seo

Choose Company That Offers More Than Just Affordable SEO

2010-06-18T00:20:00.001-07:00

There are plenty of companies that offer SEO services to small and medium sized businesses. As with most buyers, businesses are on the lookout for unique cost savings services to benefit their online presence. They choose companies that offer more affordable SEO over those that offer the same service with a higher price.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO can be very tricky. It requires intensive knowledge about how search engines work and what people search for. For this reason, it can be sometimes costly. However, you can still get affordable SEO from among many competing companies in the industry.

As soon as you find out about the affordability of the SEO services, your next concern should be the effectiveness of the services. You should see how the affordable SEO company effectively boosts your site's traffic and ranking. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to your web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier (or higher) your site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. You need to ensure that you get such results from the affordable SEO company that you choose.

So how would you know that the company gives effective SEO services? You need to look at the following:

• Ethical practice. You need to know if the company is using ethical techniques in their affordable SEO services. This way, you can ensure that the result can last longer as opposed to having instant result that only lasts for a while due to your site being penalized for employing unethical SEO practices.

• Targets market niche for high traffic and sales. You should look at the online marketing strategy of the company. The affordable SEO firm should precisely target your customers to increase traffic to your website and eventually increase your revenue.

• Experience. You should deal with a company that has substantial experience and comprehensive knowledge in affordable SEO. Choose a trusted provider in the industry. As much as possible, the company that you deal with should be transparent and sincerely ensures that you get what you really want.

Before signing any contract, read a review or know the background of the company that offers affordable SEO. Don't just settle for the affordability of its service. Get the most value for your money by knowing the company you are dealing with and ensuring that you get the results that you need for your online business.

Content Writing Makes Higher Ranking In Search Engines

2010-06-18T00:19:00.001-07:00

There are infinite SEO professionals all around but the count for exceptional content writers is very few. Websites earn revenues by selling authentic information to customers. Google and Yahoo are widely used by folks all over the world. A single appearance of one's link in these search engines would draw the attention of thousands of visitors.

Website content writing is an evolving new genre of profession, which has a wider and important role to play in the arena of Internet marketing. The profession is already playing an indispensable role over the Internet, and is a boon for online business marketers. It is done by content writers and such genres of content churners especially write for spiders and not for their own good. The main aim is to keep the crawlers satiated and going.

This is the soul purpose of content writing. You have to comprehend the basic fact that the content of your website will be read by different people from diverse educational and cultural backgrounds and therefore, it has to be unique and should shun difficult words, technical jargons, circumlocutions, euphemisms etc as far as possible for seizing the attention of the readers.

Keywords play a most important role particularly for superior rankings in the search engines and also to boost the traffic of the website. Specialized content writers realize the significance of keywords in the given content and will for that reason edge them in a web page or article.

A good article normally maintains utmost objectivity in tonality. An objective piece of writing will not be clouded by the writer's personal views. To give an example, the writer may well be a teetotaler, yet his article on different types of wines in the market will not express his dislike for wine in any way.

The best way to go about proofreading is to make sure that there is someone to proofread everything you publish to ensure that your site has professional, organized web content. Experts feel that all web content .

SEO is essentially a part of the online marketing strategies. The technique, when properly implemented by a professional link building services, would direct the traffic from search engines. Writing website content SEO is beneficial for your business. Here you can employ a few strategies while being careful about certain factors. In a scenario where numerous websites exist with the same theme, the content makes the site stand out from the rest.

Outside the world of the internet also creates opportunity for these services. Initially it may seem that article writing services are unnecessary, but if you work in the corporate world then you may need professional content writing services. The other side of the coin is if you are selling your writing services, you need clients.

There are many offering web site content writing services from India. One area in which the Internet has proven especially invaluable is in turning people's dreams into reality through various writing services available on the Web.

Content writing is getting its big wave in the call center industry. If the account caters to website development and marketing tools, writing articles about your website is an effective way of promoting your website in the Internet.

This enables existing employees in the field of IT itself to shift their career interests to technical writing. Thus, online texting is very dynamic field where industry analysis has shown this field to have an increased growth rate.

Happy Day With New Wordpress Theme

2009-12-19T23:13:00.000-08:00

Last three days ago, I was able to finish my last SEO contest in third position. Although it’s not an extra ordinary achievement, yet I can’t pretend that I’m so happy with that. Thus, during two days, I took a break just to give my brain freshness. For what? If there is no delay, there will be announced new SEO contest oganized by PJ forum again. And of course, I am still interested to take a part inside because the prize and the rules for the next competition are more interesting than the previous one which allowed anyone to use the targeted key phrase in the main domain name. According to its moderator, the next one won’t let this happen again.

Anyway, since it’s still a happy day for me, now I am trying to change my blog theme with new wordpress theme. Although it’s not a newest version, yet I love it so much considering that I have tried in my dummy blog for a couple of time. Beside, now my free blog is gone again, that’s why I prefer to use this Glossy them in this blog instead of ignore it at all. However, I don’t know whether it passes W3 school rules because a few moment ago, I edited to ensure that all pages are SEO friendly for search engine robots. Yet, that’s not the important one. I can still make any changing later on.

Well, this is still in trial use, if you found some errors here, please let me know it. For the last words, I hope you will also have a happy day with something like this new wordpress theme or whatever… Bye.. happy holiday and have a nice weekend.

MMA Pound For Pound SEO Contest!

2009-12-19T23:10:00.000-08:00

Although I am not the first one who found this news, yet I think it’s still okay to publish MMA Pound For Pound SEO contest announcement in this blog. As I said yesterday, this was supposed to be announced in December 18, but in our time zone, it’s already 19. Well, it doesn’t matter whether it’s delayed or not. The most important thing is that this seo contest is already begun. To know the rules and any requirement for competition which probably to promote mixed martial arts pound for pound videos, game and news, please come to the promo junkie official forum or in their seo contest page. Otherwise, just read here, I will inform you as complete as I can both with the main faq.

* MMA Pound For Pound SEO Contest News:

The challenge has been started from today and will end up next March 18 (12.00 AM GMT+7)
* MMA Pound For Pound SEO Contest Rules
* No keyword domain allowed. Sub domain is no problem and the main domain that contains some part of the keywords seems that allowed. However, let’s wait for further explanation by the MMA Forum moderators.
* MMA Pound For Pound SEO Contest Prize

First winner will deserve $1000, then $300 for second place, and $200 for third. Yet it’s not fixed at all since I heard from some people who active in the forum talk that the amount can be bigger.
* MMA Pound For Pound SEO Contest Registration

To enter this great battle, you should be the PJ’s member first then you can register your blog or entry in the official form.

Well, I believe this simple news already cover any questionable thing from this SEO contest. Now, it’s all up to you whether to participate MMA pound for pound or not. Before I go, I just need to say that never hesitate to leave a feed back through the comment form below whenever you have something that not clear. Good luck!

Why Should You SEO?

2009-12-04T22:28:00.001-08:00

As SEO enters the mainstream of business marketing strategies you would think that less time would have to be spent educating people on why SEO is so very important. But the fact of the matter is, many people still just don't understand SEO or the benefits it can bring. Worse, many companies haven't yet grasped the fact that SEO is crucial to long-term online success, especially for small companies without big brand names or budget.

Jake Matthews put together a great post at 10e20 obtaining why search engine optimization is crucial for small businesses. He discusses a handful of benefits that a good SEO can bring to any online business, small or large.

* Obtain Increased and Higher Quality Sales
Just as you begin to optimize your website, long tail search volumes will improve. Over the long term, with a lot of hard work, you can achieve significant positions on the major search engines leading to positive, bottom line results.
* Increased Search Engine Visibility
When a searcher finds you, they have INTENT. They pulled themselves right to you for a reason; they are looking for what you have.
* Brand Recognition
Strong niche oriented organic search results can lead to your brand being associated with that niche over time. Your brand awareness and brand recall strength will increase as time goes on.
* Enhanced Credibility and Legitimacy
Search Engine’s organic / natural results are viewed as authority referrals.
* Investment in your Domain Name
Your investment in SEO is an investment in the value of your domain name and your website as a whole.
* Competitive Edge and Research Advantage
Competitors who see you succeed and beat them out in major search, may in turn bow down to you and want to strike deal with you in any number of business negotiations. Or, you may one day say – hey, I have too much new business coming to me on the web, can you handle my overflow for me and I’ll take a cut????
* Ad Spend predictability and High Return on Investment (ROI)
Optimization has more predictable long term costs and ROI metrics as compared to other components of marketing strategies.
* Passive Business Development
Organic rankings help build traffic from other long-tail (more specific) terms and you site gains more and more momentum.

Expanding on each of these points in greater detail, Jake provides some outstanding reasons why all small businesses should be engaging in SEO. The overall benefit received is substantial, provided the person or company doing your SEO really knows their stuff. While many suggest that good SEO is expensive, like ignorance, not doing SEO properly can be even more expensive.

Outfox, Outsmart and Outgrow Your Big-Business Competition

2009-12-04T22:25:00.000-08:00

I believe that one of the key things that keep small businesses small is that the owners maintain a small business mindset. For many, being small is just fine. They don't ever want to be anything more than a mom and pop operation. But others dream big and want to see big goal accomplished but continue to struggle to "make it big." They can't ever seem to get over that hump that propels them out of small-time territory.

If you don't want to be a mom and pop operation, or you want to be more than the small business you are, then it's time to start thinking not like the small business you are but like the bigger business you want to be.

The first place to start is with your online marketing campaigns.

With a few exceptions, online marketing has leveled the playing field significantly for the small business. However, as more companies make the move into online marketing the playing field is becoming slanted again. Bigger companies with larger budgets, better recognized name brands, and a larger team of people to manage multiple online marketing campaigns are gaining an advantage. It's becoming increasingly difficult for small businesses to make headway into competitive fields against this onslaught.

But that's not to say it can't be done. There are still plenty of opportunities for small businesses to succeed, even against well-financed competitors. But to do so it requires some clever thinking and swift moving; two things which big businesses are generally not too good at.

Think smarter than a big business

Online Marketing and SEO success is not always about achieving number one rankings. Over the years I've learned to quickly determine which of those businesses that come to us are serious about their success. Those who "want to be #1" are looking for a quick fix. Those that want to build visibility and improve conversions and sales are looking at the bigger picture. Rankings are a means to an end, not the end itself.

Are #1 rankings still possible? Sure. Are they wise? Depends on the phrase, the targeted traffic it draws, the conversion rates it achieves, and the amount of time and money it takes to get it there. There are a lot of great #1 rankings that can be achieved that will do wonders for your company, yet many business owners focus on getting #1 rankings for the keywords that don't give them a good return on their investment.

Even if you already own the top positions, so long as you have the small business mindset you're going to find yourself disappointed. You can only hang on to the tops spots so long with a budget of a few thousand a year, when some upstart comes along and throws tens of thousands of dollars a month at their online marketing campaigns. Enjoy the success while you can, but don't expect to hold onto that forever. Rankings change.

Success is always relative. A small business does not have to spend $10,000 per month in order to do well online. Most small businesses, even if they had such a budget, are not set up to handle the same kind of success as large businesses. You have to grow into that. But every small business owner investing in online marketing needs to keep their expectations in line with what can be done and what kind of success they can handle. Budget doesn't always make or break success, but it does play a role in it. The key is to find the areas where your budget will see the most return.

Organize time like a big business

As a small business owner, you need to determine how your own time is best spent. Do you have time to do it all yourself? Or is it time to think outside the small business box and hire someone to handle certain jobs that you don't need to be doing?

Most small businesses hire help as needed but when it comes to their online marketing they want to "save money" by doing it on their own. Why is the marketing any different from the other jobs you hire for? Would you try to do everything yourself? And if you did, would you be able to grow your business as you want? The answer is likely "no."

Part of thinking like a bigger business is being willing to not do everything yourself and put it in the hands of those who can really bring you the most success. Let skilled people do the jobs they are good at so you can focus on the job you're good at.

Move more swiftly than a big business

While the small business can't always hire everybody it wants for every job there is, they do have one advantage over the big business that can work in their favor. That advantage is adaptability. Big businesses often move too slow, but as a small business you have the luxury of being able to adapt and move fast.

You can have a big business mindset but take advantage of your small business position. Moving swiftly into new areas of marketing can reap huge rewards as you invest in areas your competition is overspending and underperforming, without having to go through layers of approval and red tape.

This is where outside consulting can come in handy. Having someone take a strategic look at your online marketing efforts and help you identify your own and your competitor's weaknesses can really open up your eyes to new opportunities. Of course, you then have to be willing to do what it takes to invest in those opportunities.

Small businesses have to stop letting the small business mindset keep them from performing big. You don't have to be a big business to win in the online marketing game, but you do need to get out of the mom and pop rut.

Be willing to take risks, but do so wisely and well-informed. And like big businesses, be willing to fail a little here and there if it teaches you how to succeed bigger later. You don't have to spend like a big business, but you won't go far so long as you keep thinking like a small business.

5 Worries That Can Kill Your SEO Campaign

2009-12-04T22:20:00.000-08:00

Small businesses are often seen fumbling around in the dark when it comes to figuring out which SEO strategies really work and which don't. There is an onslaught of information freely available online, much of it contradictory or confusing. Small business owners who attempt to perform SEO for themselves don't often know which strategies are more important than others, which are worthwhile and which are worthless, or how do you tell the difference.

Slogging through SEO forums, blogs and article sites can provide a great deal of good information, but it can also leave the small business owner confused on what--or what not--to do.

Those that choose to hire an SEO provider can push some of their SEO decision-making burdens off onto someone else, but some then open the door to a whole new set of worries that can circumvent their online success, even with a successful SEO working for them.

Spending nights worrying about your SEO campaign can eat up a lot of energy that is better applied to other, more important matters. While every business owner needs to be fully aware of the progress being made by their SEO's efforts, they also need to trust that the SEO knows what is needed for them to succeed. For that to happen, here are a few things the business owner need to stop worry about. Failure to do so can kill an SEO campaign in its tracks.

1) Worrying about making page edits

Without changes there is no SEO. You can focus on link building, social media, ad campaigns, etc, which can bring you limited success on their own. However, if you want your site really perform for your targeted keyword phrases, you have to be willing to make keyword focused and other architectural edits.

All too often site owners don't want to make necessary changes to their site's because they are afraid of losing customer focus. This is a legitimate concern but also one that is often misplaced. Site improvements designed for search engines often align with site improvements for your visitors. If searchers are using specific phrases in their search, it makes sense that your visitors will be served seeing those very same specific phrases on your site.

Don't be afraid of making changes to your site. The goal of any good SEO is not to just improve your search engine rankings, but help you increase your business.

2) Worrying about shifting rankings

It's a simple fact of life that search engine rankings change. New sites are always going online, old sites are disappearing, new information is added to the web, and new competition with fresh marketing dollars emerges. Add to that the fact that search engines are always tweaking and adjusting their algorithms and you've got a search engine ranking roller coaster.

That doesn't mean that you ignore keyword rankings completely, but if you're compelled to monitor your rankings, don't do it on a day to day basis. Most search engine ranking changes are insignificant and just part of the normal fluctuations that occur.

What you do need to be concerned about is overall trends. If you do start seeing a month to month trend of a loss in rankings dropping that's when you need to start looking at things more closely. Don't sweat the small stuff, but instead look at the bigger picture.

Another problem worrying about small shifts in rankings is people often get concerned about the wrong keywords and the wrong engines. Google drives the most traffic, but isn't always the best at converting. Improvements in other engines that may convert better may be worth a sacrifice of lower rankings in Google. Again, it's about the big picture.

3) Worrying about trying new things

Good optimization and marketing isn't a linear process. Every site is different as are the site's needs. Many changes recommended will be standard fare while some will seemingly come way out of left field. Give all proper consideration, and don't be afraid about doing something different.

One thing to keep in mind is that success comes through trial and trial produces error and failures. We've all heard the story that when Thomas Jefferson failed thousands of times for every success he ever made. Hopefully you won't have to fail that often in your website marketing, but be prepared for some things not to work.

Fear of failure is not a reason not to try. We tell the same to our kids and we need to take that to heart in our businesses. Step out, and be willing to try something new.

4) Worrying about making large-scale changes

Before a site can be optimized for your targeted keywords, it needs to be optimized for search engines. I call this having a "search engine friendly" website. A lot of sites are build by developers that don't know much about SEO beyond meta tags. The sites they build may look good but won't perform well in the search engines because the site architecture isn't search engine friendly.

The last thing you want to do is to pay a lot of money on an expensive optimization campaign if your site isn't in a position to be optimized. That's just putting SEO frosting on a website dung pile. Big changes need to be made before you can really start focusing on the actual on-page keyword targeting. In many cases you have to be willing to burn the site to the ground. Other times it's less severe but many structural changes will need to be made before any SEO can be effective.

Failure to make these big changes will ultimately result in poor performance of any optimization campaign you implement. Don't be afraid to make the big changes necessary for your small SEO changes to succeed.

5) Worrying about investing in long-term SEO

SEO is a long-term investment, not a one-time expense. The changes you need to make to optimize your site will cost you both time and money.

All too often businesses looking for an immediate boost turn to SEO as if it's some sort of magic bus ride to the top of the search engine rankings. They don't want to spend much money but they have very high expectations. Unfortunately, SEO isn't like building a fence. There is much more to it than having a bit of knowledge and a few tools to work with.

Those who are afraid to spend what it takes for their SEO campaign to succeed rarely ever do succeed. They limp along with sites that under perform and ultimately cost more to market than if the money was spent sooner to make the changes requires.

Worry tend to cause bad decisions. When we worry, we tend to make decisions based on how we feel at the moment rather than basing our decisions on facts and evidence. When you turn your SEO campaign over to another person, or even do it yourself, there is enough to worry about without adding to it.

As business owners you have enough on your plate. Make wise SEO decisions but leave the worries over superficial matters behind. By focusing on the wrong things you can sink your SEO campaign before it even has a chance to get off the ground.

4 Basic seo step for wordpress blog

2009-12-04T22:17:00.000-08:00

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the steps taken to increase visitors to a website or blog through search engines (search engines) like Google. The steps in the process of SEO is very much at all and there are a variety of ways.

For wordpress blog that use self hosted (like this blog), particularly the new blog, SEO is a step we can do to increase the number of visitors. WordPress is already very SEO Friendly, but we still need to do several steps to optimize SEO on wordpress blog and get the best results on the SERP (Search Engine Result Page). Here are the basic steps SEO we need to do :

1. Permalink Setting

The default setting of permalink structure (URLs for each post) on wordpress is not good for SEO. Basically the search engines is not have any problem with the permalink like that (the default) but it would be much better by using “clean url”. For best results in the SERP, use the permalink “%postname%” only. Go to your Dashboard and open the Settings menu, then select the Permalink menu.
2. All In One SEO Pack Plugin

For SEO on wordpress, All In One SEO Pack plugin is absolutely you need to install. With this plugin, you will be very helpful in the affairs of SEO your blog. Plugins All In One SEO Pack will handle the problem rewrite tittle, meta keywords, meta description, and others.
3. Related Post Plugin

One important plugins that need to be used on wordpress blog is Related Post Plugin. This plugin also benefit visitors and search engines. Related Post plugin automatically displays the related post (related article) under each post that we make, usually based on the tag of each post. Your blog visitors will be very helpful to find links to articles related to the post which he read.
4. Update Services

Update services is a tool we can use to make other people know we are updating our blog with a List of Ping Sites. This list can be found here, then copy and paste on your blog Update Services. Please open the Dashboard, then click Settings and open the menu Writing. Update Services are usually located at the bottom of this page.

long keyword

2009-12-01T21:20:00.000-08:00

I know my title is long and ridiculous, but it does help emphasize what long tail is all about. “Long tail” keywords are a string of three or more words that make up a phrase. The concept of long tail is pretty simple: Tap into the large amounts of search traffic using longer keyword phrases. Like traditional (one or two word) short tail keywords, long tail keywords define what is on the web page and what the website wants to be located under in search engines and on SERPs.
Search engine algorithms’ are getting more and more complex. When a website gets crawled by search engines, they are taking into account the keywords and phrases found in the indexable text of the web site. All indexable words on the page factor into which keywords and phrases the page ranks for. Of course, the frequency and placement of consecutive words are the biggest factors into which keywords and phrases rank the best.
Because of this fact, long tail keywords serve a dual purpose. They can refine search terms to a web page, as well as assist a searcher in locating something very specific. For example: if a consumer is looking to purchase “pink furry strawberry slippers” it makes more sense to search on the entire phrase than to put in “furry slippers,” “furry strawberries,” or “strawberry slippers” and attempt to filter through irrelevent search results.
Another big difference between short and long tail keyword phrases are the search results. If you were to search the keyword “counseling” in Google, you will receive 55,200,000 results. Then, if you look up the short tail keyword phrase “counseling jobs” in Google, it returns 10,900,000 results. Finally, if you enter the long tail keyword phrase “drug counseling jobs” in Google, it provides 323,000 results. Although the long tail keyword phrase is searched less than the shorter keyword phrases, there is much less SERP competition.
Using long tail keywords to corner a smaller market has just as much potential, if not more, than using short tail keywords in a larger, more exposed market. Some sites may discover that the long tail isn’t quite as rich in their market, while other sites will do far better by targeting the long tail. Either way, using long tail keywords where you can, will definitely give you the advantage over your competitors.

what does alexa with seo?

2009-12-01T01:20:00.000-08:00

Disappointed? Yeah. Threw me into my low-mid-life crisis. We should have held a memorial for baseball as we knew it.
I remember the years when baseball was a man’s sport, not a cheaters sport. I loved it. I couldn’t miss a Mariner’s game rain or shine…more rain than shine, but the King Dome ruled. I was there to watch Griffey’s rookie season, the Jr. and Sr. tandem, his first Grand Slam and A-Rod’s inaugural homerun. Jay Buhner, Pete O’Brien, Dave Valle, Harold Reynolds, Tino Martinez, Omar Vizquel, The Big Unit…all ancient memories now. We’re talking stone-age ancient, or so it seems.
When the recent news came out about Alex Rodriguez, I was broken for a day. Extremely disappointed. Literally every last one of my hopes for baseball’s future was finally strung out to fade in the sun on an unreachable limb of shame.
How does baseball bounce back from having its icon player completely, publicly wamboozled? Who knows. Alas, we’re not here to talk about the MLB and roids. Thankfully.
Something Profound Amidst the Muck
And what else is there to do than apply the A-Fraud stuff to SEO? Yup, we can apply what A-Rod is going through to SEO. It’s brilliant, check it out.
A-Fraud broke the cardinal rule of SEO, and, well, of life too. Though steroids weren’t in the day to day conversation back then, he marginalized his personal brand integrity and partook of ‘grey area’ stuff when the consequences of taking it weren’t even considered. Steroids was part of the ‘loosey goosey’ era in baseball where players, coaches and trainers just looked the other way and let it happen (I would have considered it flat out cheating, but, to be fair, it actually was a grey area back then. It baffles me as to why but that’s just how it was).
Every day at magic-seo.blogspot.com we come across webmasters that have doomed their business to SEO failure. They’re doing the exact same thing that A-Rod did, but to their businesses. They marginalize their site’s integrity by partaking in grey area, loosey-goosey stuff without concern for future consequences. They pump the juice to get some cool short term results without a thought for future ailments that may come of it. Bad idea. Very bad idea.
When you have an all-seeing and omniscient powerhouse like Google looming over you, as a webmaster, you can’t hide under ‘ignorance’ like A-Rod did for so many years. Google doesn’t care who you are. They know everyone and are everywhere, watching you. Kinda creepy. More creepy knowing they control your web business, at least the free traffic part of it. So you HAVE to make them happy. You have no choice. They are no respecter of persons [or websites]. They will find you and they will dump your site as if it didn’t even exist. And search engine placement resurrection is a difficult, lengthy process.
Avoid Grey-ness Like You Would Steroids
Using A-Rod as an example of what happens when you go the grey hat route, you get hammered when the sun exposes the true colors or when the market/boss changes expectations. In other words, once Google finds out or changes policies (and they will) you get hammered. Once the U.S. found out about her golden boy baller’s ugly, old, stale grey stuff, golden boy got hammered. Wouldn’t A-Rod have been better to steer clear of anything that could be considered cheating? Duh. Your business is no different.
For your main site, things that are considered ‘grey hat’ should be avoided completely. It’s not worth the long term repercussions. It just isn’t. Build your site right the first time. Keep as far from the ledge as possible and you’ll be loved by Google and you’ll find a place in your niche’s Google hall of fame. Good luck A-Rod.
For long term sustainability, steady and white hat will win the race. Don’t go for the ‘quick’ score.
What is Grey Hat?
Here’s the legit definition so bookmark this page or tweet it to your friends because this is good:
Grey hat SEO is the employment of techniques that are not technically against Google’s policies but that don’t provide value and are done solely for SEO purposes without regard for user experience.
Here’s the kicker. Pay attention. Grey hat today can literally become black hat tomorrow.
I’ve seen grey turn to black too many times. Here’s an example: Remember when blog commenting was the craze about 18 months ago? Everyone came out with their own software to almost automate blog spamming because it was cool. An immediate billion anchor text links!
All of a sudden, Google laid the smack down and it hurt. Blog spamming will kill you now. That’s not to say you can’t comment on a blog and point to your site, but you have to actually make a real comment and join the conversation.
***Don’t risk sandboxing your brand for the latest SEO craze. Be real all the time***
What Are Grey Hat Techniques?

Before we lay out the common grey hat mojo, know that there are literally unlimited grey hat areas. When building SEO focus on adding value and user experience and you will win, always. Period. Limit the things that you do that are ONLY for SEO purposes. Remember, grey hat today can be black hat tomorrow morning so pick your battles wisely. Don’t blow it like A-Rod did.
These are a few grey-hat tactics that could be just as bad for your site in the long run as steroids were to A-Rod:
• Stuffing keywords in alt tags, link titles and image titles.
• Linking to sites that have nothing to do with your niche or industry.
• Obtaining inbound links that have nothing to do with your niche or industry.
• Purchasing links under the guise of ‘advertising’ or ‘traffic purposes’ when they are really for SEO.
• Social media spam.
• Blog comment spamming is now black hat.
Have you committed the grey hat A-Rod steroid sin? Repent. Do you have anything to add to the grey hat areas that we’ve gone over?
Bling.

Earn some free gifts very easily like laptops, MP3 players, Ipods, and even $$$ too

2009-11-27T20:04:00.000-08:00

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All your comments are welcomes to this post. Feel free to contribute.

My Posting

2009-11-18T04:28:00.000-08:00

.dn

buzz marketing link

2009-11-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

I’ve been trying to come up with a formula for success in creating link bait for our clients. The best thing to do for me has been to read the book “Buzz Marketing” by Mark Hughes. Mark was the former Marketing Director at Half.com, who had the town of Halfway Oregon rename itself to “Half.com” as part of the buzz marketing/link bait campaign.
Although Mark didn’t set out with creating a “link bait formula” when he wrote his book, the principles involved can be used very easily to create link bait.
Principle 1: Be Outrageous
Remember when Al Gore invented the Internet? That’s probably as much as I need to say on that principle. But I’m a small to medium sized business, you say, and I can’t think of anything outrageous about my sock puppets; you’re wrong. You just have to be willing to put up with the negative effects that might ride on the coat tails of some outrageous story.
Principle 2: Use a Celebrity
Britney Spears is a prime example of using celebrity status to further your agenda. But you are a small business, and you’re not famous. What if that sock puppet you make was used by Kid Rock’s nanny when he was growing up? Or maybe that fax service you provide was used to facilitate the negotiations between Russia and Germany in World War 2? (a stretch I know, but you get the idea)
Principle 3: Be Funny
This is the hardest but most profitable as far as risk vs. reward is concerned. The idea is to create a story that is so funny, people will just automatically start telling the story at the water cooler at work, or in the lunch room or on breaks. Like I said, this one is hard, but if you can pull it off, it’s pure gold. Sometimes making fun of yourself is the easiest way to be the funniest.
Principle 4: Do Something No One Else Has Done
This is where you’ve got the most leeway, because there are always lists, widgets, contests, prizes, and much more that no one else has done quite like you could. However, this principle doesn’t pack as much of a punch as you might expect from the other principles, just because you may have created a super de duper list of some kind, but there are already millions of lists, so yours has really got to stand out. I know you can do it though!
Principle 5: Be Controversial
Did TuPac really die, or is he holed up in his L.A. studio creating records still? Does Area 51 really exist? Does Scrapbooking paper really cure Alzheimer’s? (No it doesn’t by the way) Having a good team of lawyers will increase your likelihood of being safe with this one. That guerilla marketing campaign in Boston with the electronic bomb looking thing flipping the bird; Controversial. Your latest product release with New and Improved flavor; Not Controversial.
Principle 6: Be The Underdog
ClearPlay wins the award for best Underdog. The DGA and studios filed a lawsuit in 2002 against ClearPlay and a Colorado video rental store, CleanFlicks, which uses its own software to decode a DVD, alter it for content, then burn a new, edited version, back onto a DVD for rental.
The lawsuit is still pending. ClearPlay contends its software is not illegal because it does not alter the original DVD. But the amount of press that ClearPlay got from that lawsuit couldn’t have been bought in 100 years. They took on one of the biggest entities in their industry and stuck it out and got huge publicity.
Overall, you’ll be the most successful with a linkbait idea that genuinely entertains, inspires, offers something brand new, or gets people talking. If you can combine one or more of the major principles above into your campaign, you are on the road to a successful link bait strategy.

Google hijackers from crackers; check your HTACCESS

2009-11-14T23:06:00.000-08:00

When’s the last time you looked inside your website’s HTACCESS file? It really should become a part of your monthly (ack, weekly? daily?) audit routines. There could be gremlins at play you see…

Ok, here’s the gig, one day a mate comes along as asks me, “You mind Googling Twitter?” and I told him to mind his manners as I didn’t go for that kind of thing. Anyway, obliging him, the mighty Google was consulted and from what I could see, the oracle of the ‘Plex was behaving as normal.

Upon pressing for details as to what exactly he is seeing he sends me this;

As you can see the top results are for an Anti-virus website… NOT for Twitter

Being the curious type, I inquired with a few other folks to see what they were seeing. Sure enough, we were all seeing the proper set of results. Fair enough, it sounds like the hull has been compromised and he’s taking on water.

As we backtracked it seems there was a search result that had a peculiar behavior earlier that day. Upon clicking the top result in Google his AV software had done the jig, (although it may have been the Trojan mimicking to gain access). I went over to the website in question – and nothing.

I then searched the website in Google and clicked on the listing – voila! Sure enough you we’re redirected and a pop-up prompted to do a ‘security scan’ cough cough. This behavior ONLY happened when accessing the site via Google.

The HTACCESS Gremlins

What could this be one wondered. Certainly the mighty Goog’ has not fallen pray to wrong doers have they? After all they say they’ve done it before;

Google serves up malware????

Naw, that couldn’t be it.

Initial suspicions leaned towards the site being hacked, but the site administrator was as confused as a link baiter on truth serum, no hacks could be found. To be on the safe side, a few of those in the know, information retrievers, were consulted and one specializing in rarefied AIR (adversarial information retrieval) had the answer. Check the HTACCESS file; which was an enlightening journey.

You see kind reader, they had gone in and were redirecting ONLY the traffic from Google which then prompted and had caused the computer to be infected. Then, on subsequent searches they were intercepting it and sending back their own (modified) Google results. The sneaky little buggars.

Make it a part of your site audits

You can just imagine the reputation problems that could come from this not to mention its potential for sabotage. While this may not seem like the domain of the SEO, having low search engagement and possibly infecting visitors is sure to have negative effects ultimately. No matter how you look at it, from hacking to put nasty (outbound links) on competitor sites to redirecting incoming SERP requests, this is something SEOs need be aware of.

In the modern world of SEO, close ties with the security and system administrators is key. Everyone needs to be aware of the potential for such attacks and be vigilant. A lot of time and money (into search campaigns) could easily be washed away and replaced with a reputation management problem.

What to watch for - This type of attack is often found when you are using a CMS or WordPress type installation that requires the htaccess to be writable (such as SEF URL creation). To guard against it, be sure to chmod your hataccess so the at it’s not writable until you need to publish something new - then make it writable, create pages and then set it back again.

…. Something to consider…

Exploiting Longevity For Google Search Results

2009-11-12T18:47:00.001-08:00

Here’s an interesting observation I just made to justify how I am writing to the web: Google rewards longevity, and doesn’t care so much about readability. A few months ago I did a revamp on There Is NO Box, and I am continually amazed at the traffic I get for years-old posts which are (frankly) not very good. Some of these are posts with one word titles, or posts that are very short, or just generally lame.

Currently on Website In A Weekend, I’m producing out a large number of articles, some of which are more technical (and take more time) than others.

But in all cases, when I feel the article is “good enough,” I pull the trigger and publish to get the permalink into Google’s index. I have read that this strategy is called “Publish, then polish” (watch for an upcoming article explaining publish then polish in detail). It goes against every bit of formal training I’ve ever had as a writer, where “quality” is the only overriding concerning, articles take a long time to produce, and inaccuracy is severely punished. Unfortunately, long, in-depth and technically detailed articles on blogs are punished by the “lack of readers” effect.

Using “publish then polish,” Google is now indexing me everyday, sometimes within hours. My highest traffic post so far published on Website In A Weekend was published the morning WordPress 2.8 was released, and got a couple of dozen hits by the end of the day. It continues to get traction. But there’s good posts on this site which haven’t yet gotten a couple of dozen hits total.

Right now a couple of dozen hits is pretty good, for any post.

Website In A Weekend doesn’t have many other readers yet. Google is probably the most active consumer… although Google sends very few search results this way.

At some point this will change. [Update 7/6/2009: in the three weeks since I wrote and scheduled this article, my daily traffic as roughly doubled!] When I do start getting traffic, I won’t feel compelled to write quite as much, and will concentrate on more refined output.

Until then, cranking out content in bulk seems to be the correct strategy. Long time readers know I’m on a schedule to complete 101 articles on WordPress, which is tentatively complete around August 10, 2009.

Whether the “publish then polish” strategy leads me astray in the long term remains to be seen.

What’s your experience?

Title Pages for Google and Yahoo

2009-11-11T18:41:00.001-08:00

Title Writing Tips pages
Search engines make the title page as one of the important reference relevant in determining whether or not a page. Pages this title is a sarcastic title of a page, so should have a title reflecting the content of the page content.

Some things to note are:

1. Number of characters
From sources that I read your page title optimal if 80 characters is optimized for google and yahoo ranges to 115 characters.
The point is if you exceed the optimal within reasonable limits, do not be bad, but of course taken into account the density of your title, may be better if you use it makssimal 80 characters.
Meanwhile, after I did the experiment, Google is only 65 characters max menampilakan in his SERP, and yahoo about 115 characters with spaces and punctuation.
From here I also found, that the title page after the characters to 65 from google not very helpful, in this case there is a site that terlisting no 1 on google with keywords "I do not call". This site has a title that more than 65, I add keywords to the "in Indonesia" (these keywords in the position after the character to 65). Apparently, this site even defeated by the sites in its pages none keyword "Indonesia".
As a second note the site has a pagerank 4. From this I conclude title after 65 characters to a smaller impact than the inbound link text. (The second site that does not have keywords "Indonesia" in dalamanya probably because it has terlisting inbound text link "Indonesia").

2. Do not use the words in the search engine filters.
For sites that speak "English", words like is, are, etc. should not be included in the title. As for Indonesia language site, it should be influential, as far as I know now, the word "the", "and" etc. are not filtered search engine. (IMHO)

3. Dispose of the words that are not useful
Words such as â € œselamat arrived at the site kamiâ €?? better etc. not included.

4. Reduce the use of separator
If possible do not because it has a long title be added separator, eventually the number of characters exceeds the maximum amount recommended karekter.

In the title selection is also not free from how to choose good keywords. And do not forget in your item has a good density of the title / title you choose.

Seo “Ilmu pasti” atau “ilmu raba-raba” ?

2009-11-11T18:35:00.000-08:00

Lama juga saya berpikir untuk menjawab saat mendengar pertanyaan ini.
Karena menurut saya sendiri, segala proses yang dilakukan search engine menggunkan algoritma dan dan algoritma itu berisi perhitungan-pertitungan matematis. Seperti diungkapkan sergey brin, pendiri salah satu search engine (google). Segala proses dalam index google sebisa mungkin tidak melalui campur tangan manusia, ini berarti segalanya dilakukan dengan mesin (komputer) dengan algoritmanya. Meskipun untuk hal-hal seperti penalty atau halaman yang di banned oleh google melalui proses penelitian dan campur tangan manusia untuk melakukannya. Tapi itu tidak mengganggu algoritmanya tapi lebih kepada variabelnya.

Jika kita membaca artikel-artikel seo, banyak juga saran-saran yang kadang-kadang ada juga yang bersebrangan, yang mana yang benar? kalau seo itu ilmu pasti, tidak mungkin terjadi kemungkinan 2 jawaban. IMHO.
Saya bukan orang matematika, jadi saya juga tidak tau pasti apa mungkin ilmu matematika memiliki beberapa jawaban. :)

Karena itu saya simpulkan menurut pendapat pribadi saja, Seo misalnya untuk pagerank, link popularity dan sebagainya tetap merupakan ilmu pasti, tetapi tidak semua orang tau rumusnya, jadi jawabannya juga tidak semua orang mengetahuinya. Kalau algoritma pagerank misalnya, merupakan kede opensource, tentu lebih mudah menjawab apakah seo untuk pagerank misalnya adalah ilmu pasti atau ilmu raba-raba.
Minta bantuan pendapatnya ya!

Keywords Research! Hati-hati dengan keywords korban seo

2009-11-11T18:34:00.001-08:00

Sebagai tambahan artikel sebelumnya tentang bagaimana memilih keywords yang baik, kali ini saya akan coba mengulas bagaimana sebuah keywords bisa menjadi korban seo. Untuk mempermudah, saya langsung ambil contoh kasus yang saya temukan.
Kemaren sudah dibahas kalau lebih baik memilih keywords yang berhubungan dengan apa produk atau jasa yang dicari orang dan bukan terfokus pada nama usaha anda, tentu saja ini tidak sepenuhnya benar. Bagi yang menginginkan situs web yang dimiliki merupakan sumber pengunjung yang akan menjadi sumber customer dan pendapatan ini sangat disarankan. Tetapi bagi perusahaan yang sudah besar atau pribadi yang sudah terkenal dan sedang membangun coorporate image tentu akan lebih sesuai menggunakan nama perusahaan.

Salah satu keywords yang menarik bagi saya dan sudah dioptimasi oleh sangat banyak situs adalah ; “bali-hotels” dan “bali maps“. Kalau melihat hit-nya di tool-tool keywords research, hitnya sangat tinggi. Dari keywords itu dapat kita lihat dua perbandingan :

* Hotel adalah akomodasi pariwisata yang sangat dibutuhkan orang saat bepergian (kebutuhan primer), sedangkan “maps” atau peta hanya dibutuhkan sebagai panduan untuk yang belum tahu sebuah lokasi.
* Hotel merupakan bisnis yang sangat besar jika dibandingkan dengan sebuah peta.

Dari point satu dapat kita simpulkan bahwa keywords hotel akan lebih banyak dicari pada keywords maps.
Perbandingannya dapat kita lihat dalam gambar.

Sedangkan dari point dua dapat kita simpulkan dalam ruang lingkup seo, keywords hotel akan lebih banyak dioptimasi oleh situs-situs hotel, karena dari situ meraka berharap pesanan kamar dari tamu.

Jika diperhatikan, kedua keywords ini paling banyak dibutuhkan oleh orang asing yang bepergian ke “bali” dengan tujuan wisata yang sudah dapat dipastikan nilai konversi pengunjung situs yang sudah dioptimalkan merupakan pengunjung yang dari luar bali atau luar negeri. Tapi dalam tabel di bawah jumlah hits kedua keywords tersebut terlihat aneh !

Dapat dilihat, kedua keywords “bali hotels” dan “bali maps” sudah menjadi korban seo dan yang lebih parah adalah keywords “bali hotel” disebabkan karena banyak situs yang melakukan optimasi pada situs ini. Hits pada keywords yang besar itu bukan berasal dari para calon customer, pelanggan atau calon pengguna jasa. Tapi tidak lebih dari ratusan kali searching dari para webmaster yang mengecek posisi situs mereka di search engine.
Kita sudah tidak dapat lagi menentukan dengan tool apapun berapa sebenarnya customer potensial dengan pemakaian keywords tersebut. Satu lagi dampak buruknya bagi yang berkantong lebih tipis, biaya traffic anda mungkin bukan dari calon customer potensial, tetapi lebih banyak dari saingan-saingan anda.

Apa yang salah? Jawabnya tidak ada!. Dari contoh kasus ini kita hanya perlu lebih teliti dalam menganalisa jumlah hit keywords-keywords yang populer. Dan inilah salah satu manfaat jika anda lebih mengoptimasi pada keywods yang lebih spesifik seperti contohnya “bali cheap hotel” atau “cheap bali vacation package“. Dan tentunya kasus yang sama mungkin terulang lagi.

Sebelum keduluan, kenapa tidak dicoba sekarang.! :)

Oes Tsetnoc Buzz Growing In SERP

2009-11-11T18:25:00.001-08:00

I don’t really know why this happen lately, yet if you have a time to see it in Google SERP, Oes Tsetnoc buzz is growing. It’s so different compared to last week. As I remember, there were only around 150k results at that time. However, now it’s more than 200k. What’s the matter? Although I can’t answer it surely, but in my opinion, it’s all because the time left for this SEO contest is getting smaller. I think, there will only a month an active time to optimize it. So, whoever, especially thos who join it, will try anything to boost their SERP.

Although Oes Tsetnoc buzz is growing in SERP, but I am still lucky today. My main entry still exist in the big four. Even, once in this morning, I can see it in the third position. Considering that this situation makes an optimization becomes harder than ever, now I must make routine update in every dummies I have. This to ensure Google bot visiting mine regularly. And hopefully, he will take mine as the best page at the moment till the final day come.

Anyway, apart from the simple news about oes tsetnoc buzz that is growing in SERP above, now I am joining another local SEO contest too. It’s entitled kerja keras adalah energi kita. Sadly, it’s stuck in 6th place. So if you have any blogs that are having space to support it, please do that as soon as possible guys. I really need your help today. Will you?

Black Magic SEO

2009-11-10T21:37:00.000-08:00

“Abracadabra.” – Alfred Borden, The Prestige

There is a bit of truth to this Ranked Hard. No, there isn’t any sorcery being performed, but I have had more than a few phone calls from potential clients that have spoken with other SEO companies that have gotten similar responses. We are very forthcoming with how we will achieve better rankings in the search engines and as most reputable SEO firms will admit, it isn’t overly complicated. Good content and solid link building are the foundation of any good SEO campaign.

Unfortunately, many SEO companies will say things like, “It’s too complicated to get into,” or “We can’t share or SEO techniques.” When I hear that I immediately tell the perspective client to be very suspicious. When an SEO company isn’t willing to share their methods, it is usually because they have no methods to share or else they are doing things they wish to hide.

Or, maybe they are practicing Black Magic SEO, who knows?

title tag

2009-11-09T21:05:00.003-08:00

Looking for a quick fix that will improve your rankings? Take a look at your title tags. A title tag is the line of text that is normally displayed at the top of the browser window. Title tags are arguably the most important SEO tags for any site.
For most search engines, the maximum length of a title tag to be displayed is between 60-70 characters. If your title tag is over 70 characters, your title will be cut off around 70 characters on the search results page.
Search engine spiders use these title tags as the main source for determining the page topic. Spiders or crawlers examine the title and then translate the topic of the page. This is one reason why it is always best to use your keywords in the page title, and to place them as close to the beginning of the title as possible. Remember, the text included in the title tag is also the text that will appear in the SERPs (search engine results pages) as the linked title on which users will click to access your page. In fact, just fixing the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and significant improvements in your rankings.
For example, let’s say you have an educational site that provides information and guidelines on teacher certification requirements. You’ve decided that the most important keywords for your site are “teaching certification” and “teaching requirements.” In this case, a page title along the lines of “Teaching Requirements for Teacher Certification” is highly relevant to the topic of the site. Spiders will crawl your site, and because the title is the first factor it sees, the spider will “read” it and then examine the rest of the page finding the keywords used in other places on the page to determine how relevant the title is to the rest of the content. If the content, H tags, and title tag all relate—you’re in business! This is why it’s so important to target the most critical keywords in the title tag.
Follow this same process for all of your pages, and remember to create unique titles that are relevant to each page and do not keyword stuff. This greatly improves the effectiveness of those tags and will increase the search engine rankings for your keywords. Although your home page might show up for 20 or 30 different keyword combinations, only your top two or three keyword phrases should be included in the tittle.

learn basics before anything fancy

2009-10-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

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.

your-site-seo-hokey-pokey

2009-10-12T21:19:00.000-07:00

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!

Black Magic SEO! Vampire Weekend sucks SERPs

2009-10-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

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.

SEO Tips for Beginners

2009-10-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

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.

Caution! rel=”nofollow” Discussion

2009-10-06T21:36:00.000-07:00

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.

