Sabtu, 12 Mei 2012

All Link Types and SEO

This article covers a much discussed topic in the SEO community. Also, clients and often site owners come up with questions about what links to get, and how to get them. Note that I will not consider reciprocal links here, because of better alternatives, and because their effectiveness only applies to a small number of sites, who use them under 10% of their overall link ratio. I will review the main types you want to get for your site.

The natural one-way links.
This one is solely based in good content and resources. This is the safest method of link building available as far as search engines, which look at the “intent” of links. But it is also the slowest. If your site is new, then as part of its launch, submit it to niche web directories. Start with a few highly trusted directories, but do not have more than 10-15% of your overall links coming from them. Don't overlook industry-specific directories that may be paid or unpaid. These usually send highly qualified traffic and can be a real bargain. Directories will get you site many natural one-way links, at a natural speed of growth. This combination of type and speed is very beneficial. Look for sites that would benefit from offering users your content.

Linkbaiting, or link bait.
This one is not easy, and involves creativity. But it is worth every effort. Linkbaiting refers to content, videos, images or anything on your site that is created with the intention of increasing links to it. It is highly effective in getting links, probably the cheapest too, based on the cost of the “bait” you use, has no negative effects from the search engines, at least not for the moment, since all links generated look natural. When complemented by social bookmarking, the networks associated with these links will add even more value to them.

Paying for links, or paid links.
These links can have great short-term search benefits. These are good mainly for sites that have tons of pages with content, and have been well established online for years. In addition, these sites also have tons of natural links to them, again because they had been well established online for years. These are not recommended for new sites. Look for sites that are highly on topic with yours, and in complementary niches. A very important factor in the evaluation of these links, like any other, is age. And the latest “Google Slap” effect were sites fall pass the top 30 in the listings, is affecting primarily those which do heavy link buying.

Bad links and their effects.
Outbound links play a big role in the way search engines determine who your “neighborhood” is. Bad neighborhoods will affect your search engine rankings. Things like FFA (Free For All) link pages, links farms, etc, fall in this category. Note that this has nothing to do with your pages going into the supplemental index. That is not the kind of penalty these links cause for your site. And the amount of bad links considered is a big one. A small amount of them would not trigger a penalty, but make sure that your site is not related in any way to those link patterns.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Google, Yahoo, and Msn

In this article I will review the similarities and differences between the ranking algorithms of Google, Yahoo and Msn. Google and Yahoo are considerably reasonably close in terms of off-page factors weighting compared to Msn, which is more on the on-page side. Like Google, Yahoo and MSN will discount obviously identical and unnatural looking anchor link text. Since these algos are frequently updated, I will only concentrate on those factors that do not. Otherwise, mayor updates should take place for them to be replaced by other/better methods.

The Google Factors.
It is a known fact that Google is focused on links. Therefore, it ranks them by quality and relevancy factors. With that said, on-page factors such as title keywords, content keyword density and relevance also influence the ranking of a given page. Google also looks into the "neighborhood" of your site analyzing outbound links. If you link to related quality sites with relevant content, search engines will associate your site with these “neighbor” sites.

The Yahoo Factors.
Yahoo tends to be the most active of the three when it comes to crawling. Not a general rule though. But in addition to its nature, having RSS on your site will get it more aggressive and frequently crawled. Similar to Google, Yahoo gives a lot of importance to inbound links, looking into factors like relevancy and anchor text, and heavily at volume of links. Their TrustRank is a form of PageRank, but with a special teleportation to a subset of high-quality pages. Yahoo search rankings appear to place extra importance on your site being listed in their directory, especially for highly competitive terms. Keyword density in title and content relevance also count.

The Msn Factors.
Maybe a substantial different from the other two, Msn normally gives more weight to the title text. Also, CSS optimization plays an important role at getting better rankings here. Msn is second to Yahoo on links volume, but the link analysis is reversed, analyzing inbound links for quality, anchor text keywords, and relevancy. Inclusion in the MSN endorsed directories would boost your site high in the SERPs. This fact still holds true, but its advantage has lessened with the new Live version. Content freshness is still very important, boosting rank of frequently updated pages.

