by hongxing128

Before going into what a Search Engine Optimization firm does, let us first define what search engine optimization or SEO is. In ‘brick-and-mortar’ terms, SEO may be compared to placing an advertisement in a medium that caters largely to a particular market segment, e.g., medical journals, fashion magazines, adult cable channels, etc. so that there is a high probability that whatever products or services you offer is what that particular viewing, reading, or listening market segment needs. The ‘agent’ for this type of advertising is the advertising or marketing firm which, when related to cyberspace is the Search Engine Optimization firm.

SEO is the set of activities and strategies implemented (either by yourself or through a Search Engine Optimization firm) that influences a search engine’s ‘spiderbot’ to give your website a high relevance rating which translates into a high ranking in the list of keyword responsive websites. Since it is a targeted approach, the success rate of an SEO strategy (measured in terms of average business per visitor) that a Search Engine Optimization firm implements should be higher than, say, online advertising (which may attract more visitors but will include a big share of ‘just looking’ hits, thus resulting to a lower average business per visitor). This ultimately results to lower cost per sale since the resources required to service the visits (which will go down in terms of quantity but increase in terms of quality) goes down.

What does a Search Engine Optimization firm do in order to achieve its objective of ethically optimizing your website? One Search Engine Optimization firm may apply a different set of SEO strategies viz. another SEO company, but they both focus on one aspect: the search engine keyword or keywords. Essentially, the keyword is the major rating criterion of a relevance rating; i.e., how often it appears in the website or content. Although more sophisticated discernment algorithms are being implemented by the search engine’s ‘spiderbot’ to weed out unethical practices (e.g., embedding keywords in articles or content that do not have any logical connection), the keyword density still the key.

Some of the strategies that a Search Engine Optimization firm employs are as follows:

- Keyword Rich Domain Names

This is the most ‘no brainer’ strategy that a Search Engine Optimization firm could employ, yet is one of the most difficult to implement. The proposition of this strategy is that the best way to get a high ranking for a keyword relevant site is to embed the keyword into the domain name. For example, recipes(dot)com will obviously get top ranking when the keyword ‘recipes’ is used in the search box (as a side note, if you are looking for recipes, you might even just skip the search engine altogether and instinctively enter recipes(dot)com ). The problem with this strategy, of course, is that these domain names are probably owned by someone else already, in which case, the Search Engine Optimization firm could embed the keyword in a longer domain name like, e.g., mothersrecipes(dot)com or homecookedmealrecipes(dot)com , which, when combined with other SEO strategies could potentially even outrank recipes(dot)com .

- Content Optimization

In this strategy, the Search Engine Optimization firm ensures that the content is ethically filled with all the relevant keywords to which the website is responsive to. This is accomplished by framing the advertising copy around the keyword and making it appear as many times as relevancy allows, including the keywords in the text articles, etc. The Search Engine Optimization firm has several ways of determining the possible relevance rank of your website based on the level of content optimization.

- Meta-Tag Optimization

All websites use HTML in several parts of the website’s program. In the body of the HTML program are areas that the programmer uses, among other things, for remarks (e.g., to remind him what the code is all about). The content of these areas (called meta-tags) do not have an impact on how the website looks but is ‘crawled through’ by the search engine’s ‘spiderbot’ all the same. Because these meta-tags play a factor in the website’s relevance, a Search Engine Optimization firm will normally embed as many keywords as ethically allowed to into them.

In selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm that you will use to optimize your website, be sure to put a heavy premium on its experience and reputation. Also, avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that engages in unethical (and illegal) practices just to increase the number of visitors to your sites. Avoid a Search Engine Optimization firm that is vague about how it is going to optimize your website. If it has nothing to hide, then it should be transparent as to what it is supposed to do. If you heard about a Search Engine Optimization firm through spam mail, do not even consider it. If the Search Engine Optimization firm charges you a low price without any clear specifics as to what it will do, walk away. Finally, make sure to canvass your requirements before selecting the Search Engine Optimization firm you will use.

by Hobo!

