Search Friendly

The SEO is back

So i confess its been a while since my last post, and i never really got round to completing my 10 SEO Steps To Perfection series, but the truth to it is that the most important step of all is constantly refreshing your content. take a site ive been working on recently. There a provider of Uk Web Hosting solutions, and it has taken a lot of my time. but i do think its at the stage for great things. take the Reseller Web Hosting page, perfecting the text for that page takes time and effort, and definatly a set of usefull SEO tools ive found over at SEOMOZ.org. theres h1 headers, h2 headers, bold keywords, relevant texts, strong link structure, branding images, a good amount of imformation and a clear feature list. This is essentually what your site needs to contain to do well in google, and thats exactly what a Search Engine Optimization Specialist would do for you (although i would never turn down the work!).

check out some keywords for SearchFriendly:

Search Friendly: 3rd for google.co.uk search Result 3 of about 30,200,000 sites
10 SEO steps: 1st for google.co.uk search Result 1 of about 2,260,000 sites
seo location: 3rd for google.co.uk search Result 3 of about 2,570,000
SEO Domains: 2nd for google.co.uk search Result 2 of about 583,000

not bad for a few SEO optimization articles?

if you feel you have a shining example of how to optimize a site, feel free to drop me an email, and ill be more than willing to show how your site is a shining example of SEO and give links. if anyone has any usefull seo information, drop me an email aswell and ill be more than happy to post it.

peace.

Search Engine Optimization - 10 SEO Steps To Perfection - Part 5

Today im going to touch on the need of regularly updated content on your site.

Google’s algorithms are second to none, and a major sign of this is that google only rewards the best content pages with the higher rankings.

here are a few things to note when marketing your website

• Updating Regularly:Update at least a few times a month, ideally you should be updating daily. although daily might be difficult to manage on product website, try adding a blog to your site and posting news about your products, and remember back to Search engine Optimisation - 10 SEO Steps To Perfection - part 1 where i tak about the importance of SEO Relevant content.
• Spelling and grammar: what’s the point of having keywords on your page if your going to spell them wrong… also google doesn’t see a page that has many errors is more important than one with perfect grammar and spelling
• Paragraphs: Keep your paragraphs in your text short. 4-5 lines, remember google was designed on the basis a web page is like a book, you need a good index on it, good titles and good grammar.
• Lists: are always good to get your point across, and like a book, google sees them as a point of interest
• Sentence length: keep sentences mostly brief (10 words or fewer). Medium-length and long sentences should be sprinkled throughout the text rather than clumped together.
• Contextual relevance: your Text must contain numerous terms related to your keywords, as well as stem variations of the keyword.

The more you update your site, the better the results will be in google!

Search Engine Optimization - 10 SEO Steps To Perfection - Part 1

This is the first part of a series of 10 covering Search Engine Optimization, the 10 steps to perfection.

What aspect of search engine optimization im going to talk about today is Content Relevance.

The first thing to note about content relevance, is that content is the only part search engines can see, eg if you had a red peice of text, all that goole etc are going to see, is the title text, and not the colour.

The second thing to note is that if you have a link from a related site, its going to do more for you than a link from a site that covers a completly different subject.

When writing your articles, make sure you cover your main subject in the text. for example, if you were going to make a site on Computer reviews, make sure that you pick your keywords, and use them in the content of your page.

This is the most important step of your search engine optimization, CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT. i cannot express this enough, having a site full of images means google isnt going to see allot on your page, but a 6 paragraph content section is going to do allot more for your ranks.

Blogging For Business? Does it Work?

Blog is abbreviation of weblog. A weblog is a journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the information or personality of the author or the type of business or web site.

Nowadays blogs are very popular medium to express opinion, information, history and many more details. Previously blogs are just created for biography of author, famous personality and personal information only. Now blogs are increasingly use by the business community and also by multinational companies.

Now top SEO companies offers companies to prepare business blogs as a powerful tool for search engine optimization for promote their business websites and hence business. SEO blogs are very effective way to explore information about your business, products etc.

One can describe as many information in their blogs in search engine friendly waywhich might not possible to mention in their company’s website. For example if you are manufacturer of some industrial product than in your corporate website you can give details about your company profile, product information, services and other such information while in blogs you can write any information related to your product.

The purpose of preparing blogs means you can include as many topics related to your products and business, from invention of product to most modern technology, formulation, various processes etc. This help you to get better listing in search engine result pages as well as generating more natural traffic to your website related to your business. A properly written Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog is an indeed ROI (Return on Investment).

