Thursday, July 30, 2009

optimizing-for-navigational-searches

People search for many different reasons. These myriad reasons can be broken down into a few wide segments, informational, transactional, and navigational searches. There are millions of searches when people simply need information, but often even informational searches are just the early stages of the purchasing process. It is important to understand the different ways and reasons the people search and be sure that your site is optimized to be found at each stage.
The type of searches that SEO people rarely talk about is the navigational searches. Navigational searches are search queries where people search for your exact domain name or brand name. Basically, they know exactly what they are looking for, but they choose to search to find it instead of typing it into the browser address bar.
Don’t think navigational search is a big deal? Check out the top 10 overall searches for July 2008 from Hitwise: myspace, craigslist, ebay, myspace.com, youtube, mapquest, yahoo, facebook, www.myspace.com, craigs list
Compete data shows 17% of searches are navigational. Why are there so many searches for domain names and site names? Many people will enter the URL or site name into the search box and it magically appears as the top link and the click on it. Sure, it adds an extra click that really isn’t necessary, but that’s how they learned to find things on the web so why change if it works?
As marketers, we need to understand that this is a huge part of the way people navigate the web and we need to be sure our sites are optimized to show up when people are looking for us.
Domain Name Searches
First off, make sure your site is indexed in the search engines. Does your site show up first in a search for your domain name? Unless your site is penalized, it should show up at the top of the results when you search for the domain name. Follow SEO best practices with regards to your website architecture and content. Don’t hide your content behind javascript or Flash navigation. Include a link to your HTML sitemap in the footer of your site. Make sure your XML sitemap is updated and submitted to the search engines. Be sure you are blocking any directories and pages of your site that you don’t want indexed, but be careful to not deny the search bots from indexing the pages you want them to find. Adding a / in the wrong place in your robots.txt file can get your site removed from the search engines.
Company/Brand Name Searches
Brand name searches can be an interesting challenge. It seems like it would be so obvious to the search engines and your site would automatically show up at the top for all searches for your brand name. Sometimes that is the case, but the larger your brand is, the more competition you will have for your own name. This could come in the form of affiliates, review sites, news articles, press releases, and many other types of pages. Usually it is fine to have that stuff showing up, as long as your official site shows up at the top. To make sure it does show up, be sure to feature your brand name(s) prominently on the site in textual format, not just graphics. Most of the time you will have plenty of links to your site using your brand name as the anchor text. If your site isn’t on top, however, or if you have a newer site or brand, it might take a while to get enough link juice to move to the top for your own name.
Another issue that I’ve seen on occasion is when you run into competition from other companies or products that have the same or similar brand name. They might be in a completely different market, but if they have the same name, you could have a hard time beating them for your own name if they are more established and have more link equity than your site. Another thing to consider with name searches is misspellings or spelling variations. You usually won’t want to look stupid by misspelling your own company name in the content on your site, but a few low-profile links with the misspelled version will often do the trick. Sometimes Google figures out what they meant to type and serves up your site anyway, so you should check to see what shows up for common misspellings.
International Search Engines
If you have content catered to an international audience, you should make sure your site is showing up for brand/domain searches in that country. Google is the biggest search in most countries, except Baidu in China, Yahoo in Japan, and Yandex in Russia. Make sure your site is listed and shows up for your name in the top 3 search engines for the countries you are targeting. The easiest way to get top billing in the country-specific search engines, including pages from country searches in the localized Google search, is to have a separate, localized site on the country’s preferred TLD. You can also set up international sites on subdomains or sub directories of your main domain. Then you can specify to Google which country each subdomain or directory pertains to.
Product Name Searches
Although not exactly navigational searches per se, I wanted to mention product name searches. People might search for a product name or SKU when they know exactly what they want to buy. They might be comparing prices or just looking for the best place to purchase. Or they may be looking for reviews and feedback from other purchasers of the same item. Or it could be existing customers looking for support information or accessories for their product. Whatever the reason, you would be well served to have your product pages showing up for these keywords. The best approach will depend on how competitive your products are. If you are the only one selling the product, all it will take is to get the pages indexed. If you are competing against thousands of other resellers, it will prove more difficult and you’ll need to do some serious optimizing and link building to those specific pages. Start off with the basics of getting the pages indexed. Spend some time searching for your products and see what you find. Analyze the level of competition and put together a plan to get your pages to show up on the first page. You might not get a ton of searches on any single page, but if you sell thousands of products, the aggregate traffic and sales from those keywords will make a big impact.
PPC for Navigational Searches
You should be able to show up for all of your brand terms without having to pay for the traffic. One thing to consider however, is that if you augment your organic SEO with paid listings, you increase the chances of getting people to click through to your site. This can be especially important if you have competitors bidding on your brand or other navigational searches. You want to do everything you can to make sure they get to your site and not your competition. On the flip site, you could use the same strategy to try to capture some of the navigational search traffic to your competitors by bidding on their brand names and offering a compelling alternative product or service.
More than Just Rankings
One last thing I wanted to mention about optimizing for navigational searches. Showing up for your domain and brand names is just the first step. Your really want as many of those searchers to click through to your site, so you should pay close attention to the title and description snippet that show up in the search listings. If you have a number one ranking, but no title or description, it will be easy for searchers to skip it for the more compelling link right below.
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Monday, July 27, 2009

