flyunity.net » SEO

10 Search Engine Strategies

gooddevi — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:27:36 +0000

While I’m not breaking any new ground here, I’ve tried to summarize some of the most important techniques.

10 Search Engine Strategies

Perhaps the most important — and inexpensive — strategy is to rank high for your preferred keywords on the main search engines in “organic” or “natural” searches (as opposed to paid ads). Search engines send robot “spiders” to index the content of your webpage, so let’s begin with steps to prepare your webpages for optimal indexing. The idea here is not to trick the search engines, but to leave them abundant clues as to what your webpage is about. This approach is called “search engine optimization,” abbreviated as SEO.

1. Write a Keyword-Rich Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page — rich in keywords you want people to find you with — using 5 to 8 words. Remove as many “filler” words from the title (such as “the,” “and,” etc.) as possible, while still making it readable. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the tags, in this format: Web Marketing Checklist — 37 Ways to Promote Your Website. (It also shows on the blue bar at the top of your web browser.)

Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in silver bullets and that’s what people will be searching for, don’t just use your company name “Acme Ammunition, Inc.,” use “Silver and Platinum Bullets — Acme Ammunition, Inc.” The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called “keyword prominence”). Remember, this title is your identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.

2. Write a Description META Tag. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title in the search results. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. Don’t include keywords that don’t appear on the webpage. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags, in this format:

The maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.

When I prepare a webpage, I write the article first, then develop a keyword-rich title (#1 above). Then I write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag.

Next, I strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty keywords and phrases and insert those into the keywords META tag. It’s no longer used much for ranking, but I’m leaving it in anyway. I think it may have some minor value. So to summarize so far, every webpage in your site should have a distinct title and META description tag. If you implement these two points, you’re well on your way to better search engine ranking. But there’s more that will help your ranking….

3. Include Your Keywords in Headers (H1, H2, H3). Search engines consider keywords that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don’t expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines — it won’t. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That’s a big mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)

4. Position Your Keywords in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document — where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don’t want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don’t overdo it.

5. Include Descriptive Keywords in the ALT Attribute of Image Tags. This helps your site be more accessible to site-impaired visitors(www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/glance/) and gives additional clues to the search engines. The ALT attributes do help get your images ranked higher for image search (see #12 below).

6. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your webpage. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm — another clue for the search engine.

7. Make Your Navigation System Search Engine Friendly. You want search engine robots to find all the pages in your site. JavaScript and Flash navigation menus that appear when you hover are great for humans, but search engines don’t read JavaScript and Flash very well. Therefore, supplement JavaScript and Flash menus with regular HTML links at the bottom of the page, ensuring that a chain of hyperlinks exists that take a search engine spider from your home page to every page in your site. Don’t set up your navigation system using HTML frames (an old, out-dated approach); they can cause severe indexing problems.

Some content management systems and e-commerce catalogs produce dynamic, made-on-the-fly webpages, often recognizable by question marks in the URLs followed by long strings of numbers or letters. Overworked search engines sometimes have trouble parsing long URLs and may stop at the question mark, refusing to go farther. If you find the search engines aren’t indexing your interior pages, you might consider URL rewriting, a site map, or commercial solutions.

8. Create a Site Map. A site map page with links to all your pages can help search engines (and visitors) find all your pages, particularly if you have a larger site. You can use a free tools, XML-Sitemaps.com(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/xml-sitemaps.htm) to create XML sitemaps that are used by the major search engines to index your webpages accurately. Upload your sitemap to your website. Then submit your XML sitemap to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing (formerly MSN), following instructions on their sites. By the way, Google Webmaster Central(www.google.com/webmasters/) has lots of tools to help you get ranked higher. Be sure to set up a free account and explore what they have to offer.

