Internet Marketing Optimization | SEO Expert

11 Best Practices for URLs

I could have sworn that someone has already a great post or forum thread on this topic, but I can’t seem to find it (no matter how advanced my operators). I’m sure Mr. Malicoat has it in his bookmarks, but since blog posts are one of my personal systems for public bookmarking, here goes.

Eleven Guidelines to Successful URLs

1. Describe Your Content
   An obvious URL is a great URL. If a user can look at the Address bar (or a pasted link) and make an accurate guess about the content of the page before ever reaching it, you’ve done your job. These URLs get pasted, shared, emailed, written down, and yes, even recognized by the engines.
2. Keep it Short
   Remember always; brevity is a virtue. The shorter the URL, the easier to copy & paste, read over the phone, write on a business card, or use in a hundred other unorthodox fashions, all of which spell better usability & increased branding.
3. Static is the Way & the Light
   Not to bring religion into this, but I can tell you with certainty that some of the engines absolutely DO treat static URLs differently than dynamic ones. And no human likes a URL where the big players are “?,” “&,” and “=.”
4. Descriptives are Better than Numbers
   If you’re thinking of using 114/cat223/, go with /brand/adidas/ instead. Even if the descriptive isn’t a keyword or particularly informative to an uninitiated user, it’s far better to use words when possible. If nothing else, your team members will thank you for making it that much easier to ID problems in development and testing.
5. Keywords Never Hurt
   If you know that you’re going to be targeting a lot of competitive keyword phrases on your website for search traffic, you’ll want every advantage you can get. Keywords are certainly one element of that strategy, so take the list from marketing, map it to the proper pages, and get to work. For dynamically created pages through a CMS, create the option of including keywords in the URL.
6. Subdomains Aren’t the Answer
   First off, never use multiple subdomains (e.g., siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) – it’s unnecessarily complex and lengthy. Secondly, consider that subdomains have the potential to be treated separately from the primary domain when it comes to passing link and trust value. In most cases where just a few subdomains are used and there’s good interlinking, it won’t hurt, but I wouldn’t take the chance. To me, the benefits derived from reputation management (by flooding the SERPs with your subdomains) are minimal compared to the potential loss of link/trust juice. I also think that subdomain takeovers of SERPs is not something the search engines see as beneficial to their users and may shut down at any point. Luckily, if you’re doing it now, you can always 301 to the main domain.
7. Fewer Folders
   A URL should contain no unnecessary folders (or words or characters for that matter), for the same reason that a man’s pants should contain no unnecessary pleats. The extra fabric is useless and will reduce his likelihood of impressing potential mates.
8. Hyphens Separate Best
   When creating URLs with multiple words in the format of a phrase, hyphens are best to separate the terms (e.g. /brands/dolce-and-gabbana/), followed (in order) by, underscores (_), pluses (+) and nothing.
9. Stick with Conventions
   If your site uses a single format throughout, don’t consider making one section unique. Stick to your URL guidelines once established, so users (and future developers) will have a clear idea of how content is organized into folders and pages. This can apply globally as well for sites that share platforms, brands, etc. Re-inventing the wheel in situations where reliance on convention makes everyone’s tasks easier is folly.
10. Don’t be Case Sensitive
    Since URLs can accept both uppercase and lowercase characters, don’t ever, ever allow any uppercase letters in your structure. If you have them now, 301 them to all-lowercase versions to help avoid confusion. If you have a lot of type-in traffic, you might even consider a 301 rule that sends any incorrect capitalization permutation to its rightful home.
11. Don’t Append Extraneous Data
    There’s no point to having a URL exist in which removing characters generates the same content. You can be virtually assured that people on the web will figure it out, link to you in different fashions, confuse themselves, their readers and the search engines (with duplicate content issues), and then complain about it.

Example Time
The following are some grievously heinous violators of the guidelines above:

• http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-9912342-3046240?_encoding=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B000FN0KWA

Target (who’s powered by Amazon) doesn’t describe their content, use keywords, or keep it short. That and the horrifyingly useless data that can be removed from the URL without changing the content make this URL downright ugly.

• http://etsy.com/view_item.php?listing_id=477443&pic_id=2

Despite being one of my favorite sites, Etsy’s URLs provide no descriptive information, use multiple dynamic parameters and separate breaks with underscores.

