Jumat, 31 Agustus 2012

Search Engine Optimisation: One Link is Better than Ten

That can’t be right! Shouldn’t ten links be better than one? It is usually the case where more is better. However, when it comes to gaining links, having more links isn’t necessarily better than having a few good links. In fact, having too many irrelevant links could possibly harm your website’s visibility within the search engines.

These days, search engines are placing more emphasis on incoming links to a website when evaluating rank. The reason being is because they are difficult to obtain from trusted sources (a "by the book" website such as the Dmoz directory) and it is a good way to partially eliminate the group of people who abuse the "on the page" factors of optimisation (page spamming). How is this so? Well, if you have someone who is abusing the "on the page" factors and they have no trusted links to their page (they will most likely not get any at all due to spam) then there is no chance of them getting a good listing. However, people have worked out ways in getting a large number of links, through link farms and other tactics, regardless of the quality of their website. As the search engines are aware of this, it brings us to the topic of how one link can be better than ten.

Obtaining one link from a trusted source can be very difficult in the sense that they do not issue links to just about anyone. If you have a good website with relevant information, then you will get them. It is for this reason one link from a trusted source can better a multiple of links from other websites. As a trusted source website is "trusted" by search engines, it will also trust the websites it links to. If you have ten links from your best friends, it will help you in some sense, but no where near as much as the one link from a source like Dmoz, unless one of your friends has a very reputable website amongst the search engines.

Having too many irrelevant links could harm your website’s visibility in the search engines. What is meant by this is having links from websites that have no relation to yours. An example of this would be a site about cars linking to another site about medicine (unless the sites are reputable and have a good reason for the link i.e. there is a relationship made between cars and medicine). Search engines will pick up on this sort of link and will give it no weight in boosting your visibility. Obtain many of these irrelevant links, then it could be seen as spam (like a link farm tactic) and that will lower the popularity of your website within search engines.

The key here is to focus on quality and not quantity. Gaining a few good / relevant links will take you much further than a lot of irrelevant links. To get these quality links, start off by placing your website in directories, but be sure to avoid any "on the page" spamming as this will not get you accepted. Once search engines have acknowledged a presence of relevant links, follow up on it and research some ways to obtain more. As time passes, you will notice that your website’s performance will increase, as the links age, provided you have carried out search engine optimisation. Avoid obtaining the irrelevant links even though it may be tempting to see fast results. It will only be a matter of time before a search engine realises the spam tactic, and as the saying goes "fast rise, fast fall".

Kamis, 30 Agustus 2012

Maintaining Ethical Standards In SEO

In all kinds of businesses, credibility is important. This is one of the primary principles that are being established by the companies. It must be prioritized above all other things because if not, they will surely loose their customers. In every country, there is always a provision that sets ethical standards when it deals about business.

Even on the SEO or the search engine optimization companies, they are also very concerned with the maintenance of their integrity. It is easier to attract customers if the company is able to sustain a good name. It will also ensure a good profit, because the more subscribers who will patronize the business the greater the gain that they will have.

The kind of employees that you have will reflect the totality of the company’s management. This will reveal the manner on how you discipline your staff. It will also transpire to the people that will make them decide whether they will go for subscription in your company or not.

In SEO, there are various ways to maintain its credibility.

• Choose a trustworthy staff. Usually, chaos and controversies within the company starts when misunderstanding exists. Make sure that when you accept applicants as your future employees you are guaranteed that they have a good morale. Even though the task of the employees in SEO will be merely focusing on computer works but still it is very important since you will be making transactions within and outside your offices.

• Small things should not be made complicated. If there are little problems that arise in running the business, better discuss it immediately before it grows into a bigger problem.

• Problems arising in the company must be tackled within the office only. Avoid things that will likely worsen the situation, commonly this is the problem of the companies. Matters that deal on internal concerns must not reach the other offices. There are times that your opponent company may use the controversy against you that will lead to the obliteration of your name.

• Always appear cheerful towards your customers. In spite of the internal problems that you are probably encountering do not take it as burden up to the point that you will disregard the welfare of your subscribers already. You will lose a lot of them if you continue doing this, so always remain positive to them at all times.

Some of the noted unethical practices that are very known to search engine optimization are cloaking and issue, doorway pages or hidden links and sometimes hidden texts.

These malpractices are treated to be forbidden by various search engines. Beware about this because once they discover these strategies used in your website, you will surely be banned.

