learn basics before anything fancy

I heard something on the radio a few weeks ago that stuck with me and made me think about the basics of SEO. The line went something like this, “You have to have the fundamentals down before trying any of the fancy stuff. ” So before you go out and try to do things like PR sculpting or any of the other advanced techniques you hear about, get the basics down.
SEO can really be broken down into three essential areas: Architecture, Content, and Links. These are the basics of SEO that you need to understand and get right first. Let’s take a look at some key points to understand in each of these main areas.
Architecture – Can Your Site Be Crawled?
One of the first problems that a website has to address is whether or not their site can actually be crawled by the search engine spiders. You can have the best content in the world, but if the search engine spiders can’t get to it you won’t reap the benefits! Here are some things you can do to help your site be more crawl-able:
1. Avoid things like JavaScript or Flash navigation. Both of these kinds of navigation are not crawled very well by search engines at this time. This could change in the future, but for now it’s best to just avoid JavaScript and Flash navigations.
2. Keep your site’s architecture as flat as possible. Don’t have tons of levels in your architecture. Keep pages as close to the root as possible. In other words, mysite.com/folder/product is much better than mysite.com/category/subcategory/other-folder/product.
3. Stay away from parameter strings in URLs. By having parameter strings in URLs you could have multiple versions of the same content and will have to learn how to properly use the canonical element. You can avoid this by not using parameters. Instead, have a static URL for each page whenever possible. For example, mysite.com/productname.html is much better than mysite.com/?prod-id=abc123&cat-id=def456.
4. Use internal linking appropriately. Whenever it makes sense, link to other pages in your site from within the content of the page. Don’t just rely on your navigation to get people (and search engine spiders) to where you want them to go. (More about internal linking.)
5. Sitemaps are your friends. Make sure your site has both an HTML and XML sitemap. (More about sitemaps).
Content – Is It Optimized?
Once you have your website’s architecture set up the right way, the next step is to make sure that your content is well-optimized to help your site rank for your main keyword phrases. Here are a few basic guidelines to follow:
1. Don’t target too many phrases per page. You may have a list of 50 keywords you want to target, but you should only focus on 2-3 main phrases per page. Create other pages around additional phrases as needed.
2. No spammy stuff! Don’t do any keyword stuffing, alt stuffing, meta spamming, or any other spammy techniques. They don’t really work well anymore anyway.
3. Use your keyword phrases in titles, header tags, etc. By using your keyword phrases in your titles and header tags you can give them more emphasis.
4. Use your keywords in your content. Don’t just rely on your titles and header tags. Don’t overdo it; make the text read naturally but make sure you include your keywords and variations of them in the content.
Links – Getting Juice from Other Sites
Setting your site up the right way is one step, but getting traffic to your website takes a lot more than just using keywords on your pages. The other big key to getting a good rank on the search engines is to get other sites linking to you. By getting these links you are showing that your site has credibility and is worth ranking well. Here are a few quick tips to keep in mind when you’re building links:
1. Use a variety of techniques. There are a lot of things you can do to build links: directories, articles, social bookmarking, forums … the list goes on and on. Mix up what you’re doing and get a variety of link types coming into your site. (More about link building)
2. Spread your links over a lot of domains. It’s important to get a lot of links, but it’s also important to get a lot of links spread over many domains. If you follow tip #1 this shouldn’t be much of a problem for you.
3. Use keywords in your anchor text. One problem that I’ve seen over and over is that someone will build links to their site using either their name, their business name, or their URL. This is nice if that’s what you want to rank for, but if you want to rank for a keyword phrase you have to use that phrase as the anchor text of your link.
4. Use a variety of anchors. Don’t just use the same keyword phrase over and over again. Mix it up so that you aren’t spamming one phrase too much. This will help your link building look more natural.
5. The work is never done. Don’t think you can just submit to a bunch of directories and your work is over. SEO is an ongoing process.
While these tips don’t cover everything you need to know about the three main areas of search engine optimization, this is enough to get you started. Spend some time looking over your site to make sure that you are doing these basics. Then, if you want, you can try to get a little fancy.
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adding arrows your quiver

