Be Aware Of SEO Errors

Doing search engine submission and just having a flashy web site is not enough. It is important that potential customers locate your site to keep your business growing. You might say, “What is wrong with my site? It has a beautiful design and an impressive content.” But give it a second thought. Are you really satisfied with the business that is flowing? If this continues, will it be possible for you to survive in this competitive world? This brings us into the realm of SEO.

Be aware of SEO errors:

1. Non-standard title: One should have a clear concept about the title. A standard title should always include the major web site’s keywords and it is recommended to use the company name after the keyword phrase. For more information logon to www.keyword-swipe.com.Title should always be chosen keeping the viewers in mind or else it can prove to be lethal for its search engine ranking.

2. Use of Meta data: Meta data provides useful information about a web page and the three pieces of metadata that requires our concern are Title, Keywords and Description.

3. Back-links: Some sites tend to link them with other important sites. But the most genuine way to get good links is to develop good contents. If your site can enchant your users then other site owners will have a good reason to link to you, benefiting you from the SEO point of view.

4. Flashy images: Flashy images might be attractive to you but it may not be so to search engines and users. What matters most is the quality of information that is provided to the users – because spiders can’t read flashy images and so they fail to index them.

5. Consistency and Maintenance: One must always remember that it is important to keep an eye on the rankings of your page. To be successful one should maintain an updated site.

6. Reduced site usability: Inconvenience created to the user always results to a poor lifetime value to the visitors and makes the site less attractive.

7. Not staying within guidelines: Search engines have guidelines and violating them may prove to be costly as it may lead to a site being removed from the search engine index or otherwise penalized.

8. Keyword density: It is the ratio of the number of keywords used on a web page to the total number of words on that page. For more infomation logon to www.sitemap-makers.com.The keyword density of an article ranges between 2% to 12 %. Repetition of the keyword sometimes damages the charm of the content.

9. Wrong keywords: Knowing and understanding the customers’ needs is very important. Based on it, effective keywords should be chosen so that it brings traffic to the site and makes it more SEO friendly.

10. Insufficient data: Stuffing your website with irrelevant data will create a negative impression on your customers and it may harm your rankings if not taken seriously.

Thus, the role of SEO is vital to a successful online marketing campaign. A website designed beautifully with original contents following the varied information stated above will definitely generate a good business and collect higher returns on investments

Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks

Everyone knows that search engine optimization is the game to play these days. After all, it seems as though it’s the only thing that everyone talks about anymore. But how do you go about properly optimizing your website? Do you really need to spend a bundle of money for special tools and consultants?

The answer is no - as long as you have a little bit of time and willingness to learn. In this article, we’ll take a look at some simple steps you can take that have been proven to greatly improve the ranking of websites within search engine results.

But first, I’ll define search engine optimization, according to Dictionary.com, so that we start on the same page: [search engine optimization is] the process of choosing targeted keywords and keyword phrases related to a Web site so the site will rank high when those terms are part of a Web search; abbr. SEO. A good basic definition - you will see in a moment, however, that SEO does go above and beyond mere keywords.

So let’s get started from the ground up.

Website Structure

We’ll start at the very basis - your website’s structure. This pertains to the way your site is put together, and every other aspect of SEO builds upon this. I’ll start with the basic website/web page elements you do not want to have, and I’ll also explain why:

>Re-directs - Re-directs refer to pages that are blank and just point to another page. Many search engines run into trouble when they try to add re-direct pages to their databases, so this is something you want to stay away from. Many re-direct pages are not indexed, and if you are using a re-direct for your homepage, there goes any chance you may have had of any part of your website landing in search results.

> Frames - Frames consist of essentially two separate web pages being displayed as one. Frames are usually used so that, for instance, a constant navigation menu can be displayed in a panel on the left side of the screen, while the rest of the screen changes each time a link in the navigation panel is clicked. This can make a website look snazzy, but search engines just can’t process frames, and you’ll end up with the same problems as if you tried to use re-directs. It is best to stay away from frames. The good news is that you can emulate the function of frames pretty easily, through the use of simple HTML - the only difference is that you’ll have to include the navigation menu code on each page, but it is worth doing this to have your website indexed.