9. Develop Webpages Focused on Each Your Target Keywords. SEO specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a target keyword or keyphrase for which you would like a high ranking. Let’s say you sell teddy bears. Use Google Insights for Search (www.google.com/insights/search/) or the free keyword suggestion tool on Wordtracker(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/wordtracker.htm) to find the related keywords people search on. In this case: write a separate webpage featuring the keyword “teddy bear,” “teddy bears,” “vermont teddy bears,” “vermont bears,” “the teddy bears,” teddy bears picnic,” “teddy bears pictures,” etc. You’ll write a completely different article on each topic. You can’t fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but for each of these focused-content webpages, spend lots of time tweaking to improve its ranking, as described in point #10.

10. Fine-tune with Careful Search Engine Optimization. Now fine-tune your focused-content pages and perhaps your home page, by making a series of minor adjustments to help them rank higher. Software such as WebPosition(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/webposition.htm) allows you to check your current ranking and compare your webpages against your top keyword competitors. I use it regularly. WebPosition’s Page Critic tool provides analysis of a search engine’s preferred statistics for each part of your webpage, with specific recommendations of what minor changes to make. The best set of SEO tools is Bruce Clay’s SEOToolSet(www.wilsonweb.com/afd/clay_seotoolset.htm). If you want more detailed information, consider purchasing my inexpensive book Guide to Search Engine Optimization (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/seo.htm). You can find links to many SEO articles (www.wilsonweb.com/seo/) on my site and even more in our Research Room(www.wilsonweb.com/search/cat.php?querytype=category&subcat=mp_Search).

Frankly, this kind of SEO fine-tuning is time-consuming, painstaking work that takes a lot of specialized knowledge. For this reason, many small and large businesses outsource search engine optimization.

Technorati Tags: keywords term, search-engine, SEO

Yahoo And Google Sitemaps – May Be They Or Are Certainly Not They Lucrative Search Engine Ranking Tools?

gooddevi — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 02:19:02 +0000

Google has had a element out for some time which makes it possible for webmasters to produce a sitemap file to assist Google’s crawlers find and index content material.

It sounds like a wonderful notion. In the end, it is significantly less complicated to feed the crawler the content then hope it finds it on it’s very own.

But is often a The search engines sitemap worthwhile? Is it even necessary?

When the Yahoo and google Sitemap program initial began my thought was “That’s kinda cool but what’s the true advantage?”

So, I thought I’d try it out and submit sitemaps for a couple of wpsplittester websites that I own.

When Yahoo Sitemaps initial came out it was extremely difficult to figure out what all of the entries meant as well as the way to in fact produce the sitemap.

Certain, it was XML based, and I could plainly see what they expected but when you have a significant web site, how do you go about generating this?

Then Yahoo arrived out with http://www.yahoo.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/sitemap-generator.html, a sitemap generator which can be a software intended to help you you create a sitemap for your website. This does guide speed up the method but unless you happen to be a developer it is a small challenging to implement.

Also, you will need access to your server to run the script necessary to produce the sitemap. If you are unsure you should check with your web host to determine if you’ve got terminal access to execute Python scripts.

Personally, I’ve by no means tried the Yahoo and google Sitemapper tool but I’ve utilized others. For instance, on my private website which uses Moveable Type, I found a website post which exhibits The best way to assemble a Movable Type The search engines sitemap template http://www.niallkennedy.com/blog/archives/2005/06/google_sitemaps.html. And I’ve used Xenu and an Excel spreadsheet http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=199253 which operates excellent likewise.

Now that the sitemap creation is covered, let’s get to the question at hand. Is usually a Yahoo and google sitemap actually well worth the work?

A few months ago I would have stated no, but lately Yahoo and google has been adding functions that make me feel otherwise.

For illustration, if you’ve gone via the verification method (which can be actually just placing a blank HTML file about the web site and having Google obtain it) and ensured your 404 errors are appropriately configured you possibly can get access to a wealth of further intel.

1 such element is the “Top Look for Queries.” This tells you which queries were used when your pages appeared from the search results but might not have been clicked on.

