Decoding SEO

This basic definition of SEO is what everyone knows but the real problem lies in how does one optimize his site. Let us see first why should you optimize your site. The internet is a medium for one to do business without the hassles that a traditional business set-up faces. There are no workforce issues, one does not need to be physically present for transactions to take place and most importantly it provides consumers a lot of flexibility. If someone does not have the time to go to a shop he can just log on to the internet and place his order.

Let’s take an example wherein someone wants to buy a Nokia N95. He will just log on to Google and search for Nokia N95. He will see the first two or three website descriptions and then decide which website he wants to check. How does Google decide which websites to rank in the top four or five? It has its own complex algorithm which takes in certain factors and decides which sites rank higher than others. For your websites to get more traffic it is but natural that they rank in the top four or five and this is where Search engine optimization comes in the picture.

Search engine optimization firms study your website and recommend changes to your websites. The basic things to be done are to have meta tags, alt tags, title tags etc. in place to ensure that basic website structure is proper and that the Google crawler can go through your website with ease. Next step is to create your worth amongst the thousands of websites that are doing the same thing as yours. Just as in an election where there are many competing candidates but the person who wins is the one who has the most votes similarly the website that has the most links from other websites andor directories is the one which Google ranks higher. Why does Google does so? The logic is simple if a website provides a link to you it means that the website considers your website to be important and the more no. of websites that deem your website to be important the higher Google ranks you. Does this mean that you can have links from any website? Seo firms will strongly advise you against this. Links from websites that have content relevant to yours and the websites that have been given some importance by Google(indicated by good ”PR”) count.

Keyword analysis forms the crux of your SEO campaign. If your website is targeting the wrong keywords then however good your website is it won’t rank for the keywords that it should. SEO firms use various analytics software’s like Google trends, Word tracker, Keyword Discovery etc. to zero in on the correct keywords. The structure of your website can also be modified to create a mesh structure wherein easy navigation links are provided and all the pages are linked to one another. Conversion of urls from dynamic to static is also what SEO firms focus a lot more. One must realize that although these steps seem very basic actual implementation is very difficult and it is a gradual process. Google takes some time to realize that changes have been done to your website and even when it does it might wait for some time before reflecting those changes on its search results.

In the last decade India has emerged as the IT center and it is right at the top in the SEO industry. SEO firms in India are highly regarded and companies from all across the world are flocking to India to cash in on the expertise and deep understanding of this domain that these companies have.

Google Algorithm Update Analysis

Google algorithm update analysis is a standard with which an analysis can be made of the SEO rankings of various sites on the web world. The sudden up and down in the ranking of a website largely depends on three important things. These three are PageRank, backlinks and domain age.

Domain Age

It is basically the time period for which the website exists on internet. Google and other search engines attach a lot of importance to the domain age of a website for its ranking standards. Although a long domain age depicts a strong establishment of the company but this often appears to be a disadvantage, for the other new websites may have useful information and helpful user assistance sections.

Although, it has pushed back a lot of new websites but at the end of the day it has resorted the issue of unwanted and useless material topping the charts. There was once a time when, many websites were launched with unnecessary keyword loading just to top the search engine charts. With the trend or rather the method of choosing to make domain age as one of the base of SEO ranking, there is kind of sieving done by the Search engines to give the best results at once. So, with coming times ranking algorithms will soon be adjusted with the current trend to make web browsing more effective and fast.

Giving Domain age more relevance has greatly affected other factors ratings for search engine optimization because it seems to completely evade the content quality. In short, even if a website presents good meaningful content with right amount of keyword density to be in the web of SEO, it is likely to face the brunt if it is new to the market!

Backlinks

Along with the domain age system there has also been a slight alteration in the calculations of Backlinks. Earlier there was lesser importance given to reciprocal links but now search engine optimization takes in to account largely the number of reciprocal links a website has. Websites with reciprocal website link directories are rated higher with SEO ranking. So, if you are eying at good SEO ranking, a large link building back up can easily get you a good SEO ranking.