In case if you are launching some new products or something different and you want to domestically or internationally promote your business, blogs are very right and beneficial approach for marketing your products. The major advantage of blogs is all search directories and search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and the others are looking for fresh and new information that is frequently updated, there for chances to get fast listing are more, sometimes in a few day but not always.

Google find daily and updated content, the more often their search spiders will visit your business blog, resulting in top search engine ranking.

Things you can write in Business Blog for Top Search Engine Ranking

For instance, a manufacturer can include following pages related to the business in their blogs,

• History or invention of product
• Stage wise manufacturing process
• Quality, type of material
• Industry wise various applications
• Comparative advantage [ with other competitive products ]
• Latest market trend and technology
• Packaging details
• Rules and regulation in case of import and export
• Major Constrains
• Business Opportunities
• Domestic and global market
• Basic Tips for buying, caring, storage etc

Who should select blog for their business?

• If you have appropriate information to make people aware about your product
• If you would like your website to have top ranking positions in Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines
• If you’re unhappy with the results and ROI from internet marketing

Why you should opt to prepare blog for your business?

• For higher search rankings on Google with no paid submissions
• Search engines will most likely position you top with fresh content
• Create visibility with information to generate natural traffic to your website with top search engine ranking and thus great chances for receiving more business enquires
• Google will take only few days for fresh information to be appearing on search result pages.
• Business SEO blogs should be viewed as an additional and parallel solution to fortify communications and ideas to your prospects, suppliers, business associates, customers etc., while at the same time helping your website in the search engines.

Why blogs are Search Engine Friendly?

Blogs are search engine friendly because the text,links are rich, updated frequently, no images or graphics or any plug-in controls, use of CSS, in other word it is fully text or content base and therefore easy for search engine to crawl or search. Optimizing a blog is similar process as optimizing a website. Blogs gives more scope for generating number of search engine friendly keywords and keyword phrases.

You can get good ranking if you follow some basic rules in your blogs. Here are the most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

• In blog domain, use your primary keyword
• In title and header tags of your blog, use most important keyword or keyword phrase
• In the body text, use secondary keywords and keyword phrases
• Use your keywords in the page name and anchor text of links
• Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily
• Update your blog frequently

A Few Mistakes in Search Engine Optimization

In Search Engine Optimization, SEO, there are many mistakes to be made. Below is a list of a few most common mistakes that website owners do.

Badly Designed Websites
If your website is designed badly i.e. lack of proper navigation, using frames to save on design times, and large graphics which takes more time to load, and reduce text that you would use instead of the image, these all makes effect on listing in Search Engine. Search engine spiders can actually be blocked from crawling sites that are not well-designed. Therefore a proper web design is very important part of search engine optimization.

In many sites, images and other script languages are used for fine looks. These are good but not crawl-able i.e. not advisable for search engine optimisation. Try to make your useful links in HTML rather than using images or use of other web script languages. If your page layout change then place HTML link on bottom of your page. It is also good chance to use keywords in anchor text.

Large image size will cause more time to download page, people don’t have time to wait for long time. Make your images in more pieces so it will take less time than single image. Try to make low resolution file where high resolution graphics are not required. If it is essential to use large images then consider using thumbnails and open it in separate page. This may give additional benefit of creating more pages and more text that spiders and bots crave.

Badly written of Content
If we have to rate single largest factor for high ranking in search engine i.e. “content”.

Clarity of content written in site is a very important aspect for search engine spiders, search engine and directory users. If your content is badly written and not relevant to what you want to find for or content which are never updated, than your site is neither search engine friendly nor user-friendly. Well-written content is what search engine spiders feed on, and content is the key to high rankings. In addition, your content absolutely must have targeted keywords and phrases. If content is written properly, you can make more targeted keyword and appropriate phrases.

Ideally, you will use those words throughout your copy frequently and may also include them in bold or italics to show search engines that those words are very important in the scope of the page!

Absence of targeted keyword and phrases can break your site. When users go to search engine and type particular keyword related to your site, but if you have not entered that keyword in your body text than your site will not come in listing.

Another common mistake made by some SEO professional is their choice of keywords placed in the META keyword tag. Make sure it might seem logical to your content.

Any irrelevant keyword or phrase can increase your ranking but think about it – even if you succeeded in ranking well for such a competitive term that you don’t want, how many of the people visiting your site as a result of this search would leave as soon as they see your home page? That’s right, because most of them don’t find what exactly they are looking for. Misspellings, odd spacing, and product feature-specific variations should also be considered. Thorough keyword research can save money and future disappointments.

Does it become clear now that targeting such a generic word is a waste of time? What you need to do instead is optimize your site for search terms and phrases that are highly targeted to your precise business. Use a tool such as Word tracker to find what people are actually typing in to the search engines to find goods and services similar to yours and concentrate on ranking well for those terms. The more qualified your site visitors are, the more likely you are to convert those visitors into paying customers.

Replica of Content
Do not copy content from other’s website. When Search engines compares your site with other site; if your page is updated later that it consider your site as spamming and it may result into penalty or low ranking of your site. If you use duplicate pages means if you prepare more than one pages with different name and link but if content in page are same search engine will considered as trick and it definitely affect your ranking.

Also, search engine algorithms have become smarter and are now checking that sites contain highly relevant content before including them in their index.

Improper use of Meta Tags or Site without Meta Tags
Without Meta tags or improper Meta tags can misguide search engine for irrelevance search that may cause improper listing of your website. Meta tags are used to include Keyword and description tags. It is reserved part especially for search engines. Meta tags help search engines for quick search. It is also helpful to increase ranking in search engines. Make sure to include these Meta tags in all page of your site, and target them for each individual page.

If your website is good in content and also have proper keywords, but not place page title or not used descriptive and appropriate page title than it might harm your ranking. It is better to have different title on every page also use descriptive page title.

Use your title tag, URL, and H1 tags when optimizing site. In a website these are the three most simple and most important for search engine, when it comes to search engine optimization.

Absence of Sitemap for website with more than 10 pages
Without sitemap, user need to search entire site for the content he is searching for which is very tedious and sometime user may quit without going further. For the reason it is very important to prepare sitemap in the website to help searcher and search engine. Sitemap assist web crawlers in indexing websites more efficiently and effectively. Sitemap provides structure of entire site in one page which is very useful for search engine optimization. The sitemap drives the search engine to go directly to the page instead of search for links. This helps a lot in optimization of website in search engines.

Google has introduced an option for generating sitemap of your website. Google sitemaps is an easy way to tell Google about all the pages on your site, which pages are most important to you, and when those pages change, for a smarter crawl and fresher search results.

Google Sitemaps also answers questions you might have about how Google sees your site.

Page Cloaking
The website that contains contents that is specially designed for the search engine is called cloaking site. The search engine checked IP address and keywords of the search query. There are cloaking techniques where the homepage is altered to each and every keyword to make search engine think that your site contains very relevant contents especially designed for the queried keyword or key phrase. Cloaking can result in a penalty that may damage your business as well as ranking.

Over optimisation affects your web site
When you put weight only on search engine ranking then it becomes over optimisation. When you prepare content in your site with more numbers of keywords i.e. keyword stuffed body text; having a too high keyword density may cause an over optimization penalty. This also applies to your page title, your Meta description and Meta keywords, as well as the ALT attributes of your images. That means you can not place stuff of keywords as body text in the site. Therefore, avoid optimizing your pages very much by all way. Try to make website for human being rather than making for search engine robot.

Absence of Back Links or broken links
Your site must be link properly. For example if you open some page in new window and there is no back link or any navigation in that page to return main page than it is just as a deserted island. The other example is if you have placed banner of some of your partner or relevance to your business, when user click on that link and you have not place back link than user may not find way if he wants to back to your site.
It is a good way to link sites that are related to your business and ask them to link of your website. But take care of proper linking. Try and think in terms of traffic and avoid the page rank trap. If a link will bring your site traffic then go for it. If you are in a highly competitive market try to build quality links.

Inadequate Marketing Plan
Ranking will not help if you don’t know what your target market is. Your ranking has to lead with proper marketing strategy that hit your target audience and not just useless hits. Before spending time and money a perfect marketing plan is essential.

SEO - Tips to Optimize Your Webpage to Compete for a High Ranking

Search engine optimization (SEO) is very important to websites. If you rank high in search engines, your website are shown to a huge number of target users.To start with, you have to pick a list of target keywords. Try the google Adwords: Keyword tool for selecting the best keywords for your site.

Remember, be specific with your keywords! eg trying to rank well for “web Development” is going to be hard, but trying to rank well for “asp.net web development” is easier to achieve.

Go to google.com, search on the target keyword your website has planned to work on. Then check the top ranking website, learn from it, and do better.

How to do better? Here’s some basic practices…

1. place your optimizes keyword in titles, and make sure you have 1 title per page. to do this all you need to do is use the <h1> tag in very top of the page.

2. place keyword phases in a paragraph or 2 of text at the top of your site.

3. On your web page, set your first graphic with ALT set to your target keyword

4. build a text based sitemap, add ALT if it is an image

5. OPML / RSS site map

6. bold or underline keyword (1 or 2 times only)

7. The key word/phrase should be used again very near the end of the page.

8. try to register a good domain name with keyword (I guess keyword in subdirectory is ok)

9. navigation menu on the right, since google bot looks from top and left.

Keyword Rich Content For Search Engine Optimization SEO

Search engines love content. Graphics may make your site look great, but a nice picture does not attract a search engine. Or a searcher for that matter. Good, relevant content does.
Search engines aren’t all that different from people. When faced with a ton of choices, they want to know which sites are the best. And, the best sites are the ones that give the most accurate and relevant information.

Good content serves three main purposes:

1. Search engines will rank your site higher for keywords and phrases included within your content.

2. Users will return to your site, and recommend it to others

3. Other sites will link to you, which will improve your linking popularity and make your web site visible to the spiders.

But, how do you get good content? Simple. You write it, or get someone else to write it for you, using keywords and phrases your visitors will actually use on a search query.

Feeling a little hot under the collar? Relax. It’s not as difficult as it sounds. Anyone can learn to write for crawler search engines. It just takes a little planning, detective work and focus. Ready to begin? Follow the steps below and you’ll be writing like a pro in no time.

1. Determine which keywords and phrases you want to target

Before you sit down to write anything, you’ll need to decide which keywords and keyphrases are relevant to your site. One of the best ways to do this is to use the Word Tracker keyword tracking service at www.wordtracker.com. Word Tracker receives its data from the Dogpile and Metacrawler search engines and estimates search counts for all other search engines based on its market share. You can sign up for a day, a week, a month or a year.

Another good way to find keywords your visitors are using is to look at your site’s server logs. These will tell you what phrases people are using to find your site. Some keywords will be too competitive. For example, the keywords “real estate” will return hundreds, if not thousands of search results, and may not place your site near the top, but “Houston Real Estate” or is more focused and targeted to a particular query.

If you want your site to be included in local and regional searches you may want to design your site with local searches in mind, even if you also market globally. How do you do this? Just include local keywords such as address, city, state, province and zip code in the header or footer of your web pages. For example:

XYZ Business Consultant, 3657 Acacia Avenue, farnham, Surrey gu12 6rg. Tel: 01252 746 895. Located in Aldershot Surrey, UK.

That way you have a much better chance of getting a first page listing on a localized search.

2. Scatter your chosen keywords and phrases throughout your text.

Let’s say one of the keyphrases you want to target is “cotton duvets”. You’ll want to weave this phrase throughout your copy without making it sound stilted or contrived. Remember, you still need to persuade your prospects to buy your product, so don’t be tempted to write paragraphs like this:

“Our cotton duvets are the softest cotton duvets around. Check out our affordable cotton duvets in our online cotton duvet store now.” While it’s obvious what your keyphrases are, the two sentences don’t exactly encourage your visitor to place an order. Be subtle. Use your keywords to emphasize your point and insert them where they naturally fit, without compromising flow and readability.

3. Review your headings, titles and hyperlinks

Use your keywords in headings, subtitles, page titles (found in the blue bar at the top of your Web browser), bold face and hyperlinks, because these stand out to the search engines. For example, returning to the cotton duvets you may want to change your “contact us” hyperlink to “contact us now about our luxurious cotton duvets.” Or, “learn more about how our cotton duvets can keep you warm and snug this winter”

4. Post keyphrase-rich, informative articles on your site

Another great way to fill your site up with keyword-laden content is to post relevant, informative articles. Every article you post on your site adds more content–content that the search engines thrive on. And, if you write each article as if you are giving the spider a good, healthy meal full of essential keywords, they’ll devour every word, and index it for future use.

You can also post your articles on article directories such as GoArticles, Article City or IdeaMarketers that offer free content to ezine publishers and website owners. That way you’ll spread the word about your site, get some great back links and even free publicity.

5. Publish a Newsletter or Ezine

Newsletters and ezines are another way to add content to your site. If you’ve written articles already, you get to reuse them, and you can create a newsletter archive section on your website.

6. Post a blog or weblog

Blogs or Weblogs are frequently updated journals. that point to articles elsewhere on the web, and to existing on-site articles. The popularity of blogs have spawned blog services such as Typepad and Blogger which make it easy for non-techies to update their sites and add them to an existing web site. Because both the search engines and your site’s visitor’s love new, updated information, blogs can be a great way of adding content to your site on a daily basis. You can use a blog to announce company news or comment on industry news, announce new product details or to create a “brand” or “personality” for your company.

Before you begin publishing your blog, think about what you’re customers want to know. Then, answer their questions on a daily basis. It won’t be long before you’ll have them, and the search engines hooked.