Best 3 SEO Tips of 2008 January 19, 2010
Posted by admin in : internet , comments closedEach year I spend the first three months looking for the best and most innovative SEO tips of the previous year’s end. This year I have what I believe to be the best 3 SEO tips in a decade!
SEO Tip #1: Make Google Alerts Your Personal Online Spy
Google Alerts is a great way to let the world’s biggest search engine be your personal online spy. This takes search engine optimization insider info to whole new level. Here’s an excerpt straight from Google….
“Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.
Some handy uses of Google Alerts include:
* monitoring a developing news story
* keeping current on a competitor or industry
* getting the latest on a celebrity or event
* keeping tabs on your favorite sports teams”
As you probably guessed, it’s the second one we care about most, “keeping current on a competitor or industry.”
Here’s how it works… Each time Google finds a reference to the query or topic you request you will be sent an email with the details. This is like having an online spy to make sure competitors are not using your protected keywords (trademarked names, company names, etc.) It’s also an instant identifier to know when your site or product is mentioned in a news story or even when a topic is hot so you can take advantage of the situation. It’s the easiest way in the world to stop competitors’ dirty tricks and identify trends that you can take instant advantage of.
It’s fast, free and works every minute of every day. Let Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) do your most time consuming legwork while you reap the rewards!
SEO Tip #2: Optimize Your 404 Page and Always Be Found
“Error 404: Page Not Found” is a blessing that most Webmasters curse. Why? Getting a visitor on any page of your site is fantastic! Don’t blow the opportunity. Not only can you make your “404″ page a valuable sales tool, you can use the following search engine optimization techniques to attract customers in droves.
A.) Use your main keyword in your title, add a “pipe” (usually above the Enter key) and then use your secondary keyword. Here’s as example for an SEO site “SEO | Search Engine Optimization Tips”
B.) Add some keyword rich content using one to two keywords for the page. If you have less than 250 words on the page, just use one keyword and use it no more than three times total. Bold the first use and italicize the second or third use. Keep in mind this is an “inactive” page so simply tell the visitor what your site is about and whet their appetite with a good description. Something like this works well… “Thank you for visiting SEO (bold) Group, Inc. We are sorry you landed on a missing page but don’t worry, if you’re looking for the very best search engine optimizations tips (bold), you’re at the right place…” This will go on for a couple paragraphs or as long as you’d like then end it with something to the effect of “Please Click Here (link) to visit our site map or click any link to the left.”
C.) Add your site’s standard navigation system (bar, column, etc.) as mentioned above.
D.) Make the look and feel of the customized 404 page match your main site as closely as possible with a template, matched palette, cascading style sheets, etc.
E.) Create a link to the site map page if available, and make the link easy to find. You want your visitor off the 404 page and into your main content as quickly as possible.
Setting up a custom 404 page link usually takes less than five minutes on most major Web hosting companies like Godaddy.com. But whatever it takes, it’s worth the effort.
SEO Tip #3: Get (Even More) Serious About Linking
I saved the most important for last. If you want to do well on any search engine, especially Google, linking is THE single MOST important thing you can do. It’s that simple.
Here are the five things you MUST do to make your site #1 on Google:
A.) Find the highest page rank sites linking to your site AND your competitors’ sites.
B.) Run monthly link campaigns and snatch up the best of the above identified Web sites.
C.) Run regular checks on what pages are still linking back to your site. Alsomake sure they did not move you from a high page rank page to a lower one (don’t get cheated!)
D.) Eliminate any penalized sites you link to; ASAP!
E.) Check your search engine ranking AND your competitor’s for each of your keywords every week. Do this, at the minimum, for Google, Yahoo, MSN and Alta Vista.
Inside Tip: Keeping up can be a lot of work so a lot of SEO Consultants (myself included) use SEO Elite (http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com) to do all the most difficult and time consuming work.
There’s one more very important thing to know; Google was originally a Ph.D. student’s project and was created for the sole purpose of defining a Web site’s value by the sites that link to it. Twelve years later this is still it’s main job. Linking is EVERYTHING to Google.
These few SEO tips are the very best of the best so use them wisely. Best of luck!
SEO Tips to Help You Get the Most Out of Your Marketing January 19, 2010
Posted by admin in : internet , comments closedSEO can be an invaluable asset to the marketing of your website or business, as long as it is used properly. Seeking out helpful SEO tips can get you started. Although it seems like a simple process, there are actually a few complexities that you need to be aware of before you get started. Sure, you could just pop a few keywords into your website content or articles and call it SEO, but it doesn’t work that easily. In case you’re not already aware, SEO stands for search engine marketing, and is the process of using keywords and common search terms to create a website that has higher search engine rankings.
For more details go to: www.greatseosecrets.com when combined with other marketing methods, it can be very successful in driving traffic to your website. By itself, it can do a little, but not a lot, for your business.
Here are some SEO tips to help you get the most out of your marketing:
- Be the consumer. Think like a consumer would to determine which keywords will work best for your particular website or business.
- Research. There are sites that have keyword generators, lists of popular searches related to your topic, and even articles about how to best use SEO (like this one) that can help you in your website marketing needs.
- Use what works. Even if it sounds dumb, use the phrase that’s getting the most use. For example, trying to work “insurance quotes houston” into a coherent article can make the article seem incoherent. However, having that keyword phrase in there could make or break your rankings, so do your best to make it work.