> Image maps - Image maps are images that have had separate links added to them. To illustrate, suppose you have created an image with three areas of text on it: ‘Home’ ‘Help’ and ‘Links’. By "mapping" that image, you can create three separate links around each area of text, without having to break the image into three smaller images. Image maps are usually used for navigation menus, but here is where the problem comes in: search engines cannot follow the links in a navigation menu. (Aren’t you starting to get tired of all the problems these navigation menus cause?) There is an easy work-around, though, if you really want to use image maps - just include the links as text links somewhere else on each page that has an image map. Search engines will be able to follow these text links and index the rest of your site.

> Macromedia Flash - You either have a love or hate relationship with Flash, but the bottom line is it chokes up search engines too. If you don’t have to use it, please, don’t. (Not only for your sake, but for the sake of us who have gotten just a little bit tired of those tacky Flash headers on every website now!)

> CGI, PHP, and all that stuff - CGI, PHP, and other web programming and scripting languages are very powerful and can contribute a great deal to a website’s functionality. But dynamic web pages are just one more thing that search engines can’t digest. Oftentimes, there may be no getting around using scripting in a website, but use it sparingly, and if you’re using it for the sole reason of looking impressive when HTML would do the job just fine, by all means, switch to HTML!

So now you have a basic understanding of the technologies and areas to avoid when building - or re-designing - your website. A properly structured website facilitates the easier "crawling" of "spiders" through it so that it receives a higher search engine results ranking.

We’ll now move on to the content of your website, an often-overlooked aspect of search engine optimization.

Website Content

The content your website contains is very important. All the search engine crawling in the world won’t do you any good if the search engine "spiders" don’t find any useful content on your site. Oftentimes, you won’t see search engine optimization programs cover your website’s content, but this is a very important point that I think should not be left out.

Your website should consist of a good amount of relevant, explanatory content, containing your keywords (which we’ll talk about in a few moments) and several good supporting images (we’ll get to those in a second as well).

Upon hearing that more text is better, many webmasters make the mistake of adding un-decipherable jibberish to their sites. This is also something we’ll discuss under the Keywords & META Tags section, but for now I will say that this is a big no-no. Search engines can tell when you’re trying to fool them, and if they consider your site to have committed a large offense, they may even permanently blacklist your domain from their results database. So it is extremely important that the content on your website makes sense.

One good idea is to include articles on your website. Search engines greatly prefer content that changes often, and what better way to have changing content than to continuously post articles on your site. Not only will you be perceived as an expert in your field, you’ll also make the search engines happy.

I think that’s as far as I’ll go with content - much of what will be discussed in the next section applies here as well, so keep reading!

Keywords & META Tags

Keywords are yet another integral part of your search engine optimization campaign. For starters, you need to sit down with a sheet of paper (and don’t forget your good old thinking cap!) and think of keywords that pertain to your business. (For the record, keywords can be both single words and phrases - just make sure they’re not too long!) Think of what your website does, and develop keywords that you would use to describe your website and its content. It does not matter how many keywords you come up with, although it is best to have no less than five (and the less you have, the more targeted your search engine marketing can be).

After you’ve developed your list of keywords, there are a few things you’re going to want to do with them. First, sprinkle them within the pages of your site. Anywhere you have text on your website, include these keywords. It is best to have at least three per page (of each one), as the search engines likely will not pay attention to them otherwise. Keep these tips in mind when inserting your keywords:

> Do not repeat a keyword over and over.

> Do not repeat a keyword over and over (or even just once) and make it the same color as your website’s background.

> Do not include your keywords all together as jibberish that no normal human can understand.

The second thing you’re going to want to do is to include these keywords in the descriptive sentences you will use in the ALT tags for the images you have on your site. Again, follow the rules in bold above that can be applied to ALT tags.