What is Outsourcing, is all about……….

In every spare of every day life, the benefits of outsourcing of course are variable, dependent upon the nature and situation of the organization. However, the following is a list of common reasons why outsourcing is undertaken:

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Lower costs due to economies of scale
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Ability to concentrate on core functions
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Greater flexibility and ability to define the requisite service more readily
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Specific supplier benefits. For example, better security, continuity, etc.
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Higher quality service due to focus of the supplier
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Improved internal management disciplines resulting from the exercise itself
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Less dependency upon internal resources
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Control of budget
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Faster setup of the function or service
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Lower ongoing investment required in internal infrastructure
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Greater ability to control delivery dates (eg: via penalty clauses)
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Lack of internal expertise
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Increase flexibility to meet changing business conditions
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Purchase of industry best practice
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Improve risk management
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Acquire innovative ideas
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Increase commitment and energy in non core areas
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Improve credibility and image by associating with superior providers
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Generate cash by transferring assets to the provider
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Gain market access and business opportunities through the supplier’s network
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Turn fixed costs into variable costs

OUTSOURCING MEASUREMENT

Despite the size of this list, every scenario is different. There may well be equally compelling arguments against any sort of outsourcing arrangement. It is therefore important that ALL the issues are considered before embarking upon the outsourcing course. This assessment should take into account all factors, both local and generic.
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How to get Backlinks ???? Sources and definitions for novice

Everybody yelling "Back links are back bone for any website" but how come... and what's all this game is all about....What is it's significance? What role does they play to upbring a website?

If you've read anything about or studied Search Engine Optimization, you've come across the term "backlink" at least once. Understanding importance of backlinks and its application can make or mark your efforts to drive traffic to your website.

People are looking for backlinks, and don't know what are those and how we can gain them:

I have tried to explain a bit that so that you may be clear with this.....

Optimization: A set of techniques to improve a Web site’s presentation to visitors and its stature in a search engine’s index. As a specific field, search engine optimization has suffered in reputation due to unscrupulous individuals and companies using tactics that degrade the integrity of search results and violate guidelines set by those engines. Generally, any optimization scheme that tricks a search engine also tricks visitors to that site, making online life worse for everyone involved. Pure optimization, though, helps everyone: the Webmaster, the search engine, and the visitor. The true values of optimization are clear content, coherent navigation, wide reputation for quality, and high visibility in search engines.

Backlink: A link at another site, leading to your site. Also called an incoming link. The number and quality of backlinks represent the most important factor in determining a site’s PageRank. The value of any backlink is determined partly by the PageRank of the linking site, which is determined partly by the quality of its backlinks, and so on.

Outgoing link: A link from your page to another page. Outgoing links don’t build PageRank by volume, as incoming links (backlinks) do. However, Google pays attention to the text elements of outgoing links, and a page’s optimization can be strengthened by consistent placement of key concepts in that text.

You can get back links by:

Article Submission: Every good webmaster knows the power of original, unique content. Getting your unique content distributed online so that your website and links can be seen by a greater audience is vital. The Marketing Gurus call this “Viral Marketing”. You submit your unique article to an online directory of articles that is relevant to your particular website niche. Then this article gets read and picked up by many other webmasters and sometimes even offline publications.