Sadly, once your site is ban you will not only loose your ranking but as well as the money that you have invested on it. Everything will turn into nothing so it is better to be honest at all times. Do not grab for profit in an immoral way because you will just suffer the consequence in the end.

So, ethical standards will be comprised of all the factors surrounding the entire management of the company. It is not a matter of questioning your manager’s individual personality or even the staff but on their morale inside their work.

Rabu, 29 Agustus 2012

Affordable SEO Rankings

Title:
Affordable SEO Rankings

Word Count:
619

Summary:
What route to take when deciding on an SEO campaign and higher rankings? Outsource to an SEO company or go DIY which can, in some cases be much more affordable and profitable long term.


Keywords:
seo SEO cources affordable rankings search engine optimization ranking marketing


Article Body:
Traffic is a must if any online business is to succeed. Your business can either pay for that traffic through advertising, ezines and other means... Or you can decide to go the SEO route and get all your traffic for free.

However in doing so there is first an outlay in costs to get your website highly ranked on all the major search engines. The more ranking you would like to obtain, on multiple pages, using multiple keywords/phrases, the more costly it will be to your business.

But the real question, is just how costly?.... And, if you go the D.I.Y SEO route, just how effective will it be and how much money will you save?

What is a reasonable cost or the average cost for employing an SEO company?

The problem with most SEO companies is the fact that they are literally charging a small fortune for a basic SEO campaigns which may include optimization of only a few web pages and ranking of just two to three keywords or phrases. How much for such a package.... anywhere from 2 to $4,000.

The current going rate for in house (internal) SEO work is anywhere between 40 to $60 per hour, with external rate, business to business sitting at roughly $100 per hour.

If you are a large company, these rates may be affordable but for most small businesses and solopreneurs, they are simply out of the question.

Even a large company may be better off handing their SEO tasks over to a capable employee who can learn the required skills and techniques and apply these when required. One or two people with such capabilities would not only save the company profits but would allow their business to adapt to new SEO products a lot faster than having to outsource.

What you are not being told be the SEO companies is that search engine ranking is really not that difficult to master... And the second point that maybe matters the most is that once you have high ranking for many selected keywords, just a little maintenance and tweaking can keep you there for a very long time. Even to the point that much SEO work can be outsourced at very low rates to experts in other countries which makes it even more affordable.

Without doubt, obtaining high rankings by doing it your self or handing it over to a major SEO is quite doable. With so many affordable SEO guides, memberships and software packages online today, it is really a wonder as to why many companies are yet to implement their own in-house SEO specialists using their current staff.

So, is this to say that learning all SEO techniques is simply a walk in the park, of course not. But any person with a reasonable ability in technical matters could have a large website on it's way to excellent ranking positions within as little as two weeks.

Unfortunately what most lack in SEO, is a clear and concise plan of action. Yes, many will learn the techniques and methods required but then fail to act or fail to implement the complete plan thus resulting in minimal outcomes. As with any marketing campaign, it must be implemented right through to the very last step, SEO is not different.

With the continuing improvement of search engines to supply more accurate results, search engine marketing will continue to grow and be in high demand.

The decision you have to make for your own business is....

Exactly how much income do you wish to take out of your own business pocket in using such services, or is there a better alternative by taking your SEO in house and increasing business profits continually, year after year?

Selasa, 28 Agustus 2012

Google And Your Domain Name

Google, being the largest and most used search engine and is extremely important to optimize your website for. As a matter of fact, if you optimize your website just for Google you’d find your rankings in Yahoo! and MSN will jump up higher than your ranking in Google. I’ve optimized many websites that show up in at least the top 20 listings in Google and found that in each case they ranked higher in Yahoo! and MSN usually in the top 3 positions with most in the number one spots.

Most everyone agrees that with Google content is king. So writing good copy with just the right amount of keyword phrases, for keyword density is important. And natural anchor text links is second to the throne, which takes lots of work and proper timing to do properly.

Third in line are keyword phrases (notice I said phrase because single keywords are almost impossible to optimize for), which need to be researched to find the right phrase for you and not used to often in the content/text to get the right density. Used to often and you’ll hurt your ranking.

Fourth in line are the Meta Description Tag which when used properly can actually bring visitors to your website who wouldn’t normally come there. Of course there are several other factors involved with getting that elusive number one spot.

But what most everyone often overlooks is what I call the fifth element which Google uses to determine their ranking of a website and that's the domain name.