PageRank

Unlike the earlier trend, the PageRank has lost its importance with the search engines in the process of search engine optimization process. PageRank is related mainly to the Backlink value. In lieu of the Search Engine optimization process, the PageRank calls for little attention and if Google has taken a step ahead to rate it lower among Search engine optimization planning, it is a good step.

Most significant fact that should not be overlooked is that earlier Google used another measure for SEO ranking algorithm calculation. This algorithmic analysis tool was TrustRank. It was basically the standard which depicted the trustworthiness of the site with Google, the search engine. Later the standard was discarded and PageRank was given the duty to perform in the Google algorithm analysis. Since now, PageRank also seems to loose the credibility in the process, there is likely a chance that it would shift to TrustRank again.

Whatever may be the next update, Google update will definitely turn up with another analysis update because it is quite obvious that a website that has just been launched would be loaded with information that is latest rather than the one that exists since the starting of the millennium.

Related linking analysis is likely to show a higher graph and will be effective as there are chances that lower PageRanks but with high relevancy may win the race with high quantity and less relevant linking process.

The chance that Google is here looking forward to make the other tools more important for SEO ranking might give a chance to find out what actually went wrong with PageRank earlier, and so efforts will be made to make it even better. Consequently, if you have been worried about your search engine rank going higher; it might bring a smile to your face. However, you must keep in mind that SEO algorithm analysis tools updating is an ongoing process and the coming time will soon see a change in the scenario again like the one we see now.

What is best for you is that you need to adjust with the algorithm analysis to stand in good ranks and if you fail to do so, there might be a chance that you come up but when you never know.

Optimizing for Google, Yahoo and Msn

Search engine optimization is a regular process, if you want your website to be a top ranker in all the major search engine results, its mandatory to update your website according to the changing algos of search engines. To gain higher rankings in the search engine results, first we have to understand the three internet giants Google, Yahoo and MSN. These are the three biggest existing search engines available. Almost all of us use any one of these three to make searches for any kind of information we want to look for on the World Wide Web.

Although these three search engines rule the internet industry but they all have a tendency to dominate another. Google has more or less succeeded doing this. Here are some facts about the three search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN, tweaking them can help you to rank well in the SERPs:

Let’s start with Google:

Google

1. Google consider the domain age most important as compared to other major search engines.
2. Quality links obviously can attract any search engine.
3. Active websites (updated regularly at any level) are loved by Google.
4. Get Listed in The Major Directories, helps you to climb success ladder on Google.
5. To please Google your HTML markups should be up to date as well as up to the mark.
6. Google with its advanced algorithm has started indexing websites which are based on LSI. Pages on your website should be relevant to your theme.
7. Your website should not be limited only to three to four pages to be indexed by Google.
8. Hyphens in URLs with keywords will definitely work.
9. W3C Compliancy in the source code is equally important for Google.

Yahoo

1. Keyword in Title Tag work for Yahoo.
2. Keyword Density is also an important factor.
3. Lot of Links (Site wide links work in Yahoo.)
4. Getting listed in Yahoo directory helps you to climb high on Yahoo, which is paid one.
5. Domain should not be too young in order to rank in Yahoo.

MSN

1. Keyword in Title Tag
2.Keyword Density Works
3.Freshness in content, relatively young websites can rank well in MSN.
4. Lot of Links (Site wide links work for MSN.)

Search Engine Marketing Tips: Do Your Business Online

Search Engine Marketing Tips: Do Your Business Online. Now days, the most effective marketing strategy for one’s online business is search engine marketing. Search engine marketing is being used for promoting different shapes of online business. It helps in receiving a superb keyword ranking in a quick manner. As a result of tremendous internet advertising policy, search engine marketing is really growing. It has an effective impact on the overall increment of your business growth like quicker search engine ranking position of your keywords, increment in one’s selling rate of one’s website. Search engine marketing tips provide a useful affair in leading a business to meaningful terms.

Search engine marketing tips have become a key ability, so that one can hunt quicker search engine rankings. Search engine marketing tips come in handy during the process of search engine marketing. One of the most important search engine marketing tips is ‘links’. Links relate to quality and quantity of the links on World Wide Web that points to one’s site and its sub pages. One of the most influential factors is the incoming links. One important search engine marketing tip is to submit articles and do selective link exchanges to give one’s site a push start and let the content bring to the top. There are many owners who think that Internet is a mysterious monster that will not be effective in the local market. But the fact is that, internet has become the most appropriate advertising medium that generates a nice flow of new customers. It has been researched that most of the customers search the internet to find a local product or service.

