings than any other element.

Unfortunately, getting those links can be difficult and time consuming. But with persistence, patience and some old-fashioned networking, you can acquire quality links to your site — and greatly improve your chances of ranking highly in relevant search engine results.

Why Links are Important for SEO

“Links are like doors,” says Thomas W. Petty, CEO of the Bay Area Search Engine Academy, which offers SEO workshops in Sacramento and San Francisco. “The more you have, the more likely someone is likely to walk through them.”

Links to your site, as well as within your site (from one page to another), can help search engine robots more efficiently find and then index your site’s content. Conversely, if your content isn’t included in a search engine’s index, people can’t find it when conducting keyword searches.

In addition, links to your Web pages on other sites help potential customers find you. They’re especially valuable if the link is part of an editorial endorsement of your product or service.

Search engines are also likely to interpret legitimate links to your Web pages from other sites as a vote of confidence from those sites. The more votes you get, the more likely search engines are to consider your pages important. And a page seen as important has a stronger chance of ranking high in relevant search queries than a page considered unimportant (or worse, seen as spam).

Consider Google, for instance, which has about 65 percent of the U.S. search traffic. Its search engine technology takes into account more than 200 factors when deciding how important a Web page is to a particular keyword search. Among those factors is PageRank, a patented algorithm that assigns a score of one through 10 to Web pages based on each page’s perceived importance.

A page’s PageRank score is influenced, in part, by the PageRank score of other Web pages that link to it. While some SEO experts debate the overall importance of PageRank to SEO, it still points to a larger truth about SEO.

“Good links to your site are far more important than how you use keywords,” says Rand Fishkin, CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz.org, an Internet marketing and SEO consulting firm.

To see this principle in action, says Fishkin, type the words click here into a search engine. Most likely, the no. 1 result will be Adobe’s page for downloading the free Adobe Reader software (for viewing PDF documents). However, nowhere on this Adobe.com page or within the page’s HTML code is the keyword phrase click here used.

So why does that Adobe page rank number one for a keyword phrase it doesn’t contain? Because countless Web sites include a link to that page with the keyword phrase click here in the anchor text. (Anchor text is the text within a hyperlinked phrase. It’s an important place to put keywords for pages that you want to optimize.)

Keywords Are Still Key

The importance of links vs. keywords doesn’t mean you shouldn’t optimize your pages with relevant keywords, as described in SEO Tips: How to Increase Traffic With Keywords. Keywords are critical to helping a search engine determine the subject of a Web page, blog post, YouTube video or other content.

But keywords alone aren’t always enough to goose your ranking in a Google or other search-engine query. In fact, ranking high for competitive keywords is extremely difficult without a solid network of good-quality links pointing to a relevant page on your site, says Matt McGee, a Search Engine Land editor and search marketing consultant for small businesses.

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Monday, August 10, 2009

Free Directory List 2

Free Dirctory List1

PR 6 Free Directory List

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