Avoiding duplicates in the search engine index has consistently been a key concern we’ve heard from webmasters and site owners. Over the last few years, we have made significant strides in finding duplicates in our crawler and index algorithmically and provided webmasters with better tools for controlling these. Today we are announcing our support for a new HTML tag, the tag, which helps reduce duplicates by documenting the preferred URL form to access each page.
When you use the tag, you can indicate the canonical URL form for crawlers to use for each page of content, no matter how it was retrieved. This puts the preferred URL form with the content so that it is always available to the crawler, no matter which session id, link parameter, sort parameter, parameter order, or other source of variance is present in the URL form used to access the page.
To do this, specify a tag in the section of your page content:

The above tag indicates to the crawler that the URL it is present on should be represented canonically as http://www.example.com/products. This would eliminate the following duplicates:
http://www.example.com/products?trackingid=feed
http://www.example.com/products?sessionid=hgjkeor2
http://www.example.com/products?printable=yes&trackingid=footer
A few technical details:
• The URL paths in the tag can be absolute or relative, though we recommend using absolute paths to avoid any chance of errors.
• A tag can only point to a canonical URL form within the same domain and not across domains. For example, a tag on http://test.example.com can point to a URL on http://www.example.com but not on http://yahoo.com or any other domain.
• The tag will be treated similarly to a 301 redirect, in terms of transferring link references and other effects to the canonical form of the page.
• We will use the tag information as provided, but we’ll also use algorithmic mechanisms to avoid situations where we think the tag was not used as intended. For example, if the canonical form is non-existent, returns an error or a 404, or if the content on the source and target was substantially distinct and unique, the canonical link may be considered erroneous and deferred.
• The tag is transitive. That is, if URL A marks B as canonical, and B marks C as canonical, we’ll treat C as canonical for both A and B, though we will break infinite chains and other issues.
For several years, we have had a clear policy on handling redirects that allows you to take control of how crawlers and browsers relate between pages on your site. Another useful tool for eliminating spurious dynamic URLs and avoiding content duplication is the Rewrite Dynamic URLs feature of Site Explorer. All you need to do is authenticate your site in Site Explorer, which can now be done instantly, and then create a URL Rewriting rule. The benefit of this approach is that Yahoo! does not need to crawl your duplicate pages to discover the canonical relationships. The tag provides you with another resource to use, and is also being supported by our other partners in the Sitemaps effort, Google and Microsoft.
We recommend that you structure your site with normalized URLs and minimum duplication, or use 301s if need be. If those don’t work for you, try Site Explorer and/or the tag. Our support for the tag will be implemented over the coming months. Let us know if you have any questions on our Site Explorer Suggestion Board.