Optimizing for all.
Yes, it is possible. Did someone said: wikipedia? Regardless of the algo differences of the mayor search engines, a site with great content that attracts users, and generates lots of natural occurring inbound links having great anchor text, has a great chance of replicating similar success. Of the off-page factors, quality of inbound links is the most important. Of the on-page factors the keyword density in the title. A good balance between conservative keyword density and other elements like RSS and CSS need to exist when used, since they all get particular boots or penalties with the search engines.

By Utah SEO Jose Nunez

Google’s Bigdaddy about to take control

When you’re a search engine that accounts for over 46% of all searches on the Internet, you are a bona fide Big Daddy. But for Google, it’s more than a nickname—it’s the future.

For months now, the 7-year-old search engine has been testing new crawling and indexing systems with the hopes of making web searches more intuitive and accurate. The project, called “Bigdaddy,” is much more than a software update. It’s a total refit of the search engine’s infrastructure and software.

“…It’s not just a data push or algorithm update,” says Search Engineer Matt Cutts of Google. Three data centers have so far been updated with new ones coming online every 10 days, a pace that’s expected to increase. Web users can access the updated Google search by typing in the IP address of the updated servers in their address bar: 66.249.93.104, 64.233.179.104 or 216.239.51.104. All of Google’s reported 85+ data centers are expected to be updated around the end of February or early March, and the closer we get to that time, the odds increase that your Google search will hit a “Bigdaddy” data center.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ addresses

The biggest issue “Bigdaddy” will fix is hijacking redirects of URL requests—what happens when someone redirects a request for one website to another though illicit techniques. These kinds of redirects are called “302 redirects.”

“Bigdaddy” will also add something Google calls “canonicalization,” which will instruct a search engine how to decide which of a series of URLs is the proper one to insert into the Google index. For instance, most people would consider these the same URLs:

www.example.com
example.com/
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp

In reality, these URLs are different and could conceivably return completely different content for each request. However, Google’s “canonicalization” will pick the URL that best represents what the user is likely asking for.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ does

“Bigdaddy” will also bring different crawling and indexing criteria, the groundwork for more advanced algorithms, larger databases and faster, more effective indexing of content.

Additionally, Google will be able to index new kinds of content. Testing is underway on a new search engine spider based on the Mozilla browser that can read links within images and even within Flash video.

What ‘Bigdaddy’ means to you

Brand Identity Guru has spent the past week researching what the implications of “Bigdaddy” will be for our Boston Search Engine Optimization clients. By comparing the results, we found that “Bigdaddy”-powered keyword searches returned improved rankings for 77% of our clients while 17% stayed the same and 6% (mostly those without a good number of incoming links) experienced a decline.

“Bigdaddy” data centers also reported much higher numbers of search results: searching for “landscape software,” the non-“Bigdaddy” search engine returned about 30 million results while “Bigdaddy” returned over 60 million. We’ve concluded, then, that sites ranked well because of solid on-page SEO techniques and inbound linking will benefit from this update. But there are still many unanswered questions about the implications of “Bigdaddy.” However, Google (as usual) is remaining mum on specifics in the hopes of preventing people from taking unruly advantage of the system.

Role of On Page Optimization in SEO

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is the process of enhancing the visibility of a website on search engine listings. It refers to a list of marketing tools required to arrange a website in order to increase its rankings in the context of the result of pages of search engines and directories.


There are two main types of factors in search engine optimization:

1. On page Optimization
2. Off Page Optimization

On Page Optimization:

On Page Optimization is a technique by means of which your web page gets a high ranking on various Search engines like yahoo, google MCN etc. On page factors are directly related to the content and structure of the website.

Features of On Page Optimization:

Title Tag: This is an area in a web page where the text is placed that shows the title of the website on the very top of the web browser window. Search engines use title tags to make a link in search results.

Meta tag description: A Meta Tag Description is a part of web page coding that gives the basic description about the website. This should focus on the website because Meta tag description plays a very important role in web page ranking.

Meta Tag Keywords: Meta Tag Keywords play the similar role as meta tag description for highlighting the importance of a website.

Keyword Density: A particular percentage of keywords used on a web page are called keyword density. A keyword must be used in a web page from 2% to 8 % for good page ranking. This technique is the backbone of Search Engine Optimization.