People, even SEO companies, don’t either know the importance of the domain name to Google or take the time to chose the proper name for the website. Most just use their company name or what they conceder a "Cool" name for their websites. Now, unless your company is well known or at least well known in its field, using a basically unknown company name is pointless. Even more pointless is the "Cool" name.

The entire reason you optimize your website is to get visitors from search engines, so why not use all the tools available to get the best ranking possible for your website.

Use your domain name as one of those tools. Instead of your company name or the "Cool" one, use a keyword phrase, one that describes your product or service. Take your time in choosing the proper name. Make sure that it will work best for your website. If you not sure ask your friends and relatives what keywords they would use to find your product or services on the Internet. You might be surprised at what they would use.

You have the keyword phrase that you know will work. But before you jump online and get that domain name there are a couple of things you may still need to do.

Let's say you're the owner of Mike's Bikes and you specialize in Colorado Mountain Bikes so you figure to kill two birds with one stone and use the domain name mikescoloradomountainbikes.com to keep your name in it along with using the keyword phrase. Now this might make sense to you but you’re not Google. You're not going to like it but you need to drop the mikes out of the name because it's dead weight.

So now you've got coloradomountainbikes.com but wait before you burn up the keyboard use Colorado-mountain-bikes.com instead. Why? Because Google sees this as three different words and would see coloradomountainbikes.com as a single word. When people are doing a search they will not be using coloradomountainbikes, they are going to use Colorado mountain bikes. The bonus is that your domain name now becomes a keyword phrase used by Google when it performs a search.

Senin, 27 Agustus 2012

SEO Tip: How Do Search Engines Choose Page-One Sites?

You may be wondering how search engines arrange the top pages from millions of others. There are calculations involved and you have to work with these to put your site in page one.

How Do Search Engines Work?

There are three important elements that make up the database and finding of relevant material by search engines. From the inputting of words, the search until the hierarchy of results, there is a process that is mathematically formulated and produces the links and sites that suit best.

1. The web crawler. This is also known as a “spider” or “robot” which roams the web. It is a program that translates web pages and any existing links relevant to the page. The web crawler begins by looking through the web addresses that are available in its database or index. Any other page on the internet is added to the database should the web crawler consider it relevant to its existing index. Thus, the database continually grows and the web crawler also goes back to the index to check for updates and again search for new available links.

2. The index. The index holds all information of websites and pages that the web crawler has discovered during its frequent web roaming. Whenever any website or page is updated by the owner, the index also updates its stored information thus it continually grows over time.

3. The search engine. A search engine is a software that goes through all the information stored in the index whenever a search is done by a web browser. An algorithm supports the final results according to how relevant the websites found are to the search. The hierarchy of page results is determined by shutting on or off categories that the search engine feels is relevant to the search.

The Goal of Search Engines

The ultimate goal of a search engine is to provide the most relevant and informative web pages to the web browser. The effectiveness of search engines may be tested through search engine optimization. Page results for different search engines may vary depending on the algorithm that they are using. Thus, website owners aim to improve their rank based on the algorithm.

How Can I Get on Page-On of Search Engines?

1. Links. Links are small routes leading to your website thus a lot of these will increase your visibility in search engines. When typing in a search, it is possible for your URL to be exposed even if the engine may be revealing another website housing your link.

2. Page Summary. Make your page summary more effective by using meta tag names and using keywords in a balanced manner. Be more flexible in your website’s description so that it can stand out even if the search is bound for a different category. This prevents your website from being completely shut out by the search engine.

3. Title. Although the true nature of the fixed algorithm used by search engines is not fully known, it might help to start with titles that begin with the letters A to E. Engines arrange equal scoring websites in alphabetical order.

4. Keywords. Wisely input keywords in your web pages. More is not better when it comes to key words since engines will decrease your value with too much repetition. Four to five keywords per page is the most you may be using to help boost your visibility.

5. URL. Share your URL as much as you can in multi and single-database services to increase your value. You may also put it in blogs, your friends’ linking addresss and emails.

Minggu, 26 Agustus 2012

A Simple And Free Way To Skyrocket Your Search Engine Ranking

What can you do right now, to increase your search engine ranking?

Well for starters, incoming links play a huge role when it comes to placing high in the search engines. The more links that point to your site from other websites the better. To the search engines, each incoming link counts as a vote for your ranking. The higher a site ranks, the more the its vote is worth.

