Posts Tagged ‘search engine optimization’

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 Content Linking
Writing Code Content Writing Internal linking
Validating Code Formatting Incoming or Inbound linking
Cleaning & Optimization Code Content Placement Anchor linking
Cross Brower Independence Content Distribution Navigation
Robots.txt and sitemap Content Updating Site Structuring

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.

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What to do when website ranking stuck? How to keep improving positions in google, yahoo and msn?

It is seen many times that website rankings get stuck and some times started going down. Is it due to lack of SEO knowledge? Weak link popularity? Poor content? Pathetic coding? There must be a way to get things going. In this article you’ll come to know what makes your web ranking stuck and how to improve your rankings!

Search Engine Minimization!

The term search engine optimization is not valid specially after Google’s Florida update, in that update google introduced a new term called “Over Optimization” and it’s very well known today. Well there is no measurement tool to analyze either the practice is optimized or over optimized that’s why SEO should go for search engine minimization, what is search engine minimization? Search engine minimization is a technique that deals with basics and its primary purpose is to get the website listed in top 500 website rather looking directly for top 5 placements.

Focus on the Competitors!

When your website rankings stuck and you are short of ideas, what to do? How to move forward? The very first thing you should do is to not worry, but don’t get relax it’s time to keep an eye on your competitors, observe the top 5 competitors and the top 5 above of your rankings that means 10 for each keyword, look at them and try to find out either there is something missing what you are doing or your competitors are very intelligent enough. Your competitors can make you learn the best lesson sometimes.

There are certain areas in search engine optimization which should be improved with time, if you don’t take care of those elements, your website will be out-dated and miss-fit in front of your competitors, since all your competitors are fighting for top positions.

On Going Content Improvisation

Look at the content either your website has fresh original content with balanced keyword density, content is still king, never ignore the value of quality content, you can compare keyword density balance with your competitors.

Active Link Building Campaign

The more inbound qualified links your website has the better position it will get, never let your link building campaign die, link popularity is like oxygen for life, try to find out more relevant and qualified incoming links, permanent and one way links will be obviously preferable than temporary reciprocal links.

Optimized, Validated and Error Free Coding

Your website code is one of the very important element of your search engine ranking, you must check your website code for quality assurance periodically, sometimes everything looks fine but you never know your competitors, they might be doing something very special which you might have ignored.

Some other Tips to Get an Extra Edge over Your Competitors

  • Increase domain registered period for at least next five years
  • Keep the same address at website and at domain registration
  • Apply proper formation technique such as H1, H2, Bold, Bullets…
  • Don’t miss Alt tags
  • Don’t miss title tags for image base links
  • Proper directory and file structuring
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Importance of Website Domain Name in Search Engine Optimization

Website domain can play very important role in your SEO campaign, search engines take very valuable information through your domain name. You can be credible, authentic, more reliable, and more valuable for search engines. You’ll come to know how effectively you can take benefit from your domain name.

Why to have Keywords Specific Domain Name

Keywords specific domains, or keywords in domain names are highly valuable to search engines, such as www.d4dating.net where “Dating” is a keywords, but I would always recommend to have brand specific “easy to remember” domains, you can’t have a single keyword or phrase for a website, can you? Then why to have a keyword specific domain name? You can always keep keywords specific files or directories to support your SEO work and be flexible with domain name, since domain name is going to be your online identity and your direct traffic will heavily depend on your domain.

Is Your Website Domain Easy to Remember?

Website domain name is as important as the identity for any brand. There are more than 100 million registered website domains in the world, how many website domains one can remember? Selection of most appropriate domain name for your website is one of the very important aspects of building your image on internet. Why I say most appropriate domain name is just because finding best domain name will be one of the most difficult tasks.
Strategy to Select Best Domain for Your Website

There are three ways through which you can select most appropriate domain name.

  1. Company Name Based: Example www.hostingheap.com where “Hosting Heap” is company’s name
  2. Catchy Title Based: Example www.alwaysidea.com where “Always Idea” is title
  3. Keywords Based: Example www.d4dating.net where “Dating” is a keyword phrase.

Whenever you will select domain, keep these elements in mind and try to select a domain which can help you in search engine positioning and also in online branding.

Google takes Old Domains as Gold!

Google gives more importance to older domains comparatively than newly registered domains, the older the domain better the chances of getting good rankings in Google. Here one thing should be kept in mind that the domain registration details should not be refreshed or updated frequently, if you update or change domain registration information, then there is a chance that Google will consider your domain as new, since there are people who have made it very profitable business, they registered domains and sell them.

Avoid Being Suspect, Get Credibility by Your Domain Name!

Search engine have become very smart, they can track server statistics, domain whois info and compare these information with the available contact information at your website, if information doesn’t match they can give you poor rank or no rank. That’s why it is always advisable that you have same information at website and at domain registration, don’t try to update server information too often or else search engine can take that modification as a change in ownership and your domain becomes fresh once again.

One Year Domain Registration vs Multiple Years Domain Registration

Normally people register their domains for one year even though there is a possibility of registering domains on monthly basis by domain registration companies. Recently the trend has changed now smart businessmen are registering their domains for multiple years, why this change occurred? Why people are investing more money on domain registration?
Newly registered domains are just like infant babies to Google, they have almost zero reliability, credibility factor from their domain registration, there is only one way for those infant babies is that they get themselves registered for multiple years, if they want to be credible and reliable to Google eyes. Google has been always a logical company and there is a logic behind this credibility factor, those websites which are registered for one year or few months can adopt black hat SEO techniques or they can be involved in any short term activity to bring quick ranking, it’s just because they have invested very less amount of money

How Search Engines Treat Sub Domains

Search engines give equal importance to sub domains as they give to domains but there are website which are excessively using sub domains for their promotion. This indicates that very soon search engines will have strict policy related to sub domains.

Domain Name Tips

  1. Try to select “easy to remember” domain name, after all we all need to increase direct traffic rather hoping from search engines
  2. If you’ve already taken domain, try to have keywords specific files or directories
  3. Register your domain name for multiple years (five or ten years)
  4. Mention your contact details clearly at your website
  5. Keep the same contact information at website and at domain registrant
  6. Don’t mess with sub domains but it’s always good to have few relevant sub domains
  7. Take care of Canonical URLs
  8. Avoid geographical/country specific domain, unless your target market is specific
  9. .com is still the most popular domains in search engines and in people
  10. Don’t modify domain information, it can refresh your domain’s age according to search engine
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The Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines (that’s really no secret at all)

How I despise those awful, cheesy pages promoting the “secrets” of search engine optimization. How I loathe the slick salesman pictured in fuzzy, 1980′s-style photography promising you “the hidden tactics SEOs don’t wan’t you to know.” When most search folks think of the “ultimate secret” in SEO,” they probably think about one of these:

  • Keywords in the Title Tag
  • Spiderable Links & Content
  • Anchor Text in Links
  • Links from Quality Websites

Those are all good pieces of advice, and important to high rankings, but even the last one (links from quality websites) doesn’t convey the most important part of successful ranking campaigns. If there is one key to high search engine rankings, a single piece of advice that unlocks the door to the top of Google & Yahoo! it’s this: Your website must appeal to a link-savvy audience.

Simple? Sadly, no. The truth is that the very best website in the world that sells your product, offers your content or promotes your cause may not be good enough to make it to the top of the engines. Why? Because the world of search has an inherent bias to those sites with more links. It’s not enough to build links now through manual link requests or link buying, nor is it enough to bolster these link acquisitions with a flawlessly “optimized” website filled with keyword-targeted pages. These strategies, while effective in the short term, won’t guarantee you success in the long run. To have a shot at keeping the top positions for years to come, you need a strategy that naturally drives links to your site again and again. The “secret” is that the audience most sites appeal to is NOT the same audience that provides links, yet this group (the Linkerati) has the power to make or break a site’s rankings.

Let’s walk through a brief history of search engines to see how this happened:

Hotbot Monster

No, Hotbot Monster, back in the early days, you really weren’t. Measuring repetition of keywords and keyword placement and density led to some pretty bad results and a lot of cloaking and spamming.

Googlebot Links Rankings

With the arrival of Google’s PageRank and Apostolos Gerasoulis’ Teoma (now called ExpertRank), the search engines got smarter, mapping the link patterns of the web and giving higher ranks to those sites & pages with more inbound links.

Googlebot Natural Links

Over the last 8 years, the engines have been refining the way they measure links, taking into account context, relevance, trust and other metrics to help indicate which links are worth counting towards a particular ranking.

All of this algorithmic evolution means that sites wishing to rank at the top of the engines must have high quality, naturally given, topically relevant links. Since search rankings are so valuable, massive amounts of time and money pour into campaigns for the most competitive queries, making the struggle for placement increasingly difficult. This brings us to the fundamental issue that site creators struggle against – segmenting visitors accurately and appealing to the “Linkerati.”

Three Groups

Above are three groups of visitors, applicable to nearly every commercial or goal-oriented website in existence. While most sites do a reasonable job identifying and targeting the 2nd group (in blue) from the first (in green), this isn’t the case with the 3rd group (in red). Those red Llinkerati are essential to your site’s rankings – they are the great “secret” of long-term SEO success. In order to leverage their power, you must create compelling content that appeals to their desires. This really is no “secret” at all. In every interview and on every stage, you’ll hear representatives from Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask repeat this same mantra (albeit without the benefit of colorful diagrams). As an example:

“…the sort of people who have been doing “new” SEO, or whatever you want to call it, that’s social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz, those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract back links, attract lots of discussion, those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward.” – Matt Cutts in an interview with Gord Hotchkiss

Why are these Linkerati so powerful? What makes their opinions and influence so important to average website owners? Easy – the power to control the web’s link structure.

Links Per Month

The web’s content may still be overwhelmingly commercial and organizational in scope, controlled by exceutives at companies, museum curators, government taxonomists, etc. But, the link landscape of the web, particularly those links that point externally from sites, are dominated by the Linkerati. If your competitors or even organizations like Wikipedia, About.com, niche bloggers or industry news publications become more popular with the Linkerati than you, how can you ever expect to compete for search engine rankings?

This is the great “secret” of SEO – that (at least) some content on your website must be targeted to the Linkerati – fulfilling their unquenchable thirst for new material to link to and share and spread virally. Although they may be a vastly different population than your customers, you need their respect and approval in order to continue to draw in targeted leads from the engines.

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