Search Friendly

Tools to use when deciding what keywords to use. Part 1

When Developing your site and considering Search Engine Optimization, one of the most important things to do is to look at the keywords you want to use, and how much traffic those keywords get.

For example for this blog, one of my keywords is Search Engine Optimization articles . I need to see what traffic in Search engines this keyword generates.

The First thing you should do is check out the competition. enter the term in google and see how many results are returned.

Search Engine Optimization - 10 SEO Steps To Perfection - Part 4

Today im going to be talking about Website Hosting.

Now you may be thinking, what’s this got to do with Search Engine optimization? it plays a big part in location based searches.

For instance, saying you have a .com and are targeting a US based audience, you want US Hosting, the same applies for a UK Audience.

If you go to google.co.uk and do a uk search, it’ll only show websites hosted in the UK, whilst if you go to google.com it ll show American websites as well.

For UK Shared Web Hosting i recommended Power-core.co.uk. With their UK Hosted Servers, this will mean google sees any websites hosted on their servers as uk based sites, and helps promotion in the uk search.

For a US Shared web hosting account, i recommended dreamhost.com

Hope this helps! comments?

Black Hat And White Hat SEO Methods

There are three types of SEO Methods, Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO and in the middle of them both we have the Grey Hat SEO (which is a mixture of white and black hat methods).

This SEO Article is going to outline why people class them in this way and how they go about their techniques and what each focus on.

Those who practice white Hat SEO are sometimes said to use “ethical” SEO Methods, and those who Practice Black Hat SEO are sometimes referred to as “spammers”. Those who Pick and choose between the white and black methods are said to practice Grey Hat SEO methods.

But these Labels are not really useful, and don’t account to much meaning wise. I’m what they class as a White Hat. does this make me better that someone who uses Black Hat SEO Methods? Well it doesn’t make me any better as an SEO as Black Hat SEO’ers use completely different ways to me to achieve the same goals.

For instance, i target a website to be visible in google, doesn’t have to have the #1 spot in google, but it defiantly should be around 1-5 in google for maximum exposure over a long period of time. This is ethical SEO as i don’t use any “bad” methods to get my sites listed in Search Engines.

But using Black hat methods you can also score big. A Black Hat SEO knows that eventually there going to get their site banned from google, and will have accounted for this in his business plan.

You see as a black hat SEO, you can score big with a short period of time. Some black hat SEO are proud of the fact there black hat and spammers, as scoring big on certain keywords can make them upwards of £100,000 Per month from their techniques.

What those guys do as SEOs, however, really has nothing to do with what I do as an SEO. sure, we try to target our sites in search engines, but that’s where the similarities end.

I don’t have to panic every time a algorithm is changed in google, or find the latest bug that you can exploit in the search engine to improve ranking. All i have to do is be aware that the search engines are there, and check the relevance of my pages and what the best keywords are to use for that product/service.

White Hat SEOs And Black Hat SEO’s both have their pluses, and lots of people are looking for the types of products/services that black hatters specialise in, but allot of people use these methods, and often are extremely tough to compete with.

The important thing to note, however, is that most sites don’t need to resort to Black Hat SEO.

It all depends on the marketing strategy of the company. long term success, or temporary large pay-offs. choosing between both ways can be difficult, especially as it can be compared to gambling. you could use black SEO methods to get huge gains, but it could all be fixed within a week, meaning you have spent time and resources on a loss, or you could try white hat methods and find that you are trying to compete with other black hat SEO’ers and not get anywhere. of course as a white hat the best way to combat this is to choose another relevant keyword, or more descriptive keywords.

For a company seeking long term success, steer clear of Black Hat seo methods, yes you may get a quick fix, but seeing a drop in google traffic all together when your sites banned, is not a good thing, slow and steady ethical methods my take longer, but the substantial results you will get over time will allow your business to grow at a slow and steady pace, not just a “Quick Fix” of cash.

What Is Search Engine Optimization

From wikipedia:

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks”, the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

This basically means that Search Engine Optimisation is the modification of web pages to improve placement in search engine results pages (SERP’s).

Depending on your level of search engine optimisation training, you may wish to speak to a Search Engine Optimisation Company or you may want to read my SEO Articles on the 10 SEO Steps to Perfection.

Web Standards vs. Search Friendly Sites: Can You Have Both?

By Bill Hunt, The ClickZ Network

Web designers don’t understand search optimisation, and search marketers are clueless about usability and style—at least according to conventional wisdom. The good news is, those attitudes are slowly starting to change.A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, December 13-16, 2004, Chicago, IL.

For as long as I have been involved in online marketing and specifically search marketing, there has been a rivalry between web designers and optimizers. What stuck me as a sign of hope was the composition of the “web Standards, Good Design and SEO: You Can Have It All” panel with their collective attitude that we can “all get along” to design web sites that are visually appealing, informative to the visitor and at the same time, be search friendly.

In Danny Sullivan’s opening remarks for this session, he told the attendees that one of the main reasons he created Search Engine Watch was because everyone was busily creating sites for Internet Explorer and Netscape and few were spending any effort designing for search engines which he referred to as the “third search engine.”

Eric Meyer was the first speaker. Eric is a Consultant from Complex Spiral Consulting and gave a very informative presentation regarding web standards but did not make any specific ties to search engine optimisation. He spoke about how following web standards can reduce page weights which save companies money. He also touched on browser incompatibilities, especially in IE but mentioned that transitional design (using a combination of CSS and table layout) can help to bridge the gap.

Standards help users by reducing load time. Other than that, users really don’t care about the code. One point that Eric made (one that many large companies have already known but you don’t see as often in smaller sites) is that by following standards, developers can streamline the creation and maintenance of a site saving the company money. For more information on web standards, Eric suggests webstandards.org, maccaws.org and of course, the worldwide web consortium.

Matt Bailey from the Karcher Group spoke primarily about how web standards help accessibility, specifically for the visually impaired. He showed examples of how sites appear to people with various visual impairments and showed some screen reading programs (JAWS, Window-Eyes, HAL, and Out Spoken) and demonstrated how an over-optimized site would sound when read by one of these programs.

While humorous, it was obvious that brand-conscious companies must look at the broader picture when optimizing their sites. While most of his presentation was focused on development for the visually impaired, Matt did touch on how standards apply to search engine optimisation. He stressed using accurate image ALT attributes, uniquely titled pages, title attributes in links, descriptive text links and the need to reduce JavaScript as important search friendly tactics.

Shari Thurow from GrantasticDesigns.com followed with high praise of Eric and his work with CSS. She emphasized that good site design is most importantly user friendly and engaging enough to get users to convert. Shari reviewed a few case studies to emphasize the fact that your site needs goals and that you have to integrate search into your goal attainment planning.

Shari talked about the conflicting advice given by search engine optimizers and web standards professionals who advocate a limited use of graphics, and branding and marketing professionals who want to load up on graphics and flash to present a compelling offer to visitors. Shari is on the graphics side of the debate, advocating that graphics are better for usability and that too few graphics make a page appear unfocused. She echoed the advantages of CSS on site maintenance and reduced file size and explained one of the biggest problems with CSS is that not all fonts are available to users, causing problems for site owners.

Yahoo’s Tim Mayer said speed is a major concern, and to ensure fast loading page the company uses standards to reduce file size. Tim went on to say Yahoo’s crawlers prefer fast loading sites and that they really don’t put a lot of emphasis on validation. They have not seen a correlation between validated sites and good quality relevant sites.

Though the divide between design and optimisation will continue, this session went a long way to help close the gap and hopefully lead to faster loading sites and a wider adoption of accessibility functionality across the web..

Bill Hunt is the CEO of Global Strategies International.

Want to discuss or comment on this story? Join the Web Standards. Good Design & SEO: You Can Have It All discussion in the Search Engine Watch forums.

The 10 Commandments for Windows Users

1. Thou shalt not use the system without expecting a random reboot
   make sure you back files up, nothing quite like an unexpected reboot caused by windows updates.
2. Thou shalt pay over the odds for semi decent software.
   Windows software is extremely overpriced, especially when you could get an equivalent version free in linux.
3. Thou shalt ignore the community
   Usually passing by on forum posts and so forth laughing at what people cant do.




4. Thou shalt not read documentation.
   Of course, using windows means your instantly a computer/software guru and don’t need to read any of this blurb.
5. Thou shalt OVER use the available support system.
   printer not printing? checked the paper? nope, first youll phone the support line and demand a tech come out to fix it.
6. Thou shalt not search.
   In most cases, your question or problem has already been addressed, but your half-assed attempt to fix the solution normally involves a phone call to your “I.T Friend” and all he had to do to find the fix was 1 keyword in google.
   
7. Thou shalt explore and delete random files.
   Yes, most windows noobies do this. “oh the windows folder, don’t think i need that *delete*
8. Thou shalt use the password of “password”.
   nothing quite like leaving your system wide open to hackers.
9. Thou shalt not try to recreate linux.
   don’t expect your system to always respond or do what you expect, its not linux
   
10. Thou shalt regularly give up.
    if at first you don’t succeed, give up. TRY LINUX