Hi All ,
I will update here very soon .
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, November 7, 2008
10 Factors Google and Yahoo Consider For a Top Search Engine Ranking
Want to get into the top 5 of either Google or Yahoo? Make sure your website contains the top 10 factors for deciding a top search engine ranking.
It does not matter if you have the cure for cancer, if nobody knows about it you are not going to make any money. A top search engine ranking in either Google or Yahoo is the surest way for buyers to find your products so you can become a wealthy marketer. Google and Yahoo are responsible for about 80% of all search engine traffic in the world.
Make sure your online business or website contains these top 10 factors used for determining sites with a top 5 search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo.
Factor #1: Number of Quality Sites that Link to Yours
Google and Yahoo put a lot of significance on how many quality sites link back to yours with a page rank of at least 4 and above. This is probably the most important factor when considering a top search engine ranking.
When search engines see lots of important sites link back to yours it must mean that your site is also pretty important.
Remember the purpose of the internet is to provide information back to the end user. As someone is conducting research on the World Wide Web, sites must also participate and flow and connect to other related sites allowing those searching for your keyword terms various paths to the information being inquired.
Factor #2: Number of Pages Your Website Has
A website with less than 50 pages is really going to struggle to get a top search engine ranking unless it has more quality back links coming into it than their competitors.
Factor #3: Keywords in Your Title Tag
Google and Yahoo look to see if your keywords are contained in your page title and description. Make sure your keywords are also listed within your heading and subheading tags.
Factor #4: Keywords Showing in Links
Keywords that are highlighted within a link are considered more significant than those not at all highlighted within a link.
Factor #5: Keywords in Bold
Likewise words in bold are also considered more important than those not in bold.
Factor #6: Keywords in URL
Websites that are in less competitive markets that contain the keywords within their URL are considered more important than those sites that respectively do not.
Also keywords in the URL that come before unrelated words are considered better than a URL that follows an unrelated word within the URL. For example if your keyword is televisions, a URL with `televisions’ followed by unrelated words such as your name `Mike’ is better than putting your name `Mike’ before `televisions.’
Factor #7: More Significance Given to First 25 Words on Page
The first 25 words of each page are given more weight than all other words on the page. Make sure your keywords are in the first few words of your page. However, if you try and just list the same word or phrase 25 times repeatedly Google and Yahoo will penalize you.
Factor #8: Greater Than 300 Words on Your Homepage
Make sure you have at least 300 or more words on your homepage.
Factor #9: Keyword Density
Keyword density is not as important as it once was in the past but it still is an important factor. In order to get a top 5 search engine ranking look at your competitors sites and compare the density of their sites to yours and try and match their density.
Factor #10: Page Rank
Want to find out the page rank of your website or the page rank of another site? Download the Google toolbar and make sure the page rank indicator is activated. One major factor in determining your page rank is the first factor listed in this article. Quality back links are the most important factor for formulating your page rank.
A top search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo is decided most often by the combination of these 10 factors. If you want to get into the top 5 of the two most important search engines than make sure your website applies these major search engine ranking factors.
Author: Tim McGaffin
It does not matter if you have the cure for cancer, if nobody knows about it you are not going to make any money. A top search engine ranking in either Google or Yahoo is the surest way for buyers to find your products so you can become a wealthy marketer. Google and Yahoo are responsible for about 80% of all search engine traffic in the world.
Make sure your online business or website contains these top 10 factors used for determining sites with a top 5 search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo.
Factor #1: Number of Quality Sites that Link to Yours
Google and Yahoo put a lot of significance on how many quality sites link back to yours with a page rank of at least 4 and above. This is probably the most important factor when considering a top search engine ranking.
When search engines see lots of important sites link back to yours it must mean that your site is also pretty important.
Remember the purpose of the internet is to provide information back to the end user. As someone is conducting research on the World Wide Web, sites must also participate and flow and connect to other related sites allowing those searching for your keyword terms various paths to the information being inquired.
Factor #2: Number of Pages Your Website Has
A website with less than 50 pages is really going to struggle to get a top search engine ranking unless it has more quality back links coming into it than their competitors.
Factor #3: Keywords in Your Title Tag
Google and Yahoo look to see if your keywords are contained in your page title and description. Make sure your keywords are also listed within your heading and subheading tags.
Factor #4: Keywords Showing in Links
Keywords that are highlighted within a link are considered more significant than those not at all highlighted within a link.
Factor #5: Keywords in Bold
Likewise words in bold are also considered more important than those not in bold.
Factor #6: Keywords in URL
Websites that are in less competitive markets that contain the keywords within their URL are considered more important than those sites that respectively do not.
Also keywords in the URL that come before unrelated words are considered better than a URL that follows an unrelated word within the URL. For example if your keyword is televisions, a URL with `televisions’ followed by unrelated words such as your name `Mike’ is better than putting your name `Mike’ before `televisions.’
Factor #7: More Significance Given to First 25 Words on Page
The first 25 words of each page are given more weight than all other words on the page. Make sure your keywords are in the first few words of your page. However, if you try and just list the same word or phrase 25 times repeatedly Google and Yahoo will penalize you.
Factor #8: Greater Than 300 Words on Your Homepage
Make sure you have at least 300 or more words on your homepage.
Factor #9: Keyword Density
Keyword density is not as important as it once was in the past but it still is an important factor. In order to get a top 5 search engine ranking look at your competitors sites and compare the density of their sites to yours and try and match their density.
Factor #10: Page Rank
Want to find out the page rank of your website or the page rank of another site? Download the Google toolbar and make sure the page rank indicator is activated. One major factor in determining your page rank is the first factor listed in this article. Quality back links are the most important factor for formulating your page rank.
A top search engine ranking in Google and Yahoo is decided most often by the combination of these 10 factors. If you want to get into the top 5 of the two most important search engines than make sure your website applies these major search engine ranking factors.
Author: Tim McGaffin
How To Get A Pagerank 7 In 200 Days
With a reported 22.1% of search traffic Yahoo is second only to Google’s 64.4% (src: Hitwise) for search user volume so it is extremely important not to forget that attaining a top ranking in Yahoo can be a big boon to the bottom line. As a result, I decided to write this update on how to attain superior rankings in Yahoo using today’s useful tools and tactics.
OVERVIEW: Optimizing for Yahoo!
Algorithmically Yahoo is Google’s much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say “boldly” I do not mean use SPAM; by nature SPAM and optimization do not mix… they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact).
The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo.
WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION
SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements:
Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in the title tag. For an example check out “car sales” or for that matter any phrase. Within the top 10 results you will notice that the majority of sites listed will include at least one incidence of the keyphrase or a crucial portion of it (i.e. “cars”). The ones that do not include the keyphrase tend to be sites that have are extremely popular so even basic title tag optimization is not required to attain a top ranking.
Meta Description Tag: Start this tag with an incidence of your keyphrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 small-medium sized word sentence clearly describing your site. Include one more incidence of your keyphrase in the sentence. Keep in mind that the description tag is often utilized as the description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to make it alluring.
Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword tags have long been considered ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so it cannot hurt to include it. The keyword tag should start with the keyphrase and then all following words or phrases should be ordered according to their relevance to your website; place the most important ones up front. The max size of a keyword tag should be 250 characters – comma-delimited. Do not over repeat words; no more than 3 repetitions of a single word within the tag.
Keywords in URL: Create keyword-based filenames that closely represent the content within the file. Yahoo rewards keyword-based filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past your competition.
Headings: Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page’s keyphrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyphrase on the page.
Alt text for images: Don’t forget to provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text must not provide information that is already written on the website. ALT text is supposed to provide a clear and concise description of what the image is. Fortunately this means that adding an incidence of the keyphrase or a portion of the keyphrase is totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility to your page score when Yahoo’s crawler (Slurp) indexes the page.
Inline Links: In the midst of your page it is beneficial to include links to related pages from related content. These links will apply relevance to the linked page; which is optimized for the same keyphrase you linked from.
Site Structure: Site structure is a vital component to ranking success on Yahoo; especially in competitive marketplaces where every advantage is required to reach the top. One method that would be successful at Yahoo (and happens to work as well on the other major search engines) is a tried and true technique that revolves around the linear progression of related content throughout the website; it is commonly known as Themeing. The following example should shed some light on this subject:
Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5” as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5” the odds of achieving a ranking for that term increase considerably.
Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5” as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5” the odds of achieving a ranking for that term increase considerably.
LINKS
When building links for Yahoo concentrate on quality not quantity. Quality links would be one way links from sites that specialize in content directly relevant to the content on your own website. Building these links can be done by creating content and syndicating it to your own industry for link love and to build credibility. In addition, if your website is a worthwhile resource it is entirely reasonable to tell the world about your site in order to build links; hopefully they will link to you because they like your site so much.
Finally, there is another tactic that has mixed results; send out press releases once a month using PRWeb or an associated press release agency. A good press release can easily build the links you need in no time at all. Unfortunately the mixed results I noted occur when press releases inevitably become archived, at which point the link relevance will fade. As a result, link building with press releases is only useful as an ongoing practice and should be considered a small facet of a robust link building campaign.
SITE EXPLORER SETTINGS
Yahoo’s Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for monitoring your website(s) and running basic link reports. If you have not already done so you should create an account at Site Explorer and then validate your website (prove you own it) so that you can manage the information Yahoo has for your website. Once you have validated your website I have noted some Site Explorer functionality that may help your website perform on Yahoo:
- Make certain to create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo:
If you haven’t already done so use a XML sitemap generator to create a sitemap for your website and then submit it to Yahoo using the “Add Feed” form within your website’s Site Explorer profile. - Removing unnecessary dynamic content from your URLs with new add-on within Site Explorer:
Does your URLs content session ID’s or other dynamic content that is unnecessary within the URL? If so, this information can be indexed by the search engines and ultimately can cause havoc with your rankings. Thankfully Yahoo has implemented a new tool within the Site Explorer domain management section called “Dynamic URLs Beta”. Here are the instructions to use the Dynamic URLs tool.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
After reviewing our notes from current and previous Yahoo promotions and taking a look at a variety of top 10 results the following points appeared noteworthy:
- Ensure open indexing by using Robots.txt wisely
- A lot of our client’s older content appears to be sticking to top rankings with little or no monthly tweaking. As a result, I think it is fair to assume that fresh content is not currently gaining much weight in the Yahoo algorithm.
- In many cases top ranking sites have pushed the envelope and their sites border on SPAM. Considering the top ranking these sites have it appears Yahoo’s SPAM filters are far less sensitive than Google’s. I expect Yahoo will change this in the near future but then again I have been surprised how long this has been the status quo.
- One common claim throughout forums is that achieving a placement in the Yahoo Directory provides an instant boost to Yahoo rankings. Unfortunately we have not seen conclusive evidence that the annual $299 fee will increase rankings dramatically in the short term. That said, I strongly believe that a Yahoo Directory placement is a very reputable incoming link that does pay dividends in the long run at any search engine that weighs incoming links (the ones that count).
- Yahoo Search Submit was re-introduced back in February 2007 to significant criticism due to the potential favouritism to those who pay to get into the Yahoo index. Despite the negative feedback there appears to be some potential benefits to paying for submission. For one, in July I noted an interesting story where a website was banned from Yahoo and the webmaster got the site back into Yahoo’s index by paying for inclusion (“Banned from Yahoo?”). A second reason Search Submit may be worthwhile is the guarantee that your site will be indexed. Furthermore, the Yahoo’s Search Submit Pro service allows you to recommend your own title and description tags for each page submitted and to submit pages that may not normally be indexed by Slurp.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Search Engine Optimization: Ten Golden Rules For Beginners
The following are the ten simple ways to optimize and increase traffic to your website. The guide is meant for those who intend to or are just starting out in Search Engine Optimization. It shows you all the basic things you need to know and what do to improve your rankings with the search engines and increase traffic to your website. No geek speak. No technical jargons. Just practical, easy to follow tips.
Directory Submission:
Submit your site to online web directories. There are several directories you can list your site with. There are free ones as well as paid services. Directory registration can be a time-consuming elbow grease so the temptation is to go for a paid service whereby you pay a company or any other concern to help submit your site to all relevant directories. However you do not really need to shell out to get listed in the right directories with decent traffic and pagerank. The search engines have their own directory services and is a great place to start. Yahoo has its directory service www.dir.yahoo.com. Visit the site and submit your URL and feed in the category that matches the kind of website you run and / or your kind of business. It might take a while but your site will be listed. Getting listed in a directory like that offers all the exposure and presence a major player like Yahoo has to offer. Another directory to aim for is the Open Directory Project (dmoz). It does take some effort to get listed here but given the fact that this directory is highly valued by most of the big search engines, then it must be worth every effort. It can be found at www.dmoz.org.
Search Engine Registration:
Register with the search engines. Registering with the search engines is introducing your website to them, inviting them to visit the site and help announce your existence to the world wide web. This can be explained simply without getting into geek mode. Forget about algorithms, spiders, crawlers and all that. In plain terms, the search engines on being registered with, will visit your website and index it. Hopefully they like what they see and they keep coming back and once someone searches for the contents they have found on your site, they point that person towards your site. So a sure way of being noticed by the search engines is simply to register with them. Of course Google should be your number one target here. Other prominent search engines you should register with include Alexa, Entireweb, Scrub The Web, Jayde, Info Tiger, Exactseek, Lookseek and Lifetips.
Article Submission:
Submit articles to online article publishing and syndicating websites. When you do this, put a link to your website at the end of the article or any other appropriate place depending on the website you are submitting to. Be aware that this does not correlate to just a blatant plugging of your site. The article should be well written, informative and most preferably relevant to what your line of business or website is about.
Build Links:
Link building is perhaps the most important and influential factor to consider when looking to increase your standing with the search engines and increase traffic to your website. Basically link building can be seen in two broad terms: Viral and Organic. Viral links are from websites who belong to a link building group or association of websites all exchanging links for the basic purpose of having as many links as possible irrespective of any other considerations. In other words people join certain websites where all the members are there for the sole express reason of populating their link list. This is deemed as cheating by the search engines and is frowned upon. Some of the sites could have been blacklisted or penalised by the search engines. Some may have no relevance to your website. So you want to avoid this kind of link building like the plague. If your website gets blacklisted by Google for instance, it takes up to the better part of six months to get back in their good books. Organic link building is the way to go. These are links that that you acquire naturally. Examples are websites that link to your website due to its relevance or quality. Organic link building can be attained by various ways. See below for some of these.
Join online Groups and Forums:
By joining a group or a forum you can network with people with the same interest as you thus it follows that these people will visit your site. Not only that your group members will visit your site, they might mention your websites on their own sites thereby giving you more exposure. Since most of you in the group are members because you share a common interest then this can also serve as a source of quality links for your website thus improving your pagerank. Remember that the relevance of links to your website is considered by the search engines in ranking your site. You increase your exposure by posting on forums that relate to your website. A lot of people read forum postings even without being members and i even know people who use forums as a search method. Yahoo Group is one of the earliest and is my choice. However there are now a plethora of groups and forums that will deliver just as well.
Closely related to these two is Yahoo Answers. Here you can establish yourself as a source of reliable information regarding the subject matter of your website or the business you are in. Put a link to your website when you post an answer to a question. If people find your answers useful and relevant of course the tendency is that they will visit your website.
Advertise:
Paid advertising is a more direct strategy in increasing or improving your web traffic. A very effective strategy it must be said. The best idea is to go for a Pay Per Click deal. Google Adwords is the one to target here. Basically, a banner of your website is displayed on Google search results and if the banner is clicked the person is automatically directed to your website. You can find more information on Google Adwords and how to start at http://adwords.google.com
Use Web 2.0 and Social Media:
Open accounts with sites like MSN Windows Live,Yahoo 360, Blogger and Wordpad. Register with sites like Technorati, Flickr, Stumbleupon, Ryze and Facebook. They all afford you to maintain a presence on the web. You can reach a wide audience or potential customers through these pages. Even big business concerns have realised the power of Social Media and are making use of it to maintain a competitive edge. Also you need to register with pinging websites. These are sites that work for you while you sleep so to speak. All they ask is you let them know once you have new contents on your site and they will bellow it to the whole world wide web. My pick here is pingoat.You can join pingoat at www.pingoat.com.
Content is king:
This fact is a dog eared expression in Search Engine Optimisation these day. So much so it is fast attaining the status of a cliche. I am not one easily caught dropping cliches but if it is a crime to do so then i plead guilty on this instance and will gladly do my time. Your site`s content should be well written. No grammatical errors or spelling howlers. Such errors make a bad impression on visitors to the site. Keep your sentences short and compact. Aim for clarity and try to make the site as easy to understand as possible. Again it is paramount that the content of your website should be relevant to it`s title or your business. This is important for two main reasons: If the site contents and site description do not tally, your standing with the search engines might be adversely affected or worst still they might suspect you of being a spamming or other dubious site. And you do not want that. The other reasons is that visitors might be disappointed and discouraged from re visiting a website they thought was about fishing but found out, on visiting the site that it was about computing. Sure you can have some computing talk on a fishing oriented website but your main focus should be on fishing. As implied in your website`s name or description. Update your website with new contents regularly. The search engines love new contents. The search engines periodically scan the net for new contents. As i mentioned earlier, they send out feelers (robots, spiders or crawlers in geek speak) to see what is there in cyberspace. If time after time your website is visited they have something new to report back then they will always come back. The result of which is that your pages are constantly updated. This improves your standing in their search queries for a keyword related to your website
Use your e-mail as a campaign tool: You can do this by using the url of your website as a signature. So every mail you send carries a clickable link to your site. This is quite easy enough to do. Most e-mail clients have this facility. For example if you use hotmail go to Options> Preference >Signature and insert the full address of your website.
Create a sitemap:
A sitemap outlines the structure of your website. It arranges your website into sections. This makes the website easy to navigate by search engine robots and spiders. This of course makes the indexing of your site easier. To learn more about sitemaps go to www.xml-sitemaps.com.
by: Leo Jackson
Directory Submission:
Submit your site to online web directories. There are several directories you can list your site with. There are free ones as well as paid services. Directory registration can be a time-consuming elbow grease so the temptation is to go for a paid service whereby you pay a company or any other concern to help submit your site to all relevant directories. However you do not really need to shell out to get listed in the right directories with decent traffic and pagerank. The search engines have their own directory services and is a great place to start. Yahoo has its directory service www.dir.yahoo.com. Visit the site and submit your URL and feed in the category that matches the kind of website you run and / or your kind of business. It might take a while but your site will be listed. Getting listed in a directory like that offers all the exposure and presence a major player like Yahoo has to offer. Another directory to aim for is the Open Directory Project (dmoz). It does take some effort to get listed here but given the fact that this directory is highly valued by most of the big search engines, then it must be worth every effort. It can be found at www.dmoz.org.
Search Engine Registration:
Register with the search engines. Registering with the search engines is introducing your website to them, inviting them to visit the site and help announce your existence to the world wide web. This can be explained simply without getting into geek mode. Forget about algorithms, spiders, crawlers and all that. In plain terms, the search engines on being registered with, will visit your website and index it. Hopefully they like what they see and they keep coming back and once someone searches for the contents they have found on your site, they point that person towards your site. So a sure way of being noticed by the search engines is simply to register with them. Of course Google should be your number one target here. Other prominent search engines you should register with include Alexa, Entireweb, Scrub The Web, Jayde, Info Tiger, Exactseek, Lookseek and Lifetips.
Article Submission:
Submit articles to online article publishing and syndicating websites. When you do this, put a link to your website at the end of the article or any other appropriate place depending on the website you are submitting to. Be aware that this does not correlate to just a blatant plugging of your site. The article should be well written, informative and most preferably relevant to what your line of business or website is about.
Build Links:
Link building is perhaps the most important and influential factor to consider when looking to increase your standing with the search engines and increase traffic to your website. Basically link building can be seen in two broad terms: Viral and Organic. Viral links are from websites who belong to a link building group or association of websites all exchanging links for the basic purpose of having as many links as possible irrespective of any other considerations. In other words people join certain websites where all the members are there for the sole express reason of populating their link list. This is deemed as cheating by the search engines and is frowned upon. Some of the sites could have been blacklisted or penalised by the search engines. Some may have no relevance to your website. So you want to avoid this kind of link building like the plague. If your website gets blacklisted by Google for instance, it takes up to the better part of six months to get back in their good books. Organic link building is the way to go. These are links that that you acquire naturally. Examples are websites that link to your website due to its relevance or quality. Organic link building can be attained by various ways. See below for some of these.
Join online Groups and Forums:
By joining a group or a forum you can network with people with the same interest as you thus it follows that these people will visit your site. Not only that your group members will visit your site, they might mention your websites on their own sites thereby giving you more exposure. Since most of you in the group are members because you share a common interest then this can also serve as a source of quality links for your website thus improving your pagerank. Remember that the relevance of links to your website is considered by the search engines in ranking your site. You increase your exposure by posting on forums that relate to your website. A lot of people read forum postings even without being members and i even know people who use forums as a search method. Yahoo Group is one of the earliest and is my choice. However there are now a plethora of groups and forums that will deliver just as well.
Closely related to these two is Yahoo Answers. Here you can establish yourself as a source of reliable information regarding the subject matter of your website or the business you are in. Put a link to your website when you post an answer to a question. If people find your answers useful and relevant of course the tendency is that they will visit your website.
Advertise:
Paid advertising is a more direct strategy in increasing or improving your web traffic. A very effective strategy it must be said. The best idea is to go for a Pay Per Click deal. Google Adwords is the one to target here. Basically, a banner of your website is displayed on Google search results and if the banner is clicked the person is automatically directed to your website. You can find more information on Google Adwords and how to start at http://adwords.google.com
Use Web 2.0 and Social Media:
Open accounts with sites like MSN Windows Live,Yahoo 360, Blogger and Wordpad. Register with sites like Technorati, Flickr, Stumbleupon, Ryze and Facebook. They all afford you to maintain a presence on the web. You can reach a wide audience or potential customers through these pages. Even big business concerns have realised the power of Social Media and are making use of it to maintain a competitive edge. Also you need to register with pinging websites. These are sites that work for you while you sleep so to speak. All they ask is you let them know once you have new contents on your site and they will bellow it to the whole world wide web. My pick here is pingoat.You can join pingoat at www.pingoat.com.
Content is king:
This fact is a dog eared expression in Search Engine Optimisation these day. So much so it is fast attaining the status of a cliche. I am not one easily caught dropping cliches but if it is a crime to do so then i plead guilty on this instance and will gladly do my time. Your site`s content should be well written. No grammatical errors or spelling howlers. Such errors make a bad impression on visitors to the site. Keep your sentences short and compact. Aim for clarity and try to make the site as easy to understand as possible. Again it is paramount that the content of your website should be relevant to it`s title or your business. This is important for two main reasons: If the site contents and site description do not tally, your standing with the search engines might be adversely affected or worst still they might suspect you of being a spamming or other dubious site. And you do not want that. The other reasons is that visitors might be disappointed and discouraged from re visiting a website they thought was about fishing but found out, on visiting the site that it was about computing. Sure you can have some computing talk on a fishing oriented website but your main focus should be on fishing. As implied in your website`s name or description. Update your website with new contents regularly. The search engines love new contents. The search engines periodically scan the net for new contents. As i mentioned earlier, they send out feelers (robots, spiders or crawlers in geek speak) to see what is there in cyberspace. If time after time your website is visited they have something new to report back then they will always come back. The result of which is that your pages are constantly updated. This improves your standing in their search queries for a keyword related to your website
Use your e-mail as a campaign tool: You can do this by using the url of your website as a signature. So every mail you send carries a clickable link to your site. This is quite easy enough to do. Most e-mail clients have this facility. For example if you use hotmail go to Options> Preference >Signature and insert the full address of your website.
Create a sitemap:
A sitemap outlines the structure of your website. It arranges your website into sections. This makes the website easy to navigate by search engine robots and spiders. This of course makes the indexing of your site easier. To learn more about sitemaps go to www.xml-sitemaps.com.
by: Leo Jackson
Adding A Regional Component To You Web Site
What is a regional web site?
A regional web page is one that focuses in on a specific area such as a city, county, state, country or area of the world. You do not have to have a regional web site to add a regional component to your site. There are two types of sites I am going to talk about. First is the regional site itself and then a web site with a regional section in it. If you already have a web site and want to expand the content and the audience then adding the regional section is a great option for you.
Building a regional web site.
Regional web sites are becoming more popular. Five years ago if you built a site about the community you live in there was a good chance you were one of only one or two sites to do so. Obviously if you were only one of two web sites for a community then you were at the top of any search for information about that community. It is not as easy now. This is still the case for many smaller towns and counties. But there is much more competition for larger more populated areas. Don’t just rule out larger areas because if done right then you can still do great in these areas as well.
The first thing to do is decide on the area you want to build a page about. A good place to start is where you live or your favorite vacation spots. This is a good choice because you are already familiar with the area. I will share two things the site will need. The first is more important and the second will bring in more traffic.
Next you need to list the things that make the community you chose unique. It is especially good to find the lesser-known unique things about your community. This can include historical places, unique places and fun places. It can even include the best places to kiss. It can have reviews of local restaurants and business, a history of the community, little know facts about the community and any other things that make your community unique and special.
This is important because most community sites are just a group of links pages about the area. This is part of doing it right. When your page is unique and full of quality content it is easier to get good quality links to your site. Many people forget about this and concentrate on make pages about the key words that people search for. When this happens you end up with a site that nobody wants to link to and nobody wants to spend time looking at the different pages of your web site. Quality is always at the top of the agenda. The goal of any web site should be to be the best web site on the internet about your particular topic. You decide which is better to have 1000 visitors who visit your site a day who average looking at 2 pages or 300 visitors a day who average 10. In the long run when you have hundred of well-ranked sites linked to you then you will get the thousands of visitors who visit many pages on your site.
After you have the above and have a quality site for your community then it is time to start looking at keywords. This is what brings people to your site. A good tool for finding out what people are searching for is Overtures Keyword Selector Tool.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Type in the name of the community in the search box and click the arrow. It will give you a list of how many times that a term has been searched for in Overture the previous month. I will also list all the phrases that were searched for using that term. This way you know what people are looking for when they search for something in your community. Now you can take the information in this book and apply it to making pages based on these keywords. Remember that with every page you build quality is the key. You want your site to be better than any other site about your community. For an example of how to use this tool try this link.
http://arthritis-symptom.com/adsense/keyword-selector-tool.htm
As an example if people are searching for museums in your community do not just make a link page to the museums web sites. Rather list every museum in the area and add a paragraph or two for each. You can also make a page about every museum and have an index page called museums in your community that link to all the museum pages you have built. If you have 10 museums in your community people will visit most or all of the museum pages. Be sure to add a short description on the museums in your community page.
Adding a regional section to your web site.
This is an idea that has become very popular in the last few years. As the internet continues to grow it is becoming harder to be at the top of the search engines for the most popular terms. So one of the things you can do is to make regional pages for your products or information. I stumbled on this by accident years ago. As I have mentioned I have a very large arthritis web site. As a service to my visitors I decided to add a section to the web site that listed had a page in for every state that listed arthritis resources in that state. It quickly became one of the most popular sections of my site especially in the search engines.
This can be done for any product or service that is not specific to a community. For example I knew a guy who was representative for a Satellite TV system company. He could sell a system anywhere in the country. Once he made the sale the company arranged for the system to be installed. So he built a page for Satellite TV for every city in America. He did this because he found out that many people were searching for Satellite TVs in their communities. He had about pages for over 500 different cities.
This worked well for a while, but he had a problem. Basically every page in his site was the same. The only difference was the name of the city and state. The search engines now frown on this. He tried to fix this by adding unique information about each city. He finally gave up on this and redid the site under a new domain name. Once a search engine punishes you it is hard to get back in their good graces.
So if you are going to do this for a product or service you need to make every page unique. As mentioned above, quality always is important and you can no longer cheat the search engines. So do not take the easy way. Take the time to make every page one that the search engines and your visitors will be proud of.
This can also be done as a service. One of the most popular sites on the internet is topix.net. They have the largest news network that includes news for almost every city and town in America. This can be done for almost any service from adoption to zoos. Some subjects have way too much competition and companies that are spending too much money for you to compete with. Regional travel and legal sites are examples of these. Even though there is a ton of competition for some types of regional sites there are still literally thousands of different topics and services that do not have too much competition.
By Rusty
A regional web page is one that focuses in on a specific area such as a city, county, state, country or area of the world. You do not have to have a regional web site to add a regional component to your site. There are two types of sites I am going to talk about. First is the regional site itself and then a web site with a regional section in it. If you already have a web site and want to expand the content and the audience then adding the regional section is a great option for you.
Building a regional web site.
Regional web sites are becoming more popular. Five years ago if you built a site about the community you live in there was a good chance you were one of only one or two sites to do so. Obviously if you were only one of two web sites for a community then you were at the top of any search for information about that community. It is not as easy now. This is still the case for many smaller towns and counties. But there is much more competition for larger more populated areas. Don’t just rule out larger areas because if done right then you can still do great in these areas as well.
The first thing to do is decide on the area you want to build a page about. A good place to start is where you live or your favorite vacation spots. This is a good choice because you are already familiar with the area. I will share two things the site will need. The first is more important and the second will bring in more traffic.
Next you need to list the things that make the community you chose unique. It is especially good to find the lesser-known unique things about your community. This can include historical places, unique places and fun places. It can even include the best places to kiss. It can have reviews of local restaurants and business, a history of the community, little know facts about the community and any other things that make your community unique and special.
This is important because most community sites are just a group of links pages about the area. This is part of doing it right. When your page is unique and full of quality content it is easier to get good quality links to your site. Many people forget about this and concentrate on make pages about the key words that people search for. When this happens you end up with a site that nobody wants to link to and nobody wants to spend time looking at the different pages of your web site. Quality is always at the top of the agenda. The goal of any web site should be to be the best web site on the internet about your particular topic. You decide which is better to have 1000 visitors who visit your site a day who average looking at 2 pages or 300 visitors a day who average 10. In the long run when you have hundred of well-ranked sites linked to you then you will get the thousands of visitors who visit many pages on your site.
After you have the above and have a quality site for your community then it is time to start looking at keywords. This is what brings people to your site. A good tool for finding out what people are searching for is Overtures Keyword Selector Tool.
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Type in the name of the community in the search box and click the arrow. It will give you a list of how many times that a term has been searched for in Overture the previous month. I will also list all the phrases that were searched for using that term. This way you know what people are looking for when they search for something in your community. Now you can take the information in this book and apply it to making pages based on these keywords. Remember that with every page you build quality is the key. You want your site to be better than any other site about your community. For an example of how to use this tool try this link.
http://arthritis-symptom.com/adsense/keyword-selector-tool.htm
As an example if people are searching for museums in your community do not just make a link page to the museums web sites. Rather list every museum in the area and add a paragraph or two for each. You can also make a page about every museum and have an index page called museums in your community that link to all the museum pages you have built. If you have 10 museums in your community people will visit most or all of the museum pages. Be sure to add a short description on the museums in your community page.
Adding a regional section to your web site.
This is an idea that has become very popular in the last few years. As the internet continues to grow it is becoming harder to be at the top of the search engines for the most popular terms. So one of the things you can do is to make regional pages for your products or information. I stumbled on this by accident years ago. As I have mentioned I have a very large arthritis web site. As a service to my visitors I decided to add a section to the web site that listed had a page in for every state that listed arthritis resources in that state. It quickly became one of the most popular sections of my site especially in the search engines.
This can be done for any product or service that is not specific to a community. For example I knew a guy who was representative for a Satellite TV system company. He could sell a system anywhere in the country. Once he made the sale the company arranged for the system to be installed. So he built a page for Satellite TV for every city in America. He did this because he found out that many people were searching for Satellite TVs in their communities. He had about pages for over 500 different cities.
This worked well for a while, but he had a problem. Basically every page in his site was the same. The only difference was the name of the city and state. The search engines now frown on this. He tried to fix this by adding unique information about each city. He finally gave up on this and redid the site under a new domain name. Once a search engine punishes you it is hard to get back in their good graces.
So if you are going to do this for a product or service you need to make every page unique. As mentioned above, quality always is important and you can no longer cheat the search engines. So do not take the easy way. Take the time to make every page one that the search engines and your visitors will be proud of.
This can also be done as a service. One of the most popular sites on the internet is topix.net. They have the largest news network that includes news for almost every city and town in America. This can be done for almost any service from adoption to zoos. Some subjects have way too much competition and companies that are spending too much money for you to compete with. Regional travel and legal sites are examples of these. Even though there is a ton of competition for some types of regional sites there are still literally thousands of different topics and services that do not have too much competition.
By Rusty
Sunday, November 2, 2008
The Art of Website Maintenance
Now that you’ve designed and launched your website, you have a powerful marketing tool for your business. But, your website is only as useful as the content is current. The process of keeping the content on your site current is called website maintenance, and it’s important to keep both visitors and search engines supplied with new information. Just like regular maintenance on your car, you have to make changes on your website every few months to make sure that things run smoothly.
If you update the content on your website on a regular basis, potential clients will be drawn back to your site to find out “what’s new”. The search engines pay visits to websites in their queue regularly. The catch is that you’ll stay in the queue only if you update your site regularly. If the search engines visit your site several times in a row, and don’t find anything new, they may decide not to come back-which can be a blow to your search engine rankings.