URL Structure: If you want your website to rank well then your URL of website must be related to the context of the website.

Benefits of On Page Search Engine Optimization:

When creating or updating a commercial website it should be taken into consideration that the products are made more attractive for the viewers. At the same time it must be taken into account that the ability o gain more exposure with a broader target audience has its own benefits. Most websites need to reach out to a larger target audience in order to enhance their business. On Page Optimization allows a higher page ranking and based on a specific keyword or phrases they enter. This process identifies those keywords that will benefit a particular website and uses them in such a way that it gets a higher page ranking when those keywords are searched.

Most searchers only use first page displayed websites on their searches because this is where the pages with higher page rankings are displayed, which translates into these pages find the highest relevance to their keyword searches. This makes it even more vital that each website comprehends the significance and the knowledge necessary to adapt their websites to benefit from Search Engine Optimization.

An understanding of Search Engine Optimization provides the website a higher ranking in the world of search engines. By taking advantage of optimization techniques, more searchers will gain faster access to the particular website. If the website has something worthwhile to offer then this strategy that should be implemented immediately.

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An Introduction Primer to SEO

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

It can be defined as the process by which a site’s rankings in the search engines are increased for the keywords it is optimized for. Good SEO keeps both the user and the search engine in mind. Things that look beautiful on your site may have a negative influence on your site’s ranking. Good content ensures return visits. Keyword enriched content ensures that people will find your site.

How many people do you know who actually look at the fourth or tenth page of a search engine’s results page? Most people only look at the first ten to twenty search results. SEO can get your site ranked in the first bundle of results.

Aspects of SEO: Content

The web is indexed with keywords. The user types in a keyword string, exact phrase or a single keyword to find a relevant page. Information specialists make use of advanced searching techniques to find deep web content such as information imbedded in databases or dictionaries, but the average user thinks of the first thing associated with his query and types it in. That is why broad keywords on your site will not generate enough traffic because many thousands of pages have that exact keyword. You need specific keywords and keyword phrases.

There must be enough content on the page. Too little information guarantees that the keywords cannot be repeated enough without keyword stuffing. Keyword stuffing is where there are too many of the same keyword on a page. Search engines will rank your page lower if they see your page as stuffed.

Keyword density must be balanced with their relation to the rest of the page. This means that your main keywords must appear in certain areas of the page. They must preferably stand out from the rest of the text. There are a number of ways to do this but it is a new topic.

SEO: Meta Tags

There cannot be enough emphasis on Meta tags. Meta tags are in the invisible part of your page. It forms part of the source code. This is where the Title, Description, and Keywords, are placed for the search engines. Most engines will not be able to find your site if a Meta Tag is not present. This area is very important because this is where you place your main keywords and the description of your site. Once again, the relation to the title, description and content becomes important. Don’t stuff this area with long descriptions since the search engines will throw your page out if the description is too long, or the keywords repeated three or more times. Keep a balance.

You must write a robot.txt file for the spiders to exclude certain parts of your page. The reason is that most of them cannot read Java, and CGI scripts. There are a number of extensions to pages that will lead to exclusion from search engines.

Other SEO factors that also influence the way your page will indexed:

- ALT, TITLE, and AUTHOR tags.

- Number and quality of links to your site.

- Links from your site.

- Sitemap for search engines.

- Names of links to your other pages.

- Color and total number of links

These are just a few of the online and offline factors that influence your ranking. SEO is needed to make your page visible on the Internet where you have to compete with other sites.