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your-site-seo-hokey-pokey

I think it’s safe to say that everyone is familiar with the Hokey Pokey. You know, that song where you put a body part in, take it out and then shake it all about. Then in the end, you put your whole self in to finish the song.
Surprisingly, this song relates really well to doing search engine optimization for your site. The problem is many people are so focused on the foot, head or arm of SEO that they never get around to putting their whole self in and getting real results!
So let’s break down the SEO Hokey Pokey so you can make sure you’re doing all of the essentials to get your site ranked for your main keyword phrases.
You Put Your Head In…
Let’s start our SEO Hokey Pokey with the head. This would include everything that goes in the head section of your website. Here are a few things to consider for this section:
Title Tag
As you’ve probably heard, this is one of the most important parts of your site for keyword usage.
You want to make sure that your titles are unique for every page and use the most important keywords. A good format to follow is this: Descriptive Keyword Based Title | Site Name or Brand.
Keep your titles to around 65 characters or else they will be truncated in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Meta Tags
When it comes to meta tags, the most important one for search engines is the meta description. This is what most search engines will use as your description in the search results pages. Include your keyword phrases for that page and a call to action. Limit its length to around 165 characters.
For the meta keywords, either leave them blank or keep them very simple. This meta tag is not as important as it used to be, and if you put your best keywords there, your competition will easily know what your keywords are.
There are other things you’ll want to include in your header in certain situations, but the essentials really are the title and meta description. Get those right and you will have this part down. Put your head in!
You Put Your Foot In…
The foot is your foundation, and for this analogy we’re talking about the foundation of keyword-optimized content and crawlable site architecture.
If you want your site to rank well for certain keywords and phrases, you have to make sure you’re using them in your site. Otherwise, your site won’t look relevant to those phrases and will not rank well. Use your keywords in your text and link from other pages of your site with the right anchor text.
When it comes to architecture, you have to make sure that your site is set up in such a way that it is crawlable by the search engine spiders. If it isn’t crawlable, it does not matter how good your content is, no one will see it! Avoid Flash sites, JavaScript navigation bars and anything else that would impede the search engines from crawling from page-to-page.
Your foundation has to be strong, so put the time in to get it done right! Put your foot in!
You Put Your Backside In…
Your backside in our Hokey Pokey analogy is all the behind the scenes, or back-end things that go into your site. Here are a few to check on:
• Do you have a robots.txt file set up to disallow search engine spider access to parts of the site that you don’t want indexed, or that can’t be indexed?
• Do you have an HTML and XML sitemap to help the search engine spiders find all the pages of your site?
• Is the content management system (CMS) or e-commerce system you are using creating search engine friendly URLs?
A lot of the backend stuff will depend on the way your site is built, whether done page by page or with some kind of CMS or e-commerce system. Make sure you’re using one that can create a search engine friendly site. Then take the time to get your robots.txt and sitemaps created properly. Put your backside in!
You Put Your Arm In…
I’m sure you’re dying to know what the arms are in this analogy. Well, they’re the links you get from other sites!
You see, if you are going to get good rankings, you have to reach out and get links from other sites. I’m not going to go over all of the different strategies on how to do this, but this is going to be the bulk of your ongoing SEO work.
Here are a few articles from the SEO.com Blog that will teach you more about link building:
• Using Articles for Link Building
• 10 Link Building Strategies For New Website Or Business Owners
• The Value of Deep Linking
• Link Building – Finding the Right Site
Sadly, this is an area where many people either don’t put in enough time or just don’t get the right kind of links. I’ve seen a lot of sites that are very well optimized, but they are missing this critical piece. Learn how to link build and then take the time to do it! Put your arm in!
You Put Your Whole Self In…
SEO is the combination of a bunch of little things that give you a result in the end. You can’t just focus on one or two of the essential tasks and expect to get great results. Just like the Hokey Pokey, you have to get to the point where you are putting your whole self in to get results.
If you’re new to SEO, I hope this analogy helps you understand what the essentials are. If you’re an experienced SEO, now you have a dance you can do while you work! Now do the SEO Hokey Pokey!

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Black Magic SEO! Vampire Weekend sucks SERPs

Do a Google search on Website In A Weekend.

I get “vampireweekend.com” as my top result.

An absolutely irrelevant search result! How stupid is that? How much did that cost anyway?

Here’s what it looks like:
>
Vampire Weekend home page

Vampire Weekend home page

It’s been this way since May 2009.

It’s not much of a web site. There’s no “there” there.

Here’s the funny part: this pop group is riding an Indie wave (and probably some sort of pop culture vampire meme…), but whoever’s promoting them has non-Indie deep pockets. Supposedly, it’s quartet of 4 South African musicians who all went to Columbia together. Uh huh.

Deep pockets…

Here’s their Alexa ranking at the time (11/1/2009) when I wrote this post:
Vampire Weekend Alexa Rank

Vampire Weekend Alexa Rank

Holy Smokes! That’s a lot of incoming links for something with so little traffic! It feels incongruent to me. With that many incoming links, they should have a lot more traffic. And they should have interaction on their front page. More stickiness. I haven’t spent time on their Myspace page (all indie bands have a Myspace page, right?), but I bet it’s a lot stickier.

Here’s what they’re getting coming on from search:


Vampire Weekend Alexa Search

I’m sure they’re getting some traction off of Website In A Weekend.

It be cool if I got some traction off of Vampire Weekend…

Hrm. great plan! I’ll load this article up with keywords and “Vampire Weekend” links. Let’s see if I can suck down some of their SERPiness.
But what about the music?

So are these gents any good? I don’t have a clue. I did listen to about 2 minutes of the track on the home page. I wonder how coincidental that 2 minutes is to their bounce rate?

Indie rock is not really my listening preference at the moment; currently, more into deep house, psytrance, dubstep, ambient, chillout and breakbeats. If you can’t the difference between various genres of electronica, no worries. Just know that the difference between something like chillout and trance is like the difference between Roxy Music and Jefferson Starship. Both rock. Just different. Or Miles Davis 2d quintet with Louis Armstrong. Both Jazz. Just different. Or Mendelssohn versus Wagner. Both Romantic. Just different.