Social Bookmarking: What is social bookmarking? It is tagging a website and saving it for later. Instead of saving them to your web browser, you are saving them to the web. And, because your bookmarks are online, you can easily share them with friends. In social bookmarking, thousands of people keep their bookmark collections on a website instead of on just one computer. Doing so brings several big advantages.As per the SEO you are getting back links, and a good traffic source.

Directory submission: An online directory definition is; A website submission service where your website is added to the proper category in a searchable online directory which enhances your site’s visibility and creates relevant inbound links to your website. Directory submission is a very cost-effective way to get links and helps to establish a foundation for Internet marketing. Especially beneficial in helping new websites get noticed, it helps your site build traction in an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace. Directory submission creates relevant inbound links. When a site is listed in an online directory, it creates quality inbound links to your site and that also enhances your site’s visibility and ranking.

Blog Commenting: This is very simple. By commenting in dofollow blogs will help increase your link popularity and also links from relevant content page.your backlinks will help your website to gain link popularity and with your keyword in anchor text of that link.

I think you still have some questions on your mind.....

Whats is Nofollow tag?
Its a tag that tells search engine spiders to not count the link as referring link. the tag is usually found on blog comments link so that the commenter's website will not get any weight from that link. All search engine recognize this tag.

Whats is dofollow blogs?
Dofollow blogs are the blog that does not have nofollow tag in their link.

so that was all about gaining back links from a valid and easy sources.

Best of luck; now work hard and get your website on top of the list. And don't forget to tell me that THIS article works for you.....
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Friday, July 24, 2009

on-page-optimization-tips

There are many factors that contribute to showing up well in search engine results. Some of the most important items are found on the web site themselves and are called “On-Page Optimization.” Some of the areas of concern on websites include:
• Page Title
• URL
• Meta Description
• Alt Attributes for Images
• Content
Before doing anything with On-Page Optimization (or any other SEO for that fact) you first have to choose the right keywords for your site. You can learn more about keyword research on one of our previous posts.
Page Titles
Titles are very important to on-page optimization. The titles show up at the top of the browser and are often used by search engines as the title in search engine results. The title is a good place for keywords. Make the title direct, to the point and ensure that all the pages on your site have their own unique titles. For example, a page about PVC pipes on a plumbing site could have a title of “Cheap PVC Plumbing Pipes | Joes Plumbing Supplies” (I had to use Joe the Plumber as an example, couldn’t help myself). Notice that with one long keyword term many targeted words are included. By using this keyword phrase a search engine is likely to serve this page when people search for PVC pipes, cheap PVC pipes, cheap plumbing, cheap plumbing pipes, cheap plumbing supplies etc.
URL
Often when sites are designed using a Content Management System (CMS), the URLs on deeper pages look like you just spilled a cup of alphabet soup on your desk. Sometimes these URL’s are dynamic so they change every time you visit the page, making it a huge problem for the bots to properly index the pages. Unfortunately the URLs also have nothing to do with your targeted keywords unless you want to show up for po=J0ro57v. Many CMSs have modifications that can be added to make URLs search engine friendly. For example: www.joesplumbingsupplies.com/products/pvc_pipes is a URL that is Search Engine Friendly, because it is short, descriptive, and includes relevant keywords.
Meta-Description
The meta description shows up in the code of the page. Make sure each page on your site has it’s own unique meta description tag. The meta description is often used to describe the page in the search engine results after listing the page title. Having a relevant meta description increases the chances that people will click on your listing. It can also be used to include a phone number or some other call to action.
Code Structure
When structuring the body of the site, use h1 and h2 tags. The Search Engines place a high priority on words in the h1 and h2 tags. Getting ranked first in Google will be of little worth if the content on your site is not relevant or the content is confusing. Sometimes coders forget that people are reading this page and not just some random Google bot. When designing and coding sites, always place priority on the humans coming to the web site over the search engine bots. Be cautious about what content you place in flash. Although Google can now detect the text inside of flash files it is still better to place keywords in the html surrounding the flash. Some sites use Java Script extensively for site structure and navigation. Because bots tend to get confused when reading Java Script avoid using in this way. Many coding geeks have debated whether the bold tag or the strong tag is better for SEO. According to Matt Cutts Google places the same weight on both tags
Alt Attributes
Often times when people do on-site optimization they overlook placing Alt attributes on pictures. By properly describing the pictures on a site the search engines will see that even the pictures are relevant to the keywords. By doing this you are also more likely to show up in the results when people search for images.
Content
The last point is one of the most important. Whether you have content to sell your products or your product is the content it’s important to have enough relevant content all your pages. Make sure the entire page reads smoothly and is understandable because humans buy products not search engine bots. It’s good to link out to other sites as long as they are relevant. Be careful of having too many outbound links on any one page of a site. Many people have the misconception that you build a website and then kick back and watch the money roll in. Building a website is a job that is truly never done. You should always be updating and modifying information on your sites. If you want people coming back to your site you have to give them something to come back for. By adding new content to a site you also improve your chance of ranking well in Google. Regular updates will help your site get indexed faster. Search engines will see frequently updated sites as up to date, accurate and relevant.
On-site Optimization should be the first thing you do after determining your keywords. If you follow these simple guidelines you will find that you will rank much better in search engines.
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Saturday, July 18, 2009

on-site-search-seo-tipss

A major item that a lot of sites overlook and a lot of SEO’s don’t really understand is the “site search” function on a site. I’m going to give you a scenario that three of our clients have faced, with similar results.
Let’s say you own a real estate site with information being pulled from the MLS database via IDX or some other listing server. None of the content that your on-site search result displays is in any way unique from all the other real estate sites online. Which means that even if you have 20,000 pages indexed according to Yahoo, not even 1% of these pages have a great chance of showing up unless someone searches on the exact title of your listings page.
This idea also holds true for paginating issues in shopping carts and blog pages, but we won’t be delving into those two items in this post. So you have two choices basically (I’m assuming your site isn’t homes.com, realtor.com, or one of the large nationwide realty sites).
1. You can write unique titles, meta descriptions and listing descriptions for each listing, which would take you the rest of your life.
Or
2. You can exclude all your search results from the search engine spiders by adding an exclusion for your on site search results subfolder to your robots.txt file.
What if your search results get displayed using something like this: www.yoursite.com/index.php?search=action&name=something
Can you use the robots.txt file to exclude that search result, or any search result on the index.php page, without also excluding your index page from the bots? The answer in this example is no. But, if you’re going to be de indexing your search pages anyway, you can move your search results to display under a separate subfolder called /search/ or something and then using your robots.txt file, you can make all of your search listings no indexed, while still retaining one main search page, perhaps at search.html. The exclusion would look exactly like this in your robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /search/
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Sunday, July 12, 2009

on site search

After a tremendous response from my last post about on site search (5 comments, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!) I felt compelled to write you another post, going into how your on site search can be CRITICAL to your website.
For the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to assume you have a Wordpress blog or site. If not, the principles still apply.
Did you know that every Wordpress installation comes standard with an on site search function? It does. You may have changed the theme, but you can add a search function widget to your sidebar or where ever you want (the typical location is the top right of your pages by the way).
Why is it important to have a search function on your site?
1. Users who haven’t been to your site before may not understand how to find the content they are looking for, and they expect to be able to find it through your on site search function.
2. Using analytics, you can track and measure what keywords people are using in your on site search box.
3. After analyzing your on site search keywords in analytics, you can make important decisions on what content should go on your home page, as well as your other main pages, so that your users will convert

How do you implement site search in Google analytics?
1. Go to Analytics Settings>Edit
2. Under Main Website Profile Information, click on ‘edit’
3. Click on the radio button that says: ‘Do Track Site Search’

At this point you are asked for your ‘query paramter’. For Wordpress, this is usually ‘?s=’ or ‘?q=’, (if you do a search on our blog, our query parameter is ‘?s=’) so you would just copy the query parameter into the box, leave the default radio button checked on for “No, do not strip query parameters out of the URL” and hit Save.
There. You have set up your on site search, and you’re on your way to the next installment of On Site Search. Stay tuned for On Site Search Seo tip #3: Finding Meaningful data from your on site search analytics.
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Monday, July 6, 2009