Third, add these keywords to your META tags. There are three elements to the META tags that you will be using: Title, Description, and Keywords. For the Title and Description META tags, follow the rules in the bold text above - and be sure to include your company name in these two tags, if it is not already one of your keywords. For the Keywords META tag, you can go to town adding your keywords, one right after the other! Separate them with a comma, and do not include the same keyword more than once! Doing so (as well as violating any of the bolded ‘Do not’ points above) can also get your domain name permanently blacklisted.

Inbound Links

Another great search engine optimization technique that is often overlooked is incoming links. Every link you have coming into your website raises the "awareness" of your site in the search engine’s minds. If the links come from websites with high Google PageRank ratings, that is even better (in Google’s eyes, anyway - this doesn’t apply to MSN, Yahoo!, etc.).

How do you go about getting links to your website? One of the easiest ways is to add your site to as many industry-related online directories as you can find. A couple of other quick and easy methods include posting ads at Craigslist and other free classifieds sites, and swapping your links with similar (competing or not - this is up to you!) sites.

Remember, the more inbound links you have, the higher your Google PageRank, as well as your position in the search results of Google, MSN, and the others.

Outbound Links

Did you know that outbound links are just as important as inbound links? Perhaps the search engines don’t care for traffic hogs, but whatever their reason, websites containing links leaving their sites consistently rank higher in search engine results than those that do not.

So who do you link to? Remember that you can swap links with other related sites and you can both benefit. You can also link to complementary websites that visitors to yours may be interested in (but that don’t in any way compete with you). The main idea for getting both inbound and outbound links is to be aggressive, as well as innovative in your approach.

Conclusion

This is by no means an exhaustive guide. But I can’t keep rambling on and on either. You need time to go perform the tasks we’ve discussed here today, so that your site can be on its way to the top of the search engine results.

So stay tuned for further search engine optimization articles here at HostReview.com. I’ll be posting more search engine optimization techniques very soon!

7 Useful SEO tips for Wordpress Blog

Yesterday Luqmaan of computer-realm.net emailed me and asked about the secret of traffic of my blog. I’m very happy with the way traffic is growing in this blog. I’ve started this blog in this domain http://roshanbh.com.np from 4th of Jan 2008. All the other old posts are imported from my old blog http://php-ajax-guru.blogspot.com.Due to few difficulties in blogger.com, I’ve decieded to move my blog to Wordpress. And in less than two months, Alexa ranking of this blog is 253,907 which seems really surprising for Luqmaan.

As you can see the picture below, I’ve got 451 visits from search engine on Jan 26. Which is good for a blog which is not older than 2 month in this domain.

Type “php ajax freelancer” in Google , you can see me in the top. Good achievement i think.

I would not say I’m not good in SEO at but I know some tips and technique about seo which I’m going to share with you. I never write for search engine (except my About Me page) and suggest you the same but always optimize the posts for the search engine.

1) Content is the king :

This is the bottom line of SEO. I always try to write the articles on those topics of web technology which might be people are looking for.Furthermore, create a timeless content so that people come and read the same post in future as well. Always write for the readers not for the search engines otherwise people may come at your post from search engine but will not read your blog in future.

2) Use ALL in ONE SEO PLugins :

ALL in ONE SEO Plugins is the best plugin to be used in the wordpress if you know something about SEO. It can let you define various attribute related to seo like page title, meta keyword, meta description.

3) Put the Main Keyword in Title and Meta Descritption :

Search engine gives much more priority to the keyword in page title and Meta Description. So always try to put the possible search keywords in title and meta description. Furthermore, never put the name of the blog combined page title of that particular post in the title of the page, it may dilute the strength of the page title .Finally, Search engine gives less priority to Meta keyword but never ignore them.

4) Use noindex or nofollow option for the category or archives:

Some bloggers put more tags to to cut off the post in the middle and some does not. If you don’t cut off the post in the middle then you must do it. Search engine may penalize you if it finds the duplicated content in your site i.e. same content in different places of your website. You can use the options in the All in One SEO Pack for no indexing or you can create the robots.txt file for nofollow. More detail of robots.txt file can be found here.As you can see category and archive page of my website are not indexed in google.