Search Engine Placement through SEO Services no fluke

Affordable SEO services don’t necessarily mean lower quality of service. Rather, it really takes some serious effort to keep your SEO services cost low and at the same time to provide the desired quality of service pertained by your clientele. After all, Search Engine Optimisation is a methodical process with ample opportunity for experimentation. Whatever process or practices the search engine optimizers adopt, search engine placement in organic listings and increase in targeted traffic flow should be their ultimate objective. This objective can be fulfilled only when one keeps oneself abreast with the continuous developments in the field of search engine optimization. Only high Search engine placement is not the absolute solution but the SEO consultants should ensure that they are optimising their clients’ websites for right set of keyword phrases. Right set of keywords means those phrases are widely searchable terms and have relevancy to the clients’ website.
Any standardized SEO plan is dependent on the following factors:
• The total number of web pages within the particular website which is to be optimized.
• The total number of key word phrases that will be targeted.
• The competition within the industry to which the website belongs to.
• The number and quality of links to be achieved from different search engines and other sources.
However, in order to offer affordable SEO plans, the SEO experts needs to carefully take up various points coming under search engine optimization and try to cover up all the aspects of SEO. There are also some common steps that need to be followed under each SEO plans:
1. Primary Website Analysis Report: This is the most common feature of any affordable SEO services and can’t be neglected at all as it forms the base for rest of the SEO services.
2. Key word Analysis: Even an affordable SEO service package should comprise of this activity as it provides the right set of keywords which would be on target for the entire on page and off page SEO activities.
3. Industry and Competition Analysis: As the competition various from one industry to the other so the keywords need to be selected carefully as wrong selection of keywords can jeopardize the entire SEO process.
4. SEO Consultation: Any affordable SEO plan how inexpensive it may be need to follow the above three steps. However, the extent of study for each of the above activities may vary from one SEO plan to other. Depending upon the findings of the above activities, SEO consultation should be provided.
5. On-page Optimization Activities: Any affordable SEO packages can not do away without On-page activities. The number of web pages that would be optimized is dependent on the type of SEO plan chosen by the client.
6. Off-page Optimization Activities: The amount of off-page SEO activities must also be dependent upon the time to be spared under the particular SEO plan.
Aspirerankings is one such SEO firm in India that offers both standardized and affordable SEO packages. To have a complete idea about the affordable SEO plans, feel free to visit aspirerankings.com

Good And Bad SEO Practices

Search Engine Optimizing is a set of practices developed to help you get a high traffic and PageRank, while simultaneously building a useful and functional website that will respond to the needs of your potential users. While some website owners are getting their site indexed by following and enhancing these guidelines, others are looking for a way to sneak in and crawl up search engines by developing various strategies to cheat spiders.

Most search engines have their specific rules on which SEO practices are legitimate and which are not. While they disagree on some borderline issues, they do have a set of basic principles in common.


Good SEO Practices

• creating logically-structured pages
• logical paragraph use
• including a site map
• providing clear links to each page
• using descriptive and not too long meta-tags
• validating you code
• providing information-rich content that visitors would find useful
• creating your website content based on the users' needs as if search engines didn't exist
• using spell-check
• avoiding duplicate content


Bad SEO Practices

• using invisible text and links to create false keyword density
• using non-compliant HTML to manipulate relevancy (e.g.: a title that doesn't have anything to do with the page content)
• using CSS to manipulate relevancy (e.g.: using hidden elements by executing code to reveal them)
• sending automated requests to search engines
• using doorway pages created just for search engines
• using machine generated code to produce keyword-rich content
• cloaking - presenting a different content to users than to search engine spiders
• linking to spammers and other bad websites
• participating in linking schemes to increase PageRank
• creating pages that install viruses and other badware
• using unauthorized software to submit pages, check ranking etc.
• re-submitting the website without any reason


Borderline Issues

• inserting comments in the HTML code
• using invisible form elements to hold keyword values
• using HTML elements for keyword stacking (e.g.: image alts)
• using machine generated code for usability reasons (e.g.: in order to check for browser versions)

These borderline issues are controverted and ambiguous techniques. Most of the time it is very difficult to say whether these techniques were used to trick the spiders or only for usability purposes. The search engine is the one who has to make the ultimate decision.

Major search engines are constantly fighting against illicit techniques to get your website indexed and increase your PageRank and developing new and improved automated solutions to detect them. They even encourage users to report any website that is trying to abuse SEO guidelines. Thus using illegitimate ways to crawl up search engines may result in your website being banned. Once it's been removed from the search engine index, it will no longer appear in search results.

Google, as well as other search engines, are trying to develop a pro-active attitude among website owners and convince them it's more efficient to make use of legitimate SEO practices. One thing you should always ask yourself when building new features and writing content is whether you would be doing it even if search engines weren't there at all. This is the best way to drive traffic to your website and get better ranking.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller