Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
published by Gary in SEO
If it is done well, publishing shadow websites or decoy websites or micro websites can drive more customers to the principal website. Sometimes, organisations have a number of microsites without a principal website because they feel that the effect of having several microsites is greater than they could achieve by having only one principal website.
Of course, for the microsites to be SEO effective, they have to look and feel different in the eyes of the search engines because publishing numerous microsites can result in all the sites being overlooked. However, big corporations that really value their reputations often set up microsites to act as testing grounds and as bait to lure in traffic. For example, a construction company may decide to use a microsite to review a book or a computer game or a DVD with a construction element in it. It may be that through that portal it will attract more people to the main website through the links that are set up on the microsite.
Other ways that microsites can be useful without lowering the standards of the principal website is for publishing blogs and news articles and even reviews of competitors’ websites. There is no doubt that it is a fulltime occupation keeping ahead of the online competition but that is why most organisations regard their internet ranking as the most important part of their marketing budget.
Of course every microsite that is set up by a mother website has to be different and has to have a unique set of links. If the search engines discover that all the sites have exactly the same links then the search engines will start to ignore the microsites. The simple solution is to make sure that although the microsites have links in common, they also have several links that are not in common.
The secret to successfully publishing shadow, decoy or micro websites is to treat each of the microsites as a principal site, one that is unique in content and links from any of the other decoy, shadow or microsites. Of course that does mean the work maintaining all the websites is labour intensive but it will make a considerable difference to your overall search engine rankings
published by Gary in SEO
Are you looking for some effective SEO tips and techniques that will make your site easily available to the potential customers? Consider working on page ranks as they are really important in determining the overall position or ranking of your website on the popular search engines. These page ranks are not only crucial for getting your website the incoming links from trusted and reputable sites but they also contribute tremendously in making your own outbound links valuable to the other sites. This process of incoming and outbound links is also crucial while negotiating with the link exchanges performed with various other sites. The higher the site’s page ranking is, the more the other sites will add your links to their pages.
Page ranks can be easily described numerically ranging from 1 to 10 where 10 works as the highest page rank in the whole chain. It has been noted that a very less amount of pages are featured with the page rank of 10 but any number above the ranking of 6 is taken to be a favorable one.
There are a wide variety of factors that helps in proper determining of the page ranks. However, the major variable appears to be actually based on the number of websites that link to your site’s page. Larger the number of popular sites visiting your site, better is the chances to get high position on the known search engines. So to say, take for example a case in which excellent ranking websites such as Yahoo.com or CNN.com links to your site. In this situation, your site will automatically get popular and this linking of the excellent ranking websites is much better than links from a large number of low page ranking sites.
Enhancing the page ranks of your site is not only described by the total number of back links you possess and use. Even article marketing with targeted titles, content and keywords, is an important factor that helps in taking the page ranks to higher heights. Equally essential is the site’s content. The actual content of the website requires to be the details that the users can read and use in the best possible manner. Having the right kind of content that suits the keywords is one of the other factors as well that contributes a lot in deciding the overall page ranks. There are various inquisitions in the minds of website owners about whether there are some ways that can actually help in generating good page ranking and that too without involving any expenses or costs. The exact answer to these inhibitions is actually “yes”. There are a few things, however, that needs to be considered wisely in order to generate great page ranks.
The first and foremost thing that needs to be kept in mind while looking for better page ranking at no cost is that of creating internal back links. It is necessary to make links to your website whenever applicable. Take for instance a condition where you mention the online payment system on the introductory page. In such a case, it is not only good to add the service provided of online payments, it is always a better option to hyperlink the specific payments page so that the customer can easily get to the payments system and enjoy the facilities. By doing this, not only your website is creating another back link for the spiders, it is making it easier for the visitors to get to the specific payments page right there and that too without wasting their precious time.
The second aspect that needs proper consideration is that of avoiding the usage of dead-end back links. In case you have worked day and night on creating around 7 relevant pages. Your page rankings have the ability to be a rank of 7. But if by chance some of those pages are basically not providing any relevant results, they you really need to consider and figure out the main problem. Whenever the search engine spiders crawl on a site, they wish to move from one web page to the other. You may be featured with a really fantastic and informative page but in case it is not equipped with other page pinks, the spiders will take that particular excellent page to be a dead-link one thereby reducing the chances of enjoying high page ranks. It is necessary to ensure that each web page is added with an external door apart from the back button. You can easily add an index link or maybe a site navigator on each page in order to add that extra convenience for your site visitors.
published by Dan in Blogging | SEO | Usability
For people who maintain blogs, it would be fine to write about anything you wish. But bear in mind, people today are after updated information. Preferably, you should have a reliable source such as Google or Yahoo news to which you can use as reference. You don’t have to rewrite what you read. You can use their content but don’t forget to link back or stress them in block quotes and a source link at the bottom of the content you copied.