In any case, they might be good, they might not be. They have a lot of really good press though, with 600+ backlinks.

Isn’t it cool how well Website In A Weekend is doing with 4 backlinks? Yep: 4 backlinks, and we’re pretty much kicking it around here. Website In A Weekend is definitely in the game.

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SEO Tips for Beginners

The rise of the shots keyword about seo training for beginners in google, gives an inspiring me to just share SEO Tips for beginners. Sharing of tips ranging from learning seo seo unity series to learn the easy seo second series I've ever written. And core 2 seo of these postings I have also been described: D. But when I look around again, it "seo tips" was not for "beginners": D. Before you read more about my posting "seo tips for beginners" is a good idea once you know what SEO in wikipedia. Because it's useless to read my writing seabrek gini, kalo aja SEO meaning belom know: P. Okay father ... mother ... ya ... mas .... And all the viewers who are reading this blog: D. After understanding about SEO be continued please read this posting.

Well tips best seo for bloggers who are just starting in the world of blogging is as follows:

1. Give your article title within their keywords you want to optimize or timbak. For example I just want to be No. 1 in the seminar blog on new york city. Well given the title of the article just like that.

2. Make the content or the content of the article according to your abilities. Do not plow, do not copy and paste. Original must be on the basis of your own mind:).

3. Update or update your articles regularly and routinely. For instance, usually cuman 1 week 1 time update it to 1-week routine update the article. But the best are the updated your articles every day 1 article: D.

4. Give the difference in each of the keyword or keywords in your articles. Whether it's a way to bold, colorful gave in each of the keywords that will in optimizing the search engines.

5. Look for Backlink whether it's through free classifieds, social media, up to search for blogs and then fitted to the blogroll. It's up to you just reply to this one: D.

As one of the builders Blogger timbak kiwod in Indonesia: pardon:, apparently in 2008 it was worth it if called as a carpenter timbak year-menimbak. The number of Blogger who specializes in SEO in 2007 kalo era can still be counted pake fingers + toes 8 -) in the year 2008, I borrowed her fingers + toes mas iwan ga alone can create a count of seo experts. Maybe because the team victory in the race IMFreakz "Busby SEO Challenge" is the first milestone that timbak artisans in Indonesia can not be underestimated. As well as evidence that the builders could timbak "The Indonesian people it the name". We pray it in the contest Busby SEO Test, the team can win timbak Indonesia.

Okay ga not much talking and a lot of words again: D. Good luck with seo tips for beginners from me:). Seo tips over a lot easier (reply to me) than to love meta tags, or other means. Welcome tried and successful.

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Caution! rel=”nofollow” Discussion

The Rel=”NoFollow” link attribute made its debut back in January 2005. It was brought to the internet scene by Google to help combat comment spam for blogs and guestbooks.  The name implies that search spiders should not follow the link. What it really means is, “don’t pass on any rank to the following link” or “don’t give any score to this link.” The general idea was to limit the exposure comment spam was giving to unrelated and spammy websites. It is NOT used to keep search engines away from certain website pages.
It has since mushroomed to other areas of internet marketing and linking. Google now recommends adding it to paid/advertising links. Others suggest using it on a site’s internal links to help manage page rank. Still, many think it is hurting the internet and should be eliminated.
There has been significant confusion over the nofollow attribute for the last few years. What is it? Should we use it? Should I add it to all of the links on my site? Will it hurt my site rank?
Allow me to shed some light on the subject.
When to use or not to use the nofollow attribute:
1. DO NOT use when you have a link to a legitimate and useful website. The internet thrives on links between different sites and pages. Think of a link as a recommendation. With a link from your site to another, you are telling your readers/users the following site is useful. When you add a nofollow attribute to a link, you are effectively removing your endorsement for that webpage.
2. DO USE nofollow for paid links. This is definitely an area of debate. When choosing sides, my money lies with Google. They clearly state, “In order to prevent paid links from influencing search results and negatively impacting users, we urge webmasters to use nofollow on such links.”
3. DO USE nofollow on untrusted content, or if you don’t want to vouch for content your site is linked to. A great example of this is what nofollow was originally created for, untrusted user comments on blogs and pages. This can discourage spammers from using comment fields in your system. You may decide to remove the nofollow attribute from trusted contributors, and users who are adding value and usefulness to your content. It is common for webmasters to use follow blog comments to encourage more interaction and higher quality comments on their site.
4. DO USE nofollow on links that search engines won’t be able to use otherwise, registration or sign in pages.
There will continue to be discussion regarding when and how to use the nofollow attribute. My advice is to follow the recommendations from the search engines. After all, they are using nofollows to help rank content.