- Too much is BAD. Most search engines will limit you to a density, or use, of 1%-2%. In a 400 word article, that’s 4-8 mentions of the keyword or phrase.
For can visit to: www.thesearchengineprimer.com any more can get you reprimanded, or in most cases, banned from search engines. Then your business won’t get any traffic at all.
No matter how much (or how little) you know about SEO, you should always feel free to ask for assistance. There are people who are specifically trained in the art of search engine optimization and can help your website succeed with little effort by giving you valuable SEO tips. Sure, this might cost you a little money, but it will pay off in the end when your site has better rankings and traffic because of it.
One thing is certain: you can never invest too much into the marketing of your business. After all, without proper marketing, people will never know your site exists, and your business will fail quickly.
The Layman’s Guide to the Google Pagerank Algorithm January 19, 2010
Posted by admin in : internet , comments closedLet me ask you: If you have a certain idea or topic in mind, and you wish to find out more about this topic, what do you do? Ten years ago you would probably have gone to the library, but today… You GOOGLE IT!
If you take anybody currently living in the modern world, chances are that is what they will tell you. Google is King! Over the course of just a few years, Google has gone from a couple of smart guys at Stanford University with the revolutionary idea of making the entire internet available from their desktop, to being the undisputed gatekeeper to nearly every single portion of humanity’s collective knowledge.
The Google search engine has in fact become so popular and proliferous that the word ‘google’ itself has now become a verb! (As in, if you want to find out more about a certain person, you just google them.)
Every time you do a search, you will see the term or phrase that you searched at the top, followed by about ten webpages that Google thinks are most relevant to your term. Since there are literally tens of millions of Google searches every single day, it is not a great leap to think that the websites that manage to get their ranking very high in Google will get ALOT of free visitors and traffic.
But what is it exactly that determines which websites get listed in the top ten listings? Well, the system that is behind every single search result that you see is called the PageRank system, named after its creator and co-founder of Google, Larry Page.
Before the PageRank system, there did exist some other methodologies for determining web search relevance and delivering accurate results, but none of them were as robust, accurate, democratic, or resistant to human error as PageRank.
-What Puts PageRank in A League of Its Own-
There are basically two major ideas behind the PageRank system that have made it so revolutionary:
First, the PageRank system is rather democratic in nature because every time one website (we will call it site A) links to some different website (we will call it site B), that link is considered to be a ‘vote’ by site A that site B has good information, or for some reason is worthy of being viewed and read. This concept of the democratic nature of the links found all over the internet is a vital main idea behind the PR system.
Second (and this is the part that really put PageRank on the level), NOT ALL LINKS ARE CREATED EQUAL!
That is to say that if you have two links coming to your website, one from Forbes.com and another from some backwater, fly-by-night dot com, these two links will not be treated equally.
So what does this mean for the question of how did the highest ranked sites get where they are? They have been around for long enough to have numerous popular sites link to them, they have valuable, relevant, dynamic content, and chances are that they probably link to other related websites.
Another vital (but not so revolutionary) mechanism behind determining which webpages are displayed for certain keywords is an advanced text-matching system. Google’s text-matching system is able to deliver highly relevant webpages because of the vast computing power behind the Google search engine itself.
-Technical Explanation of a Website’s PageRank-
This following part is a technical explanation for those who want to further understand the nature of the PageRank algorithm. If you are only interested in learning how to improve your own site’s PR, then feel free to skip to the next section.
With the PageRank algorithm, every single website on the internet is given a numerical PR value somewhere between 1 and 10, with 10 being the best. It will help if you can remember from your math class what a logarithm is, because the assignment of a certain PR number is logarithmic in nature, similar to the Richter scale of measuring earthquakes.
This is important to understand, especially if you want to increase your own PageRank. In terms of PageRank, this means that a PR6 site is not twice as valuable as a PR5 site, but actually TEN TIMES as valuble. So this would mean (not exactly but approximately) that an incoming link from a PR6 site would give you as much value as about a few dozen PR4 sites. Notice that a PR6 incoming link will NOT give the value of 100 PR4 links, because PageRank is concerned with the quantity of incoming links as well as how important they are.
-Tips For Improving The PR of Your Site or Blog-
Try to create content that is valuable, funny, or for some reason really makes people want to link to it. This strategy will increase your number of incoming links without any extra work, which will thereby increase the PageRank of your site or blog.
A ‘link farm’ is a website that has hundreds or thousands of incoming and outgoing links. Sites like this can actively inflate PageRank to make a site seem more relevant than it actually is, so Google will ‘punish’ websites associated with link farms by bringing them down in the search rankings.
Do not worry or feel like your site or blog is not good enough if after just a few months or so you do not have a high PageRank and are not listed very high in the search results. It takes time to build PR, so the better your content and the longer you have been online, the better chance you have at naturally gaining a higher PR.
See if you can find a few high-quality websites or blogs out there related to your own site topic, and contact the owner to see is they would be interested in linking to your site if you link to theirs. This is called ‘link exchanging,’ and if you do it to much then Google may ‘punish’ you becase this is another way of inflating PR, but exchanging links with a few quality sites will help you.
One last thing, and this has been stressed throughout the article, there really is a single golden rule that you can apply to boost your PageRank: create MASSIVELY VALUABLE information and content that people will naturally want to link to on their own, and you are set.