Of all the areas of Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization is the most misunderstood, and potentially the most important to your marketing efforts. There are millions upon millions of pages of web content out there — you can work hard, build a great site, and then be totally lost in the shuffle. SEO is important. It’s also a very complex process that requires patience, careful planning and a long-term approach.

If you’re just getting started with:

Selecting an SEO firm

Trying to start a search engine campaign on your own

Reviewing your current SEO efforts

…read on. This article should provide you with a high-level review of the SEO process, dispel a few SEO myths, and help you understand legitimate optimization strategies.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, defies easy definition. But here’s a short version:

Search Engine Optimization
Using keyword analysis and other legitimate practices to gain the highest possible search engine and directory rankings, under a given key phrase, for a given URL.

Every SEO professional in the world just cringed, so I’ll break this definition down a bit and hopefully prevent a hail of angry e-mails:

Keyword Analysis is the process of mining keyword search data to find the best balance between the keywords you need and the best potential search niche. More on this later.

Search Engine means an automated search engine. ‘Search Engines’ include Google, AlltheWeb.com, Yahoo (powered by Google plus their own directory information), AOL Search, Ask Jeeves and MSN Search. A search engine obtains its results from ‘spiders’ or ‘bots’ — small programs that come to your web site read it in much the same way you would: By reading the content on a page, and then moving from page to page via links. A directory, on the other hand, is built at least in part by human beings reading sites and other information and deciding where each site fits into the directory structure. Yahoo’s directory area and Open Directory are both examples of directories.

Ranking is the numeric rank reflecting your position in the results list when someone performs a search on a particular set of keywords.

Highest Possible means getting as close to number one as you can. Sometimes you just can’t get that number one spot. Maybe someone else has a 400-page web site solely dedicated to the key phrase for which you’re attempting to optimize. Or maybe they’re paying a fortune in advertising. That’s life, sometimes…

Key Phrase is the keyword or set of keywords someone types into the little ‘search’ field in Google or Alta Vista or any other search engine.

A URL is the address of one page on your site. Most search engines display keyword search results and provide a link directly to the page most relevant to those results, rather than your home page. It’s very, very important to keep that in mind when you build and optimize your site.

Legitimate Practices is a pet peeve of mine. A true search engine optimization campaign will not use practices such as page or content cloaking, redirects, or lists of links (so-called ‘link farms’) but relies on good coding practices, well-written content, steady link popularity work and site features that will be every bit as valuable for site visitors as for search engine ranking. Anything less is a short-term fix that will likely reduce your rankings more often than increase them.

So, the long version of the definition would be:

Search Engine Optimization
Using keyword analysis, good coding practices, well-written copy, link popularity analysis and careful site organization to move a web page as close to the number one search results position as possible for a given key phrase, in both search engines and directories.

Hey, that’s not so bad after all. But how do you get started? First, you separate reality from myth…

SEO Urban Legends

There are quite a few SEO myths out there. Here are my favorites:

The Keywords META Tag Matters. Mostly wrong. Only Inktomi pays any attention to the keywords meta tag. You should do something basic, but don’t bother putting in keywords that aren’t supported by your page content.

Search Engines can read Flash, images and video. Sorry, and Ford isn’t selling a flying car yet, either. Search engines can read one thing: Text. Anything else, while perfectly legitimate as a design tool, will not help your ranking. And relying too heavily on Flash or images may reduce your site’s visibility. Google is one partial exception — they can read some links in Flash, but still have very limited ability to read Flash content.

Mirroring my site in multiple locations will improve ranking. Actually, just the opposite. Duplication of content will generally have no effect or, worse, reduce your ranking in major search engines. Most search engines now have rules against this form of ‘spam’ and may reduce your ranking or ban your site altogether.

‘Doorway’ pages improve ranking. Pages that have lots of keywords but then quickly redirect to the main site will not help you in major search engines, such as Google. And, if someone catches you and reports you to Google or the other search engine, you may be banned altogether. A ‘landing’ or ‘bridge’ page, though, that’s designed to be as useful for users as for search engines, and does not redirect the user, can help by providing keyword-rich content that’s genuinely worthwhile.