Another effective search engine marketing tips include the title and META tags. One must craft the title and description in such a way which is both user friendly and search engine friendly. It must be remembered that if it is not user friendly, then no one would click. Moreover it must have keyword rich content. Internal linking is also one of the search engine marketing tips. A good internal linking structure not only shows the SE’s, but also actually increases the rankings of those pages.

One of the most important search engine marketing tips is to have quality content. Quality content brings natural links. A low quality, rehashed content would not impress anyone. Thus, one’s job can become much harder as one has to manually build all the links. Last but not the least important search engine marketing tips is related to keyword density. Now days, keyword density does not matter. With the implementation of ‘Latent Semantic Indexing’, most of the major search engines do not rank a page higher because there is set number of keywords. Writing the natural content can result to the happening of good things. One can be confident and rest assured that with search engine marketing tips, one can achieve good results. The three basic methods to ensure that one can ensure that one’s website appears on the search engine are- pay per click advertising, organic search engine optimization and online directories. Thus search engine marketing tips prove to be a helping hand in gaining status of one’s website on the search engine.

Author: Steve Waganer

What to Expect From Search Engine Optimization Procedures

Search Engine Optimization is becoming increasingly competitive with every passing day. With several websites being launched everyday, people’s expectation from the search engine has also grown. They expect to see their website on the top ranking position in the search engine in just a wink of an eye. What they do not understand is that SEO is a slow process which takes time to show results. It is not a magic which can be done in a flash of a second.

Saying that search engine optimization is a slow process, we do not mean to say that it is inefficient or incapable of showing results. Instead it is a process that needs patience and practice both. You should know how to handle search engine processes in order to get the best out of it. Before you expect the number one position in the search engines, you need to do a good amount of homework on your website first. Most of the websites that come to the SEOs for optimization normally have a lot of scope of development in the websites itself.

Webmasters generally tend to avoid certain minor but essential factors which are useful in the search engine optimization technique of these web pages. Factors like, content updation, title tags and meta tags descriptions, site map, website navigation, broken links etc. Once the website is optimized considering these factors the optimization procedure automatically becomes half the job. Another extremely important feature in search engine optimization is the correct selection of keywords and key phrases. The right selection of keywords and phrases which are suitable to the website content makes bringing the website on to the top position much more easier.

What the webmaster should be careful about is that, the web page too contains the keywords and phrases that are being used to optimize the particular page. This will bring in a relevancy in the content and the SERPs rankings.

Keywords are just on of the technique through which you can help your search engine to optimize your website. There is another quite effective way which is widely being used by webmasters in order to obtain results from the search engines. This is content creation. Believe it or not, content has a lot of potential which can be used to optimize your website. You can begin with your own website. Keep posting regular content on to your web pages. Update the existing content or add new articles to your web pages. This will automatically increase the potential of your website and will become more competitive in nature. Submitting articles to article directories and other article websites along with an link to your site is also an effective search engine optimization method that increase traffic to your site.

Search engine optimization will give you the required ranking and popularity that you are expecting from it only when your website is ready to invite traffic in.

Search Engine Optimisation Tips for Ecommerce Websites

eCommerce websites can easily get a lot of visitors if you can properly optimise the website for both search engines as well as the visitors. You can never isolate user experience from search engine optimisation. Today, they work as complimentary to each other.

Ensuring better user experience is important since search engines like Google are giving preference to user experience and they have started using it as a parameter to determine search engine ranking of websites. They mean business and whoever can offer better user experience would get better ranking in the search result pages.

Creating a user friendly interface:

Undoubtedly, this is the very first step to run a successful eCommerce website. Normally eCommerce websites have thousands of dynamically created pages and content management become tough.