This way, you cannot be tagged as stealing content. There are a lot of sites out there who copy content and could care less about what other people would say. To people who are up to date with the blogosphere today, it is obvious that such a practice is deemed unethical and unprofessional. If you want to establish yourself as a professional blogger, it would be best to give credit where credit is due.
There will also be times you would want to write about something but it may not necessarily be relevant to current hot topics. You can always do a simple search and find related topics that are normally dated to which you can use as reference. You can even pick up a couple of keywords from them which in the end can help improve your rankings as far as SEO considerations are concerned.
Remember, content is king. It will always be sought over the web. But to make sure that you are among the crawled sites, be sure your content is not passé. If so, you are losing more than ranking; you are losing readers as well.
published by Dan in SEO | Tools & Resources | Web Development | Web Technology | Writing for the Web
If you happen to have a website and want to generate income from it using Google adsense, it would be wise to determine how you place your ads. We see this option from Google once we are ready to create our own ads but while the Google tutorials are something to guide us, it all really depends on where you place your ads.
For the record, Google allows you to place a maximum of 3 ads on a certain page. Going over that will leave you a blank space. So for blogs, if you want to maximize the advertising spots, it would be wise to place your ads near the posts. Remember that your posts are the ones which changes frequently and to broaden the ads that will be shown on your site, fresh content is usually the keywords that they will rely on.
Just be sure not to overdo it. While it would be best to place Google ads for content, it may render your site worthless if you forget about why the people are there. Formatting is still essential. Blogs are meant to provide information and if you screw that up, chances are you may not get the visitors who will eventually be clicking those ads to generate your revenue.
This has been proven already. Placing them near posts raises the bar of potential ads that may be of interest to your visitors. Just bear in mind, if you don’t update or have good ads, why would a visitor become interested in them if they see recurring ads each time they land on your page?
published by Dan in SEO | Tools & Resources | Web Development | Website Analytics
For some people who want to get traffic in a hurry, some pay third party companies in directory submissions. Some charge a reasonable rate, sometimes at 4 cents per directory and considering that there are a large number of directories on the web today, it is bound to escalate at prices beyond your imagination. This scheme of submitting your site at a “per directory” option is indeed tempting since it looks cheap. But once you accumulate it, you will be surprised at the bill you will get if you don’t keep track.
Regardless, this is a form of search engine optimization that your site will surely benefit from. Not all people who put up websites have the time and effort to do research and do the online marketing practices needed to be able to get the necessary exposure these days. Apparently, some people are likewise hesitant to shell out some cash since the validity of the claims of some services are sometimes categorized in scams.
But in reality, there are really people who do this as a specialization. The best bet you can get in locating these services is to ask around or perhaps read forums that focus a lot on web development and search engine optimization. While you are at it, you can follow the conversations. You can pick a lot of tips from how they go and for sure the rest will be easily understandable.
That is all you need to do and you can be pointed to the right direction to help your site flourish and return the expected results that you have in mind when you started out on a site.
published by Dan in SEO | Web Development | Website Analytics
So you have your site up and the next thing you want to know is for the whole world to know that you exist. How do you go about it? Well for starters, don’t expect an overnight success as far as obtaining a well-optimized site is concerned. SEO can be achieved but it needs the element of time. It may take some months to be discovered and it all depends on the online marketing practices that you will apply.
SEO is not based on how sophisticated your site is programmed and presented. It has to establish itself as a reliable source and answer to most queries done online. Patience is needed as well as you have to wait for indirect ways to which your site will mature itself. Some turn to content generation and use of keywords which can speed up the process. But it does not come easy.
Vying for the same slot and exposure is the thing in mind of most web developers today. Whether you are employing such strategies such as link building or comment marketing, you need to wait a bit. Site optimization can only settle down after it has been properly crawled on.
Similar to business, you have to plant your seeds to gain exposure and popularity. In this case, link popularity will set in once you have properly applied the various means of online marketing. Turning to more strategies such as perhaps social bookmarking or even article marketing will help but it still needs the curing time to establish your site. In short, you should first invest everything and before you know it, your site will get a good ranking with the search engines today.
published by Dan in Blogging | SEO | Web Development | Website Design
Turning to the different scripting techniques to make your website stand out above the rest of website designs today may be something that will not always be good. For one thing, web site design does play a role in SEO but if your site does not load fast enough, you may eventually lose the potential visitor. It shall always be what is in your site that will matter to them as information is what they are after.