Firms promising to get me #1 rankings in 10,000 search engines for .95 can help. I alternate between tooth-grinding and hysterical laughter when I see these ads. First, there aren’t 10,000 search engines. Actually, there are probably 10-20 you should really worry about. Getting listed in the other thousand or so is largely a waste of time. Second, no one can guarantee any ranking in any search engine for a specific keyword. Period. And finally, the price is less than half the cost to get an express submission in a single directory (Yahoo). Chances are anyone trying to get you to spend the .95 is operating a ‘link farm’ where they list dozens, or hundreds, of sites. While they won’t hurt your ranking, they won’t help, either. To learn more about how to choose an SEO firm, check out Google’s article: http://www.google.com/intl/mr/webmasters/seo.html.

Firms charging me more money and guaranteeing a #1 ranking on Google can help. This is the latest SEO scam. I can get you a number one ranking on Google, too, as long as I get to pick the keyword or can get you ranked under a fairly unique company name. But no one, and I mean no one can guarantee a #1 rank under a specific keyword. Even Google says so.

Forget the myths — if an offer seems too good to be true, it is. The truth is that search engines are now almost savvy enough to read your pages like a human being would, so anything that will drive away a typical site visitor will also probably reduce your ranking. Things that will increase your search engine ranking include:

Well-written content

Good, clean HTML code

Useful, relevant TITLE tags

Useful, relevant DESCRIPTION tags

Relevant, appropriate links from other web sites

There are some basic steps that, well executed, will do more to increase your page rank than an ocean of snake oil.

The SEO Campaign Process

A typical SEO campaign starts with keyword analysis, and then emphasizes insuring your site doesn’t impede search engine bots and follows up with ongoing link and traffic analysis. If you like pretty pictures, here’s one:

 What’s a Bot?
A ‘bot’ is a program used by a search engine to read the content of your site into a directory. I mentioned this briefly in ‘What is Search Engine Optimization?’ above. Keep up, now….

Step 1: Keyword Analysis. Ah, keywords. If you say the right word enough times on your site, you’ll get that coveted #1 spot, right? Wrong. Choosing the right keywords starts with you making a list of the keywords or phrases under which you’d like to be found, and typically ends up somewhere completely different. Typically, selecting the best keywords is a four-step process:

List the keywords and phrases under which you’d like to be found.

Find out whether anyone searches on those keywords, and whether they’re searching for relevant items.

Find out how many other sites are struggling for rankings under those keywords.

Pick keywords with the same meaning but a better search-to-competition ratio.

Maybe I want to rank #1 under ‘Search Engine Optimization’. Guess what? There are 686,000 other URLs in Google trying for that spot. Hmmm. But wait! Under ‘Seattle Search Engine Optimization’ there are only 19,000. So, I targeted that key phrase, instead. And guess what? We got a #3 ranking.

Don’t forget about relevance, either. If you want a high ranking under ‘tires’, you’re going to have your work cut out for you. And in the end you’ll likely end up getting found for ‘bicycle tires’, ‘automobile tires’, ‘spare tires’ and who knows what else. Is it worth it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But you have to do your homework to find out.

Data Mining and Keywords
If you’re doing a campaign for a large site, you may end up testing and comparing thousands of keywords and phrases. Having a good data-mining tool (even Excel will do) on hand is important when you’re doing keyword analysis. We use S-Plus, by Insightful Software. It’s saved our lives, and clicker fingers, several times.

There are several tools that help you research the number of searches and competitors for keywords. Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) is a good one — don’t depend on their results from Overture, though, unless you’re specifically preparing an Overture campaign. Metacrawler’s MetaSpy tool is worth a look, too. Ideally, look at results from a few different sources.

Keyword analysis is the hardest part of a campaign, in number-crunching terms. It requires a lot of work and may not tell you what you want to hear. But in my experience it’s critical to a successful campaign.

Step 2: Search Engine Readiness. Almost every web site we review has one or more problems that will prevent search engine bots from properly reading all content. Typical showstoppers include:

An all-Flash or all-images home page

A home page that automatically redirects to another page

Pop-up ads (does anyone really read these things?)

A site full of pages with fewer than 400 words on a page

Broken links

Navigation that is generated by JavaScript

No TITLE or DESCRIPTION tags

A major step in any SEO campaign is making sure that the site will present the friendliest profile to search engines. Happily, the investment in optimizing will also pay off in a faster, more universally compatible site.

Step 3. Content and Site Preparation. You’ve done your research: You know which keywords match your message, and your site’s HTML code is one big search engine welcome mat. Now it’s time to make sure that your site contains those keywords. This is where I most often see folks get confused — should you rewrite your web content to emphasize keywords? Yes, but with extreme caution. Should you make small, appropriate changes? Yes. Here are my guidelines for content preparation.

Don’t write for keywords (much). This almost always leads to stilted, hard-to-read prose. Writing keyword-rich content that really works for users is an art form. Be careful.

Do a little careful editing. If you use the word ‘car’ but ‘auto’ is the keyword you need, chances are you can do a few replacements without marring your carefully crafted copy.

Spend time on the titles and description tags. Make sure every page in your site has a unique, relevant TITLE and DESCRIPTION tag.

Never use an automatic page generator. Tools like WebPosition Gold offer to generate optimized pages for you. Don’t. They tend to hurt your ranking as much as help, and they generate ugly, ugly pages.

Write more stuff. More content is almost always better. If your site is just missing a specific keyword or phrase, but you think it’s important, then your potential customers probably do too. By adding a few more pages, or a white paper, or some other content focusing on those absent keywords, you’ll likely help visitors and improve your keyword ranking at the same time. And, the more text-rich your site is, the better the odds that you’ll catch longer, stranger but really important key phrases that you can’t anticipate.

Step 4. Link Analysis. Quite a few major search engines (Google, most importantly) weigh your ‘link popularity’ when ranking your site. A more accurate term, though, is ‘link analysis’, because these engines don’t just count up the number of links to your site. They look for links near and containing relevant text. So a page full of links, one of which happens to be yours, won’t help very much. But a link from a related site, near a short paragraph that contains relevant keywords, will probably give you a boost. Having keywords in the link itself is even better. A quick example:

http://www.portentinteractive.com doesn’t help much.

For search engine optimization, visit http://www.portentinteractive.com is much better.

For search engine optimization, visit Portent Interactive where ‘search engine optimization’ is the link to Portent, is the absolute best case.

There are a few ways to build your link popularity:

Contact sites that relate to yours and request a link exchange. This works really well, but obviously takes a long time.

Syndicate your content. If you can provide an easy way for interested webmasters to link directly to relevant stories on your site, you provide an instant link popularity boost, and get your message out to boot.

Start an affiliate program. If you sell a product, consider setting up an affiliate sales program.

Google’s ‘One Site, One Vote’ Rule
Google awards a lot less weight to a link to your site if that link is on a page with lots of other links. That’s why so-called ‘link farming’ doesn’t work. Ideally, you want a link to your site from a page that includes relevant content and not that many other outgoing links.

Step 5. Submit your site. Many search engines, Google included, allow you to submit your site for free. Generally you can submit your home page and let the search engine crawl the rest of your site. Some directories and engines offer paid ‘express’ services, and some, like Teoma, require that you pay for URL submission. Which engines you choose depends on your budget and campaign.

Step 6. Review, Revise, and Keep Going. Think you’re done? Wrong — search engine optimization is an ongoing project. At least once per month, review your rankings, site traffic reports and link popularity and tweak your site as necessary. The tools you need to measure results are:

Site traffic reports. Any web hosting company should provide you with a web site traffic report, and almost all of the reporting tools in use today provide a ‘referrals from search engines’ section. Take a look at this section for a good measure of campaign results.

Link counts. Use the link: command on Google (see above) to determine your link popularity.

Your keyword list. Search on the relevant search engines to see if your ranking has improved.

Your brain. You have to interpret what you see, and decide whether changes are warranted. There’s no hard and fast rule for this, and no magic formula. Sorry about that…

So now you’ll get instant results, right? Well, not quite…

A Word About Expectations

Search engine optimization can take time. Even Google only refreshes its entire index once a month, so don’t expect instant results.

If your first registration run doesn’t generate increased rankings within a month or two, don’t panic. Look at your site traffic and search on the keywords you chose. Make sure that the search engine you’re checking actually includes your site, too — most likely the bots just haven’t gotten around to ‘crawling’ your site.

Still stumped? Find a professional. Sure, we cost money. But you may have missed something about your site that’s preventing a good keyword rank, and a second set of eyes can help.

A Solid Marketing Strategy

Obviously, Search Engine Optimization is a big job. But nothing can send more traffic to your site, for lower per-click cost. If you follow the basic steps, and keep at it, you will definitely get results. What’s really, really important is to make sure you don’t award too much weight to one step (such as link popularity) at the expense of the others. A well-rounded campaign will provide solid, long-term results.

What about pay per click?
Pay-per-click services, such as Overture and Google Adwords, are very different animals. If you’ve done your keyword analysis you’re halfway there, but there are other tasks. I’ve not talked about them in this article because, well, they need an article of their own. Check back soon…

by Emily Lewis

Of all the areas of Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization is the most misunderstood, and potentially the most important to your marketing efforts. There are millions upon millions of pages of web content out there — you can work hard, build a great site, and then be totally lost in the shuffle. SEO is important. It’s also a very complex process that requires patience, careful planning and a long-term approach.

If you’re just getting started with:

Selecting an SEO firm

Trying to start a search engine campaign on your own

Reviewing your current SEO efforts

…read on. This article should provide you with a high-level review of the SEO process, dispel a few SEO myths, and help you understand legitimate optimization strategies.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, defies easy definition. But here’s a short version:

Search Engine Optimization
Using keyword analysis and other legitimate practices to gain the highest possible search engine and directory rankings, under a given key phrase, for a given URL.

Every SEO professional in the world just cringed, so I’ll break this definition down a bit and hopefully prevent a hail of angry e-mails:

Keyword Analysis is the process of mining keyword search data to find the best balance between the keywords you need and the best potential search niche. More on this later.

Search Engine means an automated search engine. ‘Search Engines’ include Google, AlltheWeb.com, Yahoo (powered by Google plus their own directory information), AOL Search, Ask Jeeves and MSN Search. A search engine obtains its results from ‘spiders’ or ‘bots’ — small programs that come to your web site read it in much the same way you would: By reading the content on a page, and then moving from page to page via links. A directory, on the other hand, is built at least in part by human beings reading sites and other information and deciding where each site fits into the directory structure. Yahoo’s directory area and Open Directory are both examples of directories.

Ranking is the numeric rank reflecting your position in the results list when someone performs a search on a particular set of keywords.

Highest Possible means getting as close to number one as you can. Sometimes you just can’t get that number one spot. Maybe someone else has a 400-page web site solely dedicated to the key phrase for which you’re attempting to optimize. Or maybe they’re paying a fortune in advertising. That’s life, sometimes…

Key Phrase is the keyword or set of keywords someone types into the little ‘search’ field in Google or Alta Vista or any other search engine.

A URL is the address of one page on your site. Most search engines display keyword search results and provide a link directly to the page most relevant to those results, rather than your home page. It’s very, very important to keep that in mind when you build and optimize your site.

Legitimate Practices is a pet peeve of mine. A true search engine optimization campaign will not use practices such as page or content cloaking, redirects, or lists of links (so-called ‘link farms’) but relies on good coding practices, well-written content, steady link popularity work and site features that will be every bit as valuable for site visitors as for search engine ranking. Anything less is a short-term fix that will likely reduce your rankings more often than increase them.

So, the long version of the definition would be:

Search Engine Optimization
Using keyword analysis, good coding practices, well-written copy, link popularity analysis and careful site organization to move a web page as close to the number one search results position as possible for a given key phrase, in both search engines and directories.

Hey, that’s not so bad after all. But how do you get started? First, you separate reality from myth…

SEO Urban Legends

There are quite a few SEO myths out there. Here are my favorites:

The Keywords META Tag Matters. Mostly wrong. Only Inktomi pays any attention to the keywords meta tag. You should do something basic, but don’t bother putting in keywords that aren’t supported by your page content.

Search Engines can read Flash, images and video. Sorry, and Ford isn’t selling a flying car yet, either. Search engines can read one thing: Text. Anything else, while perfectly legitimate as a design tool, will not help your ranking. And relying too heavily on Flash or images may reduce your site’s visibility. Google is one partial exception — they can read some links in Flash, but still have very limited ability to read Flash content.

Mirroring my site in multiple locations will improve ranking. Actually, just the opposite. Duplication of content will generally have no effect or, worse, reduce your ranking in major search engines. Most search engines now have rules against this form of ‘spam’ and may reduce your ranking or ban your site altogether.

‘Doorway’ pages improve ranking. Pages that have lots of keywords but then quickly redirect to the main site will not help you in major search engines, such as Google. And, if someone catches you and reports you to Google or the other search engine, you may be banned altogether. A ‘landing’ or ‘bridge’ page, though, that’s designed to be as useful for users as for search engines, and does not redirect the user, can help by providing keyword-rich content that’s genuinely worthwhile.

Firms promising to get me #1 rankings in 10,000 search engines for .95 can help. I alternate between tooth-grinding and hysterical laughter when I see these ads. First, there aren’t 10,000 search engines. Actually, there are probably 10-20 you should really worry about. Getting listed in the other thousand or so is largely a waste of time. Second, no one can guarantee any ranking in any search engine for a specific keyword. Period. And finally, the price is less than half the cost to get an express submission in a single directory (Yahoo). Chances are anyone trying to get you to spend the .95 is operating a ‘link farm’ where they list dozens, or hundreds, of sites. While they won’t hurt your ranking, they won’t help, either. To learn more about how to choose an SEO firm, check out Google’s article: http://www.google.com/intl/mr/webmasters/seo.html.

Firms charging me more money and guaranteeing a #1 ranking on Google can help. This is the latest SEO scam. I can get you a number one ranking on Google, too, as long as I get to pick the keyword or can get you ranked under a fairly unique company name. But no one, and I mean no one can guarantee a #1 rank under a specific keyword. Even Google says so.

Forget the myths — if an offer seems too good to be true, it is. The truth is that search engines are now almost savvy enough to read your pages like a human being would, so anything that will drive away a typical site visitor will also probably reduce your ranking. Things that will increase your search engine ranking include:

Well-written content

Good, clean HTML code

Useful, relevant TITLE tags

Useful, relevant DESCRIPTION tags

Relevant, appropriate links from other web sites

There are some basic steps that, well executed, will do more to increase your page rank than an ocean of snake oil.

The SEO Campaign Process

A typical SEO campaign starts with keyword analysis, and then emphasizes insuring your site doesn’t impede search engine bots and follows up with ongoing link and traffic analysis. If you like pretty pictures, here’s one:

 What’s a Bot?
A ‘bot’ is a program used by a search engine to read the content of your site into a directory. I mentioned this briefly in ‘What is Search Engine Optimization?’ above. Keep up, now….

Step 1: Keyword Analysis. Ah, keywords. If you say the right word enough times on your site, you’ll get that coveted #1 spot, right? Wrong. Choosing the right keywords starts with you making a list of the keywords or phrases under which you’d like to be found, and typically ends up somewhere completely different. Typically, selecting the best keywords is a four-step process:

List the keywords and phrases under which you’d like to be found.

Find out whether anyone searches on those keywords, and whether they’re searching for relevant items.

Find out how many other sites are struggling for rankings under those keywords.

Pick keywords with the same meaning but a better search-to-competition ratio.

Maybe I want to rank #1 under ‘Search Engine Optimization’. Guess what? There are 686,000 other URLs in Google trying for that spot. Hmmm. But wait! Under ‘Seattle Search Engine Optimization’ there are only 19,000. So, I targeted that key phrase, instead. And guess what? We got a #3 ranking.

Don’t forget about relevance, either. If you want a high ranking under ‘tires’, you’re going to have your work cut out for you. And in the end you’ll likely end up getting found for ‘bicycle tires’, ‘automobile tires’, ‘spare tires’ and who knows what else. Is it worth it? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But you have to do your homework to find out.

Data Mining and Keywords
If you’re doing a campaign for a large site, you may end up testing and comparing thousands of keywords and phrases. Having a good data-mining tool (even Excel will do) on hand is important when you’re doing keyword analysis. We use S-Plus, by Insightful Software. It’s saved our lives, and clicker fingers, several times.

There are several tools that help you research the number of searches and competitors for keywords. Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) is a good one — don’t depend on their results from Overture, though, unless you’re specifically preparing an Overture campaign. Metacrawler’s MetaSpy tool is worth a look, too. Ideally, look at results from a few different sources.

Keyword analysis is the hardest part of a campaign, in number-crunching terms. It requires a lot of work and may not tell you what you want to hear. But in my experience it’s critical to a successful campaign.

Step 2: Search Engine Readiness. Almost every web site we review has one or more problems that will prevent search engine bots from properly reading all content. Typical showstoppers include:

An all-Flash or all-images home page

A home page that automatically redirects to another page

Pop-up ads (does anyone really read these things?)

A site full of pages with fewer than 400 words on a page

Broken links

Navigation that is generated by JavaScript

No TITLE or DESCRIPTION tags

A major step in any SEO campaign is making sure that the site will present the friendliest profile to search engines. Happily, the investment in optimizing will also pay off in a faster, more universally compatible site.

Step 3. Content and Site Preparation. You’ve done your research: You know which keywords match your message, and your site’s HTML code is one big search engine welcome mat. Now it’s time to make sure that your site contains those keywords. This is where I most often see folks get confused — should you rewrite your web content to emphasize keywords? Yes, but with extreme caution. Should you make small, appropriate changes? Yes. Here are my guidelines for content preparation.

Don’t write for keywords (much). This almost always leads to stilted, hard-to-read prose. Writing keyword-rich content that really works for users is an art form. Be careful.

Do a little careful editing. If you use the word ‘car’ but ‘auto’ is the keyword you need, chances are you can do a few replacements without marring your carefully crafted copy.

Spend time on the titles and description tags. Make sure every page in your site has a unique, relevant TITLE and DESCRIPTION tag.

Never use an automatic page generator. Tools like WebPosition Gold offer to generate optimized pages for you. Don’t. They tend to hurt your ranking as much as help, and they generate ugly, ugly pages.

Write more stuff. More content is almost always better. If your site is just missing a specific keyword or phrase, but you think it’s important, then your potential customers probably do too. By adding a few more pages, or a white paper, or some other content focusing on those absent keywords, you’ll likely help visitors and improve your keyword ranking at the same time. And, the more text-rich your site is, the better the odds that you’ll catch longer, stranger but really important key phrases that you can’t anticipate.

Step 4. Link Analysis. Quite a few major search engines (Google, most importantly) weigh your ‘link popularity’ when ranking your site. A more accurate term, though, is ‘link analysis’, because these engines don’t just count up the number of links to your site. They look for links near and containing relevant text. So a page full of links, one of which happens to be yours, won’t help very much. But a link from a related site, near a short paragraph that contains relevant keywords, will probably give you a boost. Having keywords in the link itself is even better. A quick example:

http://www.portentinteractive.com doesn’t help much.