5) Use XML sitemaps pluggings :

XML sitemaps is the plugging which creates the site maps for the various search engine. When you post a new article then it creates the site map for major search engine like google, msn and yahoo.When a search engine spider visits your website they first look for the site map which contains the links to be visited in that website.

6) Put Post title Premalink Structure :

Always use the premalink structure which contains the name of post like http://roshanbh.com.np/php-ajax-freelancer not like http://roshanbh.com.np/p?=123. The Search engine gives more values to that page if the keyword found in the URL.

7) Use Post Slug :

This is what I was missing to do in the older posts. Post slug is the test to be displayes in the URL when permalink structure uses post name. You can find the Post Slug in the right hand side of Wordpreess while writing the post. And always include the keyword in the Post Slug like one I did for this which is “seo-tips-wordpress-blog”.

Google SEO

The consensus is that there are more than 200 factors with which Google ranks web pages. There is no reliable definitive SEO list of these 200 factors; however, Google does patent some of these algorithms. From their patent can be gleaned some useful information. The list below is an explanation of some of these patented items.

Keyword in URL - The URL or web page address should have the keyword in it. As an SEO strategy the keyword in the first position is best, the keyword in the second position is second best and so on.

Keyword in domain name - This is similar to the keyword in URL above; however, there is a unique feature which search engine optimization (SEO) should account for. Within Google ranking, the preferred method for indicating a space is by the use of a hyphen. While strategic SEO placement of one or two hyphens is good, use of more than four hyphens is bad.

Keyword in title tag - This is an obvious SEO technique. The SEO strategy to follow in this case is to position the keyword near the start of the title tag. Also the title tag should be less than 60 characters long with no embedded special characters.

Page rank - Page rank is based on the quantity and quality of the links. Page rank is a combination of popularity and value. For SEO this means that the preference is for the search engine to catalog links to several sites. The greater the number of links cataloged, the more popular. This equates to quantity. The SEO process must keep in mind that these linked sites are checked for relevance to the content requested. This is the quality aspect.

Inbound link anchor text - Anchor text is the phrase that users click on to reach a web page. For SEO purposes the anchor text must the optimized keyword.

Link from an expert site - Not all web sites are created equally. Sites which contain expert content provide a higher ranking boost. The search engine optimization (SEO) effort here is to find these expert sites and obtain links to them.

Site age - Basically, the older the site the more stable it is considered. If the site is not already mature there are several SEO techniques to age a site. Beware that most are black hat techniques.

The fact that Google may have 200 plus factors to rank web pages should not daunt the owner. Even though there is no reliable list of these 200 factors, SEO consultants are cognizant of these factors. It is important to discuss the prioritization of these factors as they relate specifically to the owners situation. As equally important is to determine which of these factors will be addresses by the SEO consultant. Just remember that although Google has a strong Internet grip on searches, is not the only game in town.

SEO Tips

Tip 1: Avoid Bad Coding. Ensure web pages are W3C Compliant. Search Engines bots crawl through web sites by analyzing the sites code. The idea is to make html clean and error free so that these bots are able to index every page of a website. Having errors could mean that your entire site does not get indexed by the bots, and ultimately can lead to a lower page ranking. Tip 2: Use Relevant Keywords. If a website is about belgian chocolate, then go after specific keywords. For example "gourmet belgian chocolate" and "belgian chocolate truffles" would be good choices because they are very specific. The more specific a keyword is, the less competition it will receive in search engine rankings. This allows sites to have an easier time ranking, and a better position in the search engines. Tip 3: Smart Keyword Placement. After the keywords have been decided on, they should show up somewhere in the site title and header tags. The keywords should also be in the web pages body, but avoid overdoing the keyword density. Tip 4: Get Inbound Links. Relevant incoming links from other websites that are 'trusted' can boost the site's search engine ranking. Try to avoid paid link backs and too many reciprocal links. Stay away from link schemes.