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5 Reasons Twitter is Not Worth Your Dime or Time

It is no secret that Twitter is viewed as both marketing secret weapon and marketing bust. As a social networking tool, it has promise but what about Twitter as tool for increasing your business?

With the recent news announcements that Twitter is worth in excess of $1 billion amidst rumors of potential takeover and flotation deals, let’s take a look at why Twitter may not be worth the dime your company is looking to pay for increased web sales and exposure.

The internet and e-business is accepted as being a great way of doing business – costs are cut, geographical boundaries are overcome, new routes to market are uncovered and smaller companies are provided with fewer barriers to entry and get to compete with much larger companies on a level playing field.

BUT…there has to be a but!

The decisions you make when it comes to mounting marketing campaigns and establishing connections with customers and prospects, the established principals of offline, real-world marketing still apply.

So is using Twitter the most effective use of your company’s marketing dime?
TV Dominates the Internet in Ad Spend

Traditional, “old” media still represent better value for money when it comes to turning marketing dollars into solid sales numbers. This may seem out of sync with our perception of the internet – the internet dominates the news, it is cutting edge and at the forefront of developing new markets and ways of doing business but let’s take a hard look at the underlying numbers.

The average American adult spends almost 121 hours a month watching television but internet usage is dwarfed, coming in at only 30 hours a week. Given that the average adult is only going to spend a fraction of that 30 hours using Twitter, if at all, it is clear that spending your marketing budget on Twitter will be nowhere near as effective as investing in TV airtime.
Search Engines Dominate the Internet and Twitter is NOT a Search Engine

2528892623_27b101f93e

Search engines dominate how users find products and services and any other information on the worldwide web. Internet ad spend is concentrated upon search engine marketing and gaining rankings for their respective web sites in order to drive increased traffic which can be converted into sales.

Twitter is not a search engine – it is a real time communication tool with limited functionality.

Twitter has long been an outsider that has gained a following because of its quirkiness, but the platform has long suffered from service issues and up-time reliability (Hello, Fail Whale!). In other words, users have fallen in love with it but it doesn’t always work!
Controlling Social Media Campaigns is Like Herding Cats
twitter-com_uv_1y

Twitter's phenomenal growth has stalled recently. Why?

Twitter forms one of the main platforms for Social Media – online interactions and information sharing form the currency of these platforms but introducing your marketing and sales material is similar to gatecrashing someone else’s party! The idea that monetizing all those eyeballs using social media and Twitter is based on nothing concrete –which is why there is so much furor over the $1 billion price tag – there is no proven marketing model so how can Twitter attract your ad spend to begin with (which in turn is the basis for the company valuation). The graph above is from compete.com and shows the obvious flatline on twitter. What happens when the inevitable decline begins as users tire of the limited interaction and businesses divert ad spend elsewhere?
The Twitter Bounce Rate is >90%

song-chart-memes-things-twittered

In simple terms – the bounce rate is how many messages or emails are returned unread.

If 90% of Twitter users are “bouncing” mail and messages, less than 1 in 10 are valid or open to receiving messages – this makes merging and purging your mailing lists look like an exercise in gold mining – just imagine if you had 9 out of 10 direct mail pieces returned to your company!
Twitter Spam

twitter-spam

We’ve already mentioned that Twitter attracts the quirky and the social environment is extremely quirky and subject to cult and herd-like mentalities. It is easy to be tagged as a “spammer” if you are simply posting messages which are effectively only, “Look at Me!” Twitter spam is a real problem as the medium is deluged with online marketers – just look at many of the companies which are active on Twitter – generally they are selling health and vitamins, sex or get rich quick schemes, and frequently all three!

We may be playing the devil’s advocate here and Twitter is an easy target, but there are often good and valid reasons for being an easy target. Will Twitter ever become a useful tool or will it just be something to pass the time for 140 characters? What do you think?

Of course, if you are Alyssa Milano, forget everything I said.

And don’t forget to follow me on Twitter. ;-)

Thanks to GraphJams.com

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