You must group different products under proper and specific category. You can create static pages as landing pages for each product category. This would also help you a lot to optimise the content for specific primary keywords. Here we must say that proper grouping of primary keywords are also as important as the category grouping. This will definitely make your life easier and your visitors will find what they are looking for.

Install a good internal search engine with different verticals so that visitors can easily find what they are looking. But try to make the process as simple as possible depending on your target market’s background. And you must remember here that the same person may act differently while visiting a social networking website and an eCommerce site. Thus you must be critical in implementing any interface.

Search engine optimisation of an eCommerce website for better ranking?

The best thing about eCommerce website is that you may create thousands of pages. In most of the cases, the product name itself would fetch you a lot of website. And in most of the cases they are your target audience or prospective customer who wants to buy the product or may buy the product in future.

As the very first step of optimisation, do not reproduce the content provided by a manufacturer. Rewrite the whole content in a user friendly way. It is always better to add a ‘Features’ section to highlight the best features of the product.

eCommerce websites are always rich in images – you must use proper alt tags and title tags for those images. You can also use captions under every image where you can easily put some key words. You can also think about image mapping.

Do not forget to use keywords in page title, Meta tags, H1, H2 tags and other important locations.

Create and submit a XML sitemap in Google.

These are some primary considerations. You should also follow other search engine optimisation best practices. You can also contact a good SEO company to market your website.

Professional SEO Services Improves the Website Traffic

Search engine marketing or SEO is a part of the expanding the world of internet marketing, where opportunities are abundant to serve the ultimate goals of a business entity. Through implementing SEO services, you would be able to sell your products and services in a better preposition than ever. After availing professional SEO services, a website will start appearing in the top rankings in all the major search engines so that your presence can be felt instantly.

One of the biggest advantages of availing an experienced SEO company is that your website is easily crawled by all the search engines and improvising their presence so that they can make in the top page of the search engines.

The basic idea of bringing improvement is to modify the HTML code so that search engines can easily access to your web pages and reach to the value of your output in forms of words. If you website is having a good quality content, your website will be given weightage to index and rank. The system is quite helpful as the target audiences will be able to find the website they are researching. Getting the best ranking helps in converting into the potential into sales and improves the visibility and profit as well.

A professional SEO services can get you the right way of quality SEO services that increases about 90% of internet traffic to your website. You can advantages of sheer experience and expert techniques that can yield the desired results. A low cost search engine optimization service is our specialty. Increase traffic and cut down your website promotion cost.

Different types of search engine optimization strategy
• On-Page optimization
• Off-Page optimization

These two main techniques helps in improving the position of your web pages in various search engines so that it can attract more customers and convert their interests by providing good service.

How to Become a Link Magnent

Links are known to be one of the ultimate boosters for webpages. Everybody knows that they are very essential if you want to increase your rankings in search engines as well as drive traffic going into your website. However, there are a lot of techniques related to it. Which one works and which doesn’t? Definitely, you don’t want to waste your time on something that will not work after all.
Start with Two Methods in Linking

If you’re basically a new site and you need to gather inbound links to ensure that you can obtain an excellent page rank during the next Google update, you may want to consider performing two methods. These are referred to as reciprocal link building and non-reciprocal link building.

Non-reciprocal or One-way Link Building
What does this mean? This only implies that you will be getting links for your website without having the obligation to link back. This is advantageous for you as you don’t have to wait for other webmasters to link to your site before you can actually gain an inbound link for your site. Second, there are a lot of unscrupulous website owners who will remove your link the minute that they realize that you already have added theirs to your site. In the end, you have not gained anything.

There are a number of ways that you can practice one-way linking. Here are some of them:

1. Article Writing. Content will always remain to be the main driving force in any website. After all, Internet users are more interested with the information that they can get from you, more than anything else. But how do you exactly gain an excellent page rank just by writing articles?

By nature, only those who are interested with your articles will likely add a link or copy your article with your link at their website. Hence, you are guaranteed that your inbound link comes from a relevant webpage or site. In turn, you will obtain a reward from search engines, who highly favor sites with a high level of relevancy.
Second, the link going to your site is one-way, which has actually more weight to search engines than reciprocal linking. If you have more inbound links going to your site, the easier it is for you to adapt to the future changes in the algorithm of search engines.