It's also important that these sites that have a similar theme as yours. For example, if your site is built around photography software, you would want to get your link on sites that deal with camera equipment or photography tips.

There is a simple and free technique that you can start using this minute to get tons of incoming links to your site. After reading this article of course :)

Try this, open your favorite search engine and type in the following phrase with quotations marks: "fishing" "add url" . Hit the search button and the results will turn up numerous sites that allow you to add your website link to their directory.

Some of these sites will add your link right away and some might require a reciprocal link which means you add their link to your site. Reciprocal links can also help your ranking by positioning you as an authority if you link to other quality, similar themed sites.

Apply this technique to you own site by substituting the keyword "fishing" with whatever keyword applies to you niche. To find even more sites that allow link submission, play around with different combinations of keywords in between the first set of quotation marks.

Examples:

"football" "add url"
"football gear" "add url"
"fishing gear" "add url"
"hockey equipment" "add url"
"weddings" "add url"
"wedding merchandise" "add url"
"golfing equipment" "add url"
"golfing secrets" "add url"
"fitness products" "add url"
"adventure tours" "add url"

Next you can expand you search even more by replacing "add url" in between the second set of quotation marks with other phrases like "add link" or "submit a url". Get creative and try every possible combination you can think of.

Examples:

"add website"
"add your link"
"add a link"
"add a site"
"submit url"
"submit a site"
"submit site"
"submit link"
"link submission"
"suggest a link"
"suggest a url"
"recommended a site"
"suggest your site"
"link directory"
"add-a-link"
"cool sites"

As a side note, sometimes these link directory sites will have another text link that you must click to find the submission form. In cases like this, look for things like "click here to add your site" or "add your url" etc.

If you want to streamline the process of submitting your website link to hundreds of directories, significantly increase your link popularity and search engine ranking, then I highly recommend a hot new product called Link Directory Submitter http://www.GetDirectorySubmitter.com

This program has a very large, every increasing number of sites already built into it that you can submit your link to. Using this program is a great way to leverage your time by letting the program handle all the dirty work of finding these sites and manually submitting to them on your own.

Sabtu, 25 Agustus 2012

Non Reciprocal Link Building

What is Non Reciprocal Link Building?

Link popularity is the most important internet marketing tool for you. Building outbound links, inbound links or non reciprocal link building is the prime aspect for you to popularize your links. The non reciprocal link building directly boosts up targeted traffic on your website(s) and, thus, simply generates more business for you. In fact, one way non reciprocal links are responsible for effective SEO operations.

So, it becomes all the more important for you to know about non reciprocal links in detail. Read on to know it.

First things first, what is link popularity?
In the simple terms, link popularity can be defined as the number of websites linking to one website. You can check the link popularity of your website(s) with the help of search engines or some link popularity software. There are actually three types of links: inbound links, outgoing links and reciprocal links. The reciprocal links are the links exchanged between the two sites. Outgoing links are the links of other web masters on your websites. The inbound links are called non reciprocal links. They are also known as the one way links.

Non reciprocal link building: Why it is the most important?
The non reciprocal link building is the process of getting the other websites to mention your links. And you do not even have to link back to these websites. And now the natural question that might be cropping in your mind would be why do you need to build non reciprocal links?

The answer to this question is straight and direct. As these links are one way, they are based on the fact that these links are “useful” to the visitors. The links provide information, article and knowledge to the users. Thus, these links add credibility to your website. Even the search engines base their ranking more on the basis of one way non reciprocal links. Thus, the number of non reciprocal links for your website plays a great role in determining the exact position of your website.

Now to build these one way links, you need to make your site well enticing to the other sites. They must feel that the links to the content on your site will attract the traffic. So your website should provide necessary content or information. Even if you need to spend some money or time in getting quality content made, the deal is worth making.

You can also get free articles from a number of sites to publish on your website(s). Similarly, you can get your articles published on the others’ web sites as well. Web directories and ezines are also a place to get your website noticed. Always mention your link at the end of the articles. Always make sure that the directory you are submitting links to, is related to your business circuit.

Joining discussion forums is also an effective way of non reciprocal link building. The forums publish your articles and help you get the feed back from the readers. A numbers of sites search for the forums to find out the websites publishing good articles. Some forums allow you to mention your signature as well.

Now it would be clear to you that non reciprocal link building raise your link popularity to newer heights. So go ahead and start working in this direction today.