Why Optimize for Yahoo?
According to a recent study, of all the searches done through search engines, around 25% of searches are done through Yahoo. That means, if your site is not coming up on Yahoo, you lose 25 percent of your potential visitors. Until February 2004, Yahoo used Google results. So, optimizing for Google was enough to get a top rank on Yahoo. As of 17th February 2004 , Yahoo dropped Google results and instead showed search results using Inktomi algorithm. Yahoo's shift from Google to Inktomi made optimizing for Yahoo inevitable.
The New Yahoo Search Engine
Although Inktomi / Yahoo search algorithm doesn't differ too much from that of Google's, it is not exactly a clone of Google's algorithm. Based on the search results on Yahoo, it seems Yahoo's new algorithm gives much importance to keyword density in body text, Title tag, and META tags and to inbound links. Therefore, concentrating on these two items will definitely increase your site's ranking on Yahoo.
Keyword Density
The new Yahoo search engine gives more importance to keyword density. A Website with high keyword density may fare well in Yahoo. The average keyword counts that seem to work are as follows:
Title Tag - 15% to 20%: Yahoo displays the title tag content in its result page. Therefore, write the title as a readable sentence. A catchy title will attract the reader to come to your Website.
Body Text - 3%: Boldfacing the keywords sometimes boosts the page’s ranking. But, be careful not to be awkward to the readers. Too much of boldfaced content irritates readers.
META Tags - 3%: In META description and Keyword tags, provide important keywords at the beginning. Do not use the keywords repeatedly in the Keyword tag, because Yahoo may consider it Spamming. Write the description tag as a readable sentence.
Inbound Links/Back Links
Yahoo considers inbound links highly important. Inbound links are the links from other sites pointing to your site. Having considerable links, with appropriate link texts, from quality sites increases your site's ranking in Yahoo.
Static Pages versus Dynamic Pages
Like most other search engines Yahoo prefers static pages to dynamic pages. Sometimes, Yahoo may fail to index dynamic pages. Therefore, consider the following tips to ensure that Yahoo indexes all your web pages:
Have static pages with keyword-rich content; it increases the rank of your site on Yahoo
If you have some important dynamic pages, prepare a site map or quick links section with links to all the Web pages. This would help the Yahoo spider to craw all your pages.
Frames
Most of the search engines, Yahoo in particular, hate frames. Avoid using frames on your site, because Yahoo spider finds it difficult to crawl them.The sure-shot solution to rank high on yahoo is simply getting plenty of back links from quality sites, and then having copious keywords in the body text, title, META, and alt tags. As Yahoo holds the 25% share of the Internet searches, it is prudent to have your Web pages optimized for Yahoo. When your Web page ranks high on Yahoo, you get additional traffic that will convert into increased sales.
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Common SEO mistakes
Ignoring the Title Tag
This is one of the gravest, but most common, mistakes that may spell doom for your site's SERP ranking. Most of the search engines consider the title tag very important. Search engines generally display the content that you give in the Title tag. Therefore, have most important keywords in the Title tag. DO NOT leave the Title tag empty or have irrelevant words such as "Home page", "Welcome to our site", etc. in the Title tag.
Irrelevant Keywords
Some Webmasters use irrelevant, but much sought after, keywords to drive traffic to their site. Getting traffic in such a way will not help your business in anyway. After all, you optimize your Website to boost your business. Say for example, you have a Website where you sell Desktop Computers. To increase the traffic, you use the keyword "Britney Spears" throughout your content, metatags, and Title tag. People who search for "Britney Spears" reach your page. But, when they find that your Website has nothing to do with "Britney Spears", they will move away from your site quickly. You don't gain anything from that traffic. In fact, had you optimized your site for genuine keywords, you would have brought in possible customers.
Spamming
Spamming is an unethical practice of using the same keywords repeatedly in Title tag, META tags, and Body text. Some shrewd Webmasters use this technique to artificially increase their site's ranking. However, search engines are shrewder enough to find out Spamming and they lower the ranks of those sites that use Spamming. Sometimes, search engines may ban your site for Spamming. Therefore, never spam your site with repeated keywords.
Invisible Text & Links
This is one of those old tricks used by Webmasters to cheat search engines. Webmasters stuff the Web page with keywords and links, which will be invisible to readers but will be visible to search engines. Nowadays, search engines have intelligence to find out this. If you use this trick, search engines may send your site into oblivion -- into perpetual ban!
Links to and from Bad Sites
It is a known fact that links from external sites would increase the rank of the recipient Website. However, links from low ranking sites or banned sites will not add much value to your site. Therefore, ensure you link to and get links from top ranking sites. Linking to link farms or banned sites can be harmful to your pages SERP ranking.
Invalid HTML
Most new Webmasters commit the mistake of not checking their Website's HTML code. When your Website has HTML errors, it will fare poorly on search engines, even if it has optimized content. When your site's HTML code has errors, it will be slow to load, appear incorrectly on different browsers, and rank low on search engines. Therefore, validate the HTML code before submitting your site to search engines and directories.
Having too much Graphics in your page
Search engines view Websites much as a text browser would Large amount of graphics won't help you get a better ranking. In addition, lots of graphics will make your pages slow to download, which will drive search engines and visitors away. For better ranking on search engines, have keyword-rich content instead of graphics.
7 advanced seo tips
If you're like most online webmasters, then you have probably read one article after the other about search engine optimization. Most of them rehash the same old information and you end up wading through tons of fluff. However, this isn't one of those articles. Listed below are 7 advanced SEO tips that you won't find on every digital corner.
1. Syndicating Articles that Link to Your Sitemap
As you probably know, syndicating articles is one of the best methods for obtaining one-way backlinks.
They are also valuable pieces of search engine bait because search engine crawlers are frequent visitors to many high-profile article directories. If you want to get the spiders quickly crawling your site, simply submit an informative article to a site like EzineArticles, GoArticles, or ArticleCity.
However, there's another article marketing strategy that isn't mentioned much in marketing circles. This tactic can get the crawlers searching deeper into your site and indexing more of your pages. Simply link to your sitemap within the resource box. This will send the spiders straight to a content buffet where they can quickly slurp up all of your pages.
2. Translating Your Website Into Other Languages
Are you marketing in just one language? If so, you are missing out on 64.8% of your marketing potential. This is because 64.8% of the world is surfing the internet in a language other than English. By becoming a multilingual marketer, you immediately open up a stream of new markets. Google alone crawls web pages in 35 different languages.
One of the best ways to attract worldwide traffíc is to translate your site and register it with both English and foreign-language search engines and directories. If you are a seasoned SEO, you'll be happy to hear that the competition in foreign search engines is much less than in those of the United States.
In addition, online foreign language markets are currently growing at a much faster rate than English speaking markets.
You have the opportuníty to tap into this market while it's in an exponential growth phase.
3. ROR Sitemaps
As you probably know, sitemaps are important for making sure your site can be completely spidered and indexed by the search engines. Unfortunately, many of these sitemaps are specific to one search engine or another. For this reason, there have been a number of Google and Yahoo site map generators produced in recent years.
However, there is an alternative that is even more exciting. These are ROR sitemaps and they are readable by all search engines, not just by Google or Yahoo.
ROR is an exciting new sitemap tool that uses XML feeds to describe your website. These sitemaps are structured feeds that enable search engines to complement text search with structured information to better interpret the meaning of your site. With a ROR sitemap, search engines can better understand your products, services, images, newsletters, articles, podcasts, and anything else that you want to describe.
For example, if you are selling products, a ROR file enables you to document your product names, descriptions, prices, images, availability, affilíate programs, and any other
relevant information. Search engine crawlers like the Googlebot have an enormous job to do. It's time we start helping them to better understand our content.
4. Keyword Phrases that Convert
Selecting the right keyword phrases is the single most important aspect of any SEO campaign. Unfortunately, many webmasters target the wrong keywords. Too many of us target very general keywords like "real estate" or "internet marketing". Although these terms get lots of visitors, it is unlikely that you will be able to rank highly for them. Then, even if you do, this type of traffíc produces very low conversion rates because it does not target prospects.
You will be much more successful, if you target keyword phrases that are 3-4 words long. These terms are much less competitive and have been proven to convert much better than keywords that are 1 to 2 words long.
Who do you think is more likely to buy; someone who goes to Google and searches for "ipod" or someone who searches for "4gb black ipod nano"? Obviously, the person who searches for a more specific phrase is much closer to making a buying decision.
5. GoogSpy
Would you like to get an in-depth view of how your competitors run their business? Well, you can do exactly that with an online service known as GoogSpy. GoogSpy is a free research tool that will tell you what keywords your competitors are bidding on.
This tool tracks over 500,000 keywords every day from Google and then loads this goldmine of information into the GoogSpy.com database. Using this tool, you can browse by company or by search term.
This tool is extremely powerful. Unfortunately, many people take it for granted. This service basically hands you a business strategy on a silver platter. Maybe we should just keep this one to ourselves and enjoy the benefits of being one step ahead of our competition.
For example, let's say you wanted to do some in-depth research on Overstock.com, one of the largest companies online. You would simply go to googspy.com and type in overstock.com. You will then be shown thousands of words that this company bids on. These keywords are proven profít generators. Research like this would normally cost thousands of dollars, but they are providing it free of charge.
If you want to find keywords with high conversion rates, simply type in words such as buy and purchase. You will be shown keyword phrases that are bid on that include the words buy or purchase. These are very lucrative keyword phrases because the person who types in "buy sony playstation 2" knows exactly what they want. They're not just looking around, they are in buying mode. These are the type of keywords you want to bid on. Using GoogSpy, you can uncover these hidden gems in seconds.
Other high-converting keyword phrases include brand names and product names. Type in the keyword "camera" and you will find thousands of different brands and product names for cameras. These keywords are some of the best keywords because of their high conversion rate.
6. Internal Links Within Content
The navigation of your site is a crucial element of your search engine optimization campaign. Each link within your navigational structure should correlate with a keyphrase that you are trying to rank for.
However, you can also include internal links within your content. For example, let's say you have written an article about online marketing. Within the article are a number of keyword phrases. Some of these phrases include "link popularity" and "web site traffíc". If you have other articles within your site that pertain to these topics, then you should definitely link those keyword phrases to those articles. By doing this, you can increase the link popularity of other pages within the same site.
There are very few sites that take advantage of this optimization technique. By doing this, you enable the search engines to find and index much more of your site. These internal links also contribute to a higher ranking because of the anchor text that is used.
Many people only think of inbound links from outside websites when trying to raise their link popularity. However, the internal link structure is also a major ranking factor.
7. Using Your Log Files for SEO
Your server logs reveal very important information about your site. If you learn to use them properly, they can quickly help to maximize your site's traffíc and conversion rates.
One of the most valuable pieces of information found in your log files are search phrases. The log files will tell you exactly which keywords people are using to find your website.
Once you have optimized a page, the log files will tell you how people are finding that page and what keywords they are searching for to get there. If you find that people are using keywords that you hadn't thought of to get to a certain page, it would probably be in your best interest to further optimize that page for those keywords.
You might also want to create a new page optimized for that particular term. This is especially true if a new page would enable you to serve better information on the phrase being searched for.
In addition, by looking at how your site is found organically, you can determine whether the same keyword phrases belong in your paid search campaigns. Only choose the ones that are highly relevant. You will find that these keyword phrases have the best conversion rate.
10 basic SEO Tips
Basic SEO
1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. Inserting a keyword or key phrase will greatly improve your chances of bringing targeted traffic to your site.
Make sure that the title tag contains text which a human can relate to. The text within the title tag is what shows up in a search result. Treat it like a headline.
2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.
3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.
Adding the exact same text for your h1 tag will tell the reader who clicks on your page from a search engine result that they have clicked on the correct link and have arrived at the page where they intended to visit. Robots like this too because now there is a relation between the title of your page and the headline.
Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your article. The most important keywords can be bolded or colored in red. A good place to do this is once or twice in the body at the top of your article and in the sub-headings.
4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.
I always use the headline of my pages as the title tag to help the robots know exactly what my page is about. A good place to insert the headline is within the h1 tag. So the headline is the same as the title tag text.
5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. SEO pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were. I just place my headline once within the keywords and description tags.
6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.
7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.
8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.
My site contains navigation menus on the left and right of the page. The menu consists of links not images. The links are keywords. When you hover over the link with your mouse, the title of the link appears. View the source of this page to see how to add this tag to your links.
9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.
10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.
Here is the submission page for google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html
Submit only once. There is no need to submit every two weeks. There is no need to submit more that one page. Robots follow links. If your site has a nice link trail, your entire site will get indexed.
My site has a nice human friendly link trail which robots follow easily. All my pages get indexed without ever submitting more than the main index page once.
More SEO Tips
Get the facts here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/. This page will explain most of what you should focus on along with what you should forget about.
If you have been thinking about handing over the task of SEO to someone outside of yourself, you should read some warnings before you part with any money. http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
SEO Discussion
Most SEO Professionals will not tell you about the goose that laid the golden egg. The following link will take you to a jealously guarded FREE SEO discussion.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general
You can search the forum for specific questions you may have. I like to just lurk around and read the messages.
What is search engine optimization?
SEO is the process in which your Website undergoes redevelopment to properly and best communicate your keywords to search engines. In order for your Website to rank highly among major search engines, you must understand how they become ranked. Search engines rank Websites based on two major factors: Unique content with pertinent keywords in the body, and link popularity - the number of quality incoming links your Website has. Other important algorithms that determine your ranking with search engines are the architecture of the site, visibility of your content, underlying code and how natural your site appears to the engines.
Add your url to google
After building your site one of the first things you should do is to submit your site to google and other searh engines. You can add your url to google here: http://www.google.com/addurl/
and yahoo here: http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/dir/suggest/suggest-01.html
You should also add your url to: Dmoz but you must be carefull. If you built your site by copy-paste , it mayde a disappointment for you. http://dmoz.org/add.html
Long titles
Titles take an important place in searh engine optimization. Most searh engines just look at the title and the meta tags. So you should keep the title of your site long. Instead of "my site" you can set your title as " my site , web, internet,blog, seo, search engine... etc" you can write keywords, or a description of yous pages. So you should set dynamic titles.
Important SEO Tips 3
Monday, April 30, 2007
If you are not using Google Customized Desktop, Google Reader, or some type of RSS feed reader already, you should definitely start using one. The easiest way to accomplish this for a complete novice (but is actually the way I do it) is with your GMail account. A GMail account is something else you should already be using. For the data storage alone you should be using it. If you need an invitation to open one send me a request and I'll send an invite (garythescubadiver@gmail.com). You will need a GMail account to use these tools.
With a GMail account you can go to the Google home page and log in using your email. In the top right corner is a link for "Add stuff." It allows you to add specific URLs; it will pull the last 1-10 entries from that page and populate your Google Desktop. Here's a snapshot of what mine looks like:
It's not the best snapshot but I wanted to show as much as possible. This is actually only about 1/3 of what I have on mine. These are different places that I used to go to individually to find information.
Google Alerts is a fantastic tool. You enter your search term and whenever Google finds your term while crawling the web it will send you an email with a link to it. I have alerts on everything from "google datacenters" to "DMOZ" and "Matt Cutts" to "Danny Sullivan."
When I look for content, I use these as reference tools. They are not meant to be used to scrape content or plagiarize other websites.
There are many other uses for these if you put your head to it. :o)
10. Press Releases and Syndication
Press releases are a fantastic way to get natural one-way links, and also attract fresh traffic. If they are done correctly they can be the main source for building traffic, gaining ranking positions and building trust with the search engines.
In the United States I use PRWeb, and in the UK and Europe I use SourceWire to syndicate articles. Both originally started as PR companies before the web came along so they have excellent connections with real syndicated sources. The websites that they send the articles to will re-syndicate them to even more websites. You will pay between £20-£40/$30-$60 depending on the amount that you send them.
The articles that you syndicate should be authoritative or about something that will attract people to them, like Top 12 SEO Tips for 2007, or Ten Reasons Why ______________. You should quote trusted authorities and always reference the source when possible. I use Wikipedia or news sources like Google News, BBC, or CNN. I believe this actually adds trust to an article and in 3-6 months when Google pushes out Page Rank, the probation period for giving you full value is reduced.
Pull a unique phrase from the article (mine is garythescubaguy) and add a Google Alert to it (#9 above). Choose to be alerted "as it happens." When you get an alert (typically within 6-12 hours), go to the page and place a Social Bookmark on the page. (I will talk more about this technique in the next tip).
11. Social Bookmarking
Wikipedia defines it this way: In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are either accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them. Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another.
GaryTheScubaGuy defines it this way: One of the best free ways to get links and traffic, for very little time commitment other than setup.
So here is how I recommend doing this.
Create a free account with Roboform and download their trial. (It says it will limit you but I've had as many as 30+ passwords created and stored in the trial version). This will allow you to quickly fill out signup forms and store passwords for the 10 Bookmark sites that I am going to be sending you to.
Within Roboform go to the custom area and put a username and password in, as well as your other information that sites usually ask for to register. This way when you are using these different bookmarks it's a 1-click login and becomes a relatively quick and painless procedure.
Establish account with these Social Bookmark Sites:
Digg
Technorati
Del.icio.us
NowPublic
StumbleUpon
BlinkList
Spurl
Furl
Slashdot
Simpy
IE, Firefox and most other browsers have an "add a tab" option, but I use Firefox because I can bookmark the login pages in one file, then "open all tabs" in one click. From here I click on each tab and in most cases, if you set it up right, Roboform will have already logged you in. Otherwise you're on the login page, and by clicking on the Roboform button everything is prefilled; all you need to do is click submit. (Some of the bookmark sites will allow you to add their button into your browser bar, or you can get an extension from Firefox like the Digg Add-on to make things quicker)
Each time you publish an article put a Google Alert on a unique phrase. Each time Google sends you an alert, bookmark it on every bookmark site. This will take some getting used to, but will eventually become second-nature. Remember what I said in the beginning; "One of the best free ways to get links and traffic, for very little time commitment other than setup".
When you start seeing traffic coming in and your SERPs getting better you will use the heck out of this. I'm waiting for someone to come out with software that will automate this process completely, but by the time that hits nofollows may come into play. But for the time being it works and it works well.
12. My Top SEM Tools
I have posted these on my blog The PPC Managers Board and even in the SEO Chat forum before, but I'm including them here because many have not seen it.
This is a comprehensive list of tools that my team and I use daily.
The first one, Firefox with the three extensions, are the tools that I spoke about at SES London 2007. I encourage you to install it and check it out. It's one of the better tools I have used.
with SEO Add-Ons (1) , (2) & (3) (Density, links, code cleaner, W3C Compliance, etc.)Google Analytics - Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.IBP - Several tools for checking rank positions, basic SEO page analysis and link building tools.WebCEO - Site optimization, promotion and analysis.WeBuildPages - Free software for SEO analysis, back link and anchor text tool.Link Building 101 - Basic link building instructions and tips.Link Baiting - Good link baiting tutorial.Google Webmaster Central - Statistics, diagnostics and management of Google's crawling and indexing of your website, including Sitemap submission and reporting.
Pay Per Click ToolsWordTracker -Data is based on the Metacrawler and Overture search engines.KeywordDiscovery - Data is based on the number of search engines.Keyword Optimizer - Enter a list of keywords and this tool will remove any duplicate entries and re-order the list alphabetically.Google Analytics - Provides deep analysis on all traffic, including paid search.Google Suggest - As you type, Google provides the top 10 most popular keywords that begin with the keyed-in letters, in order of popularity.SpyFu - Find out what competitors are bidding on, estimates for the cost of PPC advertising and other bells and whistles.Hittail - Finds and easily groups the actual terms being used to find your site into an Excel format. Great for finding niches and long keyword strings.Google Trends - Graphs historical trends of various Google searches.Google Keyword Tool External - Historical trends in keyword popularity.BidCenter - A good tool for comparative analysis and easy to use.SEO Sleuth - Find what AOL users search for (AOL produces 2x the retail conversions as any other engine).ROI Calculator - This calculator measures the ROI (return on investment) of a CPC (cost per click) campaign.
Site ToolsC-Class Checker - Use the Class C Checker if you own several cross-linked sites. If you do, it may be more efficient (for SEO purposes) to host them on different Class C IP ranges.Code to Text Ratio - This tool will help you discover the percentage of text in a web page (as compared to the combined text and code).Future PageRank - This tool will query Google's various data centers to check for any changes in PageRank values for a given URL.Internet Officer - Checks for redirects.Live PR - The Live PageRank calculator gives you the current PageRank value in the Google index, not just the snapshot that is displayed in the toolbar.Keyword Cloud - This tool provides a visual representation of keywords used on a website.Keyword Difficulty Check - Use the Keyword Difficulty Check Tool to see how difficult it would be to rank for specific keywords or keyword phrases.Page Size - This tool will help you to determine HTML web page size.Site Link Analyzer - This tool will analyze a given web page and return a table of data containing columns of outbound links and their associated anchor text.Spider Simulator - This tool simulates a search engine spider by displaying the contents of a web page in exactly the way the spider would see it.URL Rewriting - This tool converts dynamic URLs to static URLs. You will need to create an .htaccess file to use this tool.Keyword Misspelling Generator - Allows you to generate various misspellings of a keyword or phrase to match common typing errors. Useful for creating keyword lists around your most important keywords to bid on.Keyword Density Analysis Tool - Finds common words and phrases on your site.Hub Finder - Finds topically related pages by looking at link co-citation. Post about tool.Page Text Rank Checker - Tool allows you to check where your site ranks for each phrase or term occurring on the page.XML Sitemaps - Makes free Google Sitemaps for sites up to 500 pages in size. Sells a cheap and useful script to build Sitemaps for larger site sizes.PageRank Toolbar For Mac - A widget to show PageRank for the site you are on.Google Tools
Google Webmaster Central *Tool
Google Labs*Tool
SpyFu for Google Bidding*Tool
Google Future PR *Tool
Google Sandbox *Tool
Google Dance Watch
Google Page Rank Formula and Sandbox Explanation
Google Google Information and FAQ
Google Reinclusion Request *Tool
Banned by Google? *Tool
Google Advanced Search *Tool
Google Data Center Pages Indexed Check*Tool
Google Page Rank Check (All DC's)*Tool
Google Keyword Ranking Check*Tool
Google "Need-To-Know" Info
Beginner Adwords Tips *Instruction
How Google Analytics Work *Instruction
Check Google Keyword Prices *Tool
Hit Tail *Advanced Adwords Tool
Hit Tail Documented
And Even More SEO Tools
Getting into DMOZ *Tool
Meta Tag Generator *Tool
RoboForm - A MUST-HAVE! *Tool
Keyword Density *Tool
Web CEO - SEO Software *Tool
IBP Pro - SEO Software *Tool
Robots.txt Generator *Tool
Link Popularity *Tool
Domain Age Check *Tool
Code-to-Text *Tool
Spider Simulator *Tool
Who Supplies Who with Search Results*Tool
Adwords Click Fraud Study *Information
Abuse IP Checker *Tool
IP Information *Tool
IP, City and reverse IP Lookup *Tool
Ping *Tool
Traceroute *Tool
PPC Hijacking *Information
PPC 101 *Instruction
PPC 102 *Instruction
Comprehensive Link Building 101 *Tool
Link Baiting *Instruction
Important SEO Tips 2
5. HTML Comment Tags/External File Names/Optimized PDF Documents
It seems like a small thing, and even overkill to some, but I have participated in some testing on these suggestions and in all instances positive results were seen. The first, rewriting external file names, would be taking your external CSS or JavaScript files and using your keyword/keyword phrases within their actual file name. As I believe meta tags (keywords and descriptions) are still in use to a point, I believe things like the file names and HTML comment tags are as well.
Google mentions looking at HTML comment tags in their Adsense Help Center. Does this mean that their algo also looks at HTML comments? Maybe, maybe not. But It can't hurt. (Only add one keyword phrase though; use it in a sentence, but not as the first word).
Last, but not least, create PDF versions of your pages that are already ranking well, or have had content written for optimization purposes. In other words, I have pages that have what I feel is the perfect SEO formula, with on and off-page optimization. Take these pages and get the trial version of Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional. This will allow you to automatically create PDF versions of your pages, and add a few other optimization elements. Be sure to name the files with your keywords. Take these PDF files and put them in a subdirectory off of your root, and in the same directory add a your-keywords-here.xml sitemap, separate from your site XML map. Submit it separately to Google for a crawl.
6. Site Navigation and Usability
Navigation and usability is a fundamental element to search engine optimization. It is also one of the first things I look at when a potential client comes to Stickyeyes for a consultation.
Unfortunately in most situations there is a Director, Manager or Webmaster that is married to the current design. If we see a need for a complete redesign, hopefully we are lucky enough to be given the "nod," but in most cases that does not happen, so we are forced to change bits and pieces.
Before I touch on some good tips, let me just say this to the site owners, webmasters and upper-management people out there. If you are not ranking well, not getting a good click-through rate, experiencing high bounce rates or cart abandonment, or you get a myriad of traffic without a minimum of a three percent conversion rate, then you probably have usability issues.
You have more than one choice.
You can let a professional redesign your website; choose a good one and this will almost guarantee every element I mention above will be resolved.
You can let a professional create microsites in subdomains with full access to tinker around, test and improve. This way your "top-secret" back-end won't be exposed (or cause any infrastructure or complicated matrix/server issues).
You can let a professional change elements within your current site and test them; a good professional will certainly know what they are doing.
At the end of the day what I am getting at here is that this is a serious fundamental element in a successful website. To use my company as an example, we typically sit down with 10 or 12 of our best people when looking at the website's functionality. This is a very strong focus group because we also know end-user behavior. Keep an open mind to these types of suggestions because they are usually one of the major issues most websites have.
So on to more tips.
Be sure you have definitive CTAs (Call To Actions) throughout your site, preferably in the navigation bars. These can be Call Us, Contact Us, Get a Quote, Add To Cart, Sign Up, Request Information or whatever. These CTAs should be in an abridged form that has as few fields as possible.
I recently looked at a website (a major name that you would recognize) that sells insurance online. Being an ex-insurance agent I know the information that they need to give a quote is certainly not 15 pages long. We actually timed it at close to 20 minutes to complete.
Look at your checkout procedure. Whether it's for an ecommerce site selling widgets, or an insurance company trying to give a quote, the information that is required should be kept to a bare minimum. Human nature is the "path of least resistance" and you can scare them off with a daunting list of required fields when all they were looking for was a quick comparison quote. People don't want to have to give this personal information away in the first place, and doing it online is an even scarier scenario, but now you want it all!?!?
Cut this down to just a few fields over a maximum of two pages…and even just one if possible.
Using JavaScript/AJAX style forms are great. With these you only show a few fields at a time and if the appropriate radio button is selected, it opens additional fields to be filled in. The idea is that if you get them mentally committed by filling out a few fields, they are more likely to fill out the remaining fields.
Placement of "information request" forms are important as well. If you carry hundreds of products, don't put a "request more information" button or form in your side navigation bar. Put one below each product and add script that will pre-fill the request form so that all the end user need do is add minimal personal information.
For those that are etailers, or those who have actual physical products that they sell (not necessarily affiliate marketers) and are competitive with their competition and their pricing, put a Low Price Guarantee like the one that you see here. You'll be surprised at the increase in sales opportunities that you will see.
7. Basic SEO Checks
This is a list of basic SEO tasks that should be the first thing that you check on all of your pages. Many times I find myself looking for the more technical issues, only to find out from one of our freshman SEMs that there was a 302 redirect rather than a 301, or worse, there was a doorway page or hidden text from a previous SEO company. So I'm including this list as a checklist for you to use.
Check for 302 redirects or any other redirects.
Check for Load Time, Browser Compatibility, Spell Check, and Link Check.
Check Server Headers
Code to Text Checker
Keyword Density
Spider Simulator
Plagiarism Checker
Atom & RSS Feed Validator
W3C Markup Validation Service
Domain Directory Checker (top 10 Directories)
8. Optimize Your 404 Page
The search engines look at traffic in their algorithms to "grade" a page. If you have a complicated URL, one that is commonly misspelled, or do something else that could cause you to lose any existing links that are published out on the Web, this is the landing page the visitor will get sent to. If it has your template and navigation from the rest of the site it will get indexed like a normal page. Change your title and meta to one of your keyword strings, add an image and relevant content that reflects your keywords as well. I avoid placing the actual term "404" on the page.
A simple "You have found this page in error, please select from the menu on the left side of this page" will do here, and you will retain more traffic.
Important SEO Tips
1. Long Tail Titles + ContentIn highly competitive markets, generic title tags just don't get it done anymore, although title tags can be one of the more important elements that the search engines look at to identify and categorize your page.End users are becoming more and more knowledgeable about how search engines work; the more descriptive words they use, the more likely they are to get the results that they are looking for. What this means is that last year the key phrase for company "A" was Debt Help. This year their top keyword phrase is Get Debt Free. I don't know why, maybe there is a major company out there doing debt consolidation ad campaigns that have "coined" this phrase to make it more memorable than debt help. Who knows? The point is that they are using a completely different search phrase, and the phrase is three words rather than two words.Generally speaking, "the lower number of words the better" has been the overall suggested recommendation to target because human nature is the path of least resistance. To a point it still is, but the people using longer phrases (based on my analytics) know what they are looking for, because they convert at a significantly higher rate.Once I have identified these phrases I start building additional pages, or even microsites (for purposes of A/B, funnel, and conversion testing) and I target the 3, 4, 5 or even 6 word long tail phrases.
Use these longer keyword phrases within your content as well. If possible, replace enough of the current keywords with the long-tail keywords. (This presumes that you do not build separate pages).If you are in a highly competitive market, this could be the answer that you are looking for to attract the middle 40-80 percent of the target audience that you are looking for, plus get great conversion rates. Just be sure to create well structured "calls to action" in the page. (See #5 below).
2. Advanced Keyword Selection
This has been covered over and over again, but it is a very important element and ongoing research is crucial to help you stay ahead of the competition. There are several tools out there, most of which are free, or offer free trials. I typically use several different tools.Google Trends - According to Google "Google Trends aims to provide insights into broad search patterns. As a Google Labs product, it is still in the early stages of development. Also, it is based upon just a portion of our searches, and several approximations are used when computing your results. Please keep this in mind when using it."This is great if you are in an industry that has seasonal traffic. This identifies the seasonality of keyword searches. Google also has a keyword tool that will take a large list of keywords and, when filtered by Search Volume Trends, give you a list that contains 12 months of data and which month showed the highest occurrence. KeywordDiscovery collects search term data from just over 180 search engines worldwide. Their database contains approximately 32 billion searches from the last 12 months. Their Premium Database contains over 600 million results.
What I like is that they cover a wider demographic than the other paid tools available. Although the new WordTracker UK version is a great addition for our company, being that it is based in the UK, KeywordDiscovery seems to be a better choice for those in a European market. Major differences are the databases from which they pull their results. WordTracker uses 4 or 5 sources (e.g. MetaCrawler, DogPile and Overture), while KeywordDiscovery uses Google, Yahoo Groups, DMOZ, MSN, Teoma, Miva and over 50 other databases. They also pull from databases in Japan, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Canada, Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Czech Republic, Russia, Spain, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, India, and Norway. In the UK alone they use 11 different engines including google.co.uk.
SpyFu is a neat (and free) tool that can eliminate keywords that you may think are good to use, but may not convert well. It is a tool for Google Adwords and useful if you are trying to determine an estimated spend for individual keywords.
I use this keyword tool to see what terms companies are bidding on that are related to my query. Chances are, if they are bidding on it, then it's probably converting. This helps me eliminate broad terms as well (e.g. parts, cars). I guess you can use other tools to base KEI (keyword effectiveness index) on and do close to the same thing, but SpyFu makes it a little easier and faster.
It will also show you misspelled terms. Of course many of these tools have this function but again, this tool does it quicker. Here's an example of what SpyFu came up with when I searched for 'advanced auto parts';
advaced auto partsadvancd auto partsadvancded auto partsadvence auto partsadvenced auto partsafter market auto partsaftermarket auto partsanvance auto parts
So it doesn't just show ergonomic misspellings, it also shows 'stoopid' misspellings.
HitTail is a tool that I hold near and dear to my heart because I had some of input into its development, and they added a few features that I requested while using it for Pay Per Click keyword research. (Well, that and the fact that the tool saved my client £90,000 a year).
The tool was originally designed to do what log files can basically do, but quicker and easier. HitTail gathers the keyword and keyword phrases that brought your visitors to the site and graphs them to identify niche phrases that have high KEI so that you can use them in articles or online content. They added an XML export feature that I love because I can use it while creating AdWords campaigns and save myself a ton of time.
The reason I use it for keyword research is two-fold:
It's quicker and easier than log file data mining.
I can quickly identify the long 4-6 keyword phrases to use in my content.
Search engine users are become more savvy and their knowledge increases every day. They know that the more words they use to target their query the better the results will be. I see 20-30 percent of my visitors using 4+ keyword strings. Two years ago it was around 2-3.
3. Video Marketing
Video is huge, and will continue to grow quickly. Yahoo and YouTube average visits were between 13 to 15 minutes. Imagine getting people to watch an ad on television that long -- or what you would have to pay for that audience.
All it takes is a video camera or good webcam, some basic editing software, and you're ready to go. Be sure to keep the video short, something that people want to learn about or that will keep them watching, and place your URL somewhere in the video. At the end of the video include a "call to action." Submit your instructional video (or whatever you choose to do) to free video publishing sites such as YouTube, Shorkle, Veoh, Furl, Bolt, MovieMasher, Zango, Badongo, MyUseNet and many others.Continue to work on this and master your editing skills. Be sure to name the file with your keywords. You would be surprised how many of these video ads are showing up on the first page in normal Google searches. This will give you a great advantage over your competition if videos (or what I like to call free advertising) can be applied to your niche market.4. Create a Link Building Campaign
If you haven't done this yet, you are already behind. Link building is an acceptable practice if it is done the right way. Here I'll tell you what I think is the right way.
You need to set some type of budget. Whether you're an individual with one or two accounts, or an agency with dozens, you need to have some type of budget set aside for this. It can be money or it can be time.
Here is how I segment my campaigns;
15% - 25% to purchase one-way back links to internal pages. Not text links. I create custom/bespoke articles that will complement the owner's site, and that have my keyword phrase within it as my anchor text. I also make sure that it is a relevant site to my article/anchor text.
25% - 30% reciprocal link exchange. Not text links. I create custom/bespoke articles that will complement the owner's site, and that have my keyword phrase within it as my anchor text. I also make sure that it is a relevant site to my article/anchor text.
25% for blogs and forums. It's considered Guerilla Marketing. This takes a little longer because you need to establish yourself within communities and become somewhat of an authority that can post links to relevant and useful content on a site. This will attract actual traffic (and improved rankings), and also create natural back links from other end-users.
25% Use an automated tool (IBP 9.0 - Axandra) to find potential link partners. You can find a complete guide on how to use this along with Firefox and SEO Quake extension on the SES London Presentations Page. The username is london2007 and the password is febpres07.
Now whether you hire students to do these tasks or you do them yourself, they need to be part of your daily routine. Obviously there are other considerations such as building good content that people want to link to, creating top 10 lists, how-to guides and reviews, but not all markets have the ability to do these in a relevant way. My recommendation in this type of situation, and really any others, is to do a who-is lookup, pick up the phone and start calling. These are the best kind of back links.
Web Directories - Points to Remember
As I already said, DMOZ particularly feeds into a huge number of other smaller directories, so going around the web trying to find as many directories as you can to submit to will be a waste of time because theoretically you will already have indirectly submitted to most of them. What you can do is look for niche directories that describe your site or service very well. If these do not take information from DMOZ, think about submitting to these smaller directories also. Don't waste money paying to be listed though; money can be better used in pay-per-click or paid submission listings than on paid directory submission.
One thing that webmasters have been noticing recently is that when searching for particular things, sites like Wikipedia will often be higher in the SERPs that directory sites. You can make use of the popularity of the wiki by adding an article describing your site or service and providing a link back to your site. Like submitting directories, this will provide spiders and crawlers with another route to your site, reinforcing link popularity. Because of the popularity of Wikipedia, you may also get increased traffic to your site. Again, try not to make it look like an advert; an honest description will go much further in the eyes of anyone viewing the wiki article.
So as you can see, the small amount of time and money that you will spend submitting your site to be added to directories, and the fact that for non-commercial sites this is free, make directory listings perhaps the easiest form of increasing link popularity. It's a bit like link trading, without the hassle of negotiating with other webmasters or worrying about adding links to other sites in return.
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The Yahoo! Directory
Another of the bigger directories that you should submit to if you can is of course the Yahoo! Directory. Yahoo! doesn't feed other directories, but because of the way its search results can tie in with its directory listings (especially in its paid services), inclusion in the directory is still advisable. Yahoo is one of the easiest major directories to get listed in, and it actually guarantees that you'll be in the directory within seven days (provided you meet its submission criteria of course).
Remember that commercial sites do have to pay a yearly fee for the privilege of being in the Yahoo! Directory, to the tune of $299 ($600 if you're submitting a site that offers adult content and/or services). Whether or not this is worth it really depends on the search engine for which you are optimizing. If it's just your ranking in the Google SERPs then forget about it, but if you are especially keen on rising to the top of Yahoo!'s results pages it may be something to consider. One way around paying the fee may be to submit the URL of a non-commercial page of your site, but whether this will work will probably depend on the editor reviewing your submission.
When submitting to directories, your choice of description of your site can have a huge effect on whether you even get added to the directory at all. Try to describe your site and service as honestly and descriptively as possible. Directory submission is not advertising! Do not try to promote yourself in the directory submission form, just describe yourself.
DMOZ
One of the best known and biggest directories in existence is probably the Open Directory Project (ODP), sometimes (most times in fact) known as DMOZ. This directory has been around for years and now lists over four million organized and categorized web sites. DMOZ has also been around for a very long time (in web terms). This directory is maintained by a huge number of volunteer editors that add new URLs of submitted sites to the relevant categories.
Many other directories on the Internet take content from the ODP, including Google, so getting your site into it can reap huge benefits as your URL will be shared with many other directories, which means that your site will have many more inbound links and therefore greater link popularity. There have been concerns in the past about volunteer editors maliciously not adding your site to the directory if it is in direct competition with a site of their own, but this was some time ago now and generally, as long as you're not a reseller, florist or have a site that is in some way illegal, you should now get into the directory once you've submitted your site.
There are other rules and guidelines of course, but the DMOZ site lists these in full, so familiarize yourself with the submission process prior to actual submission. As the directory is maintained by humans (it is one of the biggest, most distributed human edited databases in existence), getting your site listed can take anything from a couple of weeks to several months, and filtering through to the hundreds of other sites will take even longer. But don't let that put you off.
Another way of ensuring that you get into the directory could be to become a volunteer editor yourself in order to add your own site. While this may initially seem like a desirable scheme, don't forget that as a volunteer editor you will be required to spend time researching sites and adding them to the directory, so unless you're serious about being part of the DMOZ project, don't waste your SEO time doing something else. Also, if you just add your own sites to the directory and nothing else, your activities may well become known and any listings you've added may be removed. Directories, just like search engines, don't like being deceived! As with any form of SEO, honesty is always the best policy.
Increasing Your Traffic with Web Directories
Are web directories worth the effort anymore? Why spend the time (and in some cases money) submitting your website to a directory if it seems like nobody uses them anymore? Well, web directories are more useful to attract visitors to your site than you might think. This article gives you the surprising reason why, describes a couple of the biggest web directories, and helps you make the most of this resource.
Web directories have been around for some time now. In fact this is how the ever growing Yahoo! began life on the Internet, as one the biggest and best organized web directories at the time (and even now too). Web directories were the de facto method that many people used to find the information and websites they were looking for before the search engines because so big, powerful, and popular, and while the directories have been a lot less popular in comparison to fully fledged search engines in recent years, they are still the next best thing to searching and can have an important effect on increasing your search engine results pages (SERPs) ranking. While some webmasters may question the relevancy of directory listings in today's web, suggesting that they receive very little direct traffic in the form of surfers coming from directories, you have to remember that the web is used by crawlers and indexing bots too, and they love well-organized directories!
Directories are not search engines; directories do not send out spiders that index individual pages and nothing is added to the directory autonomously. Directories rely on websites being submitted to them; then a team of actual people looks at the site to categorize it and check its quality and relevancy before adding it to the directory in the appropriate categories and sub-categories. Web pages in directories are not found using keywords (although some directory sites, like Yahoo! and DMOZ will let you search the directory and Yahoo! also proves directory listings at the top of its search results pages), but by drilling down through relevant categories until they find the category that the site resides in.
Because humans check the relevancy and informational "worth" of a site before adding it to the directory, search engines can rely on this process being carried out for them and that the sites have been described correctly. Directories don't contain any of your site's content; they won't pick out information from META tags or page content or cache your pages. All they provide is a link to your site and sometimes a very brief description that you as the submitting webmaster would write. But it's this link that can be used to improve your SERPs listing.
Link popularity is still very much a big part of SEO, especially in the early days after a site goes live, and using web directories is an excellent way to build link popularity and increase your site's SERPs listing, provided you steer clear of link farms, or directories that prevent the indexing of their links for some reason. While everyday people will generally not use overly generalized web directories (but will still use specialist or niche directories if necessary) to find specific web sites, spiders will still regularly index them and the links they contain (unless they are blocked from doing this by the directory they happen to be indexing).
The more directories your site is listed in, the more inbound links your site will be seen as having, which in turn will improve your link popularity. Link popularity isn't the only thing to consider for SEO. It's not even the single most important thing to consider. But it is still a highly contributing factor and should not be overlooked.
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