5 Reasons Twitter is Not Worth Your Dime or Time

2009-10-01T21:42:00.000-07:00

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

Killer keywords and domain

2009-09-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, wrote a post about the importance of selecting a strong domain name and a few tips to help you come up with good domain names. I recently came across a great example of how much added value having keywords in your URL can bring to your SEO efforts.
I have a friend that registered the domain name coldplaymusic.net. The .com was already bought and was parked by some domainer, so he settled for the .net. If you do a search for “Coldplay music” you will find that coldplaymusic.net is in the second page of results. This is the shocking part… The domain name was purchased about a month ago. There have been no links built to this site, and there is not a lot of content. Even with these aspects working against its rankings, the site has still managed to make it on the second page for a search with a volume of over 200 thousand searches each month.
The content on the site has been optimized, so I can’t give all the credit to the domain. However, it does suggest the importance of having keywords in your domain. Because having keywords in a domain has helped web sites show up for in particular keywords, some domains become quite valuable. Some of you might remember that the domain Pizza.com sold last year for over two million dollars. The previous owner purchased it fourteen years ago for twenty dollars. Now that is what I call a good ROI.
As with everything, you need to be moderate in how you place keywords in your domain. You are limited to 63 characters or less in your domain (this does not include the .com, .net, or other country codes). Also, you should remember that if you have a domain like cheapviagragamblingpornreplicawatchesandmoneymakingschemes.com it will definitely look like spam to the search engines. Keep an eye out for my next post that will provide other tips to making your domain work for you.

i put that seo button

2009-09-24T21:17:00.000-07:00

For all you people out there who are looking to do SEO, I have some seriously bad news. You might want to sit down for this. Ready? There is no instant SEO button. I’m sorry to have to bear this bad news to you, and I hate having to be the one to break it to you. There’s no switch either. Or simple form to sign, trick to use, or connections you can have with people on the inside. If you want to be there in the top of the field with the best sites, you can’t just call up Google and say “Ok I’m ready.” It takes work and it takes time.
Even though this is fairly well known by now, it’s tempting to think that SEO is that simple. Regardless of how good your SEO firm is, you still have to be a relevant site. Even then, it will still take work and effort to get you to the top of the search engine rankings.
It will happen, from time to time, that a new site will get into a contract for SEO and stop their own developments, essentially filling that one basket with all the eggs. This actually makes things more difficult for the SEO firms. The fact of the matter is that we don’t suddenly make your site more relevant to people searching on your terms. We work to make it so that Google can see your site better so they can decide how relevant you are. We will make suggestions on how to make your site more relevant to your users. A hard, but necessary question to ask yourself is whether your site really is the best site to show up for the given keyword. If it’s not, perhaps you need to make some adjustments.
Here are a few tips to making your site the best site available for your keywords:
• Make sure you have some method of keeping your site up to date, and a source of information (where possible). A blog, or news section works well for this idea.
• Don’t fall too in love with the overall design and look of your site. Be willing to make changes, and reorganize and restructure how the site works.
• Consider keywords that don’t have corresponding pages. Perhaps pages need to be created to fit that missing piece.
• Most importantly, continue to develop your site like you would your business.
In the end, having a website that people want to find makes SEO that much better and faster. Working with your SEO service provider to make sure that you really are the best site out there will do wonders, and not to mention make a lot of people happy–including your SEO firm

choosing the best keywords

2009-09-18T21:17:00.000-07:00

Ah, the beauty of search marketing! What other marketing medium lets you get your ad in front of your potential customer at the precise moment they are looking for exactly what you sell? Of course, your success with search marketing hinges on your selection of the right keywords. Good keyword selection starts with a brainstorming session. Get together with your team and make a list of all the keywords and phrases that people might be searching for to find a business like yours. Try to include terms that people outside your industry would use. Take a look at your competitors’ websites to see what keywords they are targeting. Review their meta keywords, titles, and content on their websites to identify additional keywords to add to your list. Another great place to look for keywords is forums, blogs, industry sites, and Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers. What are the words people use to find the product or service you offer? Once you’ve built your list, use online keyword tools to see how often your keywords are searched on and refine your list. A few of these tools are Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, Google’s Keyword Tool, and Yahoo/Overture Keyword Inventory Tool. These tools will allow you to see how often your keywords are searched on and give you ideas for other keywords to consider.
It’s important to target keywords that are relevant to your business, but don’t sacrifice relevance for search popularity–I mean don’t forget about your most targeted keywords just because they aren’t as heavily searched. You want to use keywords that will drive traffic to your site AND increase sales. Once you identify the keywords that are most relevant to your website, you can use that list for search engine optimization, pay-per-click (PPC) keyword ads, and any other keyword advertising. After you start getting traffic for these keywords, spend some time reviewing your analytics reports. Monitor the keyword conversion report to see which keywords are generating sales. If you find certain keywords perform better than others, shift your focus to those keywords to achieve the best possible results. Over time you will fine-tune your keyword strategy to the point where you know exactly which keywords perform best and you will enjoy a steady flow of new business from the search engines.

freshest summer blogging tips

2009-09-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

It’s summertime and if you’re like most people, you didn’t include your blog in your spring cleaning rotation. Just as artists and musicians go through different phases and creative change-ups, bloggers need to “clean house” and evolve with the seasons as a way to improve, fine-tune and stay relevant.
These blogging ideas are hot out of the oven, right off the conveyor belt, organically grown and sealed air-tight to preserve freshness. These fresh ideas are guaranteed to win new readers and increase the interaction and engagement levels of those you already have.
Web Development
1. Change the background color(s) on your site. It’s like rearranging your furniture.
2. Rework (or create) your logo. Make it something that will scale, big or small (something you can turn into a favicon or print on a t-shirt).
3. Ditch the long URL by upgrading your Wordpress- or Blogspot-hosted sites to your own hosting (the mark of a serious blogger).
4. Commit to implement, learn and use Google Analytics. Digging into your site’s metrics is the best way to improve your design and your writing. It empowers you to give back to your readers.
5. Add social bookmarking buttons and an RSS button to your site and posts (Wordpress plug-ins make this a piece of chocolate cake).
6. Make your site “open” by allowing readers to post comments without registering (registration can be a barrier to participation).
7. Cross-pollinate your blog with your Twitter account (which implies that you should have a Twitter account). Once again, this is cake-easy with Wordpress plugins.
8. Learn HTML and CSS so you can make the kinds of minor tweaks that will sharpen your design.
Content
9. Revamp your writing ambience. Write outside, write with a huge grin on your face until you finish, or write with a lemon wedge in your mouth. (It may even shorten your writing time).
10. Develop theme days to create some reader-reward attachment. SEOmoz does “Whiteboard Friday.” Maybe you do “Rainy Day Reviews” when it rains.
11. Create something offline and share it online, be it photography, a cooking experiment, a poem, or a blind contour drawing. Do it as a planned post rather than an afterthought.
12. Go the extra mile for a post to show your dedication. For example, instead of just raving about something, make a Facebook fan page and pitch it to your readers. (As an example, see a page I created about my passion for retro stripes).
13. Look for opportunities to interview a professional as part of a blog post. It’s more than most bloggers are willing to do for their readers.
14. Do way too much research for a blog post so that you become the comprehensive, exhaustive “blogosphere” reference on the topic.
15. Shorten your blog titles. Make them short enough to get mileage on Twitter, i.e., someone can retweet and include the blog post, host blog, short URL to the post, and a personal endorsement–all in under 140 characters. Format: “RT @scottcowley 25 Freshest Summer Blogging Tips | SEO.com http://bit.ly/abc123 – Nice post.”
16. Use a story or example in every post. A commonality of buzz-less posts is that while they may be true and helpful, they are unmemorable and have not pushed any “reader engagement buttons,” which is what stories and examples do.
17. Devote a paragraph to a particular niche of people you find interesting. SEO guru Jeff once highlighted librarians in just a portion of his post about new search engines and random librarian news sites started linking to it, sending hundreds of visitors his way. You’ve got to give credit to those types of plugged-in groups.
18. Write amazing titles. In the Twitter and social bookmarking world, you are judged by your headlines and not by your content. Use the words “fresh, new, hot, or end-all” (5 points if you can do all of them in one title). The great marketing secret is that one man’s “old and boring” is another man’s “fresh, new, hot, or end-all” so don’t be self-conscious about making such claims.
19. Create a video tutorial. Make sure it exudes the “you” brand like your writing does. For example, my wife’s Masters research explores new media’s place in the writing classroom so she created a video called “What is New Media?” Low budget, but effectively “academic.”
20. Highlight current events. Hot topics are the sharpest hooks. As proof, one of the most read SEO.com blogs ever was actually a review for a new Android phone that our CEO bought. If you have any connection whatsoever to a current trend or event, jump on it before it stales.
Aftermath
21. Commit to marketing your own posts. Don’t be a purist. You wrote it. If it was good enough to post, it is good enough to market, share, Tweet, Digg, Stumble, etc. Self-promotion as a blogger will give you valuable experience.
22. Be a blogosphere/Twittersphere octopus. If you mention someone, someone’s blog or post, site, company, or anything with a figurehead web presence, use a brief blog comment or tweet to let them know that you did. People love recognition, and goodwill spreads like the pox.
23. Try responding directly to all comments made about your post. You may be surprised at how easy it is and how responsive your readers will be at this newfound interaction.
24. Use targeted requests for comments on your post. After you post, make a list of the people who would be most interested in the topic and send them a Twitter DM asking for their comments. Last week, Jacob Brown used this great technique to get my feedback on his post.
25. Use blogging as ongoing experimentation. Take detailed notes and track the metrics surrounding your blog posts. Figure out what works for your blog and readership and revisit successful approaches as a means to test and refine your best practices.
Have you ever done a major clean-up of your blogging? Did you try anything with amazing results? Any failures you’d share with others

How to choose the right keywords

2009-09-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

Choosing keywords that are baikMemilih keywords that work focused on what people search is not about what the product, article or your content.
For example, people would prefer œharga € â € hotelâ room?? than œHotel Mutiaraâ â € €??, so use the name of the company less in terms of what people search for, from the point of search enggine certainly no problem because both kewyords will be index by google. So once again, focus on what is generally sought.
To specify keywords and find out what people find most appealing, you may not get the right keywords if you do it by thinking hard or over coffee. So a better and more quickly and accurately if you use an existing tool, there is a link under the keywords tool you can use:

inventory.overture.com
Overture facility you can enter a keyword you will be given the number of keyword searches in the last months. You will also be given an alternative list of relevant keywords and the number of searches for each of these alternatives.

Wordtracker.com
This tool has the advantage because it already has a thesaurus, so you will be given keywords commonly used by people in search for things related to keywords you provide. With this you can choose a more appropriate keywords from the keywords you enter.

adwords.google.com
A tool from Google that actually made to advertisers on google adwords. But the toll is very useful to get the best keyword choices, you can also peek of how competitive the keywords that advertisers use. In addition, ajax-based tool that is very easy to use to select keywords and you can export directly to the excel file.

Complete tool list for keywords you can see in the tool category.

link building strategies for new website

2009-09-09T21:16:00.000-07:00

Believe it or not, all SEO’s were newbies at one time or another. Launching a website can be a very exciting event for an individual or new business owner. However, that excitement can quickly turn to disappointment when the site owner finds out that they are getting little or no traffic. If they are getting traffic, it is most likely coming from family members or friends who they notified through an email or Facebook.
Being involved in SEO and marketing in general, I am usually bombarded by family members and friends with questions about marketing their website or their future website on the Internet. Because of this and my willingness to help just about anyone I know, you can usually find me in a small dark corner at a family party (it has to be small and dark because my wife gets ticked when I’m not up and socializing with everyone), on the phone in the car, or answering an email, Facebook message, or Twitter message about SEO and other internet marketing tactics.
I was on a call yesterday with one of my best friends from high school. Our conversation was focused on general search engine optimization principles and link building tactics that could provide a good foundation and hopefully, if he does them right, some strong rankings in the search engines. One thing I emphasized is the fact that what ever he does, he needs to build links naturally. A natural link building campaign is crucial for success in SEO.
A natural link building campaign is one that is just that, natural! Getting 50,000 links within the first twenty days of your website’s existence is definitely not natural. Getting a slow trickle of links coming into your website and then building up looks much more natural. Also, getting 50,000 links pointing to your home page with the same anchor text is not natural. Vary your anchor text and include long tail versions of your keywords. You should also build links to other pages of your site in addition to your home page. All of these things help with building a natural link campaign.
In terms of links, there are two types of links you can get for your websites, external and internal links. Both are very important and can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings. I want to discuss in detail, ten ways to effectively jump-start your link building campaign.
Friends & Family Members
When beginning a link building campaign, one very natural way of obtaining links is from friends and family members. I just opened up our family blog and counted all of the friends and family who we have added in our blogroll. The grand total… 41. How hard is it to simply call up (recommended – it’s more personal) or email your family and friends who have blogs or other sites, and ask them for a link to your new website? Not hard at all! In fact, because they are your friends or family members, they will probably do it without hesitation. You can do the same thing with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.
Add A Blog To Your Domain
Google loves blogs! Google loves fresh content! Google loves internal links! Internal links from other pages of your website are a guaranteed way to help you increase your rankings in the search engines. Adding a blog to your domain is a great way for you to easily add new content to your website on a regular basis. In most cases, adding a blog to your main domain is rather simple and can be done in as little as three clicks of your mouse. Web hosting companies like myhosting.com, Hostmonster, & Bluehost offer one click installations of blog platforms like Wordpress or b2evolution.
Adding a blog, posting to it at least once daily, and linking back to your home page and other important pages of your website with keyword anchor text is a great way to gain a lot of internal links. When blogging, you should also link out to other websites that interest you and websites that are in similar industries. You might also consider adding images, videos, polls, etc. Mix things up! Make it look natural! Most important, have fun!
Local Organizations
Just about every city in the country has a local chamber of commerce; mine would be the Lehi Area Chamber of Commerce. Joining a chamber of commerce will not only get you a very good link back to your website, but also provides networking opportunities with other local businesses. Most times, depending on your business, you can generate new leads rather easily by getting to know other individuals and businesses in your area.
Local News
Developing relationships with local newspaper writers and always making yourself available for comments on news stories that involve your industry is a great way to build awareness about your company and get links back to your website (if the newspaper is published online).
Help A Non Profit Organization
You would be surprised how many non-profit organizations are operating in your city and your state. Every one of us has been given talents and certain things that we are good at. I guarantee that there is a non-profit organization that could use your help, whether it is with designing their website or painting the conference room of their new office building. If you offer of yourself and your services freely, you can most likely ask for, and get a link to your website from theirs.
Submit Your Site To Local & Industry Specific Online Business Directories
Anyone studying SEO can usually find a blog post about submitting your website to directories on the Internet. Yes, this is a valuable link building tactic, but before you go crazy and start submitting to thousands of directories, seek out local directories and directories that are specific to your business. Submit to these first and take your time filling out all of the information that they ask for. These will be some of your most valuable links since they are so relevant to your website and business.
Social Bookmarking
You have probably heard the term social bookmarking. You have probably heard that social bookmarking is a great way to build links. Well, it is and it isn’t… You can waste a lot of time social bookmarking if you are submitting to the wrong sites. I limit my social bookmarking to Mixx, Propeller and sometimes Kirtsy. The trick to social bookmarking is to not only bookmark your website, your blog posts, and other things related to your website, but bookmarking lots of different things that interest you. This will make your bookmarking profiles look much more natural to both viewers and the search engines.
Write An Article And Submit To Article Directories
Writing articles and submitting them to sites like Ezine Articles, Article City, and Go Articles, also known as article marketing, is a great way to get links back to your website. Take time to write a very detailed article about your industry and submit it to a few article directories like the ones I listed above. You will get links back to your website by properly using the author resource or bio box at the end of the article. You should tell a little about yourself and your company, while adding keyword rich anchor text links pointing back to your website.
Write And Submit A Press Release
Writing press releases and submitting them to places like PR Web or Web Wire is a great way to generate interest and buzz about your business and also to get links back to your website. This method of link building is a little more difficult than other links that you can get for your website. Writing a press release takes skill… a skill, which the average person, like me, does not have. Press releases have certain requirements that must be met, a certain format that must be followed, and in most cases, need to be super interesting. Not having any of these elements can almost guarantee that your press release will either be outright rejected or not distributed to other news related websites.
Build A Hub Page Or Squidoo Lens
Building a Hub Page or Squidoo Lens is a fun way to get links back to your website. To date, I have built 73 Hubs and 25 Lenses for my own personal websites and hundreds for clients that I have managed. The most effective Hub Pages and Squidoo Lenses are those that have at least 450 words of text about a certain topic or subject, videos, pictures, polls, and other gadgets that are easy to add. You want to make the page as interactive as possible so it provides value for anyone who happens to read it. You are allowed two links to other websites from your Hubs and a handful of links (be conservative, don’t spam) from your Lenses.
Building links isn’t pretty. But, in order to rank well in the search engines, it is absolutely necessary. These are ten excellent ways for new companies or new website owners to start building links to their websites. There are many others and I encourage any of our readers to add to this list by commenting on this post.

killer robots

2009-09-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

If you haven’t heard of Mr. Robots, don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t even on the SEO map till just a couple years ago. Most of you, however, know what it is but don’t know exactly how to dominate the robots.
Robots.txt files are no secret. You can spy on literally anyone’s robots file by simply typing “www.domain.com/robots.txt.” The robots.txt should always and only be in the root of the domain and EVERY website should have one, even if it’s generic and I’ll tell you why.
There’s mixed communication about the robots. Use it. Don’t use it. Use meta-robots. You could have also heard advice to abandon the robots.txt all together. Who is right?
Here’s the secret sauce. Check it out.
First things first, understand that the robots.txt file was not designed for human usage. It was designed to command search ‘bots’ about how exactly they can behave on your site. It sets parameters that the bots have to obey and mandates what information they can and cannot access.
This is critical for your sites SEO success. You don’t want the bots looking through your dirty closets, so to speak.
What is a Robots.txt File?
The robots.txt is nothing more than a simple text file that should always sit in the root directory of your site. Once you understand the proper formats it’s a piece of cake to create. This system is called the Robots Exclusion Standard.
Always be sure to create the file in a basic text editor like Notepad or TextEdit and NOT in an HTML editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. That’s critically important. The robots.txt is NOT an html file and is not even remotely close to any web language. It has its own format that is completely different than any other language out there. Lucky for us, it’s extremely simple once you know how to use it.
Robots.txt Breakdown
The robots file is simple. It consists of two main directives: User-agent and Disallow.
User Agent
Every item in the robots.txt file is specified by what is called a ‘user agent.’ The user agent line specifies the robot that the command refers to.
Example:
User-agent: googlebot
On the user agent line you can also use what is called a ‘wildcard character’ that specifies ALL robots at once.
Example:
User-agent: *
If you don’t know what the user agent names are, you can easily find these in your own site logs by checking for requests to the robots.txt file. The cool thing is that most major search engines have names for their spiders. Like pet names. I’m not kidding. Slurp.
Here some major bots:
Googlebot
Yahoo! Slurp
MSNbot
Teoma
Mediapartners-Google (Google AdSense Robot)
Xenu Link Sleuth
Disallow
The second most important part of your robots.txt file is the ‘disallow’ directive line which is usually written right below the user agent. Remember, just because the disallow directive is present does not mean that the specified bots are completely disallowed from your site, you can pick and choose what they can and can’t index or download.
The disallow directives can specify files and directories.
For example, if you want to instruct ALL spiders to not download your privacy policy, you would enter:
User-agent: *
Disallow: privacy.html
You can also specify entire directories with a directive like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Again, if you only want a certain bot to be disallowed from a file or directory, put its name in place of the *.
This will block spiders from your cgi-bin directory.
Super Ninja Robots.txt Trick
Security is a huge issue online. Naturally, some webmasters are nervous about listing the directories that they want to keep private thinking that they’ll be handing the hackers and black-hat-ness-doers a roadmap to their most secret stuff.
But we’re smarter than that aren’t we?
Here’s what you do: If the directory you want to exclude or block is “secret” all you need to do is abbreviate it and add an asterisk to the end. You’ll want to make sure that the abbreviation is unique. You can name the directory you want protected ‘/secretsizzlesauce/’ and you’ll just add this line to your robots.txt:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /sec*
Problem solved.
This directive will disallow spiders from indexing directories that begin with “sec.” You’ll want to double check your directory structure to make sure you won’t be disallowing any other directories that you wouldn’t want disallowed. For example, this directive would disallow the directory “secondary” if you had that directory on your server.
To make things easier, just as the user agent directive, there is a similar wildcard command for the disallow directive. If you were to disallow /tos then by default it will disallow files with ‘tos‘ such as a tos.html as well as any file inside the /tos directory such as /tos/terms.html.
Important Tactics For Robot Domination
• Always place your robots in the root directory of your site so that it can be accessed like this: www.yourdomain.com/robots.txt
• If you leave the disallow line blank, it indicates that ALL files may be retrieved.
• User-agent:*
Disallow:
• You can add as many disallow directives to a single user agent as you need to but all user agents must have a disallow directive whether the directive disallows or not.
• To be SEO kosher, at least one disallow line must be present for every user agent directive. You don’t want the bots to misread your stuff, so be sure and get it right. If you don’t get the format right they may just ignore the entire file and that is not cool. Most people who have their stuff indexed when they don’t want it to be indexed have syntax errors in their robots.
• Use the Analyze Robots.txt tool in your Google Webmaster Account to make sure you set up your robots file correctly.
• An empty robots is the exact same as not having one at all. So, if nothing else, use at least the basic directive to allow the entire site.
• How to add comments to a robots? To add comments into your robots, all you need to do is throw a # in front and that entire line will be ignored. DO NOT put comments on the end of a directive line. That is bad form and some bots may not read it correctly.
• What stuff do you want to disallow in your robots?
o Any folder that you don’t want the public eye to find or those that aren’t password protected that should be.
o Printer friendly versions of pages (mostly to avoid the duplicate content filter).
o Image directory to protect them from leeches and to make your content more spiderable.
o CGI-BIN which houses some of the programming code on your site.
o Find bots in your site logs that are sucking up bandwidth and not returning any value
Killer Robot Tactics
• This set up allows the bots to visit everything on your site and sometimes on your server, so use carefully. The * specifies ALL robots and the open disallow directive applies no restrictions to ANY bot.
User-agent: *
Disallow:
• This set up prevents your entire site from being indexed or downloaded. In theory, this will keep ALL bots out.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
• This set up keeps out just one bot. In this case, we’re denying the heck out of Ask’s bot, Teoma.
User-agent: Teoma
Disallow: /
• This set up keeps ALL bots out of your cgi-bin and your image directory:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /images/
• If you want to disallow Google from indexing your images in their image search engine but allow all other bots, do this:
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/
• If you create a page that is perfect for Yahoo!, but you don’t want Google to see it:
User-Agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /yahoo-page.html
#don’t use user agents or robots.txt for cloaking. That’s SEO suicide.

If You Don’t Use a Robots.txt File…
A well written robots.txt file helps your site get indexed up to 15% deeper for most sites. It also allows you to control your content so that your site’s SEO footprint is clean and indexable and literal fodder for search engines. That, is worth the effort.
Everyone should have and employ a solid robots.txt file. It is critical to the long term success of your site.
Get it done.
Bling.

duplicate content

2009-09-01T21:16:00.000-07:00

Just like the lamb lying down with lion, but the big three search engines came together for a rare joint effort to announce the launch of a new feature that will help ease the world’s duplicate content problems. The new feature, called the tag tells the search engines what version of the URL is the correct one to want index.
The link tag goes in the section of the page of looks like this:

The search engines have been doing a pretty good job figuring out the right URL when people use redirects properly, but it’s not always easy to get it right–especially when we build these nutty sites with 50 different URLs pulling up the same content. This change should help a lot of webmasters sleep easier knowing that their proper, canonical URL will be indexed and given all the link juice it deserves. I look at it like a page by page sitemap to tell the search engines what URL to index.
Official blog posts about the new link / canonical tag:
Yahoo
Google
Microsoft
Coverage on other blogs:
Search Engine Land
Joost already created a WordPress plugin for this feature
3 Reasons to Use rel=canonical, 4 Reasons not to use it

my keyword density popped

2009-08-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

“My density has popped me to you.” How true that is. This misspoken statement by George McFly in may have had more meaning than he ever knew. But the question is how much influence does keyword density really have in the search results that are “popped” to you?
I think we can all agree that proper keyword usage on a site plays a key role in how your site ranks for those keywords. But what is the best placement for these keywords? And how much is too much? When does it become keyword stuffing?
We’ll address these and other questions…after the break.
Just kidding, we’ll do it now.
What is the best placement for keywords on your site or article? Well, let me answer that by asking you this: What do you remember most when you read an article? The first and last paragraph, right? At least that’s how it is for me – and for Google, apparently. So when you’re wondering where to place your keywords, of course you want to have them spread throughout the content. But if you can, do something to make the first and last paragraph stand out. The h1, h2 and h3 headers are always dependable for this, as well as internal linking (if possible) or even just using bold type. That way you can use the keyword in several other places, but the places that stand out the most will basically be highlighted for Google.
How much keyword density is too much? That is actually a great question that it seems no one really knows for sure. The word on the street is that it can be as low as 3% and as high as 12%, with Yahoo and MSN being more tolerant of keyword stuffing than Google. I also found sites that were majorly stuffed with keywords (www.halloween.com, which was rightfully mentioned in the SEO Fail Blog for having over 21% keyword density for the keyword “Halloween”), but were not banned by Google. I guess they may still be penalized in their rankings, but that’s very hard to tell from the outside looking in. One thing I couldn’t find though is some good examples of pages getting banned from Google for keyword stuffing. In fact, I actually found one keyword stuffing experiment where keyword stuffing of up to 51% had no perceived effect on the PR of the page or the ranking for the tested keyword. So I thought I’d open that up in the comments section of this post. Got any good examples of keyword stuffing getting a page banned?
Bottom line: despite the vagueness of the limits on keyword density vs. keyword stuffing, I think it’s safe to say it’s always a matter of good practice. As long as your article or page flows naturally and is readable to the human eye, you’ll make friends with your readers as well as Google.
Oh, and just for your information, I have posted the keyword density for a couple of the keywords in this post just below:
Keyword: Keyword Density (1.13%)
Keyword: Keyword Stuffing (1.32%)
Keyword: Keyword (4.73%)

do keywords came

2009-08-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

It seems to come up with almost every child – the somewhat awkward yet vitally important question that every parent knows will one day be voiced. Although we aren’t in the business of educating youngsters about the origins of babies, we are in the business of helping SEO youngsters understand where keywords come from.
Let’s imagine we have just created a website where we want to promote web hosting companies as an affiliate. The site is designed just how we like it, and now we’re ready to begin driving some serious traffic. Although there are many different steps and processes involved in SEO success, the foundation is in the keywords. We need targeted traffic that is relevant to the products, services, or information on our site, so we need to choose keywords wisely.
Understanding this process and how we as “SEO storks” deliver the right keywords is an essential part of the optimization process. SEO for Firefox, a free Firefox add-on from SEOBook, provides the stork services we need. Through this tool we will be connected with the needed resources to truly know where quality keywords come from. Let’s use the example of our hosting site to understand the path of the SEO stork.
Go to the Firefox add-on page, download SEO for Firefox, restart your browser, and activate the add-on. Once the add-on is active, search for “web hosting” in Google, and you’ll see something like this:
Notice the links below the search bar. We will take a look at the most significant of these. As we understand each resource, our SEO stork will advance in his journey of delivering the proper keyword focus. Each resource will provide us with a new perspective, change of opinion, or new idea relating to keywords. In other words, watch and learn from the stork…
KW Research – This link takes you to SEOTools and gives a breakdown of daily search estimates for Google, Yahoo, and MSN on our keyword of choice and very similar keywords. From this tool, I can get estimates on each search engine for my keyword of choice, plus other closely related keywords. I see that “web hosting” is by far the most searched for term. The fact that my site doesn’t directly provide web hosting services might influence me to steer away from that phrase and consider different options listed below. …SEO stork arrives for pickup…

AW Sandbox - This link takes me to the Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Since we’ve decided to go against “web hosting,” we need new ideas. In order to get a better idea of what to focus on, I will choose 3 or 4 broadly related keyword phrases such as “compare web hosting”, “web hosting reviews”, and “rate web hosting.” These words would be more relevant to my site if I plan on marketing for hosting companies. I enter these phrases and the tool reports on exact and related terms. From this simple report, I can compare traffic on a broad range of keywords. At this point, we can discover that “compare web hosting” and “web hosting reviews” are relevant to our site and receive plenty of traffic. …SEO Stork takes flight…

Traffic Estimator- This tool shows me useful information on costs related to PPC campaigns. Once you’ve settled on a keyword phrase, this tool will give you great estimates on how much you should expect to spend on a PPC campaign surrounding that keyword. In this case, I could expect to spend $140 a day using “compare web hosting” as a primary phrase. …SEO Stork is cruising on course…

Trends – If nothing else, Google Trends helps you decide what to avoid. If we are trying to decide between two phrases, this tool will indicate the trends in search traffic. As shown below, the term “cheap web hosting” is on a decline whereas “business web hosting” seems to be more stable. …SEO Stork avoids a deadly collision with an airplane…

Insights-Here we can focus on quantities of searches relating to geographic locations, and potential alternatives with rising trends. Insights also displays other suggestions of possible keywords. If everything looks good up this point, we are well on our way to landing a great keyword phrase. …SEO stork comes in for landing…

Our flight is near completion. The remaining resources under the Google search bar are Sktool, Sponsored Results, 100, and CSV. Sktool is very similar to the Traffic Estimator, providing information on potential PPC campaign costs. Sponsored Results simply shows the sponsored results of the search. 100 shows the top 100 results rather than the default. CSV creates a comma separated value document with your results. Although all of these tools are helpful for other purposes, they do not provide the insight that the other tools give relating to keyword research.
As the SEO stork lands, let’s consider what we’ve learned. As we use each tool, we gain additional insight and information that helps us target proper keywords. And perhaps the most important thing to glean is we should base our keyword decisions on current search traffic, relevant information, and past statistics rather than guesswork. …SEO stork has safely delivered our keywords.
And that is where keywords come from.

misspelled keywords good luck!

2009-08-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

Ranking well for a popular keyword phrase is getting harder and harder these days. But did you know that about 10 million times a day someone misspells a keyword in their search? Normally to those poor saps I would say, “Hey, good luck with that!” But the truth is, more and more online companies are taking advantage of the misspelled keywords.
For example, if your website is selling office calendars, the average monthly search for “office calendars” is about 40,500. The term “office calenders” is searched about 1,300 times per month. What does this mean for you? Well, even though the misspelled term searches are significantly less (only 3% of the correctly spelled term’s search volume) you will not need to fight as hard to get to the top of this search, thus bringing in some extra traffic from those bad spellors that u may knot hav otherwize bin kounting on.
So what is the best way to optimize for these misspelled keywords? The first trick is to know what your options are for the possible misspellings. A great tool to use for this is the Seobook.com Typo Generator—although, in the 146 possibilities this tool gives for the word “Calendar,” they don’t even mention “Calender.” So, you will want to check out more than one source. Another source is checking the “100 Most Often Misspelled Words in English” from yourdictionary.com or other dictionary sites. Make sure to check the misspelled word’s estimated search traffic to see if it is worth optimizing for.
Next you’ll need to optimize for the misspelled term on your page. There are several ways of accomplishing this, but I believe one of the classiest methods is to simply post an article or blog post on your site that mentions different common misspellings of the desired term. You can’t base your entire SEO strategy on optimizing for misspellings. Google often times helps out poor spelling patrons showing the “Did you mean…” option above the search results.
Well, there you have it—a new arrow in your quiver. Just make sure to take some time to do a little research (Google AdWords keyword tool) before spending energy on the optimization. Often times, it’s hit or miss with these misspellings—so, good luck with that!

matt cutts domain roundtable

2009-08-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

Matt Cutts made an appearance today at the Domain Roundtable conference. Matt started things off with a few introductory comments, then spent most of the time answering questions from the audience and from questions that people sent in ahead of time.
Here are the highlights of what he discussed:
The primary litmus test for whether something is acceptable, ask yourself, “What is the regular user looking for?”
-Does it add value for the customer?
-Will they be happy to find this site?
-Is it relevant?
-Is the content unique?
He talked about how there are lots of great reasons to buy domains, but not as many domainers want to actually design and build out sites around the domains. He gave some examples of parked pages that don’t really add value, gmhs.com, earthday.org.
He mentioned ajaxian as a site that has great content even though their domain isn’t generic/premium. It’s a multi-author blog about all things AJAX.
Someone asked about duplicate content/stolen content. Matt said Google keeps track of when/where they first find content, and they do a pretty good job of rewarding the original source of the content and not the thieves’ version of the content. There was an attorney in the audience who was asking about DMCA requests and Matt referred us to the DMCA process with Google, and admitted that this stuff is outside his area of expertise.
When somebody asked about moving a site to a new domain, he recommended reading the recent post about moving a site on the Google Webmaster blog. He said people often overlook the suggestion to test the redirect with a small part of your site first (subdomain or directory), and it works smoothly and quickly, you will be fine to do the 301 redir on the whole site.
The question came up about whether it matters which TLD (top level domain) you’re using. For example, do .com domains carry more weight than a .net, .us, .info, etc. He said that TLD doesn’t matter–that’s the way Larry and Sergey originally designed the Google algorithm. The algorithm doesn’t care where the page is located, it’s all about pagerank (LINKS) of the particular page. At the end of answering this question he did admit that they might have started to look at particularly cheap (and spammy) TLDs differently than other TLDs–or they might start considering TLD in their algorithm if they’re not already doing so.
Regarding interlinking between sites, he said it’s fine to interlink if the sites are related, but he said not to overdo it. When pressed, he said over 10 sites interlinking might be asking for trouble. He said it would also be ok to break out your network of sites and interlink sites within a certain category. The specific example was a network of local sites, and Matt said you could either have a single portal with links to all the geo-portals, or maybe interlink between all the various plumbing sites.
Matt mentioned that sites don’t automatically get pagerank just for existing. They need backlinks to get pagerank. Also, he said if you have a network of sites and add a bunch more sites, it’s like spreading the same amount of peanut butter across a bigger piece of bread. In that case, each site in the network gets a smaller share of the pagerank distribution.
On expired domains, Matt said Google tries to reset pagerank/links for all expired domains to zero when they are registered by someone new. They don’t try to penalize the expired domain, but they also don’t want to give credit for the previous owner’s links.
He said keywords in the domain carry weight with users, and for this reason, Google also gives some weight to a keyword in the URL and/or domain name.
I don’t have the question in my notes, but something prompted Matt to mention Google Ad Manager, which I wasn’t familiar with (who can keep up with Google’s products?). It’s an ad serving solution that’s free and lets you serve ads on your site. You can serve up adsense ads, but you don’t have to, or you can use Adsense as your backfill for any unsold inventory.
Matt suggested doing a site: search to check if a domain is indexed before buying the domain. He also talked briefly about webmaster tools and how to submit a reinclusion request if needed.
Matt was asked what is the best way to park your domains without ticking off Google. He replied that Google can detect any change in content as it recrawls the site, so it’s fine to park a domain with a simple PPC parked page or whatever, and then when you start building out the site, Googlebot will notice and start indexing the site as quickly as possible. He also made the obligatory recommendation for using nofollow for links on parked pages, “just to be safe,” and then he explained what nofollow does and how it is used.
He suggested reading and abiding by the webmaster quality guidelines.
He was asked about IP delivery and he said that IP delivery is not bad, but it is bad to cloak–serve up different content to Google than what everyone else sees. If you use IP delivery (for geotargeting content for example), you should simply geotarget the content to Googlebot, too.

4 Tips to exchange links

2009-08-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

In exchange links, there are some things that must be considered. Here are 4 tips to exchange links-style sibaho:

1. Apple to Apple or Orange to Orange. That is, the placement of links to match. Index Page (Home) vs. Index Page. Do not Index Page opponent Post Page (page post). That's not fair name, because it will provide a different quality backlink. I several times to ignore the invite friends to exchange links, because after my survey, were collected in a blogroll special post. But I realized, it certainly was not intentional element of the friends ...
2. Give and Take. Who took first pair of links. If you are invited to ultimately do not want, to stay deleted. If you are invited there is no response, confirm again, until the time limit considered, delete it. There are many other blogs kok invited to exchange links:)
3. Look forward, not now. Exchanging links is like investing. Do not dwell only on this blog that had a high Pagerank. It takes great effort and a high failure potential. Why not ask to exchange links with blog newbie but potentially in the future. In addition to easier, it also will train our intuition to see the potential of a blog:))
4. Friendship above all. If you do not want invited to exchange links, do not break the charcoal and then immediately left the blog. Ninety percent of the links that I put in a blogroll is not due to exchange links, but because of friendship from blogwalking activity. So quite confusing just someone once commented on our blog, next thing I knew immediately invited to exchange links.

list-great-firefox-plugins-seo

2009-08-08T21:14:00.000-07:00

I’m a fan of Firefox mainly for the additional functionality you get from using plugins. In fact, it’s always frustrating when I am on someone else’s computer, and I don’t have access to my own set of “tools” that I use on a daily basis. Simply put, if you aren’t using Firefox, you’re missing out on a more effective way to work.
Below is a list of some of my favorite SEO plugins. I have also included a short list of web developer plugins that have some crossover into SEO. I know there are other tools out there, so if you have some additional plugins you like to use, please add them in the comments!
Plugins Specifically for SEO
SEO for Firefox
This one is a standard tool for most of the SEOs that I personally know. This plugin gives you a ton of additional information when you do a search on Google. You can see a site’s PageRank, age, Yahoo links and other data that can help you when analyzing your competitors.
It also gives you access to a handy little tool called SEO XRay. This sub-tool will show you the meta information, H tag use and internal and external links on a page. There are so many ways to use SEO for Firefox, it’s no wonder that it’s a standard tool! Aaron Wall (SEOBook) did a great job with this one!
Get it here: SEO for Firefox
Rank Checker
This is another great tool from Aaron Wall. If all you want to do is a quick ranking update, Rank Checker is the way to go. This tool is usually quick, and you can export your findings to a CSV document if you want to compare them with previous rankings.
As with any rank checking tool, it is not always 100% accurate. However, it is still a great free way to keep up on all of your keywords.
Get it here: Rank Checker
SearchStatus
Do you ever get tired of the Google Toolbar? If you’re like me, the only reason you really use the Google Toolbar is to find out the PageRank of the page. Well, with SearchStatus, you can get PageRank, Alexa Rank, Moz Rank and Compete Rank in your status bar. There are many other things that this tool does, but that’s what I mainly use it for.
Get it here: SearchStatus
SEO Link Analysis
I consider this plugin to be one of the essentials in my toolbox. This tool works when you go to the Yahoo Site Explorer or into your Google Webmaster account looking for back links. Rather than just seeing what sites are linking back, you can see the anchor text and the PageRank of the page linking back. You can also find out if the link is still there or has a no follow attribute.
This tool is great for spying on your competition. Go to the Yahoo Site Explorer and you will very quickly find out what keywords your competition is targeting. This makes it great for site analysis and competitive analysis.
Get it here: SEO Link Analysis
Helpful Web Development Plugins
If you’re going to do SEO, you need to know some of the basics of web development as well. Because of this, I thought it might be helpful to list a few plugins that you can use mainly for web development, but also have a crossover into SEO.
Firebug
I have loved this plugin ever since I first found it. As an SEO, I find that I am constantly helping to fix web development problems as part of the job. This tool will let you go through a site and find the different elements so you can see where the problems are in the HTML or CSS of the page. You can also make changes to a live site to see what would happen if you tweaked certain things.
Get it here: Firebug
HTML Validator
By having your HTML valid, your site is more likely to look the same in the different browsers. This tool will show you where the problems are in your code that could be causing inconsistencies from browser to browser. It also gives you suggestions on how to fix them.
Get it here: HTML Validator
Web Developer
This tool has similar functionality to some of the other tools above and is very handy. I use it frequently to turn off JavaScript so I can see how a site is handling its main navigation. Most web developers that I know of use this plugin.
Get it here: Web Developer
Add to the List!
Now it is your turn. Do you have some favorites that I did not include on this list? If so, please add them in the comments below!

your-conten-link-thirsty

2009-08-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

Lets face it. Link building is drab work. It’s the kind of work most of us like to hand off to the”‘next guy.” Nevertheless, I firmly advocate its role in Search Engine Optimization. Google’s key indicator of the “good,” “better,” and “best” websites depends on number of backlinks, and where those links are coming from.
I assume you, the reader, have already figured this out. An SEO firm without offering link building strategies to its clients might as well pack up. A site with no links is like a telephone pole with no wires—useless. Consequently, instead of asking “if” link building should be done, online marketers are always asking “how” it will be done. What’s the best strategy?
A relative of mine created an informative website, after research, about “Good Security Questions.” That was over two years ago. The site lacked all the bells and whistles that come with newer web 3.0, but it was content-rich, and more importantly, there was a niche market available who needed the information the site provided.
He didn’t know much about Search Engine Optimization. He didn’t think much about keyword research or quality link building. I spoke to him recently about the results he’s had lately. His site now ranks #1 for “security questions.” He also told me some larger corporate websites such as American Express, Delta, Prudential, and ING Direct recently changed their security questions to match the list of questions he had written on his website. People are also beginning to link to his site and use his content at the cost of little to no SEO effort on his part.
His results reveal an old rule that’s been around ever since the first neanderthal man showed his prehistoric friends how to make fire. If you want people to listen to you, say something they want to hear. Thus, before you spend time and money developing an extensive link building strategy, first, provide that your content is “link-thirsty”—make it useful, interesting, timely, or outrageous (see some of Adam’s tips about Buzz Marketing)!
Even better, include “quality content” as the first priority on your link building plan. Indirectly, appropriating your content (appropriate: suitable or fitting for a particular purpose, person, occasion) is, by far, the most successful link building strategy on the planet. If done right, link building will work for you—no more mindless directory submissions. At a bonus, you’ll get traffic from relevant sources–which means higher conversion rates. Here are a few tips to appropriate your content (This stuff isn’t breaking news…just common sense principles of which many companies fail to apply):
• Research and know your topic. This shouldn’t be difficult because you are already a guru of your industry.
• Be informative and as detailed as possible. (Word of caution: Quantity is good as long as you know how to present it in a comfortable, readable manner. Use lists, headings, and varied amounts of italicizing and bolding. Remember, people like to learn, but they don’t like to read)
• Link out to your sources. Google looks for links on your site as extra avenues to gather further information on your topic. Don’t be a dead end on the web.
• Make lists and tables. People like to gather information fast. Tables make it easy to compare items. You could even provide an objective microsite comparing your product with your competitors’ products (this only works if you, honestly, have the best product/service on the market).
• Tell stories and be narrative. This adds flavor to your content. Write with flamboyant, playful, or exciting language. Don’t always be so serious. People want to know there is a human being behind your content and your business.
• Be original. Are you telling something people already know? If it’s already known, take a new twist or add your own opinion. (Don’t copy content from other sites! First, this is plagiarism and second, Google doesn’t like duplicate content).
• Involve Users. Yes, you will need to jump on the Web 3.0 bandwagon. Provide means to comment, write reviews, vote on items, etc.
• Check your spelling and grammar. Nothing is better at killing your credibility than poor writing. Hint: Get a professional editor to check your work.

optimizing-for-navigational-searches

2009-07-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

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.

What is Outsourcing, is all about……….

2009-07-27T19:56:00.000-07:00

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:

*
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
*
Control of budget
*
Faster setup of the function or service
*
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
*
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.

How to get Backlinks ???? Sources and definitions for novice

2009-07-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

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.....

on-page-optimization-tips

2009-07-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

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.

on-site-search-seo-tipss

2009-07-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

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/

on site search

2009-07-12T21:11:00.000-07:00

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.

impossible seo tasks

2009-07-06T21:11:00.000-07:00

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!

the competitive analysis

2009-07-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

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?

right keywords capture 4 target market

2009-06-30T21:10:00.000-07:00

Utilizing the most sophisticated and in-depth SEO methods is absolutely useless if you aren’t using the right keywords. While this may seem obvious to those of us in the industry, I believe there are many who are still using the wrong words and failing at SEO attempts.
If you think like your consumer and select the words they are most likely to be searching (even if it’s not what you want to call your product or service), you will find achieve ranking success.
I had a client who offered psychic services. This particular client detested the term “psychic”, and wanted to use terms like, “Channeled Sessions.” This particular phrase doesn’t even report a single search incident. The closest term is “Channeling Sessions,” which reports a meager 28 searches for the past month, while terms like, “Psychic Reading”, “Psychic Phone Readings,” and “Spiritual Psychic Readings” are searched 165,000, 12,500, and 3,600 each month, respectively.
My client committed SEO suicide by refusing to adapt or modify her existing keywords and content, to reflect and support said keywords. The end result: her business failed. No one searched for her terms, and her site was never found. Why? Because she didn’t consider which keywords her target market would use. Instead of accepting suggestions that would have brought her traffic, she crippled all efforts put forth to make website optimization a success. She couldn’t get past her vision of how she wanted to label her services.
Let’s say you sell oranges. Only, you don’t like to call them oranges. You prefer to call the fruit ‘persnipples’. And let’s assume that you grow the best persnipples in the world. If you build a website using the keyword ‘persnipple’, no one will ever find you, and you’ll end up with sheds full of rotting fruit. Why? Because they were searching for ‘oranges’!
So, remember, consider your consumers’ standpoint when picking your keywords. Because after all, once you invest all the time, energy and money into building and promoting a site, you definitely want your consumers to be able to find you.

removing a ban from google

2009-06-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

Banned from Google? Ouch. Anyone who’s been banned from Google before knows that it’s not a fun ordeal. As of June 22, 2009, a report shows that google.com is used for around 90% of all searches done on the internet (worldwide). And with the next closest search engines in the running being 85 points away (yahoo.com at 5.5% and the new bing.com at about 4.5%) that’s a pretty big chunk of your traffic being cut out when Google decides to ban your site.
How to Know if you are Banned from Google
Sometimes it’s not so easy to know if you are banned from Google. So I’ve started a “You Might be Banned from Google if…” list. Feel free to add to the list in the comments.
• If yesterday you were ranking on the first page of Google and today your site is nowhere to be found in the SERPS, you might be banned from Google.
• If you do a site search (site:yoursite.com) on Google, and it brings up no results, you might be banned from Google.
• If yesterday your page rank was 5 and today it is 0, you might be banned from Google.
Common ways of getting banned from Google.
Now, of course, if you’ve been banned, you probably already know why it happened. But just in case you’re still in a daze, here are some common ways to get your site banned from the ever powerful Google search engine:
• Hidden text or hidden links – when you think about how this is done (making the color of the text the same color as the background that it’s placed over, how hard would this really be for Google to detect with a small piece of code in their algorithm?
• Use of cloaking or sneaky redirects – and yes, Google calls them “sneaky.”
• Loading pages with irrelevant keywords – aka keyword stuffing.
• Creating multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• Creating pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other mal-ware.
• Producing “Doorway” pages created just for search engines with little or no original content. The key to this is “little or no original content.” If you’re actually adding new content to the web then this shouldn’t be a problem.
There are also some “back-door” ways of getting your site banned from Google, such as including several links to sites that are known for spamming, thus causing Google to draw the conclusion that you’re affiliated with them.
Should you feel the urge to read more on this topic, visit google.com for a few more tips on creating a “Google-friendly” site.
If anyone knows of any other sure-fire ways of getting banned from Google, let me know in the comments!
So what if you do get banned? Then what?
How to remove a ban from Google
The thing to remember with a Google ban is that it is not always permanent. In fact, most of the time, you can just change whatever it was that got you banned and then submit a reconsideration request. To resubmit to Google, visit this link, which will take you to a page within the Google Webmaster Tools. From there they will walk you through the process which can also include sending an email to Google regarding what you have changed and why you feel you should be included in the search engine once again. Remember when you compose this email that there will be a real person reading it on the other end. Be kind and business-like in your request and you will have much more of a chance of getting the ban lifted and once again being indexed in the largest and most used search engine on the web.

rangking well in baidu search engine

2009-06-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

Getting good rankings in the Baidu search engine is not an easy task if you are accustomed to working with Western search engines such as Google US. The Chinese search engine spiders sites much the same as other spiders. It follows links from one site to another and also follows links that are submitted to it manually. However, there are a few differences in the way the websites are ranked. For instance, Baidu places more emphasis on the number of incoming links and meta descriptions, while Google is concerned with quality of incoming links.
Information on Baidu
Baidu is the leading search engine for websites, audio files, and images in China. The company offers a Chinese language search platform, which consists of websites and certain online application software, as well as Baidu Union, which is the company’s network of third-party websites and software applications. The company primarily provides Chinese language Internet search services to enable users to find relevant information online, including web pages, news, images and multimedia files, through links provided on its websites. You can read more about the full services available on the the Baidu search engine on China Analyst.com.
Baidu introduced “phonetic” or “pin-yin” search, which allows users to type in Chinese keywords using English alphabets. This feature is designed to skip the switching from English input to Chinese input, and for when the user is not sure of the written form of a keyword. Since there are many different ways to pronounce and state common words, and many different dialects, this was a huge addition for the search engine which greatly set it apart from all other search engines. Read more about Pin-Yin.
Baiduspider, the proprietary spider for the Baidu search engine, is load capacity friendly and is designed so it will not overload your site by visiting it too quickly. Unlike some other search spiders of the West, Baiduspider also obeys the Internet robot agreement. You can forbid baiduspider from indexing all or part of your site, by correctly setting up your robots.txt file to block portions or your entire site. Read more about how to optimize your Robots.txt file on our blog.
In addition to natural search results, Baidu also displays paid search results within the body of its search results. Baidu mixed its paid advertisements with its natural search results until recently when the search engine began to separate the results. Soon, all paid results will be segregated from natural listings (very similar to Google) making it easier to find organic rankings quickly, and more important to implement your SEO correctly.
Key Takeaways
What should be implemented in order to rank well in the Baidu search engine?
• Get back to the basics of SEO. Pay attention to title tags, meta tags, descriptions and keywords. Correct usage of H1 and H2 tags, alt tags, and anchor text.
• The anchor text for internal linking matters, so be sure to optimize it.
• Write the site in Chinese, not English. This includes alt tags, description, title tags, keywords, content, etc.
• If the site isn’t already indexed, submit it to baidu trends.
• Increase the number of incoming links. Keep in mind that Google looks at the quality of links. In order to maintain strong rankings in Google and acquire good rankings in Baidu, one must balance the two. Acquire good quality links in high quantity numbers.
• Having servers located in China helps the equation, since this gives credibility to the idea that the site is Chinese, and should be ranked well as a Chinese site.
Want more information on Baidu? Visit Filination.com
Read more about Google or Yahoo on our blog.

hypens or underscores in urls

2009-06-12T21:09:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I wrote about using keywords in your domain. If you have already chosen a domain, you can still benefit by naming your deeper pages with keywords.
When placing keywords in the URL you can use hypens or underscores. In the past, the hyphen has been recommended, but opinions vary on which is the best practice for URLs. Earlier this year, Matt Cutts posted a video in which he stated if you are using underscores and they are working for you, don’t worry about changing them. In other words, if you are using underscores, your site won’t be penalized or banned from the search results. However, if you’re building a new site and have the choice, it is still best to use hyphens rather than underscores, because Google treats hyphens as separators between words in a URL–unlike underscores. If you want to listen to Matt’s comment, check out the youtube clip: hyphens and underscores.

keyword-density-frequency-prominence-proximity

2009-06-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

On site optimization is an important factor affecting search engine rankings. It involves all of the changes and tweaks made to the code and content of a website, and tells Google exactly what the site is about.
This sounds like a no brainer, huh? Just a simple tweak here and there, and your site is search engine friendly and optimized. Well, it might not be that easy. In fact, there is significant strategy involved.
I would like to discuss a particular strategy that can make a big difference when it comes to showing up for your keywords. This strategy is known as keyword density, frequency, prominence, and proximity. I know it’s a little long, but don’t be afraid… It’s not that bad!
Keyword Density: Keyword density refers to the percentage of keywords that can be found in the indexable text on a web page. To be honest, I don’t believe there is a secret percentage or ratio. I will mention that a conservative percentage would be anywhere from 2-4% and not to exceed 10%.
Regarding keyword density, I recommend:
- Keyword in the title
- Keyword in the description
- Keyword in the H1 tag
- A few variations of keywords sprinkled throughout the text, where it sounds natural and makes sense
Keyword Frequency: Keyword frequency is the number of times a particular keyword appears on a website. Common sense may indicate the more times a keyword, or keyword phrase is found on a web page, the better the site will rank in Google.
WARNING! You can abuse the system by stuffing an exaggerated number of keywords or a plethora of keyword phrases into your site’s text. Google will penalize greatly for this because it looks like a spam site. Be sure to place your most important keyword or keywords throughout the page as recommended above and below.
Again, here is what you should focus on:
- Keyword in the title
- Keyword in the description
- Keyword in the H1 tag
- A few variations of keywords sprinkled throughout the text, where it sounds natural and makes sense
Get ready; this is where you set yourself apart from the competition!
When performing SEO on their websites, I would wager that most of your competitors don’t take the following two strategies into account. I do, and you should too!
Keyword Prominence: Keyword prominence refers to how prominent your keywords are within your web page. In simple English, this means how close to the beginning of the web page, sentence, title, h tag, or Meta description your keywords are placed.
If at all possible, place your most important keyword at the very beginning of the following:
- Title
- Description
- H1 Tag
- The body of the text
Keyword Proximity: Keyword proximity refers to how close two or more keywords are to each other. You will achieve higher rankings if you place your keywords close together.
For example, if you want to rank your website for used Jeep Cherokee parts, your text should read like this: “Joe’s scrap yard carries the best used Jeep Cherokee parts! Save money on repairs today!”
Another suggestion: “Looking for Jeep Cherokee parts? Joes’s scrap yard carries used parts that will save you money on repairs.”
In both examples, you receive value because your keywords are in the text. However, with the first example, you will receive more value because your keywords are right next to each other.
These strategies are gold… and they WORK! Building businesses online is tricky, and unless you have a competitive edge, you are just surviving, not thriving. Develop a strategy and implement these changes today, and they will help you increase your search engine rankings.

seo-questions-and-site-reviews

2009-06-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

Got a question about SEO? Wish someone would tell you if your site is properly optimized for the search engines? We’re launching two new features here on the SEO.com blog: SEO Question/Answer and SEO site reviews.
The way the Question/Answer part works is you ask a question about any topic related to online marketing, SEO, SEM, social media, etc. We probably won’t be able to answer every single question, but we’ll do our best to get most of them and at least respond even if we’re not able to post your question to the blog.
The second new feature is the SEO site reviews. You can submit a site to be reviewed by our team of SEO experts. We will analyze the site and make recommendations for what we would do if we were engaged to help optimize the site.
Any questions or site review requests can be submitted through our contact form.
I’m excited about these new features, and I hope you will take advantage of this offer for a little free SEO advice.

seo-generalist-specialist-surpirise-upset

2009-05-29T21:07:00.000-07:00

“A generalist is someone who knows less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything, while a specialist is someone who knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.”
In some fields, neurosurgery for example, nothing short of a specialist will do. There’s a reason we have a Surgeon General and not “surgeon generalists” in the United States—nobody would trust a surgeon who claims, “I’m better than average at cutting into and sewing up pretty much any body part. I even do animals.” Paging Doctor Frankenstein.
In other areas, like SEO, the tables are completely turned. The role of an SEO specialist doesn’t feel very specialized some days when I feel like anybody could perform the same SEO tasks I do, because let’s be frank—SEO isn’t brain surgery. Then I remember I’m compensated not for my depth of concentrated training, but for my breadth of skill. I’m trained to nimbly jump from one tactic to the next, seamlessly creating videos for one client one minute, doing conversion optimization for another client the next, and blogging at the end of the day. I’ve wondered whether they should change my job title to SEO generalist.
True SEO specialists definitely exist. They do only on-site and off-site optimization. They do keyword research. They build links. They generally have very boring jobs—the kind that robots will be doing soon. I get the impression that these “specialists” desperately want to convince the world that the search industry is a specialist niche, when it isn’t. Until we understand this, we’ll see the same topics being rehashed again and again in SEO blog posts and presentations while conferences like SMX Advanced will be “buzzing” with revelatory changes in myopic areas like PageRank sculpting.
I suspect that the SEO pool isn’t deep enough for a bunch of specialists. It’s not deep enough to make ultra-specialization practical or profitable (or I’m not seeing how brain surgeon-level SEO expertise translates into markedly improved rankings).
Even while SEO spending is on the rise, SEO-only companies may find it increasingly difficult to make a buck, particularly when every hosting, web design, or marketing company outside the search realm is finding it profitable and easy to expand into the SEO market – GoDaddy.com being the recent scary reminder.
So how do SEO companies take a generalist rather than a specialist approach to SEO? You have to be willing to do more for your clients.
We’re an SEO company, yes, but when an indirect opportunity comes along for our clients to get a traffic or rank boost, we draw on our acquired set of skills that includes advertising, public relations, web design, social media, etc., as if we were a full-service web marketing firm. For instance, my boss just spent time on the phone finding geo-targeted newspapers willing to publish one client’s press release and drive traffic to his site—something you would be hard-pressed to find at an SEO-only company.
This kind of Swiss Army knife approach keeps us creative enough to cater to specific client needs. It’s our version of an above-the-rim milkshake with the cherry on top. As a result, we get happier clients and higher rankings because we build better links and drive more targeted traffic.
My opinion is obviously that generalists are better equipped to accomplish the objectives associated with SEO than their specialist counterparts are, as surprising as that may be. Generalists of the SEO.com breed have enough specialization to get and maintain top search placement for competitive keywords, so what does that say about SEO-only specialists?
Search engine optimizers don’t need the education of a brain surgeon to be the best–just an expanded multi-functional skill set, which ultimately proves to be far more impactful and exciting for the client, the company, and employees like me.

seo-is-about-communication

2009-05-24T21:07:00.000-07:00

We’ve all heard various experts toot the horn of various elements of SEO: “Content is king!” or “It’s all about the links.” Others tout their proprietary software tools or throw out terms like latent semantic indexing. The truth is, all of these things play a part in SEO (along with a bunch of other things), but if you focus on any one of these, you’re missing the bigger picture.
SEO is about communication!

Communication is defined as: a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.
The communication process involves a sender and a receiver. As long as both the sender and receiver both understand the common system of symbols, signs, or behavior, the sender’s message will be understood. Sounds simple enough, right? The challenge with any communication is that the message has to be properly encoded and then passed along through the communication medium or channel and then decoded and interpreted by the receiver of the message. With search engine optimization, we are dealing with an intermediary (the search engines) who really aren’t our intended receiver at all. We have to make sure the search engines understand the message we are sending, or the communication process breaks down and never makes it to our intended receiver. This makes for a much more complicated communication process.
Google has made it perfectly clear that they are making every possible effort to improve the quality of its search engine. This means they are doing their best to decode the meaning of web pages and other web content — at the same time they are decoding the meaning of users’ search queries — all in an attempt to match up searchers with what they are looking for. They are trying to improve the web search communication channel. Our job as communicators is to create our websites and write content that makes it clear what we are trying to say. If we send the right signals to Google through the structure and content on our site, internal and external links, and all the other “seo” tactics, Google will get the message and move our site to the top of the search heap.
Don’t forget that getting Google to properly decode and interpret our message is only part of the communication process. Google is not the final receiver of our message, remember? Ultimately you want your customers to find your site, click through and complete the desired action (lead, sale, call, whatever).
Just getting your site to the top of the search engine for your desired keywords does not mean your intended customers will get your message. If your title and description is just a bunch of mumbo jumbo, you won’t get many people clicking through. Take care to use titles and descriptions that will convey the right message regarding what you have to offer. Once they click through to your site, the real communication takes place. If they don’t immediately see what they were looking for, they will back out and look elsewhere. If your message is not persuasive enough, the customer will move along to find something more convincing. Provide enough content and enough value to satisfy the searcher’s desire to find what they are looking for. Speak the same language as your site visitors and they will be much more likely to decode your message in the way it was intended.
An important part of the communication process is feedback. Try to get feedback from your website visitors. Obviously, when you get get a sale on your website, you know your message was successfully received (at least by that person). What if you’re not getting any sales? Or what about the other 95% of the people who didn’t buy? Provide other feedback mechanisms to allow your customers to give you feedback about your message. Provide clear calls to action and give them multiple ways to contact you and provide feedback. Use your website analytics reports along with tools like ClickTale and CrazyEgg to find out your site visitors’ behavior. Spend the time to close the feedback loop so you can refine and improve your communication process.
Don’t ever forget that SEO is about communication and the search engine is merely the medium to reach your desired recipient.

transformer-of-seo

2009-05-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

I have yet to see the sequel to Transformers but I grew up playing with transformers as a little boy and I loved the first movie. Seeing the sequel is one of the top things on my list of things to do this summer. I have watched many trailers for it and it looks like it’s going to be just as good, if not better, than the first one.
When it comes to SEO, there are a few things that can be done to transform a campaign. These are what I call the transformers of SEO. Instead of transforming from a car into a robot, these elements, when properly optimized, will transform a good SEO campaign into a great one. When not used properly, or not used at all, getting top rankings may seem to be next to impossible.
Title Tag (Optimus Prime):
The title tag is like Optimus Prime; it can be the anchor of a well-optimized website. The title tag appears at the top of the browser when browsing the web or visiting a site. Of all the HTML elements, the title tag carries the most weight in search engine algorithms. Properly optimized titles should contain keywords that are relevant to the page, and should be no more than 70 characters long. It should be a well-written sentence formed from the targeted keywords and should not be just a list of keywords.
Meta Description Tag (Ironhide):
The Meta description is like Ironhide, and can give the website a tactical advantage when used properly. When optimized, this tag can increase the click-through-rate of a site listing in the search results. The Meta description tag is not displayed on the website page. It is placed in the head section of the HTML code, usually right below the title tag. Meta Descriptions have no influence on search engine rankings. However, if if they contain the same terms of the search query, then they are normally displayed for the description in the search results.
A good Meta description should contain the targeted search terms and describe the website page. It should be about 160 characters long and contain a call-to-action that will entice a searcher to visit the site. Meta descriptions should not be a long string of keywords separated with commas. This is referred to as the Meta keywords tag, not the Meta description.
Internal Links (Bumblebee):
Bumblebee had an important role to play as an Autobot. Like Bumblebee, internal links have a critical role in an SEO campaign, and can impact site rankings if optimized. To optimize a Website’s link structure, the site should have navigation using HTML text links. The links can be formatted to appear as buttons using cascading style sheets. They should use keyword targeted anchor text and should match the targeted keywords of the page the link is pointing to on the website. Links created with JavaScript, Flash or Image rollovers without optimized anchor text, or the ability to be crawled by spiders, should be avoided.
A good SEO campaign should not neglect the optimization of any of these site elements. Including them can often make the difference in a second page or a first page ranking.

transformer-of-seo-the-decepticons

2009-05-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

Before anyone asks the question, the answer is: “Yes, I finally got out to the theater to see Revenge of the Fallen.” About 10 years ago life was much simpler. I could just pick a night, meet some of my friends and head out to the theater to see a movie. Now I am married and have a couple of kids. Getting out to the theater has become a rare event, but I did manage to make time over the weekend to see it with my brother in-law.
Thanks to a couple of comments from Princess Zelda and Dan Schulz on my previous post about Transformers of SEO, I have had some inspiration to write a sequel. My previous post compared a few optimization strategies to the Autobots. This post will contrast some of the current blackhat SEO strategies to the Decepticons. I think this comparison is appropriate because, in the end, blackhat SEO only “deceives” the person using it by making them think that it will bring top rankings and instant wealth.
Cloaking (Megatron):
Megatron is the leader of the Decepticons and one of the most powerful Transformers. Just like Megatron, cloaking can be a powerful blackhat SEO tactic that could result in high search engine rankings. The negative aspect of this tactic is that once a site has been caught cloaking it is removed from the search index and all the top rankings are instantly taken away. Cloaking is done by making a website appear to be something completely different for site visitors than it does for search engine spiders. There are many ways a web developer can go accomplish it, but whatever method is used, the end result is always the same.
Doorway Pages (Devastator):
Several Decepticons combined together to transform into one large robot called Devastator. When combined together they were a powerful and formidable opponent. Doorway pages can be compared to these Decepticons. One doorway page on its own can be an effective tool for driving traffic to a website, but multiple doorway pages can have a “devastating” effect. Doorway pages are single web pages that are set up and optimized for a couple of search terms with the singular goal of sending people from that page to a main website. Creating several doorway pages targeting multiple search terms can eventually help a webmaster rank well for all their targeted search terms. Doorway pages are just another way of tricking or deceiving the search engines. The goal of search engines is to provide the searcher with the most relevant websites to their search query. They want those websites to be what is displayed in the search results and not a page that directs a visitor to another site. Once doorway pages are discovered, they will be removed from the search index and all the work of creating them will be for nothing.
Keyword Stuffing (Starscream):
Starscream is the sidekick to Megatron but always seems to be more like a thorn in Megatron’s side. He was useful when he assisted the Decepticons in battle but was usually more of a hindrance then a help to Megatron because he was constantly plotting to overthrow him and take over as leader. I think keyword stuffing is much like Starscream. Many webmasters stuff webpage elements like titles tags, alt attributes and headers, full of keywords to either target many different search terms or inflate keyword density. While this strategy may have worked in the past, today it only results in reducing the weight of the elements that have been stuffed. So instead of possibly ranking well for a few targeted search terms, the site will struggle to rank for any search terms at all. Keyword stuffing is a strategy of the past that is dead and gone. Anyone practicing it today can expect their SEO campaign to also be dead and gone.
Don’t be fooled by any of these blackhat strategies, they deceive webmasters into believing they can bring quick rankings and wealth, but in the end it is the ethical SEO techniques that will bring the lasting results.

top-seo-tips-for-blogger

2009-05-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

Millions of blogs, and only the top 10 results. It seems like a recipe for headaches and back pain. If you don’t mind, I’ll see if I can give you some pain medication in the form of tried and true methods for getting your blog to show up in those top 10 results.
1. If you are using WordPress, start by installing the all in one seo pack. You can specify unique titles and descriptions for each post using the all in one. The reason you want to have unique titles and descriptions is so that single posts show up easier for long tail keywords, which sometimes bring in visitors or clients 6 months down the road. It’s always nice to be there for an obscure search term, so you can beat out your competitors who aren’t showing up for that term.
2. Headlines: Should be no more than 60 characters, How to’s and top 5 or 10 lists usually work the best to bring in readers. It is also easy to digg a “How To List” or “Top 10 list”. If your keywords are “Internet Business” or “Movie Critiques”, an example could be “The top 5 movie critiques for online shoppers.”
3. Text: Make your paragraphs no more than 6-7 sentences. Lists and bullet points are easier on the eyes and help people read your whole post. Obviously your keywords are an important consideration, have your keyword research handy when writing any post. First and foremost is your reader though, so don’t sacrifice semantics/readability for your keywords.
4. Links: Link to influential blogs or sources as much as possible (no more than 8 links in one post though, you don’t want the reader to get all confused by the abundance of outbound links). There are at least two reasons for this: 1) If you link to an influential blogger, they will see your link, and possibly reciprocate one back to you if your article is good enough. 2) Trusted sources are worth their weight in gold if you want to be seen as an industry expert and to keep your readers coming back for more.
5. Ultimately you will want people to read what you write on your blog. That’s why we have to prepare your blog in such a way that the search engines will find it easier. There are ways to get immediate traffic to your site using Stumbleupon or Digg or some other social bookmarking service, which we use extensively. But the real value in having your post or article go “viral” is for the links that almost automatically come from people who like what you have written. Relevant, keyword targeted text links from a high profile blog or site counts alot towards how well you rank for a particular keyword phrase. Use Stumbling and Digging as much as needed, but first write good content, and make your site search engine friendly.
6. Last but not least, make your RSS feed readily available at the top of your page somewhere. That is usually the first place people look for an RSS feed if they like your post, and if someone wants to link to you or a post of yours, you should give them as many options as possible to do so. An RSS feed is great for publishing content that will then get read and possibly linked to more often.

Dangling links and outbound links

2009-05-04T18:40:00.000-07:00

Artike before discussing the effects of outbound links. What if a page has a link to a pdf file or document? A page that does not have an outbound link (that page has no link). In this case owned pagerank pages of this type can not be distributed to other pages. This happened on several types of documents are also in the google index as a PDF file, exel, word and also the page linked to a page but not be allowed to index the files from the restrictions on the robot.txt file. This characteristic is called dangling links by Lawrence Page and Sergey Brin, in which the current Google index, so many dangling links.

For these types of pages, the iterative process (recursive) pagerank, this page removed from the calculation of pagerank, to other pages that refer to the page count pageranknya completed. Once a page has a link to a page has finished its computed pagerank, pages that do not have an outbound link pagerank otomasis provided by a particular algorithm.

So in this case dangling links will not affect the pagerank of your page for the pagerank calculation process this iteration excluded from the calculation of pagerank.

seo-a-quick-guide

2009-04-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

When designing an SEO friendly website, there are many Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind. Among these Do’s and Don’ts is being compliant with webmaster guidelines that are put in place by search engines. This list includes a few of the most common “Don’ts” along with suggestions from Google.
1. Don’t Deceive Your Users – Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. The practice of presenting different content or URLs to users and search engines is commonly referred to as “cloaking.” Some examples of cloaking include:
• Serving a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images or Flash to users
• Serving different content to search engines than to users
2. Don’t Deceive Search Engines – Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. These tricks may include but are not limited to:
• Hidden text
• Hidden links
• Cloaking
• Sneaky redirects
A good rule of thumb is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
3. Don’t Participate in Link Schemes – Everybody knows that links play a big role in ranking your site in search engines. What everybody doesn’t necessarily know is that the quality and relevance of links count much higher than the quantity of links. Participating in link schemes can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Some examples of link schemes can include:
• Links intended to manipulate rankings
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (”Link to me and I’ll link to you”)
4. Don’t have Duplicate Content – Creating multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantial duplicate content can result in a drop in rankings or even removal from a search engine’s index. Here are some suggestions on how to handle duplicate content issues:
• Consider blocking pages from indexing (robots.txt)
• Use 301 redirects
• Use top-level domains (www.domain.de vs. www.domain.com/de)
• Minimize similar content
5. Don’t Keyword Stuff – Keyword Stuffing refers to loading a web page with keywords in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in search results. Typically, keyword stuffing will be found in lists or paragraphs of keywords, hidden text, hidden in title tags or alt tags. This practice results in a negative user experience and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context.
Following these guidelines will get you going on the right track to having an SEO friendly website which will help search engines find, index, and rank your site

seo-psychology-taming-wild-webmaster

2009-04-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

Any SEO aficionado who has ever attempted to contact a webmaster as part of a link-building campaign can attest that webmasters are indeed a strange breed (and deserve an anthropological field devoted to their study). Unless you have a fair grasp of webmaster psychology, you may end up spinning your link-building wheels or worse, squandering your lone chance to cultivate a valuable relationship or acquire a Holy Grail link.
Admittedly, understanding the webmaster’s behavioral patterns and motivations won’t guarantee successful webmaster interaction–I’m sure Jane Goodall had her share of standoffish chimps. The idea, however, is to maximize your chances for link-building success by understanding the creature called “webmaster.” By looking at his website, you can learn about the kind of webmaster you’re dealing with and what you must offer as a worthy exchange for the link you desire.
A profile of various species of webmaster:
Nativus hermiticus – Think “geocities” or “angelfire,” these webmasters usually started early on and have continued to maintain their visually unimpressive, yet highly resourceful sites (usually with decent PR because of their longevity). They can be elusive when they forget to provide an e-mail. Typically a friendly species, they thrive on positive feedback about their site, have linked to many, and are easy to approach, provided your site fits with their collection and you give them the pre-built link or html.
Strategis generalus – The most common species of webmaster, they know their audience and aim to please. They employ minimal to moderate SEO, choosing to focus on design and accessibility. They are generally more concerned about having a quality website than about their site being used for your SEO purposes. Therefore, they can be won over with evidence that your site fills a void in their content. Expect them to look with much more scrutiny at your site than any other species of webmaster. Try to discover why they have already linked to particular sites and position yourself accordingly.
Strategis capitalus– These webmasters are all about monetization through sell-offs, affiliate marketing, etc., are familiar with SEO tactics, and own several domains with little emotional attachment to them. They are more concerned about getting link juice from your site than your site’s relevancy. They have a link submission page with reciprocal link requirements and mandated anchor text. The PR on their sites is generally low. You either play by their rules, or you don’t get the link.
Bloggerus amatorialus – These webmasters are just happy to have web presence and its social benefits without thinking about development, readership, or SEO. That being said, they can be very protective of their templated Blogspot site. They generally don’t link to anyone, except friends, but you can work with that. Develop a relationship over time by faithful readership and comments as a sure way in. If your blitzkrieg approach to link-building makes this unfeasible, just make contact and keep your expectations low.
Diglicious flicktwittus – These hyperactive webmasters crave popularity. Their content is replete with social bookmarking dot coms you’ve never heard of. SEO takes too long. They’re always on the lookout for new friend- and follower-cultivation tactics and they only link to “web celebs.” Accept that your link request e-mail will become fodder for their next “retweetable” status update or blog post (maybe you can get a backlink for that). Don’t worry—you’ll feel much better when their 15 minutes is up and their site is down.
Remember that the psychological and behavioral nuances of webmasters are the spice of SEO life. To enhance your approach I recommend a few other tactics to complement your webmaster familiarity.
1. Quality content. This is obviously the most important. Expect that everyone you request a link from will visit your site. If you don’t have a lot of content or if the content is bland and doesn’t fit the webmaster’s site, you’ve got work to do before requesting a link.
2. Quality web design. First impressions will be made visually when the webmaster visits your site. Maintain a site that will add visual and professional credibility to their site. Make sure your site looks accessible and engaging before you request the link.
3. Quality offer. You build credibility and rapport by having something constructive to say rather than “I like your site.” For example, you can run their site through a quick link check, like Xenu’s Link Sleuth and inform them of broken links (conveniently offering a link to take its place). If you’ve established a rapport with a history of blog comments, you may refer them to articles that fit their niche (but won’t likely be linked-to because they’re articles).
The webmaster is only feared by those that don’t understand him. You now have all the necessary knowledge to be an effective webmaster psychologist. Put the knowledge to action and you will successfully tame the wild webmaster and earn your link.

guide-efficient-link-building

2009-04-16T21:02:00.000-07:00

We all know that all links are not created equal. With that in mind, how should you spend your link building time?
I’ve compiled a general list of common ways to get links, and I’ve categorized them into the most effective and powerful down to the least effective and powerful, and about how long it generally takes to get each type of link.
1. The Gold Standard: Dofollow, anchor text specific links in the body of an article. These links can be from a number of different sources, and can be found in a number of different ways. There are two common ways to get these types of links. The first is to submit an article to an industry magazine and hope they publish it with your links intact. Another popular way is to contact bloggers in your niche and ask them if they would publish a unique article (that you have written specifically for their site, and includes anchor text links to your site). A lot of bloggers appreciate well written, unique content, because content is like money to bloggers. Finding new sources of good sources for this type of link is painstaking, and getting one good link could take you anywhere from one hour to three hours—but it’s worth it.
2. The Silver Standard: Regular anchor text links in a blogroll or resource page. These links are easier to find. You can find bloggers who do three-way link trades pretty easily. One place to find such trade opportunities is the Digital Point Link Trade forum. Also, by doing a Google search for ‘[keyword] resource page’ you can find plenty of sites that have lists of resources related to your niche. The hard part is contacting these sites in way that will get a positive response, and most of the time they will require a link back to their site. I normally don’t suggest doing reciprocal link trades unless your sites are 100% relevant to each other, and it makes sense to do it. You could use one of your other sites to send a link to a trading partner, who then will link to the site that you want to get promoted. Expect to spend at least a half hour per link.
3. The Bronze Standard: Article Marketing. Article marketing has the potential to get you good rankings, in the event that one of your articles gets syndicated on a popular site. This could send targeted traffic and give you some SEO benefit. Most of the time though, your articles get duplicated all over the place, and it’s a shot in the dark if your article bio box with your links will stay intact. As with all links, the more diverse your portfolio of links is and the more natural your backlinks look, the better chance of staying out of any search engine spam filters. You can easily get five links in an hour doing this.
4. Blog comments: The reason I even put this type of link on this list is because I’ve seen direct benefit from commenting on popular blog posts. Not only do you get direct traffic, but it helps with your rankings. And Google’s smart enough to know that blog commenting is never going to go away, and is a useful feature, and therefore, a blog comment is a useful link to your site. Keep in mind that I do not endorse ’spam commenting’. If you can’t add something valuable to the blog post, or offer a different point of view, don’t comment. Period. You can get at least ten good comment links in an hour.
5. Social Bookmarks: You can get dofollow anchor text links to your site by just bookmarking them at sites like Digg, and other dofollow sites. The reason this is low on the list is that everyone and their dog is doing it, and these links don’t have as much weight because the main page of these sites (besides the big ones) don’t have much Trust Rank or Page Rank or whatever your pet phrase may be. But again, search engines expect you to have a diverse number of links, and social bookmarking is another popular type of link these days. Twenty an hour is a reasonable amount.
6. Directory Links: These will never go away as long as the internet is alive, so you might as well continue to use them. Some words of advice though, if you are going to submit to a directory, make sure that more than just the home page of the directory is indexed, and that the directory has been around for at least one year. I’m sure there’s more advice from people who use directories a lot, but those are the basics. If you’re good and you’ve got your form fill plugin for firefox, or Robo form, you could pump out 30 directory links in an hour.

आतंकवादी अनुकूलन alexa रैंक कैसे

2009-04-12T18:45:00.001-07:00

केवल एक चीज है कि अभी भी इस ब्लॉग के रास्ते में खड़ा है पैसे पाने के लिए alexa रैंक की संख्या अभी भी है bejibun. दैनिक अद्यतनों के 1 पद के साथ मदद इतना नहीं था. Blogwalking गतिविधियों में भी बहुत ज्यादा उम्मीद नहीं कर रहे हैं. क्यों?
क्योंकि ब्लॉगर्स जरूरी एक दोस्त अपने ब्राउज़र में alexa टूलबार स्थापित नहीं है. उन्होंने कहा कि बहुत प्रभावशाली (: पी), यह गया था. क्या आपने अपने ब्राउज़र में alexa उपकरण पट्टी स्थापित करें? इसे स्थापित करें, तो हर दिन इस ब्लॉग: डी खुला

आतंकवादियों जो निम्नलिखित शायद katrok ध्वनि किया जाएगा कैसे. लेकिन यह उचित: Warnet अधिकारिता लगता है! Alamak भाषा: पी
हाँ. मैं कई कैफे को दौरा किया है. कंप्यूटर के उपयोग से एक है, तो ऐसे सभी Firefox, IE या ओपेरा के रूप में उपलब्ध ब्राउज़र पर alexa उपकरण पट्टी स्थापित करें. अगले बेशक मैं अपने ब्लॉग के पते में 'स्टार्टअप' मुखपृष्ठ बदलाव हर ब्राउज़र था, कि एक ब्राउज़र में जब है शुरू, taraaa ... मेरे ब्लॉग पहली बार खुल जाएगा. नोट के साथ, नहीं rese warnetnya ऑपरेटरों 'और एक ही उपयोगकर्ता ngenet katroknya मेरी कश्ती.

अगले, तुम तुम चारों ओर कैफे में एक ही बात कर सकते हैं. कि, निर्देशन 'स्टार्टअप' होमपेज एक अपने ब्लॉग के पते पर ग्राहक कंप्यूटर, और फिर एक और कंप्यूटर पर ही काम करते है, सिर्फ इस बार पता इस्तेमाल किया मेरे ब्लॉग का पता है: डी
और मैं भी वही बात भी करेंगे.

जैसा कि मैंने ऊपर कहा, यह कैसे अनुकूलन को बेवकूफ alexa रैंक है. बस मेरे जैसे लोगों के लिए करना आसान है. इसके अलावा, ऐसा लगता है हम बनाए रखने के एक साप्ताहिक या इंटरनेट कैफे के लिए मासिक स्टार्टअप मुखपृष्ठ अभी भी हमारे ब्लॉग पर है ओर इशारा करते हुए कि जांच करने की जरूरत है.

तुम्हें क्या लगता है? Parah banget याक: पी

आतंकवादी अनुकूलन alexa रैंक कैसे

2009-04-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

google-caffeine-you-need-know

2009-04-10T21:00:00.000-07:00

As an SEO, I know that my industry is constantly changing and evolving. That is one of the reasons why I truly love marketing through the search engines. One upcoming change will be the release of what has been code-named “Google Caffeine,” which can be beta-tested here. It will be a new, more powerful version of Google’s search engine technology. You can read more about it from the Google Webmaster Central Blog.
Because I rely on search engine optimization to grow my client’s businesses and my personal websites, I pay attention anytime Google gives out little bits of information regarding the future of their search engine.
The following quote from Google tells us a lot about this new project’s role in the future of search:
“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness, and other dimensions.”
That one sentence tells us just about everything we need to know about the future of Google search. It tells us where we need to be moving to stay ahead of the curve in our industry. Here is how we can do it:
1. Site & Indexing Speed: Google is going to be crawling more sites, more pages on those sites, and adding them to their index much faster. We have known for years that Google and the other search engines love fresh content. The problem is that there is so much new content hitting the internet every single day that they needed to come up with a solution to keep their index up-to-date with the latest news and information. The key here is that you need to continue to add new content to your website often. As Google increases their indexing speed, your new pages will get picked up faster and you will rank better.
2. Accuracy: Websites that will continue to dominate the search engines will be the ones that can properly match up the keywords people are searching on with the content of what they are actually looking for. I believe Google is not only interested in which sites people are actually clicking on, but what their behavior is like once they arrive at the particular website. The key here is that you should take all the time you need to make sure you are targeting the proper keywords, that the content on your website is related to the search term, and that it is enticing enough to keep visitors interested. Conversion optimization will also play a huge roll in converting more of your visitors into buying customers. One thing I always tell my clients is, “I can bring you traffic, but what good is the traffic if it doesn’t make you more money?” This is true regarding targeting the wrong keywords and having a crappy web design that doesn’t convert the traffic.
3. Comprehensiveness: Google will continue to favor “authority” sites. You know, those sites that do an excellent job of completely covering their niche. The key here is that if you want a website that ranks incredibly well for your main keywords, you better be ready to put in some blood, sweat, and tears. Google wants to see and rank sites that are thorough and comprehensive resources for the people who are looking for information about a particular topic. This is exactly why it is crucial that you continue to build new pages on your website that rank for each and every one of your relevant keywords. Remember, Google continues to show that they prefer larger, older websites that are loaded with useful information.
This information is nothing new. These are the things we are currently doing for our clients and that you should be doing now to increase your search engine rankings. However, there are many websites who are not doing these things and will fall far behind when Google finally releases their new search engine technology.
That is why you need to get started TODAY! If you do, you will be far ahead of your competitors who push aside this information and you will develop what is known as a competitive advantage.
Good luck!

The influence of the number of pages google pagerank

2009-04-05T18:38:00.000-07:00

This paper is a continuation of the writings on the previous google pagerank. Where pagerank algorithm has an influence on several aspects of the website we make. I will try to discuss this time is the influence of the number of pages from a website on google pagerank.
Earlier return to note is, pagerank is determined for each page pagerank accumulation is proportional to the number of pages (with notes kontibusi website does not get to / from other pages). Why do I bold and underline? This is important because of the influence of variable amount of this concept and will be described below.

From here it can be concluded each additional page will also increase the accumulation of pagerank of the website. For the value of the page (not the accumulation pagerank) is determined by the structure of the website links.
For example, such as hierarchical structure, which makes most of the pages have a link to a page on top or index pages, while the index pages do not have direct links to pages on most of the hierarchy, the highest google pagerank of the website can be ascertained is the index page. And automatically pages in the most in the hierarchy will have the lowest pagerank .. (this structure best if you can and just need to optimize your index page)

Back to the point that is underlined above, a site, (especially that in the optimization process) is certainly in dire need ibound links from other sites to increase the pagerank. The contribution from inbound links pagerank will be distributed to all web pages that you have obtained a quantity that is determined each page back to the website link structure.
Roughly, if we get a contribution from inbound links for pagerank 1, the value will be divided by all of our web pages, not just the page that receives inbound links. From here we can also see, every additional number of pages, will increase the divisor factor. Decreasing contribution of inbound links pagerank is directly proportional to the number of pages that we add.

With this, no one is assumed not to add your business web page, or add to your blog posting. Because a wesite that fresh, frequently updated is also favored by search engines.
The solution is, each additional page on your website must also sought baclink addition to your site.
The larger the website you have more and more backlinks are to the overall need of your pages have pagerank equitable (not only the index that have high pagerank pagerank but the other pages it is very low).

get-down-dirty-website-code

2009-04-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

According to Google their mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. I might add that they are also striving to provide the best user experience possible.
One aspect of SEO that is either looked over or forgotten is the technical side. I am not referring to the optimization of website code for search engine purposes. I am talking about major technical issues causing Google to rank your site lower because it detracts from the ultimate user experience.
There are three technical aspects that I would like to discuss in my post today. I must stress that I am not sure how much these aspects help; I just know they do. More than anything, I am hoping that my post will spur discussion to help us better understand these aspects and how they affect SEO.
1. Clean Code
It’s no secret that the fanciest websites can have very messy code. When search engine spiders visit your website, they only look at the code. They honestly couldn’t care less how the site appears to your visitors. It is very important your website code is clean, so spiders don’t have to sort through a bunch of crap to get to what they are really looking for… your content!
Here are the basics…
• JavaScript should be in its own file and called to on the actual web page.
• If you are hosting video (this does not include any imbedded YouTube videos), it should be in a separate file and called to on the actual web page.
• All formatting should be put in a cascading style sheet (css).
2. Downtime/Timing Out
How annoying is it when you visit a website and it is down? How about when you visit an hour later and it is still down? Website downtime is one of the things that really puts a damper on user experience.
Unlike clean code or page load speed, downtime is something that might be happening without the webmaster knowing. One of my clients, for privacy purposes we will call them Green Tree Landscaping Inc. (Thanks, landscape guy outside my window), has a website with a majority of their pages timing out. When I visit their site and those pages, everything seems to be working fine. Whenever they visit their site, it is up. No one knew the site was having issues until we ran a report in Xenu. The Xenu report indicated the pages were either timing out or there was a connection error.
3. Page Load Speed
Google Webmaster Central released a blog post on the 4th of June regarding page load speed. It is obvious from this post that Google is becoming more concerned with page load speed and how it affects the user experience. Although they don’t directly state it, I believe it is becoming more of an SEO and ranking factor than it used to be. Fixing your page load speed was previously a daunting task. Until recently, you had to practically guess what was causing a page to load slowly. On the 4th, Google released what they call Page Speed. This is a cool little Firefox Add-on that integrates with Firebug. When you run Page Speed, you receive instant suggestions on how to tweak your web pages to improve load time. They also provide educational information to help you learn (if you don’t already know) how to make the changes.
If you ask me, this is a great resource (possibly, one of the best) provided by Google. It will really help webmasters improve their site’s performance. Just remember, it’s all about creating the best user experience possible.
SEO changes on a regular basis. What may have worked yesterday in achieving top search engine rankings, may not work today or tomorrow. I believe these three aspects will play an even bigger role in determining search engine rankings in the future.

Penyakit Para Bloger dan SEOers yang perlu diwaspadai!

2009-04-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

Sebelum membaca labih jauh jangan berburuk sangka, artian penyakit ini bukan arti konotasi, melainkan arti sebenarnya.. Sakit. iya sakit pada tubuh dan bagian-bagian biologis manusia.
Semua berawal pada saat saya baru mengenal blog dan wordpress pada akhir januari lalu, saking kagetnya kalo begitu banyak orang yang sudah bikin blog, seperti manusia biasa yang merasa ketinggalan. Saya tiap hari lama-lama baca-baca blog yang bagus-bagus, seperti menemukan internet yang baru. :) Gaptek banget ya.. Hikz

Sampai akhirnya beberapa minggu yang lalu, tiba tiba saya merasa sakit yang aneh, trus saya biarkan beberapa hari, sampai hari ketiga, sudah tidak tahan dan ke dokter. Wah betapa kagetnya kalo saya dibilang sakit dan harus operasi. Sebagai catatan, saya sangat bersyukur karena sangat jarang mengalami gangguan kesehatan meski dengan gaya hidup yang lumayan sangat kurang sehat. Tiba-tiba mendapat penyakit yang harus operasi rasanya seperti mendengar guntur di siang hari..

Tubuh saya yang besar dan kuat (kata dokter) ini akhirnya kalah juga. :) … Setelah beberapa saat berkonsultasi akhirnya dokter menyimpulkan kalau penyebab sakit saya adalah “Komplikasi” kebiasaan buruk… Al.. Begadang, Duduk Berjam-jam (lebih dari 12 jam sehari ), kurang minum, Kurang makan sayur.. dll…
Tapi yang paling saya yakin penyebab utamanya adalah karena terlalu lama duduk, dari kuliah ampe sekarang rasanya hidup itu cuma buat duduk di depan komputer :) …
nb..(bukan ambayen lho).. :)

Sudah beberapa minggu ngejalani terapi supaya ngak operasi.
Semoga posting yang ngak ada kaitannya dengan seo ini banyak yang baca ya…. :)
Dan ikut mendoakan biar saya ngak jadi diopersai (takut operasi ) dan bisa lekas sembuh dan nulis lagi di blog ini…

kawan-kawan yang punya gaya hidup mirip-mirip, waspada aja, tubuh kita butuh hal lain selain komputer :) .
Banyak minum air, banyak makan sayur, sempatkan diri berolahraga.. OK

need-seo-learned-in-kinderganten

2009-04-01T20:59:00.000-07:00

When I started my career in SEO and Internet marketing there were many nights I would leave the office overwhelmed with the amount of information that I needed to know. I come from a marketing background, which means I understand the need to cater advertising to a specific audience, but all the talk of HTML code, robots, and indexed pages had my head spinning. After all, that stuff is for nerds. I am not a nerd.
As the weeks wore on and the nerd talk started to make sense, I discovered that good SEO comes down to a few simple rules. So simple in fact that they can be taught by applying them to the things we first learned in kindergarten.
Share Everything
Link building is a vital component of SEO. Share links wherever it makes sense. It is best to link with sites that will provide valuable and reputable links pertaining to the information on your site. Those links will build up your page rank, which you can in turn share with the rest of your site.
Play Fair
Be smart about your SEO strategies and don’t do something that will be seen as spam in the eyes of the search engines. Keyword stuffing and cloaking are both tactics that will keep you from earning that gold star. You might get away with black hat SEO strategies for a little while, but it won’t last. In the end, not playing fair will only come back to hurt you.
Don’t Take Things That Aren’t Yours
Create your own unique content and don’t take content from others. You don’t need to be an SEO veteran to know that plagiarizing is wrong.
Clean Up Your Own Mess
To avoid being punished by Google and the other search engines, keep things cleaned up. Avoid using multiple websites and URLs to promote your business. There are times when this might make sense but to prevent using duplicate content it is best to stay away from this practice. Most importantly make sure you have a 301 redirect in place to direct users to the proper website.
Watch Out For Traffic
Getting traffic to your site and increasing your business revenue is usually the main goal of any SEO marketing plan. Know how to get traffic to your site. Know where your traffic is coming from. Know where your competitors’ traffic is coming from. And know how to get more traffic.
Warm Cookies and Milk Are Good For You
This has nothing to do with SEO but is still the absolute truth.
When you start to look at things one simple rule at a time, diving headfirst into SEO won’t be so overwhelming. The basics are a good place to start and once you have those down everything else will start to make more sense.
P.S. No nerds were offended in the writing of this blog. I hope.

dropping-egg-four-stories-keywords

2009-03-30T20:58:00.000-07:00

In college I took a basic engineering class and one of our team assignments was figuring out the most efficient way to drop an egg off a four-story balcony–without breaking, of course. The team to get the egg to the floor the fastest (without it breaking) would be the winner. As a dedicated team, we first went our separate ways and then each came back with a prototype for the egg drop.
The next time we met, each of us brought our own invention to try. One by one we tried them. First there was the parachute, which provided a fairly safe landing, but took quite a bit of time to get to the floor. Then there was a paper-made vehicle to hold the egg with a long streamer coming out the back to slow it down a little. This did well, but as it landed, it would tip over and the egg would spill out and break. Then came the Jell-O. One member of our team thought it would be a good idea to put the egg inside a Jell-O mold which was then inside a sealed plastic (breakable) container. As dumb as this idea was, we still tried it. So back up to the fourth floor we went, and looked straight down to the hard-tiled floor. “Ready, three, two, one!” and down went the Jell-O packed egg hitting the floor with a loud pop! Red Jell-O went everywhere, staining the carpets and walls surrounding the tiled area. The egg, of course, was also demolished and the janitor was furious.
Ultimately, we collaborated and came up with an oversize plastic pill bottle stuffed with cotton and a large, flat square piece of cardboard on top to act like a parachute. It was a success. It brought the egg to the floor safely and quickly every single time. Although I will not disclose whether we officially won or lost, there is still a great lesson to be learned here. Our egg never broke, and it still made pretty good time. Other eggs made great time, but those teams were just chancing whether or not it would break.
In real life, if that egg was something you really valued, would you care more about security or speed? Wouldn’t you be willing to lose a little bit of your speed to ensure security? Gaining traffic is the same way—speed referring to just any traffic, and security referring to the right traffic. Properly targeting your site traffic is so important and will greatly improve your conversion rate. However, many businesses still fall into the “speed trap” of desiring to gain traffic without concern for the security or relevancy of the traffic.
Don’t think that because your site is 60% related to a keyword that is searched on 30,000 times per month versus a keyword that relates 100% to your site but is only searched on 1,165 times per month, you should go with the bigger keyword. Obviously you want to try and find the biggest keywords, but just remember that even though a keyword might be as much as 60% relevant to your site and searched on far more, you will still have a high bounce rate. In the long run, you will wish you had chosen the smaller keyword that will bring people that will actually stay on your site and buy something.
So can you just turn back once you have realized this mistake? Yes, but it will take time to re-optimize your site and get solid rankings for your new keywords. When it comes to keyword research and choosing which keywords to optimize your site for, you are really deciding the fate of your business. Don’t fall into the trap thinking that if you go after the biggest keywords they will bring you the most business. Instead, go after relevant keywords.

there-is-a-place-better

2009-03-24T20:57:00.000-07:00

You are all familiar with the classic movie, “The Wizard of Oz.” No? Then I suggest you take back that stolen piece of your childhood and watch it. Rent it. Borrow it. Just do what needs to be done.
Now back to my point.
After a long trip down the yellow brick road Dorothy finds herself wishing more than anything to be returned to her farm in Kansas. She finds through the help of the Good Witch (and some magic) that the ruby slippers she has been wearing all along will take her there. All she has to do is click her heels three times and repeat the words, “There’s no place like home.”
Though Dorothy’s adventures in OZ teach her that home is where she will find true happiness, the same sentiment does not apply to link building. Link building is a common SEO strategy that too often is misused. Many people are under the assumption that only linking to a website’s home page will garner the best results and at a much quicker pace. Not true. Deep linking, or linking to pages other than the home page, has its advantages and will actually help your website achieve a higher page rank.
Deep linking magic achieved: Those that choose not to use deep linking as a means of site optimization are right in thinking that a website’s home page carries the most amount of Google juice and has the highest page rank. That page rank is then passed on to other pages and subpages. For example; if you have a website whose homepage has a PR5, then each link off of that page will likely have a PR4, and each link off of that page will likely have a PR3, and so on.

You get the idea. But when you are able to consistently get credible links pointing to other pages within your site, those internal pages will build up page rank. And since most site architectures include a link from those pages pointing to your homepage, your homepage will see a boost in page rank as a result of your efforts.
Spreading the love around: Deep linking helps you to focus your content on one or two keyword phrases per page which will give you a better chance of ranking higher for those particular keywords. Having additional pages with relevant content also increases your chances of being indexed by the search engines.
Doing what comes naturally: Google likes to reward those who play by the rules and punish those who don’t. One thing Google looks for is natural linking. Natural linking occurs when other sites link to relevant content within a site. If you have a website with 500 external links and they are all pointing to the home page, this doesn’t look natural. You’re better off linking to the most appropriate page of the site rather than just the home page because the user experience will be better and Google rewards you for the deep link.
Avoiding a walk down the Yellow Brick Road: When Dorothy left Munchkin Land to find the Wizard all she was told was to follow the yellow brick road. Though we wouldn’t have a movie, it would have been a lot easier for Dorothy to jump right to the Emerald City. The same goes for deep linking. Online visitors will appreciate a link that takes them directly where they want to go without having to search all over your site to find it. And if they find what they are looking for right off they will probably visit your site again generating more traffic.
The next time you work to add links to your site, find a way to link directly to the most relevant page so you can increase the page rank of that page, include links into your site and avoid the un-natural look of building links only to your home page.

how-get-my-site-indexed

2009-03-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

So you have put together a website and have it published on the web. All the content is in place and all your site’s functionality is working properly. What comes next? This question can be answered by answering another question I have seen several times on the forums at SEO.com and other forums that I frequently visit. This question is, “how do I get my site indexed in Google?”
How does someone get their site indexed in Google and the other search engines? I have seen many different answers to this question. Some of these answers are, “submit the site to Google” or “link to your site from blogs and forums” or even “submit your site to some directories.” While these methods may all work, there is one really effective way to get your site indexed fairly quickly in Google. I have used this method for several sites that were not indexed yet, and each site was indexed in Google within about one week. This is done by submitting a sitemap in XML format to Google through Google Webmaster Tools.
When you create your XML sitemap for Google you can also submit it to Live Search through their Webmaster Center. You should also be sure to reference your sitemap in your robots.txt file. To reference it, just add the following line to your robots.txt file and insert your own domain name.
• Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
Submitting a sitemap doesn’t mean you don’t have to do those other things I mentioned as answers to getting indexed. Building inbound links to your site will not only help with getting indexed, but will also help with improving the rankings of your site. You should continue to look for good places to get inbound links. Directories, social media, blogs, and forums are just some of the places where inbound links can be acquired. But building inbound links is a topic for another blog post.
Keep up with the latest SEO techniques by joining me at our SEO Forums.

even-try-decide-search-engines

2009-03-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

few months ago I posted a brief guide of “The 5 Don’ts of SEO” listing suggestions of things not to do when designing a website. These guidelines include a few of the common “Don’ts” and suggestions from Google to help you keep your site compliant with search engines’ webmaster guidelines. Each month I’ve been going more in-depth with each recommendation. This month’s topic: Don’t Deceive Search Engines.
Everyone wants to have high rankings in the search engines, and sadly, some abide by the philosophy of “Lying, Cheating or Stealing” their way to the top. These deceiving tricks often include:
• Hidden text
• Hidden links
• Cloaking
• Sneaky redirects
Yes, these tricks may work for a short time, but if there is one thing I learned well from my childhood, it is that if you lie, cheat or steal, you will inevitably get caught—and when you do, there are always consequences.
Search engines are ever improving their algorithms to increase ranking accuracy and to improve the overall experience of their users. Their goal is to serve up the best, most relevant results to their users. They don’t like to be deceived and as they find deceitful acts, they apply a consequence. These consequences may include being banned from search engines.
Search engine optimization is not about tricking search engines to get anyone and everyone to your site. It is about building an effective online marketing strategy that delivers a flow of highly targeted prospects who are seeking your product or service. It’s a matter of good traffic over bad traffic, of quality over quantity. The goal of search engine optimization is to increase the good, quality traffic comprising of relevant visitors who are likely to fulfill a desired action on your site, whether it’s to buy something, to contact you, to subscribe to your service, or what have you.
Deceiving search engines may provide you with more traffic to your site for a short time. But in the long run, it typically ends up hurting your rankings and may result in getting you banned from the search engines.
The easiest way to not deceive the search engines is to make sure your site is actually relevant for the terms you are trying to show up for. This of course, is easier said than done, but focusing on making your site more relevant for your consumer is what will ultimately add to your bottom-line.

dont-deceive-your-user

2009-03-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

I posted a brief guide of “The 5 Don’ts of SEO” listing suggestions of things not to do when designing a website. These guidelines include a few of the common “Don’ts” and suggestions from Google to help you keep your site compliant with search engines’ webmaster guidelines. I wanted to expand a little further and give a little more insight on each guideline. I’ll start with the first guideline: Don’t Deceive Your Users.
There are many ways search engines could view a web page as deceiving an end user. Probably the most common form of deceit on a web page is presenting different content to search engines than you display to human visitors. This is commonly referred to as cloaking. Doing this may cause your site to be perceived as deceptive and can result in removal from search engines.
A common form of cloaking is serving up a page of HTML text to search engines, while showing a page of images (or Flash or JavaScript) to your site visitors. You may be doing this on your site right now not intending to deceive your users or the search engines. If you are employing these cloaking tactics, or are designing a website rich with Flash or JavaScript, you should make sure that your end users are your main priority.
To prevent your site from being a deceiver, there are a few ways to correctly provide crawlable data for the search engines. These will also be helpful to your visitors who have screen readers or images turned off in their browser.
• Provide alt text that describes images on your pages.
• Provide textual content of JavaScript in a noscript tag.
Make sure the content you provide is the same text for both the JavaScript and the noscript tag. Having substantially different content in these different elements is viewed as extremely deceptive to the search engines and they may take action against your site.
Keep your site visitors in mind as you build out your site. As I’ve mentioned before, a good rule of thumb is to think about what you are doing and who it is for. Ask yourself if what you are doing helps your users, and would you do the same thing the search engines didn’t exist.

domain-names-and-seo

2009-03-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

For years, people have talked about how valuable keywords are in domain names. I’ve heard people claim that a domain name will automatically put you on top of the search results for the word in your domain, and others claim it makes no difference. The truth lies somewhere between, but definitely leaning toward the “yes it matters” side of the argument.
I’m not saying a domain name is all you need. Far from it. Unless your first name is Wiki and last name Pedia, there’s nothing you can do to guarantee a first place ranking, that’s just the way it is. Occasionally, I’ll see simple one page sites, or even parked domains showing up in the search results, apparently due to nothing more than the domain name. You don’t see that often these days, but I still see it occasionally–in MSN more than anywhere else. Most often, a page with nothing but ads will not show up in the search results, regardless of how generic or keyword-targeted the domain name. To show up in the search listings, you’ve got to have a real site, with unique content, and plenty of links to your site.
Also, gone are the days where you can buy whatever-keywords-you-want- to-show-up-for.com and shoot to the top of Google search. Those domains were hot for a while, and I still see new site owners fall into the hyphen trap. Don’t do it! Yeah, it’s hard to find a good, non-hyphenated .com domain name that’s not registered, but use your brain people and get creative, or better yet, buy a domain that someone else has already registered. You can buy a very nice domain on the after market at an affordable price. Just get it out of your head that your domain should cost $8. Unless you’re very lucky, or you want some lame, web 2.0 name that nobody can spell, take out your wallet and spend a few bucks on a real domain name. I’m not saying you have to buy a domain with your keywords in it. You can be very successful in the search engines without it, but there are certainly advantages to owning a great domain name with your keywords. Typically, the shorter and more targeted the name, the better. You might be ok with two or three words, but if you get much longer than that, you’ll start to confuse people. Keep it simple!
Here’s my take on why keyword domains perform so well:
1. The search engines give added weight to your site for your keywords if they’re in your name. They do. You’ll see this across the board to varying degrees at each search engine. MSN seems to reward keyword domains a lot more than anyone else, but they seem to have a positive impact in Yahoo and Google as well.
2. Your incoming links tend to include your site/domain name. If your domain is iamageek.com, you’ll get a lot of links with keywords like “I Am A Geek“. On the other hand, if your domain is software.com, you’ll get links with the word “Software“, not all of your links, of course, but a lot of the links to your homepage will use your primary keywords. This is a clear advantage because you can get a link from highly regarded directories (dmoz), news stories, industry sites, etc. including your keywords (which also happen to be your site and/or company name). Meanwhile your competitors are stuck with the link text “ACME Inc” which does nothing to help their search rankings other than for their own name.
3. Your site will be more linkable. Nobody is going to link the-longest-freakin- domain-ever-registered-in-the-world.com. Besides the fact that they won’t have the endurance to type that whole thing, it just doesn’t lend itself to credibility. Before I even see the site at that domain, I have a negative impression of the site. Why would I want to add a link to such a non-credible site? Exactly, I wouldn’t. If you wouldn’t link to your own domain name, don’t expect anyone else to. Link bait on a crappy domain will not take off nearly as well as the same content on a good domain. In most cases the links won’t happen automatically, you still have to do the work, but it makes the job of getting links SO MUCH EASIER if you have a reputable domain name.
4. A good, short domain name looks more reputable. It looks like a legitimate business. This ties in with the linkability factor. If you back up your great domain name with a world-class site design (or even a decent one), and awesome, unique content, you’ll have a powerful one-two punch that will be able to get respect on the web. A good, generic, domain name will be more likely to be dugg, stumbled, blogrolled, added to resources pages, and just about any other type of link you can imagine. A good, reputable domain will also tend to convert at a much higher rate than the long, “weird” looking domain names, it just carries more trust.
Those are the main reasons why a good domain name will help your search engine optimization efforts. A lot of the benefit comes from the other “side” benefits rather than having the keywords in your name itself. Of course, you still need to have a site that’s worthy of the domain–in terms of design and content–but a great domain is an excellent start. You still have to work and compete to be at the top for your keywords, but the right domain name might be just the edge you need if you’re doing everything else right.
One parting note, has anyone else noticed the convergence of SEO and domaining? Domainers have all these sweet domain names they don’t know what to do with and all these SEOs wish they could get their hands on some of these great domain names. (Psst…some people on both sides are starting to cross over and the two industries are beginning to merge).

Saving Energy In A Big SEO Contest

2009-03-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

Everybody must be understand that the easiest way to gain better position in SEO contest is hunting backlink as many as we can from dofollow blog. Sadly, although it doesn’t need certain knowledge to apply, but it’s really time consuming efforts. We will always sit in front of our computer any longer to reach the number of backlink that we need. So, it’s not really effective and will take our energy so much.

However, actually there’s an easy way saving energy in a big SEO contest like kerja keras adalah energi kita. Through what? Firstly, before we use this strategy, we should be patient. Because it will push our SERP into higher position instantly. But whenever it works, we will stay there any longer than those who depend their SERP with backlinks of blog commenting.

Now, here’s a good tips saving energy in a big SEO contest. Just use your dummy blog to support the main entry. You don’t need to blog commenting all the time for the main entry. What you need yo do is just link it from your dummies. Yet after that, you must optimize each of your dummy, at least reach the first 100 and done. The more related dummy you have, the bigger opportunity for you to go on top faster.

Even so, many people never use saving energy like this in a big SEO contest like Oes Tsetnoc. The reason is that most of them can’t wait any longer to see the results. So, as I mentioned above, be patient when you use this scheme. I bet in less than two weeks, you feel the different. Good luck.

Pelajaran Berharga Dari Kampanye

2009-03-04T18:23:00.000-08:00

Kontesnya Mas Pogung sudah usai, namun saya masih tetap semangat untuk mengeksplorasi lebih jauh lagi bagaimana menerapkan trik seo secara lebih efektif dan tidak terlalu membuang tenaga. Kebetulan saat ini memang masih ada bahan eksperimen seperti kontes tukang nggame dan sulumits retsambew, jadi proses belajar tetap bisa berlanjut.

Namun sebelum saya kembali melakukan percobaan, mungkin ada dari kawan-kawan disini yang ingin mengetahui apa pelajaran berharga dari kampanye menurut versi saya pribadi. Dan berikut ini yang bisa saya sampaikan.

1. Domain panti atau domain yang menggunakan keyword bukanlah segalanya. Ini bukan bermaksud untuk sombong atau mengada-ada, tapi buktinya single artikel kampanye saya masih sanggup bertahan di papan atas kan? Bahkan, subdomain bos Kopi Tozie pun masuk 5 besar.
2. Geo Hosting atau penggunaan hosting sesuai dengan wilayah juga bukan segala-galanya. Ini jelas bisa dilihat dari sang jawara pemenang pemilu 2009 kali ini yang justru menggunakan hosting luar, bahkan saya sendiri pun juga tidak menggunakan hosting IIX (lokal).
3. CTR atau Code To Text Rati0 sudah kurang relevan. Jika belum paham soal CTR, silahkan liat di Google, udah banyak yang bahas.
4. Kekuatan utama SEO pada saat ini terletak pada geo targeted backlinks, yakni backlinks yang berasal dari web atau blog yang memiliki persamaan bahasa.
5. Ketangguhan hosting, jika hosting sering down apalagi sering modar, jangan harap bisa bersaing di SERP papan atas

Hmmm… sepertinya itu saja pelajaran berharga dari kontes kemarin, kalau ada yang kelupaan, mungkin akan saya update secepatnya. Atu jika ada kontestan yang ingin menambahkan atau tidak setuju dengan pendapat saya diatas, silahkan anda memberikan komentar disini.

2000 Backlink Gratis, Mau?

2009-03-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

Pada saat ini, entah sudah ada berapa ribu blog yg secara bersamaan membahas trik seo, jurus seo atau tips seo dengan istilahnya masing-masing. Tentu ini sangat membantu siapapun yang sedang belajar seo seperti saya. Namun demikian, amat disayangkan mengingat kebanyakan dari mereka hanya memberikan dasar atau patokan saja tanpa memberikan pengetahuan lebih lanjut tentang hal ini. Saya bilang kebanyakan lho, bukan berarti semuanya seperti itu hehe… Melihat kondisi ini, sudah bisa dipastikan bagi kebanyakan kalangan akan mengalami kesulitan dalam mengoptimasi keyword yang di bidik. Dan seperti kawan semua ketahui, salah satu faktor penentu keberhasilan optimasi kita adalah jumlah backlink berkwalitas. Tetapi, pernahkah anda di beri tahu cara mendapatkan 2000 backlink secara gratis dan vulgar? Bahkan, dalam beberapa ebook seo sampah yang pernah saya baca, tak pernah sekalipun saya menemukan trik untuk mendapatkan backlink berlebih. Paling banter, kita hanya menemukan daftar blog dofollow yg jumlahnya tak lebih dari 500an blog.

Untuk itu, kali ini saya ingin berbagi sedikit bagaimana mendapatkan 2000 backlink gratis, mau? Kalau mau, caranya mudah sekali. Cukup klik link Google di bawah ini dan buatlah komentar pada blog-blog tersebut. Kalau tidak salah, dari semua hasil pencarian itu 90% nya masih merupakan blog do follow. Dan berikut link untuk mendapatkan 2000 backlink gratis tadi jika kawan-kawan mau hehe…

* 2000 Backlink Gratis

Sebagai tambahan, jika mau memanfaatkan 2000 backlink gratis diatas, harap sesuaikan dengan target datacenter yg dikejar. Karena hasil diatas mayoritasya menggunakan bahasa Inggris, tentu sangat bagus buat untuk menaikkan keyword di Google.com, dan sebaliknya untuk menaikkan Rusli Zainal Sang Visioner yg kebetulan memakai datacenter Google.co.id, tidak akan berpengaruh apa-apa dan cenderung akan membuat tenggelam.

Ok, sepertinya segitu aja sharing saya tentang cara cepat untuk mendapatkan 2000 backlink gratis dari mesin pencari dan semoga saja bermanfaat bagi semua.

does-seo-die-on-web

2009-03-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

Hey, Marty, would you mind parking the DeLorean for me while I finish up this blog post? Thanks.
Hi, everyone! I’ve just come back from the future. Well, not really. I’ve actually just been reading through a bunch of articles about the Semantic Web as envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee and other brilliant thinkers. My appetite to research this topic was spurred by this article I read about two weeks ago. It’s been a fun escape into the world-of-tomorrow. Some have already assigned the moniker “Web 3.0″ to the Semantic Web. Here we go again…
So did I find anything of value on my futuristic escapade? Well, I started my trip (as always) by going to see The Oracle to find out what she thinks of the Semantic Web. It’s still unclear to me how people will interact with such a system—from what I can tell there are no consumer apps yet that handle these types of semantic web interactions. But according to the Wikipedia article, computers will do most of the menial pairing of search results that we currently do manually.
Funny enough, there are many who believe that this particular vision of the future cannot come to fruition. Others say it has already begun to happen. I don’t know enough about it yet to base an opinion either way, but I do see elements of a semantic web in now widely used web techniques like tagging.
According to Tim Berners-Lee, Google will not survive on the semantic web—at least not in its current state. Yahoo even recently announced that they will begin supporting certain semantic web standards and technologies to let people produce much richer search results.
So if search engines as we know them need to change at the advent of this new Semantic Web, do SEOers need to follow suit? Will SEO become the task of simply building properly formatted semantic markup for digestion by future search engines? That could be part of it. In fact, part of good SEO practices now include creation of semantic based data feeds (think RSS). And now with the birth of Yahoo’s open search, website owners will be rewarded for producing more semantic data and suppling it to Yahoo. I expect Google has something similar in the works.
But how far out is our paradigm shift? How quickly will the bandwagon pass? Is there a bandwagon at all? The more you think about it, the more you think, “wow, this Web 3.0 is going to be pretty cool! It’ll make SEO and search in general a lot cleaner”. As I began to ponder all of these new ideas, The Oracle sent me to this other article. Stopped in my tracks.
Mr. Doctorow is right on. One of the huge problems Google et al currently face is the overabundance of garbage on the web. This must be what Berners-Lee meant in part when he said, “…make sure people aren’t using their authority to do things that they shouldn’t be doing”. Unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done. There will always be people who are trying to game the system. Website owners of the future will be creating oodles of inaccurate meta-data about their spam sites to trick your computer into pulling bogus information into your data mash-up. Can you imagine searching for a good Italian restaurant near the place you have a meeting tomorrow at noon and you’re given a map full of bogus locations all advertising male enhancement pills. No thanks.
Let’s get back to the original question quickly: does SEO die on the semantic web? I think the answer is a resounding no. In fact, an understanding of keywords, search engines, markup, and semantics will play an even bigger role as time goes on. But who knows what the real future will bring.
Alright, I’m outta here. Where I’m going I don’t need—roads. But I do need to add some quick semantic metadata to this post before signing off (*throws in another old can and a banana peel*). OK, I’m off!

boost-seo-traffic-costumer-sales

2009-02-28T21:35:00.000-08:00

Every time I launch a new website I try to come up with an overall traffic strategy, not just an SEO strategy. Why? Because traffic is where the money is! Most times, an SEO strategy will take 3-6 months to start seeing rankings and start building a considerable amount of traffic… The truth is I want money now! And I am sure that you do to!
Because search engine optimization is a long term strategy, you need to develop short term strategies as well. I use Blog & Twitter Contests to boost search engine rankings, skyrocket website traffic, grow my customer base, and increase the number of sales through my site.
To run a Blog or Twitter contest effectively, you will need to follow the steps below. I will go into each one in detail:
1.Determine a prize(s) to give away
2.Decide how people can enter the contest
3.Build awareness
4.Set rules & launch
5.End and announce the winner(s)
The very first thing that needs to happen when planning a contest is to determine a prize or multiple prizes to give away to the contestants. These prizes can be anything from free services that you or your company offers all the way to gift cards from Amazon or other businesses.
Second, you need to decide how people will enter your contest. I have run promotions requiring either a Tweet or a blog post to enter the contest. You also need to decide if you want to give away multiple entries for other things like blogging about the contest or company and linking to the company from their website.
Gaining entries into this type of a contest should have two purposes. One to promote your name or company to potential customers, and two, to help build links back to your website. Keeping these two goals in mind throughout your planning process will keep things going in the right direction.
Third, you need to figure out how to announce the contest and build interest in what you are doing. You can do this by guest blogging on industry specific blogs and announcing your contest. You can ask friends or other business contacts to talk about it on their sites. You can Tweet about it and announce it on Facebook. The options of gaining publicity are limitless, and this step is crucial if you are planning a successful contest. It may be a good idea to have frequent updates and announcements on how the contest is going. This creates more opportunities for additional contestants, customers and links.
Fourth, you need to establish a set of rules that you and contestants are going to abide by. Some details that should be included in these rules are: an established launch date, an end date, ways you can enter the contest and how/when the winner will be announced. After the rules are laid out, it is time to launch the contest!
Last, you need to end the contest when you say you will. You should then pick a winner, announce that they won, and award them the prize.
Many times, it is a good idea to follow up the contest with a blog post thanking everyone for their participation and congratulating the winners. If the contest went well and you would like to do it again in the future, you might also mention that you will run another contest in a few months and to check back for more details.
Well folks, that is how to set up and execute a blog or Twitter contest.
We are currently running a Twitter contest for one of our clients, myhosting.com. If you would like to visit their contest page and see how it was organized, please do so here.
They are giving away three web hosting packages so you can enter for that as well!

Contests can be a powerful way to grow your business. If you want to really boost customer awareness, increase your sales, and get some links back to your website, a Blog or Twitter contest just might be for you!

blackhat-seo-lie-to-me

2009-02-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

You may have heard of a new T.V. show called “Lie to Me” that has recently started airing on FOX. I have watched several episodes of the show and I really enjoy it. If you have not had a chance to watch this show here, is a quick overview of what it is about. “Lie to Me” involves several specialists who are experts at detecting if someone is lying or not. These investigators are called in to investigate all types of situations where people are suspected of lying to cover something up. “Lie to Me” stars well known actor, Tim Roth.
The reason I mention this show in my blog post is to compare this show to Blackhat SEO. Like in the show “Lie to Me”, Blackhat SEO is a way that webmasters or search marketers try to deceive or lie to the search engines. But like in “Lie to Me”, search engine algorithms have learned how to detect lying or spamming websites. The algorithms are constantly being updated to look for new patterns or signs that a website is a spam site and then remove the spam site from the search results. They are so good at detecting spam now that many current blackhat techniques are not only going to get sites banned from the search engines but it is moving towards to outright illegal – Matt Cutts, PubCon 2008.
Like in the show “Lie to Me”, the lying website or spam website is going to get caught. So it is better to not try to deceive the search engines with blackhat techniques. Use legitimate optimization and internet marketing techniques that are approved by the search engines and avoid the inevitable consequences that come from trying to manipulate search rankings through blackhat SEO.

be-wary-shady-seo-deals

2009-02-26T21:34:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you a story. Because my career finds its focus in the internet, I get asked a lot of questions about the internet in general, especially from family. Sometimes the questions are as simple as, “How can I create a family web site?” or “What’s this thing called ‘twitter’?” Others are more difficult, involving websites or promoting their latest business ventures. One relative, who went with another SEO firm for their website, asked me to review their rankings and reports (for the record, no one at this office understood computers, much less internet marketing). Being more than willing to help, I obliged. When I examined the “reports”, I was shocked. My own family was being ripped off.
Allow me to give you as much detail as possible without naming any of the involved parties. This particular SEO company operated by giving a large list of keywords to a client, and guaranteeing results on the first page of all major search engines (and even the forgotten search engines) for a certain percentage of those keywords. The SEO firm was so confident in their abilities that their contract required no payment until the client received first page rankings. Once this was achieved, the client was locked into paying fees for a full year. If you are familiar with the SEO industry, there should be a few red flags that jumped out at you with such a deal, particularly an SEO firm giving a guarantee of any sort. My relative had reached this threshhold and was now paying the fee as per the contract.
Nevertheless, I dove in to the keywords they selected for my relative’s site. At first glance, the list is rather substantial, and they all appeared to be relevant. I didn’t see any reports on traffic or searches, so I jumped onto Google’s keyword tool. Turns out the majority of the words were barely searched on at all. I researched further, looking into which keywords were actually ranking on the first page. No keyword with significant traffic was ranking. Not even one.
Just to be sure, I reviewed their analytics data. As expected, all of the keywords bringing in traffic were completely related to the name of the site. One or two other keywords brought in traffic, but it looked like a site with absolutely no SEO work completed. The frustrating part was this company claimed everything looked great, and the website optimization was showing success. Who would consider ranking for keywords that don’t bring in ANY traffic successful?
I kept researching. I asked who chose the keywords, thinking maybe the firm didn’t actually suggest the words. Nope. A few keywords were suggested, but the firm generated most of the list.
If you’re reading this post, wondering what the big deal is, let me refer to a post from Dave a few months back. His post brings to light the fact that ranking reports are losing their significance with search engine advances and that traffic should be the ultimate sign of progress. My relative’s website was receiving a grand total of approximately 10-20 visits daily. That is certainly not worth the cost of an SEO firm for a year.
To finish the story, my relative contacted the company with the information I had provided, and is now focusing on specific keywords that should be ranking. Even still, the sting of learning how their online marketing has been handled has caused my family member to consider switching firms, using SEO.com as their primary SEO company. However, with the year long contract in place, they are trapped between a rock and a hard place, with no traffic to show for it.
Be careful when you select an SEO firm. Google has some great tips and advice regarding what to look for. I would add to their recommendations by learning as much SEO as possible. Understand what your firm is doing, and why it’s effective in bringing you more traffic and business. Make sure you are receiving beneficial reports with real data and request access to all your own accounts and information, such as websites, analtyics, PPC, etc.

Aspek Utama Penunjang SERP

2009-02-26T18:18:00.000-08:00

Terlalu lama absen dari kontes SEO ternyata cukup merugikan, sebab, seperti yang pernah saya singgung pada posting sebelumnya, ada banyak sekali tehnik lama yang jika dipake untuk kontes sekarang ini tak lagi memberikan kontribusi yang cukup besar. Sebagai contoh adalah blog commenting yg membabi buta tanpa memikirkan korelasi target dengan keyword. Coba ingat tehnik ini di masa lalu, sangat powerful bukan? Tetapi untuk masa sekarang, setidaknya menurut opini saya pribadi, kekuatanya sudah jauh berkurang. Lalu, yang menjadi pertanyaan, apa saja aspek utama penunjang bagus tidaknya SERP di mesin pencari? Jelas ada berbagai macam hal, namun lagi-lagi menurut pemikiran saya, domain, hosting, konten dan backlink berkwalitas adalah kuncinya. Entah kawan-kawan setuju atau tidak dengan pendapat tersebut, namun itulah hasil pengamatan saya sebulan terakhir ini.

Memang, aspek utama penunjang SERP diatas sepertinya hanya 4 point. Tapi jika mau mengupasnya satu persatu, pastilah ada banyak sekali sub point yang tersisa. Jadi tugasnya sekarang adalah, menganalisa sub point mana saja yg memiliki peranan penting sebagai faktor penunjang posisi kita di SERP. Sebagai eksperimen, belakangan ini saya mencoba mengoptimasi kata kunci kenali dan kunjungi objek wisata di pandeglang dari subdomain kopaj44.web44.net, dan sampai tulisan ini saya buat, posisinya masih tertahan di peringkat 7. Tetapi, disini bukan soal pencapaian ini yang ingin saya sampaikan, melainkan tehnik apa saja yg saya gunakan hingga mencapai posisi itu.

Seperti kawan semua bisa cek pada entry kenali dan kunjungi objek wisata di pandeglang tersebut, jumlah backlink nya adalah tidak seberapa jika dibanding dengan peserta lain, baik itu yg masuk ke posting maupun homepage. Ditambah lagi, blog tersebut tidak terawat dan juga jarang sekali diupdate. Namun, mengapa sejauh ini masih bisa bersaing? Didasarkan pada 4 aspek utama penunjang SERP datas, analisa saya adalah:

1. Domain, dimana dalam kasus ini adalah sub domain.

Meski hanya subdomain dari extensi dot net, umurnya blog tersebut sudah cukup lama, yakni lebih dari setahun.
2. Hosting

Walau itu adalah hosting USA gratis dari 000webhost, tetapi harus diakui jika kwalitasnya lumayan bagus untuk urusan SEO, sebab banyak dari SEOs yg saya temui juga memakai hosting gratisan tersebut dengan hasil yg tidak mengecewakan.
3. Konten

Unik konten dan konten yang nyambung dengan topik. Walau tulisanya amburadul, saya sangat yakin bahwa tulisan itu sudah nyambung dan juga unik karena saya sendiripun bingung untuk memahaminya wekekeke…, dan untuk yang terakhir
4. Backlink

Dengan semaksimal mungkin, saya hanya mencari backlink yg minimal menggunakan 1 bahasa, berlainan IP dengan target, memiliki kemiripan niche, dan punya pagerank. Pencarian backlink secara frontal seperti jaman KDPI2009 dulu sengaja saya hindari karena efektifitasnya sudah jauh berkurang.

Tentu, jika ingin mendapat hasil maksimal, kondisi saya diatas masih sangat tidak menguntungkan. Sebab, untuk urusan hosting, sudah mentok tidak bisa bisa dipindah ke IIX (hosting lokal) karena embedded dengan subdomain yg juga gratisan dari sana. Selain itu, extensi dot net tempat kopaja bernaung, juga tak bisa diganggu gugat. Jadi, bayangkan jika 4 aspek utama penunjang SERP diatas bisa terpenuhi semua, sungguh luar biasa bukan?

Okeh, ini hanya berdasar pengalaman pribadi saya saja, jika ada master seo atau konsultan seo yg merasa keberatan, monggo dikoreksi. Thank you.

PS: Saya sengaja mengoptimasi kopaja bukan untuk sok2an atau untuk mencari alibi jika akhirnya nanti kalah. Ini murni demi pembelajaran bagi saya sendiri. Harap maklum. :)

basics-of-search-engine-optimalization

2009-02-25T21:33:00.000-08:00

Having been in this industry for many years now I have learned that the internet marketing industry is always changing and it is virtually impossible to know everything about search engine optimization (SEO). Technology is always advancing, search engines are always updating their algorithms and an SEO specialist has to constantly being studying to stay on top of the changes.
One thing that seems to stay constant in this ever changing industry is the basics of site optimization. By basics I am talking about the same things that were part of SEO over four years ago and still are today. These things can be separated into two categories; On-Site Optimization and Off-Site Optimization.
On-Site Optimization:
On-site optimization is exactly that, it is the process of optimizing site layout and site content to target specific search terms for improved search engine rankings. This process involves placing targeted search terms in specific places on the pages of the website in order for search engine spiders to crawl and rank the page for those targeted search terms. These places include…
The page title or title tag
In the Meta Description tag
In the Page heading and sub headings using H1, H2, H3 tag
In the body content of the page
In Alt attributes of images
In the Anchor Text of any links that point to that page
From my own experience I have found that when targeted search terms are located in these areas the web page will generally see improved rankings in the searches for the targeted search terms.
On-site optimization also involves making sure the site structure and navigation is search engine friendly. This means that every page on the site is going to be able to be crawled by a search engine spider and be able to be indexed by the search engines. To do this the site needs to keep all pages less than 3 pages deep. So if I was navigating the site I should not have to click more than 2 links to find any page inside the website. Every page should also be able to be reached through an html text link. This is so that spiders can reach every page of the site since spiders cannot always crawl fancy buttons and flash links. On larger websites the use of a sitemap can be very helpful in making sure that all pages can be crawled and indexed by search engine spiders.
Off-Site Optimization:
Off-site optimization is the process of building up the link popularity of a site by getting other sites to link to it. Inbound links have a big role in how well a site is indexed and how well it ranks in the search engines. Inbound links allow for search engine bots to find the site, index its pages and rank it. Bots use the anchor text of inbound links to help determine what search terms the site should be ranking for. Below, I have listed a few ways to get inbound links…
Web Directories – Submit to both paid and free directories.
Reciprocal Links – Exchange links with sites that offer relevant content.
Articles – Write articles about products or services offered on the website and submit the articles to various article publishing sites on the web. Be sure to include a link to the product or service on your site.
Press Releases (PR) – Similar to writing articles. Press releases can be submitted to places like PRweb and PRleap. They then can be picked up by other news sites including Google news and Yahoo.
Remember that inbound links should be from sites that contain relevant content. Always look at the quality of the site before exchanging links.

Blogger Sitemap Sitemap Generator Solutions Submit Your Blog

2009-02-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

One way that your blog posts quickly lookups by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing is by sending your blog address sitemap. Kang Rohman first ever explained how to submit your blogger sitemap to google webmaster is on a post titled Google Sitemaps list. In the post explained that in order to submit a sitemap of your blog in blogger or blogspot is just to add atom.xml code at the end of your address, for example Kang Rohman blog address is as follows:

http://kolom-tutorial.blogspot.com

So sitemap address for registration to be like this:

http://kolom-tutorial.blogspot.com/atom.xml

If you use the service and then you switch feedburner feed address to the address provided by feed feedburner, then there will be a warning that you submit a sitemap has errors, the solution appears to be no error warning is to add the code. Suppose that experienced sitemap error is as follows:

http://kolom-tutorial.blogspot.com/atom.xml

So in order not to get an error message dar google webmaster tools submitted feeds address plus the added code? Redirect = false at the end of the feed address, for example:

http://kolom-tutorial.blogspot.com/atom.xml/atom.xml?redirect=false

Error message will usually missing or in other words been solved, but there is one other problem that is usually owned by the bloggers who use the machines is a blogger or blogspot URL lookups by google only slightly, although the posts have already reached the hundreds. Example of one of Kang Rohman http://blogtemplate4u.com blog has had 121 posts, but in the existing data on webmater, the URL is indexed by 20.

sitemap

This question is a question often asked by the bloggers who use blogspot machine. Are you including those having this problem? If so, you please try this way.

The way to overcome errors in gogle webmaster sitemap is to use Blogger Sitemap Generator. By using our Blogger Sitemap Generator can create a sitemap for our blog and proved able to overcome his problems do not post our lookups.

My sitemap

Here's how to use Blogger Sitemap Generator:

1. Please visit http://digitalinspiration.com/tools/blogger/sitemap/index.php
2.

Input your blog address in the fields, do not forget to write the complete address of your blog (eg: http://kolom-tutorial.blogspot.com/), then click the Create button Blogger Sitemap.

blogger sitemap generator
3.

Note the sitemap addresses that have been created or copy and paste in notepad or another, for example:

atom.xml? redirect = false & start-index = 1 & max-results = 500

submit-sitemap

4. Click the links to make the ping to Bing and Yahoo.

To you who have more than 500 postings, the address must be submitted a sitemap which is more than one sitemap address, for example:

* Atom.xml? Redirect = false & start-index = 1 & max-results = 500
* Atom.xml? Redirect = false & start-index = 501 & max-results = 500

For the next step, please log in to google webmaster tools sitemap to submit addresses that have been made earlier. If you do not have a google account, please list here first. The following steps more details:

1. Once you are on the dashboard google webmaster tools, please go blog where you'd like to submit sitemapnya.
2. Click on Site Configuration

site configuration
3. Click the Site Map (if English is the Sitemap)

site map
4. Click the Submit button Site Map (bahasa: Submit Sitemap). Copy and paste this address in the sitemap is created in blogger sitemap generator (atom.xml? Redirect = false & start-index = 1 & max-results = 500), then click the Send button Site Map. For a blog post that has more than 500, please submit a sitemap return address and the next second.

send site map
5. Delivery Process or Submit Sitemap Sitemap been completed. Usually the new sitemap to be indexed by google you take up one day, please check back tomorrow if you just sitemap submit it has indexed or not.

Hopefully this way to make your blog sitemap faster in the index by google, and hopefully your blog visitors can be more increased from search engines.

Good luck!

Pengaruh Geo Targeted Hosting Terhadap SERP

2009-02-23T18:19:00.000-08:00

Sejenak melakukan analisa terhadap kontes SDSA yang masih berlangsung, akhirnya bisa disimpulkan jika sampai saat ini, Geo Targeted hosting masih memiliki pengaruh yang besar terhadap SERP. Seperti kawan semua bisa lihat, pemuncak klasemen dan juga mayoritas blog yg berada di halaman pertama kontes SDSA adalah mereka yang menggunakan hosting lokal. Memang, ada sebagian seperti kerjakeras.com, bos Benny dan Mas Albri yg tetap exist walau menggunakan hosting US. Hanya saja, dengan situasi ini, tanpa mengurangi rasa hormat, jelas peserta pengguna geo targeted hosting atau hosting yg sesuai dengan target lokasi dimana dalam kasus ini adalah hosting IIX (lokal), akan memiliki peluang lebih besar di banding yg lain.

Mengingat pengaruh geo targeted hosting terhadap SERP masih cukup besar, mungkin bagi teman-teman yg masih berkeinginan menaikkan posisi stop dreaming start action ataupun kenali dan kunjungi objek wisata di Pandeglang boleh mencoba cara ini. Namun demikian, meski sudah menggunakan geo targeted hosting, jangan lupa untuk mengimbanginya dengan geo targeted backlink. Sebab, menurut opini pribadi saya, kedua hal tersebut masih sangat berkaitan walau entah mana yang paling berpengaruh untuk menentukan SERP. Sementara untuk prakteknya, semua dah pada punya trik sendiri bukan? So, good luck dan semoga selalu menang dalam setiap kompetisi keyword, baik dalam kontes SEO ataupun dalam keyword harian. :mrgre

i-wish-dmoz-was-like

2009-02-21T21:30:00.000-08:00

If you can guess what the following terms all have in common, I’ll give you $25 via Paypal, no questions asked. Just leave your comment at the end of this post. This is not open to current employees of SEO.com. Here they go:
SEO, Jobs, Careers, Linkbuilding (I’ll tell you the answer in my next blog post, which will be a humdinger)
My post is actually about DMOZ, and the things I wished that they did differently.
First of all, I wish DMOZ was a paid listing site. Why? For the mere fact that if they required payment, then in return, they would be required to at least have a little bit of customer service. I would either get a ‘Yes, your site is accepted’ or a ‘No, your site sucks and sells Viagra’. Right now, you get nothing from these guys in terms of a response.
Secondly, I wish DMOZ wasn’t so hyped up by everyone and their dog. Yes, DMOZ would be the bees knees and the cat’s meow in anyone’s review of free directories. But as a source of authority and link value, there are hundreds of other free sites that provide the same, or more, authority and link value. Also, Google really shouldn’t use your DMOZ listing title as the title of your site in search results pages. That’s just plain wrong.
Thirdly, if DMOZ stays in their ‘free directory’ model, then they should really either accept more editors, or kick their current editors in the face. I mean honestly, I don’t know how many legitimate sites I’ve submitted to DMOZ, only to sit and twiddle my thumbs and 6 months later, still no listing. I don’t know what the review process is for sites to be accepted, but I’ve got to imagine they get tons of submissions every day, and the editors have to really stay on top of those sites. I currently run a few directories that get multiple submissions every day, and it takes about 5 seconds to tell if a site is relevant to the category it was submitted to, and if it’s spammy or not.
Fourthly, I wish DMOZ would come out with the definitive guide to getting listed in their directory. Specific things such as ‘When submitting, record yourself licking your nose while singing the National anthem, and upload to Youtube, then you’re guaranteed to get in (oh, and no Viagra)’. It would probably save the editors time if they just wrote down all the guidelines, and then went through the checklist, and deleted all the sites that didn’t meet the criteria. For you Naysayers claiming, ‘The current guidelines of DMOZ are fine’. Well I disagree. If they’re just fine, then why don’t all my sites get accepted? They all meet the current criteria.
Fifthly, if you’re actually looking for SEO, Jobs, Careers, or Linkbuilding, just click on the respective links I just used.
Lastly, if you would like to join in the effort to help DMOZ become better, you can send me an email at dmoz-could-get-better@seo.com, and I won’t respond to you, or even let you know that you matter at all, because I’m an editor at magic-seo.blogspot.com, the greatest site in the world.
Honestly, if this blog post does happen to elicit a response from anyone at DMOZ, then I think the world would be a better place. We’ll see what happens. And I will continue to submit my clients’ sites to DMOZ because hey, why not?

Tips SEO Paling Berhasil

2009-02-12T18:20:00.000-08:00

Banyak rekan blogger yang mencari cara menaikkan peringkat pada Seach Engine atau paling tidak, masuk kedalam list pencarian Search Engine. Berbagai Tips SEO (Search Engine Optimization) dicoba. Berbagai petunjuk cespleng telah dilakukan. Kadang, berbagai proses improvement ini justru melupakan satu hal mendasar, yaitu perbanyak content blog anda.

Tips SEO tidak ada masalah dicoba dan dijalankan, namun, tanpa isi blog yang variatif, tips SEO semanjur apapun akan berkurang khasiatnya. Bagi rekan-rekan yang baru memulai membuat blog atau mencari cara terindeks oleh Search Engine, cobalah perbanyak isi blog.

Jangan bebani dulu dengan membuat blog yang berkonsentrasi pada satu niche market. Pada spesialisasi tertentu. Spesialisasi atau konsentrasi pada niche market memang bagus, namun, jika tidak terbiasa menulis, hal ini justru bisa membebani kegiatan menulis isi blog.

Tulis saja apa yang ingin anda tulis, meski itu sepertinya narsis dan terasa 'sangat pemula'.

Rekan-rekan yang menyempatkan diri melihat catatan pengunjung blog kadang menemukan data bahwa pengunjung belum tentu datang karena isi yang khusus melainkan karena isi yang selintas saja. Banyak rekan yang blognya dikunjungi hanya karena pernah ada satu posting tentang MP3. Ada juga yang dikunjungi karena pernah menulis tips anti virus. Blog saya sendiri pernah dikunjungi melalui search engine dengan key "poligami" padahal artikel tentang poligami hanya 1 posting dan itupun berupa humor. Beberapa pengunjung malah datang dengan kata kunci pencarian "ikan air tawar" hanya karena ada entry tentang ikan air tawar raksasa di blog saya :-).

Yang lebih aneh, ada pengunjung blog saya yang datang dari seach engine dengan kata kunci "skripsi kasus kecelakaan lalulintas". Saya tidak pernah menulis tentang kecelakaan lalulintas kok. Kemungkinan besar pengunjung datang karena kata kunci "skripsi"-nya.

Jadi, sebelum melakukan teknik SEO yang canggih, lakukan dulu hal mendasar dari SEO, yaitu membuat isi blog yang variatif. Jika blog anda hanya berisi puluhan atau bahkan belasan artikel saja, Search Engine tentu cepat bosan dan malas untuk datang, apalagi kalau posting yang ada justru copy paste dari blog atau website lain...

Mempercantik SEO Dengan Sentuhan CSS

2009-02-02T18:19:00.000-08:00

Pekerjaan untuk mengoptimasi keywords atau yg biasa kita kenal dengan SEO memang cukup menarik. Sayangnya, terkadang jika kita terlalu over melakukan semua optimasi tadi, kita sampai lupa dengan kenyamanan para pembaca atau pengunjung. Ada beberapa kasus dimana seorang blogger menggunakan BOLD, STRONG, EM dan ITALIC secara berlebihan pada keyword yang di bidik, termasuk saya sendiri. Akibatnya, para pengunjung akan merasa cukup terganggu dengan pengoptimasian seperti itu tadi. Untuk menghindari hal tersebut tanpa harus melupakan optimasi SEO yang kita buat, sebenarnya kita bisa mempercantik SEO dengan sentuhan CSS yang sederhana.

Maka dari itu, kali ini perkenankan saya berbagi tips cara mempercantik SEO dengan sentuhan CSS supaya tetap SEO friendly dan juga visitor friendly. Langkah yang perlu dilakukan untuk mempercantik tampilan artikel yang kita buat adalah sebagai berikut.

1. Buka style.css dari theme anda.
2. Tambahkan kode css di bawah ini dimana saja, atau jika memungkinkan, masukkan di sekitar .post.

.post em, u, b, strong {
font-style: normal;
text-decoration: none;
font-weight: normal;
}
3. Save style.css anda dan selesai.

Setelah itu, lihat apa hasil dari penambahan kode di atas, saya yakin semua keywords yang di buat BOLD, STRONG, EM dan ITALIC akan terlihat seperti tulisan normal. Dengan tehnik mempercantik seperti ini, di jamin usaha SEO kita tetap jalan, namun kenyamanan pembaca pun tetap terjaga.

Oh iya, cara di atas berlaku untuk para pengguna wordpress. Bagi para pengguna blogspot, bisa saja menggunakan cara itu, namun tidak semua template bisa match dengan kode di atas. Silahkan di oprek sendiri-sendiri :mrgreen:

Akhir kata, semoga bermanfaat dan saya ucapkan selamat berjuang bagi para peserta Rusli Zainal Sang Visioner maupun kontes Mengembalikan Jati Diri Bangsa, walau saya ndak ikutan kompetisi tersebut, tapi saya tetap mengikuti perkembanganya kok xixixi… :lol: