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Common Search Engine Optimization(SEO) Mythology

2007-05-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

Common SEO Myths:
There are many SEO mythologies floating around on the SEO world. Some are valid, and some never worked ever. It is very important to know what these are so here are list of the biggest SEO myths you need to be aware of so you can avoid them:

Myth: You need to submit your website manually to all major search engines to get it into their index. Actuality: Not true. Search engines prefer to find new sites through backlinks. Through backlinks you could be indexed within 48 hours.
Myth: In order to get indexed to many search engines, you should use one of those search engine submission services.
Actuality: Not true. The only search engines to worry about are Google, Msn, Yahoo, and Ask. Get into these, and you have covered around 98% of the market.
Myth: Meta tags are only important thing for good ranking. You must pay attention to these if you want the search engines to index you, and correctly.
Actuality: True and false. While some search engines look at meta tags like keywords and description, most search engines like Google look at the content of the page. Just build content and backlinks if you want to increase your ranking.
Myth: Today PageRank is dead.
Actuality: Not true. Today Pagerank is as importatn as ever with Google.
Myth: All you need is more & more links.
Actuality: Not true. Links into your site need to be related to your content. So called "link farms" which are lists of hundreds of unrelated sites will lower your pagerank. So quality is more important than quantity.
Myth: SEO doesn’t require patience.
Actuality: Not true. SEO requires, not only patience but research, thought and time invested into it. For better result you should have patience.
Myth: New sites can not get listed in search engines.
Actuality: Not true. Good and well SEO optimized websites can get indexed in a s little as 48 hours.
Myth: Meta tags – all are equal and important
Actuality: Not all Meta tags are important, though few of them are. Search engines prefer better content than the Meta tags. Some search engines don’t follow description tag and the same is true for keywords also.
Myth: SEO demands too much expenditure.
Actuality: Not true. SEO can be called the most economic form of online marketing. Organic SEO is very cost effective than the sponsored or banner advertising.
Myth:PPC is better than SEO.
Actuality: It can be true but not for long term. This you can analysis for yourself. Almost all searchers rely on organic seo because they find sponsored ads seldom relevant. Users trust organic search results more than sponsored pages. In PPC, though, you are visible in the search page but it is for a short term only whereas if you get good ranking in organic seo, people will definitely hit your website.
Myth: Homepage Optimization is enough for effective seo.
Actuality: Many think only homepage can be optimized with keywords, and it is enough for better ranking. But, you can optimize all pages of your website with keywords. Every page should have its own keywords, it can show better ranking results.
Myth: Guarantee is possible in SEO.
Actuality: Many SEO companies give guaranteed ranking and optimization. But, in reality, no one can guarantee ranking in any search engines. SEO is a never ending process and one need to optimize the site intermittently. So these guarantees are just
a bait to lure gullible companies.

Dirctory Submissions

2007-01-31T01:47:00.000-08:00

Directory Submissions

I am going to talk about Directory Submission, every one know it plays very very important role in Offpage SEO, directory submissions the name itself conveys the message that it is related to submissions to a directory or directories. It is a very popular way to get traffic as well as a link back to your website which affects your rankings in SERPs and counted a vote to your webs.

What is a directory?

A directory is a list or a collection of website addresses which is organized in a categorized format to provide a unique information system of Webpage’s in terms of websites. The process of submitting websites for inclusion into directories, Search engines for indexing in terms of websites. If you get few hundreds of good link backs i.e. one way link back, then your search engine position will grow very fast.

There are two types of web directories:
Static Web directory

Dynamic web directory

Dynamic web directories only helps in getting some traffic to your websites but are not useful for search engine positioning as they don’t provide a direct link to your website which cannot be considered as a vote to your website.
Static web directories helps in both ways, traffic as well as search engine positioning because it give a direct link to your website which will be counted as a vote to your website.

So be careful while apporaching any directory for link!!

Before you begin directory submission, make you have taken note of the following:
• Do not submit a mirror page; most directories don’t accept mirror pages.

• Do not submit any “Under construction” pages.

• Always submit the top-level domain of your site.For example: The correct URL to submit for my site is www.seoay.blogspot.com. Do not add index.html or any sub domains.

• Check all your links. Broken links are a sign poor site management which may not go down well with the directories.

• Chose the most appropriate Category for your site.

• Choose proper title for your website. Try to include a keyword you are aiming for ranking in in the title. Choose proper keyword for better results, read Keyword Analysis

I have recently tried this good quality web directory submission process on one of my website and it has shown its effect and I got very high search engine placements for many keywords.

Here are some directories:

www.dirworldonline.com
www.givelink.info
www.ilinkr.com
www.linkedout.info
www.placeyourlinks.com
www.sitereviewer.net
www.kinds.biz
www.daredirectory.info
directory-links.net
www.easydirectory.info
www.findtoplinks.com
www.generaldirectory.biz
www.pegasusdirectory.com
www.castbylorenz.com
www.seo-friend.com
www.diverselist.com
care-for-earth.com
www.wannaberichtoo.com
www.aaawebdirectory.com
www.best-net-sites.com
www.blackdhalia.com
www.gimmemydomains.com
www.best-sites.co.uk
www.daredirectory.info
www.2space.net
www.diverselist.com
www.autostop4u.com
www.buysell-classifieds.com
www.dir.snn.gr
www.directoryzeal.com
directastic.com
www.directory4u.info
www.duanegartman.com
www.thenewwebtools.com
www.lavaseek.com
www.linksarena.com
nven.com
www.submit2dir.info
www.suggestlink.co.in
commercedir.com
www.computer-remote-control.com
commerce-directory.co.uk
www.directory-global.com
www.directoryon.info
www.directorysquare.com
www.directory-submission.net
www.directory143.com
www.directory4u.net
dir.seo7.net
www.dir6.com
www.ewolf.info
directory.ezweb-tools.com
fabarooni.com
www.findsites.net
www.findwhatwhere.info
www.free-top.net
www.freewebdirectory.biz
www.godirectory.org
www.gooddirectory.net
www.goodprdirectory.com
www.rattandirectory.com
www.ezilon.com
www.4-every-1.ws
www.4ppl.com
www.a-free-directory.info
www.a-web-directory.info
www.a1directorysearch.com
www.abilogic.com
www.add-link.info
searchsight.com
www.allthelinks.info
www.xtremsearch.com
www.directory-free.com
www.1stchoicesearch.com
www.2addlink.info
www.abigdir.com
directory-links.net
www.addyoursitefreesubmit.com
www.bhanvad.com
www.blisswolff.com
www.businessdirectoryofusa.com
www.c2000.com
www.cash-for-surveys.com
www.cyngoseek.com
blue.daffodil.uk.com
www.dhundo.com
www.eurofind.biz
www.iconcave.com
www.imegamall.com
www.infignos.com
directory.inmeres.com
directory.iserv.com.au
www.itzalist.com
directory.jayde.com
www.landoflinks.com
www.linketeria.com
www.look4business.org
www.megri.com
www.monkey-directory.com
www.netkushi.com
www.webdirectory1.info
www.aardvark.co.za
www.websearches.info
linkcentre.com
www.pedsters-planet.co.uk
webmasterhole.info
www.linktoria.com
www.tsection.com
www.rdirectory.net
busybits.com
www.somuch.com
www.eliteweb.cc
www.spacebom.org
www.theglasspalace.org
www.resourcehelp.com
www.pleaseretrieve.com
www.forage.in
www.links4rank.com
www.000harrydir.info
www.1americamall.com
www.abcsubmission.com
www.addyourlinkfree.com
www.afghana.com
www.agada.info
www.amray.com
www.autumntree.info
www.busybits.com
www.bzzu.com
www.cachedirectory.com
www.cash-for-surveys.com
www.catalog.fubix.com
www.cherrydir.com
www.click2directory.com
www.completeonlinedirectory.com
www.consultant-directory.com
www.cyberwebsearch.com
www.directorysearch.org
www.infotiger.com
www.imegamall.com
www.theseoking.com
www.worldsiteindex.com
directory.jayde.com
www.search4i.com
www.redjuniper.com
www.elib.org
turnpike.net
fastpaths.com
www.addsite-submitfree.com
www.typelinks.com
www.digitaldir.eu
www.dramba.com

One list of directories is at http://info.vilesilencer.com/main.php?rock=seo-friendly.php. Opinion at the moment is suggesting that non-reciprocal or one-way links are better, although any relevant link is useful. Directories that encode their links are mostly useful for traffic if their Alexa Ranking is high enough. Directories that do not encode outgoing links will help your website's Search Engine Ranking.

Search Engine Optimization - SEO Articles for Beginners

2006-11-09T23:09:00.000-08:00

Search Engine Optimization

The following articles are meant to aid in the understanding of the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). The articles may also be re-published on other websites, newsletters, e-zines, or in print magazines as long as the authors are given appropriate credit and re-print guidelines are followed.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a website promotion strategy, the goal of which is to get your site to appear at the top of search engine results under keywords or phrases appropriate to your business. For example a site that sells CDs online will want to be found in major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista and AOL under key phrases such as "online CDs," "buy CDs," or "CDs for sale."Below are examples of three major search engines and the types of search results that are attainable through search engine optimization. (Click on any of the images below to view the images in full size.)

Keyword Analysis & Meta Tags

Keyword Analysis - Article and guide on proper keyword analysis. Keyword analysis is the process of determining which search words and phrases are most likely to bring the greatest ROI.

Intro to Meta Tag Optimization - Introduction to Meta Tags with detailed descriptions, and tips on how to properly optimize the title, description, keywords and robots tags.

Advanced Meta tags - Guide to advanced Meta Tags covering HTTP-EQUIV tags, obscure tags, headers, character sets and content types.

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Use Keyword Rich Anchor Text
Use ALT Tags
Use Heading Tags
Use Bold and Italics
Use Correct File Names
Keywords in URL

Keyword Analysis

2006-11-04T03:58:00.000-08:00

Definition
Keyword analysis also known as keyword research, keyword analysis utilizes a variety of search engine data to determine which search words and phrases are most likely to bring the greatest ROI to a given website.
A proper Keyword Analysis is always the first step to a solid search engine marketing campaign. The purpose of the analysis is to determine under which search terms your website should be marketed. There are several factors to consider during the keyword analysis process.

Keyword Phraseology
Are people more likely to search in singular or plural? Will they type in first-person verbs (i.e. buy) or verb participles (i.e. buying)? Do they tend to put nouns in front of adjectives and verbs, or verbs in front of nouns and adjectives? Will people search in full sentences or by single words? To find the best keywords for a website it's important to know exactly what people are typing into the search engines. This is the study of keyword phraseology.
A common beginners misconception is that search engines will provide the same results for similar keyword phrases such as: "buy online roses" and" buy roses online." This is absolutely not true. In fact, if you go to Google or Yahoo and try these two searches, you will see that the results are quite different. Obviously, as you build your online marketing campaign it would benefit you to know which term is searched for more.
Part of a good keyword analysis is to carefully determine the exact variations of keywords that are most beneficial to your site.

Keyword Popularity
Keyword Popularity refers to how often a keyword or phrase is searched for. Although certainly important, beginning search engine optimizers often put too much weight on this factor during keyword analysis. Targetedness of a keyword is much more important in keyword selection for almost all industries.
There are several tools that can help you determine a keyword's popularity. The Google and Overture tools are the most popular free tools, and are included on our SEO resources web page. Espotting also has a free tool to determine keyword popularity. All of these resources test only a limited section of searches on the Internet to determine their keyword popularities. They also ignore word order and the difference between plural and singular words in their listings. Anyone serious about keyword analysis will subscribe to WordTracker. WordTracker is not free, but is, predictably, much more accurate than the free services.

Intro to Meta Tag Optimization

2006-11-01T00:21:00.000-08:00

An HTML document contains three sections. The first is a Document Declaration Statement which tells the requesting agent what version of HTML the web page is using. The second is the HEAD element which contains the TITLE and META Tags. The HEAD section is meant to give requesting agents general information about the web page. The third section is the body, which is what is translated by your browser into a viewable web page.

Today, there are only a few META tags that are worth your optimizing. Luckily, the list is short:

Title
Description
Keywords
Robots

The Title Tag

A Title should be informative about the web page content. It should be understandable outside of context. For example, "Introduction" is not a good page Title, but "Introduction to Search Engines" is a good Title. Important: The Title of a page appears as the link to your site in search engine results. Make it something your customers will be likely to click on!

The Description Tag

The description is the second most important element of the HEAD section. Although it is most often not used to determine search engine rankings, the Meta description is sometimes used as the description under your link in search engine results. A good web page description can mean the difference between someone clicking on your link or skimming down to your next competitor.

The Keyword Tag

Keywords have been so badly abused, that many search engine optimizers have declared them dead. Still, even if only a few search engines still use the keyword META tag, every lit bit helps. Keep them short and sweet. Don't repeat a keyword more than twice (some say don't ever repeat a keyword), and don't overstuff your keyword META tags. A good keyword tag has 5-20 well-chosen, succinct phrases that may or may not be separated by commas.

The Robots Tag

A robots Meta tag is meant to instruct search engine spiders or 'bots' in how to index--or not to index--your web site. The default is "index, follow", which means that without a robots META tag, the search engine spiders should assume you want them to index your site and follow its links.

Advanced Meta tags

2006-10-29T00:23:00.000-07:00

There are two types of META tags:

META NAME tags are the ones most people first learn about. For example, the keywords META tag is a META NAME tag because it has the word "name" in the code.

HTTP-EQUIV META tags:

Specifying Content Type and Character Set
The Content-Type tag allows you to specify the media type (i.e. text/html) and the character set. As different languages have different default character sets, this can be important in ensuring that your page displays correctly in all browsers.

Specifying Language
The content-language META tag is important to directories, search engines or other agents that are looking for websites in a specific language.

The Expires/Pragma Combination
The Expires and Pragma tags are meant to control browser caching. Theoretically, they will ensure that an end-user will be viewing a fresh copy of your page and not a copy cached in the History folder of a browser. Netscape seems to obey these META tags more accurately than Internet Explorer.

Refresh Your Page
The refresh META tag is used to refresh a web page every x seconds or to redirect a page to another page in x seconds. For example, the following code would redirect you to our homepage in 3 seconds.

META NAME Tags

The important META NAME Tags (such as keywords, robots and description) were explained in our Introduction to META Tag optimization. But there are still hundreds of obscure META NAME tags we haven't discussed.

Article on Onpage SEO

2006-10-26T00:23:00.000-07:00

Onpage Search Engine Optimization
Every website on the internet is created using a programming language called "html". In orderto see the "html code" that is used to create a webpage, we must click "view", then "source"within our web browser as shown below:This will open up a text file for us to have a look at and see if this website is actually optimizingtheir "Onpage Optimization factors". For example we are doing SEO of a "weight loss site" and we have selected our main 3 keywords:
weight loss story
weight loss picture
safe weight loss
Notice that all of the keywords contain the word "weight loss". This will make things easier forus when we begin to optimize our offpage ranking factors which you'll learn about later.Let's Optimize Our Webpage:-

Step 1: The first thing we need to do is select a page Title for our website.
The page title should:Include ONLY our main keywords. The least amount of words you can place in the title,the more weight Google will give to each of the keywords and the higher you will rank.When creating your page title, it should not look like this:
Welcome to our website!
It should not even look like this, which does contain our main keywords, but contains anunnecessary number of words: weight loss story and weight loss picture and safe weight loss Although that title isn't horrible and does contain all of your main keywords.
you should do acouple of things to cut down on words used. This would be a perfect title for your webpage:
Weight Loss Story Safe Weight Loss Picture
Notice that I've: Taken out all of the "ands" Replaced one of the "ands" with a "" character Note: This character is located on the keyboard directly above the "enter key".
Combined the keywords "Safe Weight Loss" with "Weight Loss Picture”Always Combine Your Keyword When Possible to cut down on the total number of words thatare in your title!

Step 2: Add h1 header tags, Next we'll need to add h1 header tag and place our most important keyword there. The header tag should be as far towards the top left hand side of the page as possible. When Google reads a webpage, it views the text from the top left hand side of the page, andthen follows down to the bottom right hand side of the page. So, it's best to place your h1 header tag on the top left hand or top/middle portion of your page. It's ideal if you can include ONLY yourmain keyword within the h1 header tags. "Weight Loss Story" would be a perfectheader tag.

Step 3: Add h2 header tags, Next, we'll need to create an h2 header tag. This can be thought of as a sub heading for our webpage. You should place your 2nd most important keyword in the h2 header tag. It's ideal to place your primary keyword here within the h2 header tags. "safe weight loss" would be a perfectheader tag.

Step 4: After we've done this, we need to actually create the content for our webpage. When writing the content, try to evenly sprinkle your main keywords throughout the copy.Note: Don't overdo it though. If you simply repeat your keyword over and over like this:weight loss story about weight loss story that I have a weight loss story and weight loss story...Google will immediately see your website as search engine spam and you will not rank well.So, try to keep in mind that you're creating your website for the eyes of REAL people. Try to mention each keyword in a natural way as you are writing, but be sure to include at least one of the keywords per 1-2 paragraphs, depending on how large your page is.

Step 5: Make sure to mention your main keyword at the very top left and the very bottom right hand side of the webpage. A trick I like to use is to include this in the copyright information line at the bottom of the website. For our example, this would be a good example:

Step 6: Bolding, italicizing and underlining ...Once we've finished writing the copy, we should go through and bold, underline, or italicize some of the keywords only 1 time each, maximum. Only do 1 per keyword or it will hurt you more than it helps.

Step 7: Properly include alt image tags ...Next, add an alt image tag to the very top image of your webpage (This is usually your website's header graphic). Use the "alt" image tag using the text "weight loss story header".

Step 8: Google reads your webpage from top left, to bottom right? Well, in general they do, but because most websites contain a left hand column which contains all of their navigation links, as shown below: Google WILL View all of the text in the left hand column Before The Body of the webpage. This isn't good for us, because we want Google to actually read our content first! You should create a table that looks like this, where Google will read the top left hand row/column first (This is labeled "emptycolumn") but will see that it is empty, so it will then read the body text of your webpageand then read the 2nd left hand row/column which contains your navigational links!

In summary, I really want to point out the fact that, although good onpage optimization issomething you'll really want to do, it is NOT how you make dramatic changes in your searchengine ranking!

Article on Off-page SEO

2006-10-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

Off-page Search Engine Optimization
It is the offpage optimization factorsthat will get you high rankings. I will teach you exactly what offpage optimization factors are,AND how to make sure you optimize this perfectly for Google and the other major searchengines!

Off page optimization involves:
• Link Building to improve Link popularity
• Reciprocal Linking – Two way links
• Non-reciprocal linking – In-bound links
• Use of keyword rich anchor text in linking text
• PPC advertisements
• Directory submissions
Note: Index yourself in google, its very important. Get listed in DMOZ: The Open Directory Project
(http://www.dmoz.org ) is the world's largest directory.
So, what is offpage optimization anyway? Offpage optimization basically consists of all of theranking factors that are NOT located on your webpage, that the search engines look at whenranking a website.

Link Building
These include:
Which websites link to you The number of websites linking to you.
The Google of the website linking to you.
The page title of the website linking to you.
The anchor text used in the link linking to you.
The number and type of links linking to the website that's linking to you.
The number of outbound links on the website that is linking to you.
The total number of links on the website that is linking to you.
Whether or not the websites linking to you are deemed by Google as an authority website.
The IP Address of the websites linking to you.

Article Marketing
Writing several articles and submitting them to article directories for publication is a great way to build one-way links. By including a link to your website in your articles resource box, you not only gain quality one-way links but also drive free targeted traffic to your site. Your articles may drive truckloads of traffic if they are impressive. There are hundreds of article directories if not thousands. You can find them by going to Google and entering the search term 'article directories'.

Directories
Submitting your website's link to directories is another way of getting backlinks. Directories normally offer 3 types of listings:
1) Paid listing
2) Free listing
3) Free listing but require a link back from you.
If you choose the first or third option and your website meets the submission guidelines and rules of the directories, your link will usually be listed within days. If you select the second option, you have to wait longer and your website's listings aren't guaranteed.Getting listed in quality directories with Google page rank 7 or higher such as DMOZ and Yahoo directory can be more beneficial for increasing your rankings than a lot of links from smaller and newer directories. But it is
not easy to be accepted by these quality directories.

E-mail signatures
Start using E-mail signatures. They might not produce thousands of visitors, but are a great way to promote your site a bit without having to actually do anything.

Press Release
Press release is simply an announcement of an important event for your business. Just like article marketing, you can gain one-way links by writing a press release with a link pointing to your site and submitting it to other websites. To find websites that accept press release, you can go to Google and enter the search term 'submit press release'.

Affiliate Program
If you are selling a product or a membership service, launching an affiliate program is a good idea to increase both your inbound links and online sales. Webmasters that are interested to market your product will place your link on their websites and you get free one-way links.