2. Submission in directories. So far, this is considered to be the easiest for the simple reason that all you need to do is to submit your link to the right category. What’s more, there are hundreds of directories that are completely free. In the end, you will obtain a permanent inbound link going to your site. Added bonus is the fact that these directories can invite traffic from their visitors.

There are actually two kinds of directories, and both have their own pros and cons. Those that are paid are being handled by major search engines, such as Yahoo. The main advantage of going for paid directories is that you will have a prominent position in the directory. Perhaps your link will appear in the topmost portion. It also doesn’t take days before you can actually find a link in their directory, which means it will not also take a long time before your pages get indexed. On the downside, it may mean that you have to spend few hundred dollars every year. Once you stopped paying, your link will be removed.

Free directories are cheap and can still provide you with inbound links. However, it may take even as long as one year before you can find your link right at their directory. This is because your website needs to be manually reviewed.

Reciprocal Link Building
There are less and less people who are into reciprocal link building perhaps for a number of reasons. First, it definitely spells hassle for anyone. It’s usually a wait-and-see attitude for some. You need to see to it first that your link is added to their website before you will add theirs to yours. It could be vice versa. Moreover, there’s a huge possibility that you will be denied of such link partnership, most especially if you approach those well-established ones. Nevertheless, reciprocal link building still works, and it may be ideal to know the strategies on how to do this right:

1. Go for relevant websites. Ask yourself, “What is it for me to link to this website?” Since search engines are after relevancy, you may like to obtain inbound links from relevant websites. They are attractive to search engine spiders, and they are extremely useful to your targeted audience.

2. Get rid of “page rank only” mentality. You’re apprehensive because you need to find similar websites with excellent PR. If you’re basically starting out, you will likely get rejected a lot of times, unless you’re really good in proving your worth. To improve your link building ability, it could be best if you settle for sites with small PR but with interesting information. During the next Google update, you will benefit from their page rank.

Google’s Latest Update for Its Algorithm in Detail

Google has recently launched an update for its search engine’s algorithm. Nicknamed “Jagger,” this update has resulted to critical changes in the way that Google gives weight to certain factors that it looks at in coming up for PageRank. Because of this, there have been dramatic changes to Google’s search results. Google for its part has claimed that it is only out to give out more relevant search engine results that would maximize the searcher’s experience.

Over the weeks after the update was implemented, several sites that have not been placed in top spots have suddenly flew in ranking while some of those that have been ranked high previously have found their ranking fluctuating.

What is the update about? And what changes have been introduced into Google’s system?

Older Sites See Prominence in Results

One of the three affected areas is the domain age or the website history. Google has decided to place emphasis on the site’s age in calculating PageRank. One obvious effect of this is that older sites have suddenly appeared in the top spots of every search result page, outdoing the newer sites.

This change has brought about several questionable effects. If the older sites have a lot more information than the relatively newer site that has previously held the top spot, then it is good. But if they don’t, then Google has inadvertently prejudiced against newer sites with better quality. By default, older sites have outdated information that would most likely be irrelevant or lacking information to help a web searcher in his quest for information.

On a positive note, the greater weight on the older sites has resulted to suppression of a black hat technique of launching multiple domains just to gain ranks.

Google Recalculates Values for Backlinks

Google has also made changes to how it gives value to backlinks, or links that point to a site. Previously, Google simply calculates the number of links that point to your site (treating it as a vote of support along the way) in coming with up your page’s ranking. With this update, Google has now placed varying weights depending on the link’s age. Newer links have lesser values compared to links that have existed quite a long way before. Google has adjusted its algorithm in a manner that links start to gain more weight after periods of time.

This update has affected those webmasters that resort to link buying to build up their inbound links. No longer could they depend on these methods to quickly gain rank because any new link posted for the site would still take some time before it could build up some weight to materially affect the site’s ranking.

PageRank Loses Part of its Importance

The latest update has resulted to lesser importance for the PR value in the calculation of ranking. Google apparently has realized that a high PR value is not at all related to a website’s relevance and importance to a search query. PR, after all, is calculated by the number of backlinks to a site together with an importance factor that is determined by how the site being pointed to is related to the site making the referral. High-quality links carry the heaviest weight in the calculation, since these links are coming from sites that are considered relevant (and thus important) to the site being referred.

PageRank has come under various abuses by some SEO experts that use black hat techniques to artificially inflate sites’ PR values. While having high PRs serve little to the page’s actual ranking in results, artificially high PR sites can once in a while swindle a link-buying webmaster to buy links from them.

This is related to the practice of PR buying, where a webmaster buys rights from a high PR site to post a link to his site. This practice stems from the long-running belief within the SEO community that a site being linked by a high-PR site gets the PR value of that site. Hence, webmasters buy links from high-PR sites for that purpose, although with the age delay addition to the algorithm this practice has lost its effectiveness.

There has been speculation that PageRank will be replaced by TrustRank, a similar algorithm used by Google’s competitor Yahoo although this has never been proven by public statements. It is also said that Google might have decided that TrustRank is irrelevant. Since they are similar, Google could have concluded that its own PageRank algorithm is irrelevant as well, although most people find this unlikely.

Getting Your Site Ready for Google

Google is known as the search engine that is most widely used by Internet surfers and the like. Because of this, most webmasters are concerned about optimizing their websites to be able to get a high ranking in Google along with two other engines, namely Yahoo and MSN.

There are several ways that one can optimize a website to attain the best results for Google. This article will tackle that in detail.

Arranging Your Website’s Structure and Content

Your website design structure plays a vital role in SEO because of the way that search engines index it for ranking. This is related to the way that search engine spiders read content.

For example, spiders give a higher priority to codes that are found in higher positions within the main HTML code itself. For example, if you place navigation codes like headers before your main content, this results in a higher priority for your header code than for your main content. In a nutshell, parts of the code that serves little or no purpose for the optimization of the page should be placed in the bottom of the code, and those that are important should be placed higher within the HTML code.

The purpose is to let the spiders crawl and see the optimized content first, so that it will gain more priority in the indexing. The content is the part that matters, after all.

Coming up With SEO-friendly content

As you could see in the previous section, the content is intended to be given the most priority in SEO. Optimizing a site means that you come up with content that would satisfy a search engine’s criteria for a high rank, which is in your end goal for all your efforts.

The first criterion is keyword density. This is measured by the number of times that a keyword appears on your page. Optimal density is around 3% to 5% of the total number of words the content body contains. So, if you had a 1000-word article, you would have to repeat the primary keyword at least 3% and at most 5% of 1000. This is how Google looks at your page and judge its relevance to the search term. Its spiders count the occurrences of the keyword within the page being crawled.

The way that you format your content is also important to your SEO efforts. Formatted content actually receives greater weight from the search engine. Examples of formatting are keywords that are in boldface, in italics or in anchor text. This is because these formatted words serve to highlight the important part of the content for the visitor, so that they would find easily the information that they are searching for.

Last, but not the least, the pages on your site must revolve around a central theme. This is done by making individual pages centered around a specific topic, which is related to the site’s theme as a whole. This is the ultimate goal in your content SEO efforts. Like mentioned earlier, it is your content that will make or break your site’s success.

Procuring Links for your Website

Inbound links are also important for the search engines. This is because Google’s PageRank algorithms calculate the PR value for a site by counting the number of links that point to it. The whole affair is like a ballot during elections. Each inbound link is considered a vote of support for the site, and these votes are tallied to come up with the PR value.

That said, you probably now know the importance of being able to build a number of links for your site. One process is known as link baiting. You can do so using your blog. To do this you must post content about topics that you’re sure people would follow and refer others to by posting inbound links to your blog, which post a link pointing to your site.

Link building is another method of procuring votes of support for your site. One way to do this is to submit articles to article directories. These directories allow you to include a link to your site in the bottom of your articles, which counts as a vote of support when it is seen by search engine spiders.

Other ways of doing this is to post links to your blogs or website in social networking/bookmarking sites like Digg.com. These sites give your sites a chance to be viewed by many people and linked to. These sites are considered reliable and important by search engines, so any link from them carries a great value for the calculation of your final PR value.