So, when is it appropriate to update your website? You don’t want to waste time and money nitpicking at your site if you don’t have updates of real value to add. You should update your site if you’ve:
* Grown your skills. Have you gotten a new accreditation? New licensing? Improved your skills? Any change in your skill set is a great reason to update your website-and your potential clients-with your new capabilities.
* Expanded your products or services. Do you have a new offering? Add it to your website and start making new sales in that area.
* Completed a successful project. If you’ve just finished a project, include it on your website. Create an online portfolio, add a case study-build a section on your website to use as a place to show the world your success.
* Gotten more testimonials, or added to your client list. Including more feedback on your offering helps to build your credibility. Be sure to get a testimonial from each of your successful client projects. Updating your testimonials regularly will also show clients who have visited your site a few times that your offerings are “up to snuff”.
* Written an article. Writing articles is a great way to keep your website up-to-date and to put more content on your site. Search engines love content-rich sites, and visitors will love to see the new information. So, if you write articles to educate your clients and promote your business, be sure to place them on your website as well. They’re likely to be full of keywords related to your area of specialty, which will help your ranking in the search engines.
* Press releases. You should post all press releases and other information you publish about your company to your website. You never know who may be visiting, and you may get written up for your accomplishments.
* Changes in your business. Have you hired someone? Changed your business structure, and you’re now required to notify the public of that? If so, you should probably review your website and evaluate how you can add that information.
* Yearly check-ups. You should do a basic check on your site at least once a year, to make sure that the content is current. Some things to check on include:
* Your copyright statements should be updated yearly
* Test and validate your links, to ensure that they still work
* Your time references should be changed. If your “About” page says how many years you’ve been in business, this is the time to change that!
* Your pricing and offerings-do you have new products or services? Have your prices increased over the past year?
Spotlight any major updates on your home page as well, so that people will learn of those updates as soon as they enter your site. The search engines will also discover the new update as soon as they enter your home page if you leave a bit of information, with a link to the full story, on the home page. That will act as a breadcrumb for the engine to follow-the engines will follow your link to learn more about it.
Any of these reasons, and dozens of others, are great reasons to make changes to your site. If you make keeping your website current a priority, it will pay off with better search engine rankings and increased sales and leads through your website.
Once you’ve decided to make your changes, the next choice is how to go about doing that. There are two steps involved in maintaining your site:
1. First, decide whether you prefer to edit your content on paper or online. This can be done in a couple of ways. You can start by printing the pages that have outdated information and then updating that information on paper first. Or, you can copy and paste the outdated content from your website into a word processing program such as Microsoft Word and then edit that file on your computer.
2. After you have updated your text content you can choose either to make the changes yourself or to hire a web designer to make the changes. There are several tools that you can use to make changes to your site yourself. We recommend an easy-to-use tool called Macromedia Contribute. It’s fairly inexpensive, its simple to set up and learn, and it allows you to back up to older versions of your site if you make mistakes.
We suggest that you use this tool to make only simple text changes. More complicated changes-for example, to the overall design or navigation-are more difficult to make, and having a professional make those changes will save you energy and frustration.
If you are comfortable with a more complicated software program, then we recommend a professional-grade tool such as Dreamweaver. With a better software package, you’ll be able to make some of the more complicated changes yourself.
By building more-and more current-information into your website, you will also begin to build trust with your potential clients, since they will have a snapshot of what’s currently happening in your business and available to them. Your website can go a long way towards making sure that your online prospects know, like, and trust you-which can lead to more sales from your website.
By Erin Ferree
If you update the content on your website on a regular basis, potential clients will be drawn back to your site to find out “what’s new”. The search engines pay visits to websites in their queue regularly. The catch is that you’ll stay in the queue only if you update your site regularly. If the search engines visit your site several times in a row, and don’t find anything new, they may decide not to come back-which can be a blow to your search engine rankings.
So, when is it appropriate to update your website? You don’t want to waste time and money nitpicking at your site if you don’t have updates of real value to add. You should update your site if you’ve:
* Grown your skills. Have you gotten a new accreditation? New licensing? Improved your skills? Any change in your skill set is a great reason to update your website-and your potential clients-with your new capabilities.
* Expanded your products or services. Do you have a new offering? Add it to your website and start making new sales in that area.
* Completed a successful project. If you’ve just finished a project, include it on your website. Create an online portfolio, add a case study-build a section on your website to use as a place to show the world your success.
* Gotten more testimonials, or added to your client list. Including more feedback on your offering helps to build your credibility. Be sure to get a testimonial from each of your successful client projects. Updating your testimonials regularly will also show clients who have visited your site a few times that your offerings are “up to snuff”.
* Written an article. Writing articles is a great way to keep your website up-to-date and to put more content on your site. Search engines love content-rich sites, and visitors will love to see the new information. So, if you write articles to educate your clients and promote your business, be sure to place them on your website as well. They’re likely to be full of keywords related to your area of specialty, which will help your ranking in the search engines.
* Press releases. You should post all press releases and other information you publish about your company to your website. You never know who may be visiting, and you may get written up for your accomplishments.
* Changes in your business. Have you hired someone? Changed your business structure, and you’re now required to notify the public of that? If so, you should probably review your website and evaluate how you can add that information.
* Yearly check-ups. You should do a basic check on your site at least once a year, to make sure that the content is current. Some things to check on include:
* Your copyright statements should be updated yearly
* Test and validate your links, to ensure that they still work
* Your time references should be changed. If your “About” page says how many years you’ve been in business, this is the time to change that!
* Your pricing and offerings-do you have new products or services? Have your prices increased over the past year?
Spotlight any major updates on your home page as well, so that people will learn of those updates as soon as they enter your site. The search engines will also discover the new update as soon as they enter your home page if you leave a bit of information, with a link to the full story, on the home page. That will act as a breadcrumb for the engine to follow-the engines will follow your link to learn more about it.
Any of these reasons, and dozens of others, are great reasons to make changes to your site. If you make keeping your website current a priority, it will pay off with better search engine rankings and increased sales and leads through your website.
Once you’ve decided to make your changes, the next choice is how to go about doing that. There are two steps involved in maintaining your site:
1. First, decide whether you prefer to edit your content on paper or online. This can be done in a couple of ways. You can start by printing the pages that have outdated information and then updating that information on paper first. Or, you can copy and paste the outdated content from your website into a word processing program such as Microsoft Word and then edit that file on your computer.
2. After you have updated your text content you can choose either to make the changes yourself or to hire a web designer to make the changes. There are several tools that you can use to make changes to your site yourself. We recommend an easy-to-use tool called Macromedia Contribute. It’s fairly inexpensive, its simple to set up and learn, and it allows you to back up to older versions of your site if you make mistakes.
We suggest that you use this tool to make only simple text changes. More complicated changes-for example, to the overall design or navigation-are more difficult to make, and having a professional make those changes will save you energy and frustration.
If you are comfortable with a more complicated software program, then we recommend a professional-grade tool such as Dreamweaver. With a better software package, you’ll be able to make some of the more complicated changes yourself.
By building more-and more current-information into your website, you will also begin to build trust with your potential clients, since they will have a snapshot of what’s currently happening in your business and available to them. Your website can go a long way towards making sure that your online prospects know, like, and trust you-which can lead to more sales from your website.
By Erin Ferree
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Art of Website Maintenance
Now that you’ve designed and launched your website, you have a powerful marketing tool for your business. But, your website is only as useful as the content is current. The process of keeping the content on your site current is called website maintenance, and it’s important to keep both visitors and search engines supplied with new information. Just like regular maintenance on your car, you have to make changes on your website every few months to make sure that things run smoothly.
If you update the content on your website on a regular basis, potential clients will be drawn back to your site to find out “what’s new”. The search engines pay visits to websites in their queue regularly. The catch is that you’ll stay in the queue only if you update your site regularly. If the search engines visit your site several times in a row, and don’t find anything new, they may decide not to come back-which can be a blow to your search engine rankings.
So, when is it appropriate to update your website? You don’t want to waste time and money nitpicking at your site if you don’t have updates of real value to add. You should update your site if you’ve:
- Grown your skills. Have you gotten a new accreditation? New licensing? Improved your skills? Any change in your skill set is a great reason to update your website-and your potential clients-with your new capabilities.
- Expanded your products or services. Do you have a new offering? Add it to your website and start making new sales in that area.
- Completed a successful project. If you’ve just finished a project, include it on your website. Create an online portfolio, add a case study-build a section on your website to use as a place to show the world your success.
- Gotten more testimonials, or added to your client list. Including more feedback on your offering helps to build your credibility. Be sure to get a testimonial from each of your successful client projects. Updating your testimonials regularly will also show clients who have visited your site a few times that your offerings are “up to snuff”.
- Written an article. Writing articles is a great way to keep your website up-to-date and to put more content on your site. Search engines love content-rich sites, and visitors will love to see the new information. So, if you write articles to educate your clients and promote your business, be sure to place them on your website as well. They’re likely to be full of keywords related to your area of specialty, which will help your ranking in the search engines.
- Press releases. You should post all press releases and other information you publish about your company to your website. You never know who may be visiting, and you may get written up for your accomplishments.
- Changes in your business. Have you hired someone? Changed your business structure, and you’re now required to notify the public of that? If so, you should probably review your website and evaluate how you can add that information.
- Yearly check-ups. You should do a basic check on your site at least once a year, to make sure that the content is current. Some things to check on include:
- Your copyright statements should be updated yearly
- Test and validate your links, to ensure that they still work
- Your time references should be changed. If your “About” page says how many years you’ve been in business, this is the time to change that!
- Your pricing and offerings-do you have new products or services? Have your prices increased over the past year?
Spotlight any major updates on your home page as well, so that people will learn of those updates as soon as they enter your site. The search engines will also discover the new update as soon as they enter your home page if you leave a bit of information, with a link to the full story, on the home page. That will act as a breadcrumb for the engine to follow-the engines will follow your link to learn more about it.
Any of these reasons, and dozens of others, are great reasons to make changes to your site. If you make keeping your website current a priority, it will pay off with better search engine rankings and increased sales and leads through your website.
Once you’ve decided to make your changes, the next choice is how to go about doing that. There are two steps involved in maintaining your site:
- First, decide whether you prefer to edit your content on paper or online. This can be done in a couple of ways. You can start by printing the pages that have outdated information and then updating that information on paper first. Or, you can copy and paste the outdated content from your website into a word processing program such as Microsoft Word and then edit that file on your computer.
- After you have updated your text content you can choose either to make the changes yourself or to hire a web designer to make the changes. There are several tools that you can use to make changes to your site yourself. We recommend an easy-to-use tool called Macromedia Contribute. It’s fairly inexpensive, its simple to set up and learn, and it allows you to back up to older versions of your site if you make mistakes.
We suggest that you use this tool to make only simple text changes. More complicated changes-for example, to the overall design or navigation-are more difficult to make, and having a professional make those changes will save you energy and frustration.
If you are comfortable with a more complicated software program, then we recommend a professional-grade tool such as Dreamweaver. With a better software package, you’ll be able to make some of the more complicated changes yourself.
By building more-and more current-information into your website, you will also begin to build trust with your potential clients, since they will have a snapshot of what’s currently happening in your business and available to them. Your website can go a long way towards making sure that your online prospects know, like, and trust you-which can lead to more sales from your website.
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By Erin Ferree
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