Quite simply, these are actual searcher queries that were performed on The search engines wherever your internet site may have appeared but not had click-through’s.

From a keyword research point of view, this can be a huge advantage to you. By monitoring your sitemap stats it is possible to quickly see some of the conditions WPSplitTeser folks are utilizing and perhaps ascertain what it is advisable to do to rank higher for those conditions so you as well could possibly get the clicks that your competitors are receiving.

If you ever don’t have prepared having access to log analysis or other stats, the Yahoo sitemap can also tell you what terms in fact drove site visitors to your website.

Quite simply, these have been searches carried out on Yahoo and google that basically created clicks for your website.

There’s also a wealth of other information. For illustration, “Crawl Stats” shows you how Googlebot sees your website, mistakes produced by it, and also a PageRank distribution chart detailing how properly PageRank is distributed.

So, if you are like me and wondering if a Yahoo sitemap is really worth it I’d say yes, it can be. The facts supplied, though mostly technical, can enable you to troubleshoot problems as well as produce ideas to assist you improve your positioning.

Technorati Tags: SEO, website seo

How To Perform Successful Long Tail Keyword Research

gooddevi — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 00:47:48 +0000

In order to reap solid results from your endeavors in online marketing, keyword research proves to be supremely essential. There are lots of different ways to get traffic to your website, but if you overlook the importance of good keyword research, your campaign will never get off the ground. Every campaign for online marketing is fueled by this critical aspect. In order to get the full benefits, you need to select a niche that you want to target.

After determining your segment that you will focus on, then you should move on to the beginning stages of research. You’ll have to use a reliable keyword research tool for this purpose. While Google Adwords Keyword Research is an excellent tool for this, you might want to take look beyond that option. Adwords will provide a plethora of specific keywords for you, however it will not provide the increased specialization that you need to rise above the competition; a program like Micro Niche Finder can provide this for you. These tools are designed to give you keywords that you won’t find elsewhere. By using the keyword list and cross-referencing the data related to competing websites that also utilize similar keywords, you will get essential information that you can use in your campaign. You’ll have a good idea about what it will take to rank your site for your chosen keywords and if it would be possible to get on the first page of Google.Steve Clayton

Having selected a good niche is important when using keyword research tools to determine which keywords to use. The effectiveness of your keyword capture is determined by the refinement of the niche you select. Then comes the researching, which is the most important part of it all. In order to make sure your keyword research is done properly, you have to keep in mind that the people searching for these keywords have to be relevant to your market. When you choose the wrong long tail keywords, you will find that your product will not be found by your targeted audience. Many people make the mistake of going after a keyword that is long tail but doesn’t have a high search volume. So make sure that all your research is based on the idea of finding keywords that are searched by many people and have less competition. Keep this in focus: the phrase long tail keywords is synonymous with “buying keywords.”

The idea with keyword research is that you want to the find the specific keywords that you potential customers are using when they are interested in purchasing items that you offer. Use your keyword research program to run the list of keywords that you gathered from Google; from here, you will be able to generate increasingly exclusive keywords. Soon enough, you will see that these keywords are pure gold. Through the use of long tail keywords, you are targeting a market of individuals who are quite sure of what it is that they are looking for. These individuals have already decided what they will purchase, and are prepared to buy it right now. The key is to siphon out all of the superfluous keywords and retain only the essential ones. Online marketers have used this method for years to reach their potential customers and it continues to work.search engine rankings

The above given steps are the most important ones when trying to find long tail keywords. Any online business can receive immense benefits by gaining knowledge about how long tail keywords can increase your company’s success. Search engine experts agree that the best way to succeed online is to find and embrace your niche, and then aim your marketing to that customer base. Now that you have a clear idea about how to effectively research these keywords, all you need to do is take some rapid action and see strong results.

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Technorati Tags: SEO, website seo

flyunity.net » SEO

10 Search Engine Strategies

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