impossible seo tasks

For some reason there are some things that are just impossible. By “impossible”, I don’t mean that it can’t be done. I mean that it never gets done. It’s absolutely impossible. For example, for those of you that live with roommates (or can remember), it’s “impossible” to put the toilet paper roll on the dowel. I find it in so many other places than where it should be, such as on top of the counter, on top of the toilet, or (this is the best one) on top of the empty roll which is still on the dowel. Forget about the debate on which direction the roll should face, I’d be happy with the roll just being on the dowel.
While taking out the empty roll and replacing it with a fresh one isn’t exactly rocket science, it just never seems to get done. It doesn’t even take more than a couple seconds. So what’s the item on your site that becomes the metaphorical toilet paper roll? Are you ignoring some small aspect of your site that just doesn’t get done?
There are a few more common items that I’ve run across that seem just too “impossible” to do, and do regularly.
H1 tags. Don’t get lazy with the way that your H1 or H2 tags are being utilized. I’ve seen these tags in just about every place imaginable (like that pesky toilet roll). For some reason I’ve seen it on images, on random words inserted within a normal body of text, completely hidden off the page, and others. It’s a heading tag, so make it a heading.
Blog. Make one. Add to it regularly. This is admittedly a bit more “impossible” than some of these other suggestions, mostly because the excitement for a blog is highest in the beginning and as you run out of ideas it gets harder. Nevertheless, a blog is helpful as it increases the likelihood of getting links to your site. Try to get in a habit of regularly adding to your blog.
Get rid of old pages (throw away that used up roll!). Especially if you have an older site, you tend to forget about some of the deeper pages that aren’t used anymore. Even pages that you mean to take off the site have this weird tendency to stick around in the search engines. These should be deleted or redirected to other pages so that the useless pages aren’t stealing any potential SEO goodness from the pages you want to show up. (Hint: Try typing in “site:www.yoursite.com” in Google to see all the pages that are still being indexed)
301 redirects. These can seem tricky, but in the end are actually quite simple. Make sure that your old pages are redirected to new ones. If you have links going to the old pages, you want the benefits to be passed along to your new pages. If you have an .htaccess file, you can get some basic programming information here. If all else fails, get your web developer to do it for you.
There are certainly more things than what I’ve listed here. In fact, I bet you’re thinking about things you’ve neglected right now. Going back to the toilet paper analogy, the funny thing about it is that it’s more of a hassle to not put it on correctly. Out of laziness we don’t put it on right the first time, and then we find ourselves fumbling with the roll when we need to use it. Just do yourself a favor. Your site will be better off by taking care of these small SEO items now, rather than later!
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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

the competitive analysis

When I was in middle-school, comic books were AWESOME. Looking back, I notice now that in nearly every comic book, eventually there was the villain that could take everybody’s powers and use them as his or her own. The uncanny X-Men battled the aptly-named Mimic; the Avengers and the Fantastic Four both took a shot at the extra-terrestrial, mega-warrior called the Super Skrull; and more currently the TV show Heroes has a creepy fellow who can do more of the same thing. The list goes on. Feeling geeked out on super-powered goodness? This is still an SEO blog. And you should know that the common ability of these villains apply to SEO.
Think of your strongest competitors on the internet. Why are they competitors? Is it because their site has a lot of useful information? Is the site multilingual? Do they have links from big news sites like CNN, or from government or university sites? Is their blog well thought out and and a leading trusted voice in the industry? Are they taking advantage of new media and social media avenues? What do they have that gives them an edge? What do they do that makes them weak?
These are some of the major questions to ask when performing a competitive analysis. They tell you what makes your competition special and give you information necessary for competitive search engine optimization. These answers are followed next with the question that touches the heart of competitive analysis: How can I do what they are doing, but better?
Now, I know what you are thinking right now: Sure, there’s money to be made as a super villain, but what about self-respect? Integrity?
The good news is that you can use your new-found powers garnered from competitive analysis for good. Competitive analysis isn’t about copying. Improve upon your competitors’ ideas, avoid their weaknesses, and build their strengths onto your own site’s ideas, structure and philosophy. This is the best way to stand out as most relevant to your potential visitors. The problem with the aforementioned villains (insert black-hat SEO) is that they’re frequently using their powers to deceive and control people in ways that shouldn’t be done. This sort of villainy will always lose out to the quality and relevance of a site properly strengthened with competitive analysis.
Here at SEO.com, competitive analysis is one of the first things we do with a new client. We look for strengths, weakness and give you suggestions on how to implement these in ways that will increase your level of search engine optimization. Then we periodically keep an eye on the competition to see how (if) your competitors are innovating in their approach to generating traffic, appealing to search engines, or making conversions. With greater power and strength than your competitors how can you not succeed?
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