This is not to say that you should not consider extravagant web designs. In fact, readers may even love you for it. But if you don’t use optimized designs that are concerned with making sure that your page loads faster, people will not be patient enough to see what you have to offer them.
Perhaps this is something that says a lot of the character of the web designer. For sure he is amazed at how new scripts and add-ons make a site tempting to check out. But at times, it is the developers of these web designs that is really the one that is being satisfied and not what visitors really want to see. When that happens, website optimization is obviously not met.
There are certain gauges to determine how a site is optimized. Content and keywords used in them is perhaps the best source of them all. For one thing, when you do search queries, you don’t see them looking for design. It’s all about the keywords. Focus on that and then think of an ideal but tempting design that will keep your guest coming back for more.
published by Dan in Blogging | SEO | Web Development | Website Analytics | Website Standards | Writing for the Web
While there are various commercial sites where you can generate income from your site, bear in mind that there are also private ones who may want to advertise on your site. The manner of finding you is easy; they found you while searching for potential partners. While it may seem that it is a long shot, the validity of it all is the most important thing.
If you happen to get an email all of a sudden asking you if you wanted to accommodate certain requests as buying ad spots on your site or even certain posts, you will be amazed at how much people would pay you for it. One entry can make a difference and while it may seem low at first, imagine the number of advertisers who would do the same thing? In fact, the more posts you have the better since it would mean that you are offering quite a number of spots that can allow advertisers to choose from.
As far as payment for these ad spots is concerned, it would be wise to seek advance payments. For example, if they want to have a spot all to themselves for a year, payments made online like perhaps Paypal is fair enough. You can specify the size, number of words or even limitations (which is perhaps rare and dependent of the site where they will be advertised). Of course you would want ads that do not disrupt the flow of your content.
Finally, if they find you, it only means one thing. You have done a great job in marketing your site and it is safe to say that your site is optimized on the web after all.
published by Dan in SEO | Web Development | Web General | Website Design | Website Standards | Writing for the Web
When it comes to designing a website, people normally point at advanced programming such as PHP or CSS for reference. But there are software today that make it easier. There will still be the usual coding and commands that a site developed will have to get used to but generally, if you know logic, you can handle it yourself.
Normally, hiring a professional website designer would be the immediate solution to the problem for most. But getting the proper one will cost a lot, sometimes even more than the site URL and hosting. For most it would not matter since it is a one time thing. But seriously, if you are inclined to learn, you can use the help option or even get simple tutorials online on basic to advanced programming.
It may all sound simple but most of these seasoned website programmers started out the same way. You will be surprised to find that they have not really garnered any specific dedicated studies towards web programming as most of these software are new to them. In fact, you may be surprised that they would know the latest software when in fact they claim to have learned it long before it was introduced on the web.
This is not to discredit what web programmers do these days. But there are people who do that. The thing is, if they can do it then why can’t you? It is all about taking it one step at a time. There will be basic to advanced modes and once you get the hang of it, the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place and you may even pick up a lesson or two when it comes to building good websites.
published by Dan in SEO | Website Analytics | Website Design
We’ve been discussing the various sessionisation methods used to gather data to be used for web analytics but haven’t really touched on the benefits it can bring. Web analytics is in fact very important and beneficial not only to web designers but also to webmasters who take care of the site’s optimisation and to the marketing team behind the website as well. Some of the reasons why web analytics is important/beneficial include:
- helps determine performing/non-performing parts/sections in each web page - By being able to determine these sections of the pages the web designer can review these pages and make the necessary adjustments. It might mean a change in the page layout or something as simple as enlarging and changing the color of the BUY button or some other element.
- helps determine low traffic pages in the site - By being able to determine low traffic pages in the site SEOs can then focus on optimising the page to increase traffic to the site. Hand-in-hand with the web developer the SEOs can also determine if there is anything wrong with the site structure that results in low traffic volume to these pages.
- help determine quantify success of your online marketing effort - Some data gathered can also be used by the marketing team to see how well the online marketing campaign is going and compare the results with their offline efforts. The data can also be used not just for comparison but to adjust their efforts/strategy when necessary. An examples of useful data for marketers would be user location, which can be used to determine conversion rates for target locations and can also show the potential of an overlooked market.
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