• http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=98115&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1&iwloc=A

Google should be ashamed – their guidelines for URLs practically set the town for the recommendations, but their maps feature is almost unusable due to inefficient, bloated URLs (when they must know that millions want to copy those URLs into emails)

These few below are doing a considerably better job, but could still go the extra mile:

• http://men.style.com/news/gadgets/092006

It’s almost there, and one could almost argue that the subdomain use here is justified for branding purposes. It is too bad they gave us so much data, but then cut out keywords and descriptives right at the end

• http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1

Nasa has uselessly appended dynamic parameters onto the page, and added /home/index.html for no logical reason

• http://www.newyorkmetro.com/fashion/fashionshows/2007/spring/ main/newyork/womenrunway/marcjacobs/

They’re trying to be descriptive, which is great, but not separating words and going 7 folders deep is really pushing it.

These last examples have done nearly everything right:

• http://www.wahidqazi.com/seo-help/

Brilliant – it’s short, descriptive, static and obvious.

• http://blog.wahidqazi.com/11-best-practices-for-urls/

Despite the subdomain, everything else is near perfect.

• http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html

I’m letting the White House off the hook for not using “john-kennedy” as the page title, because they’ve wisely also provided his number (the US’ 35th President).

URLs seem like one of the most simplistic parts of SEO, but I find myself returning to this issue with nearly every client. Hopefully these guidelines can help a few folks make use of best practices before it becomes an issue down the road.

Revenge of the Meta-Tag!

Many people in SEO groan at the thought of meta-tags.

After all, meta-tags for ranking is dead for SEO, isn’t it?

Not quite.

In fact, meta-tags have begun a startling revival.

A couple of key points about why you should consider taking meta-tags more seriously:

1. Google duplicate content filters

Google has had real problems this year in determining what may or may not be duplicate content.

Sites with generic, or absence of, meta-description tags, may find themselves going supplemental, or simply not showing properly for their content.

Heck, even well-known sites such as SEOmoz and Threadwatch may have issues here.

Going supplemental is an invitation to traffic loss, so take pre-emptive action by setting up unique meta-description tags on your pages.

2. Clickthrough rates

There’s no point ranking for good keywords if the description under your search engine listing sucks.

Absense of a meta-description at best leaves search engines looking for a random sampling of text that may be relevant.

Why leave it to chance?

Increase your clickthrough rates from listings by actually better controlling the text with the listing by setting up unique meta-descriptions tags for your pages.

And try to ensure you include a marketing hook very quickly in the description tag.

If you are ranking, tell search engine users why your page is so relevant for their query.

3. Ranking

Google doesn’t appear to use meta-keywords to rank webpages/sites.

But Yahoo! does.

Yahoo! still commands a respectable 30% of US search traffic, and even where the market share is really small (such as the UK), strong Yahoo! rankings can still prove very cost-effective.

So add some spice for Yahoo! Search by focusing on your meta-keywords tag.

No, I’m not advising you keyword stuff the tag – but at least make the effort to set up keywords in your tag that Yahoo! can process that for ranking purposes.

Overall

All too often people can get fixated on the details rather than the bigger picture. Decent meta-tags are a part of that bigger picture.

This is especially when it comes to clickthrough rates. After all, what’s the point of ranking for competitive keywords if you leave clickthroughs to chance?

Search engine users want a quality experience – offer them that by taking care of the details of your site that can help work best in the big picture.

Getting Top Positions about More Hits? Thanks to Google Alert!

How many of you think this way? Let me repeat my question, is getting top positions about more hits to your website? I guess all will answer in YES, but the truth is a bitter reality, thanks to “Google alert”.

Getting King’s place doesn’t mean more Money!

In the same manner getting top positions doesn’t mean more hits to your website, when a website comes at top place in search engine, what it shows? It has three things to show, page title, description and website address. Site title and description help searchers to motivate (to visit) or reluctant (to leave).

Hard to justify with different Industries every time

It takes years to understand one business properly, how can one expect from SEOs should understand all industries? YES, SEOs understand their JOB very well, most SEOs understand the common sense of business.

To Understand clients’ industry/business and its term is just like giving them the best outcomes, it will not only help to communicate with Clients but this way SEOs can help them in correct direction.

Why to Thanks Google Alert!

Google Alert is a very effective utility of Google, it tells us about which websites are hits with search keyword phrase/s, it really helped me knowing the fact that not all top ranked website/s are hits, it’s about the best description tag that turns searchers to click on that website/s, it doesn’t matter where website/s ranked, you can experience it by yourself, http://www.google.com/alert is a free service, create your alerts and whenever you get alerts, try to search with those mentioned keyword phrases and see the position of the hit website/s.

How important is Description Tag?

Description tag can turn searchers to be visitors, so you can guess how important description tag is! Bringing websites to top positions require a lot of things including healthy content, good link popularity, easy navigation, logical site structure, clean html and relevant title/description tags.

SEO efforts are not just to bring websites to top, bringing website to Top is just one of the elements of SEO efforts. A SEO involvement is the 2nd heaviest involvement than website owner.

Understanding Clients Business…

1. Understand clients target audience and market
2. Select the best keyword phrases according to product/services, keeping target audience in mind
3. Focus on the most relevant keyword phrases
4. Re-check all keywords by “Reverse Engineering Process“, either the selected keyword phrases give the exact traffic your clients require or not
5. Write “Title”, title belongs to keywords, try to include relevant keyword phrase within the limit of 60 to 70 Characters
6. Write “Description Tag“, description tag is very important bringing traffic and converting visitors into customers, it belongs to products and services, write is according to products and services, it has to be central idea of the page and site

Motivate SE Searchers!

Searchers are never the less important than Visitors, it’s easy to motivate visitors than searchers, a visitor visit a page but a searcher view collectively not more than four lines of title, description and website address.

Do you know?

• Who your searchers are…
• What they must be looking for…
• What description your website is showing off after search…
• On Which page your searchers are directed…

If you still miss some answers of above mentioned questions, you should be able to find out all, after knowing all answers, you can easily motivate your searchers to hit your website.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in branding and promotion, pioneer of SEO industry in Pakistan, and has trained dozens of quality SEOs.

Google Morning! Google Afternoon! Google Evening! Google Everywhere!

Why and how much Google is Getting Important, either you are Businessman, Doctor, Engineer, Software Professional, SEO or Housewife, you tend to google every time. Google is more or less an integral part of our online life now. Google has become the biggest brand on internet, it’s still a seven year old kid and has surpassed young and healthy fellows like Microsoft and Yahoo!

Google Means the World!

Google means everything for almost everybody, you ask from it, it’ll serve you with the best. Google People intent to capture all World’s Information at one single platform, one can guess how big they aim to be! Thought Google hasn’t get 10% of its Goal but still it’s the Biggest Online Database. It serves to everybody including Businessmen, Visitors, Professionals and Competitors as well.

1. To Visitors: Google is their Genie, which can serve them anything they want without spending any penny.
2. To Business Owners and Advertisers: Google is their God father, which provides them immense quality traffic every moment.
3. To Competitors: Google is their Teacher, which sets new Trends, it’s competitors try to follow the same way as it does, try to learn from Google.

Google Loyalty!

Google is basically a Search Engine that has built enormous Loyalty with its Visitors through its consistent quality, reliability, innovation and simplicity. Whatever Google is going to experiment, people already trust that it’s going to be big and very reliable. That’s why thousands of people get dependent on Google.

Google to Follow!

Well, it’s not easy to follow Google’s way, because Google always believes on Research and Innovations, how can it be restricted to Search only? It had started Testing and Launching New Services and Tools for better user Experiences. Its BETA Launched Services and Tools got Mega Success and surprised big players like Microsoft and Yahoo!

Secret of Google Success!

David C. Drummond, Google’s Vice President, Corporate Development, according to him there are four factors as the key to Google’s success:

1. Technology: Along with its innovative approach to page ranking, Google is a purpose-built hardware company, building all its own servers from components it buys directly for their manufacturers. According to Drummond, Google now operates the world’s largest distributed computer system.
2. Business Model Innovation: By perfecting the nature of targeted ads, Google not only has created a highly effective revenue generator, it has produced what it hopes to be a better experience for its users. It is Google’s goal to make their targeted ads at least as relevant and useful to users as the search results themselves.
3. Brand: According to Drummond, a European study recently determined Google to be the number one most recognized worldwide brand. Indeed, Google has become a verb (“I can’t wait to get home and Google him”) which poses real challenges to a company seeking to protect the strength of its mark.
4. Focus on the User Experience: Product decisions at Google are driven by optimizing for the user experience first and for revenue second. The folks at Google firmly believe that the better the user experience, the more easily money will follow.

Google Info

The Google name was chosen to represent the gigantic amount of material available on the Web. It comes from “googol” the number 1 followed by 100 zeros.
For more http://www.google.com/intl/en/about.html

Google History

Google was created by two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. In 1996, they developed BackRub, a search engine that analyzed the “Back Links” the number of web links that pointed to that page. With an investment from Andy Bechtolsheim, a Sun founder, and others, Google Inc. was founded in September 7, 1998.
For more http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html

Google Tools and Services

Google has launched dozen of Desktop and Web Tools and Services, though majority of services and tools are still beta but they are very effective, here is a list of google tools and services http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in google optimization and promotion.

Jaggar Updates and Solutions! Always better efforts from Google!

Three Pronged Google’s Jaggar Update was the scariest of all Google Updates so far, it’s the longest period update and affected almost all websites specially those on competitive keyword or phrase. Majority of SEOs and Website Owners dislike this update, since they had to change their strategies.

I personally like google not only because of its volume and popularity but for its continual efforts to improve and maintain search engine quality of results. In search, google always comes with new and innovative ideas. Here is a latest updates that google does recently, it’s another step toward better results.

Here is a list of elements in Jaggar Update:

1. Reciprocal Link Exchange (RLE) Abuse
2. CSS SPAM
3. Blog SPAM
4. Redirect Domains or Pages
5. Pirate Sites or Matter
6. Inbound Links (IBL) Repetition
7. Outbound Link (OBL) Irrelevancy
8. Top Domain PR Weight
9. Keyword Stuffing in Alt Tags
10. Hidden Text

Reciprocal Link Exchange (RLE) Abuse: is cross linking between two or more websites for building link popularity, it doesn’t matter the websites are relevant or not, they are cross linked just to improve their PG. NO more cross linking now, jaggar update has really treated RLE website badly. Bulk link renting, link farming, FFA linking and irrelevant linking are also the type of RLE abuse.

Solution: Stop RLE link building strategy. Build one way linking through partnership programs, directories relevant category listings and relevant industry portal registrations.

CSS SPAM: is that CSS, which is created for misleading search bots and visitors, playing with CSS and deceiving search engine bots is NO more worth at least with google bot, webmaster use CSS to invisible text with website visitors, invisible text or near to invisible text by any mean is SPAM.

Solution: Use CSS for better formatting not to deceive search engine bots.

Blog SPAM: is that blog which is not updated and created specially to promote website.

Solution: Make blogs and maintain them regularly, try to use your blogs as guideline or help to your business rather just promotions.

Redirect Domains or Pages: are those domains or pages which are used to forward visitors somewhere else it could be in same domain or different domain.

Solution: Don’t redirect your domain or pages unless you have restructured or updated your website. Use 301 a permanent director, if you have restructured or updated your website.

Pirate Sites or Matter: are copied sites or matter from somewhere without permission, it could be from same domain as well then it will be mirror copy that’s also SPAM.

Solution: If you can’t manage to keep fresh content then there are free content distribution websites available which provide fresh content free of cost, use content from there.

Inbound Links (IBL) Repetition: IB links are links pointing the same domain pages. If one page is linked with too many times by different positions and with different or multiple keyword or phrase, it’s considered to be SPAM practice.

Solution: One or two multiple links (one could be text based and another could be image based link) are OK to same page, don’t go beyond the limit.

Outbound Links (OBL) Irrelevancy: is linking with irrelevant websites or categories, it’s wastage of time and money to be linked with irrelevant websites.

Solution: Find relevant category related to your website and ask for placements both paid and free directories and portals available with plenty of categories.

Top Domain PR Weight: is the index or default page exists in root directory, when you type www.mydomain.com this page comes to show its content, google has started considering this page’s PR only, rest of the pages got very less consideration to google now.

Solution: Register your top domain in directories, portals to get maximum incoming links to your top domain and keep fresh content at top domain as well.

Keyword Stuffing in Alt Tags: is considered SPAM, this is a technique in which keyword or phrases are put in atl tags without considering that they are relevant or not.

Solution: Put relevant keyword or phrase in alt tags if keyword or phrase doesn’t suite then don’t try to put it forcefully.

Hidden Text: is invisible text that is kept to feed search engine rather to show website visitors. In this technique text color is kept same as back ground color, as a result text cannot be seen by human visitors.

Solution: Don’t use this technique, if you have applied it, remove it as soon as possible. Instead of keeping your text hidden, make everything visible to visitor and try to use keyword or phrase in caption, heading, sub-heading, bold or linked.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in google optimization and promotion.

Top 7 Fundamentals for Google Optimization! Google SEO Tips and Techniques by Expert!

Who doesn’t want to get Top Ranking Positions in Google? 1st Page Placement in Google is NOT difficult, you need to follow Google Optimization Guidelines, and this Article has Summary of the Seven Fundamentals for Google Optimization.

Google optimization is about following Google guidelines, Google likes ethical SEO practices, those SEO practices which are to help website owners as well as Google and it has published guidelines for SEOs here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

Top 7 Fundamentals for Google Optimization

1. Fresh and Original Content
2. Clean and Validated Code
3. Easy and Accessible Navigation
4. Good Interlinking of Web pages
5. Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links
6. Domain Age and Registered Period For
7. Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration

Fresh and Original Content

Google love fresh and original content on web page, selectable content/text copy of your web page, google can’t read content on images or at pics but if your website is completely based on images so there’s a solution for you, you can use your slogan on ALT tags.

e.g.; “<img src=”image source” alt=”Search Engine Submission | Submit Your Website on 100 Search Engines With a Single Click. “>

Clean and Validated Code

Clean and validate code helps google to crawl deeply, try to put content at the beginning of your web page, ignore nesting, javascript or comments, in fact try to shorten the text format with the help of external CSS.

Easy and Accessible Navigation

Text or image base navigation helps google to read, google bot can’t read javascript, dhtml, flash base navigation, try to avoid using these practices which google doesn’t like. Keep your navigation at top or left side of the web pages, make sure to add a sitemap page which will guide web surfers and web bots to read each and every page of your website, if you have huge website then make sure to add at least all main categories’ links at sitemap page.

Good Interlinking of Web pages

Web links are like roads and streets at website, make sure all website’s internal links are text base or image base, with relevant content.

Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links

Google likes referred websites, specially referred from quality and relevant resources. The more referrer links the more top rankings. Here one thing should be remembered that one relevant incoming links is better than hundred irrelevant links.

Domain Age and Registered Period For

Google started keeping new registered domains in sandbox since April 2004, in sandbox almost all new domains kept on probationary period for 6 to 8 months, in some cases for longer period, Sandbox domains don’t get good rankings.

Google also likes to rank better to those domains which are registered for longer period like for 5 or 10 years, because whoever registered domains for longer period shows how much s/he is serious with her/his business and most probably won’t do SPAM with those domains.

Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration

Google likes true businessmen and a true businessman doesn’t misguide his website visitors, google likes those websites which have physical mailing address to their contact pages and google compares it with that physical mailing address which is used in domain registering.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in google optimization and promotion.

Organic Vs PPC! Who wins?

Interesting comparisons between Organic and PPC listings, everybody wants to know which is of more worth and value, I would say that both have different preposition and benefits. Here is list of elements between both organic and PPC with their pros and corns.

Organic Listings

1. Long Lasting Effect
2. Slow Results
3. Low Cost
4. Less Control Over Ranking
5. More Clicks Than PPC
6. No Management
7. No Monitoring
8. Assumption
9. Gigantic Exposure
10. More Text Space
11. Uncontrolled Title And Description

PPC Listings

1. Effect Depends On Budget
2. Quick Results
3. Expensive
4. Complete Control Over Ranking
5. Less Clicks Than Organic
6. Complete Management
7. Complete Campaign Monitoring
8. Authentic
9. Limited Exposure
10. Less Text Limitation
11. Controlled Title And Description

I’m sure, this comparison will help you take better decision and best use of your hard earned money, both these marketing are very effective in different scenarios, if you have big budget you must go for PPC first and also keep organic as secondary marketing for long term. If you have small budget then organic would be an excellent choice with some paid listings in directories and industry related portals.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in google optimization and promotion.

How Well Your Website Can Communicate with Search Engines?

Search engines don’t talk with websites directly, they use bots to communicate with websites, their bots come to websites and start reading the websites, whatever they read at websites they go back to search engines carrying the messages and store those messages in search engine’s database.

Search Engines are NOT Human Beings!

Search engines view websites with different prospects. They don’t have eyes to analyze beautiful colors and animations, don’t have ears to listen music and don’t have feelings to fall in love with your catchy slogans. Apart of all these disabilities they can evaluate your website better than a human being.

When you develop or going to get your website developed, what things you should keep in mind? Being website Owner you might think of website design and content, being Webmaster you might think of easy navigation and flexibility of website. You might be missing one very important aspects of search engine positioning, and that is how search engine is viewing your website?

What Things Search Engines Like at Your Website?

Good communication can increase the performance, it applies the same to search engines, if your website can communicate well enough to create good impression to search engines, your website will be facilitating with high rankings then, here is a list of elements search engines like.

• Validated and Optimize Code
• Rich Content
• Unique URL of Each Webpage
• Plain URLs
• Proper Internal Linking
• Healthy Incoming Links
• Text Based Navigation
• Neat Table Structure
• Good Directory and File Structure
• Proper Headings, Subheadings, Captions
• Title, Meta Tags and Alt Tags
• Robots.txt

What Things Search Engines Dislike at Your Website?

Take care of the elements which can hurt your view to search engines, thought each search engine has its own criteria of viewing websites but all major search engines dislike these mentioned elements.

• Broken Links
• Invalid Code
• JavaScript
• Orphan Links, Images and Files
• Under-construction Page/es
• Pop ups
• Redirectors
• IP Tracking
• Dynamically Generated Pages
• Frames
• Same Background and Font Colors
• Multi Nested Table Structure

Search engine bots crawl website with different time frame period, it depends upon how frequently your website updates? Each search engine has its own time frequency to crawl websites, now you know what things do matter to search engines, take care of them so that your website can delivery its message well enough to get top rankings.

Best of luck

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in google optimization and promotion.

Manual Vs Automated Submission! Which one is the best

We all know how important link popularity is for better rankings in top search engine like google, yahoo and msn! In this article you’ll come to know the linking types and brief comparisons of manual submission and automated submissions.

Comparisons of Automated and Manual Submissions:

After looking at the comparisons, you can easily know why manual submissions are considered to be good and recommended by professional SEOs. Don’t look at the shortcomings and a little ease in automated submission, these shortcomings and little comfort can be a nightmare. Submissions are a very important part of link building campaigns, and if your submissions are made correctly they can play huge rule in link building. Try to submit manually so that you can get the maximum benefits out of it.

More links VS More Valuable Links?

Effective manual submissions can be very useful increasing link value, automated submission can create only more incoming links but effective manual submissions can give those links more value.

A professional submitter should always take care of few things, which can give his/her submissions more value.

Take Care of These Elements When Submitting…

1. Should know the type of the link, going to be visible after submission
2. Should know the limits of title and description
3. Should create multiple titles and descriptions according to limits
4. Should check and re-check those submitted links periodically
5. Always keep passwords and ids save for future updates

Three Basic Elements of Search Engine Optimization SEO! Code, Content and Linking (CCL)!

Search engine optimization effort can be categorized into three basic elements “Code, Content and Linking (CCL)” these three diverse elements play very important role in search engine rankings, you will come to know about their effectiveness and usability with some of the very useful tips in this article.

Code

Code of the website is the very first element that is unfortunately ignored by most SEOs, website code allows search engines bots to go through the webpage, and if bots will not be able to understand code they will not be able to access content of the webpage because content is kept within code, this is enough to tell you about the importance of website code.

Code of the website has to be clean and optimized, here i means that code like JavaScripts or CSS should be called externally, try to keep your code as short as possible and ignore too much nesting.

You must validated complete website code either everything is working fine or not, check for browser compatibility, orphan pages and broken links, don’t forget to have robots.txt and sitemap.

Content

Content is still king, no one can deny the fact that since the revolution of search engine in mid 90s, content is undefeated king. Content needs special treatment, today search engines automatically take keywords within content, they become more conscious about content, they follow basic fundamentals of writing techniques, such as headings, sub-headings, bullets & numbered, inverted commas.

Now it’s up to you either you are successfully able to give an impression of your important keywords to search engines, try to use your important keywords in headings, sub-headings and try to start paragraphs with important keywords.

Note: – Here content means selectable content, content on images can’t be selected and read by search engine bots.

Linking

Linking is one of the most important criteria to get better rankings in search engines specially in google. Linking is divided into two categories onsite linking and offsite linking. Onsite linking belongs to links that are mentioned at your web-domain either they are internal or external it doesn’t matter, they have to be declare at your website (domain). Offsite linking belongs to links that point your web-domain from a different web-domain, they are inbound or incoming links to your website (domain).

In internal linking you should try to keep web pages as close as possible to root, if you have a big site of over 100 pages or 500 pages then you have to make relevant directories and keep relevant pages in them.

In link-building you have to keep few things in mind that link has to be one way, and link title and description should be very focus, try to have incoming links from relevant sites, since one relevant link is equal to 100 irrelevant links, when submitting to directories, go as deep as possible and try to find most relevant category where you can submit your site.