For search engine optimization, visit http://www.portentinteractive.com is much better.

For search engine optimization, visit Portent Interactive where ‘search engine optimization’ is the link to Portent, is the absolute best case.

There are a few ways to build your link popularity:

Contact sites that relate to yours and request a link exchange. This works really well, but obviously takes a long time.

Syndicate your content. If you can provide an easy way for interested webmasters to link directly to relevant stories on your site, you provide an instant link popularity boost, and get your message out to boot.

Start an affiliate program. If you sell a product, consider setting up an affiliate sales program.

Google’s ‘One Site, One Vote’ Rule
Google awards a lot less weight to a link to your site if that link is on a page with lots of other links. That’s why so-called ‘link farming’ doesn’t work. Ideally, you want a link to your site from a page that includes relevant content and not that many other outgoing links.

Step 5. Submit your site. Many search engines, Google included, allow you to submit your site for free. Generally you can submit your home page and let the search engine crawl the rest of your site. Some directories and engines offer paid ‘express’ services, and some, like Teoma, require that you pay for URL submission. Which engines you choose depends on your budget and campaign.

Step 6. Review, Revise, and Keep Going. Think you’re done? Wrong — search engine optimization is an ongoing project. At least once per month, review your rankings, site traffic reports and link popularity and tweak your site as necessary. The tools you need to measure results are:

Site traffic reports. Any web hosting company should provide you with a web site traffic report, and almost all of the reporting tools in use today provide a ‘referrals from search engines’ section. Take a look at this section for a good measure of campaign results.

Link counts. Use the link: command on Google (see above) to determine your link popularity.

Your keyword list. Search on the relevant search engines to see if your ranking has improved.

Your brain. You have to interpret what you see, and decide whether changes are warranted. There’s no hard and fast rule for this, and no magic formula. Sorry about that…

So now you’ll get instant results, right? Well, not quite…

A Word About Expectations

Search engine optimization can take time. Even Google only refreshes its entire index once a month, so don’t expect instant results.

If your first registration run doesn’t generate increased rankings within a month or two, don’t panic. Look at your site traffic and search on the keywords you chose. Make sure that the search engine you’re checking actually includes your site, too — most likely the bots just haven’t gotten around to ‘crawling’ your site.

Still stumped? Find a professional. Sure, we cost money. But you may have missed something about your site that’s preventing a good keyword rank, and a second set of eyes can help.

A Solid Marketing Strategy

Obviously, Search Engine Optimization is a big job. But nothing can send more traffic to your site, for lower per-click cost. If you follow the basic steps, and keep at it, you will definitely get results. What’s really, really important is to make sure you don’t award too much weight to one step (such as link popularity) at the expense of the others. A well-rounded campaign will provide solid, long-term results.

What about pay per click?
Pay-per-click services, such as Overture and Google Adwords, are very different animals. If you’ve done your keyword analysis you’re halfway there, but there are other tasks. I’ve not talked about them in this article because, well, they need an article of their own. Check back soon…

Resell search engine optimization programs provide a big boost to numerous web-oriented businesses; increasing their revenues by a great margin. Many businesses already have a well-built list of customers already concerned with the Information Technology or Marketing field. That is where SEO plans are sold and re-sold the most.

Most of the SEO reseller programs are customizable. The flexibility in their technology portion opens the option for including the private label, if needed. Of course, the decision of including private label depends largely on the partner firm as well. Furthermore, account management holds great importance in every SEO program. For example, in Fortune 100 space, account management is discussed first before selling SEO services. The company managing the accounts is solely responsible for the contacts of the customers. And again, numerous features of reselling SEO service could be customized. In short, selling and re-selling SEO plans make it convenient for the firms to sell out their services and enjoy profit margin as well.

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by hongxing128

Getting a Search Engine Optimization Specialist depends on what stage of development your website already is in. Many website owners err by creating the website first then hiring a Search Engine Optimization Specialist to implements his expertise so that the website ranked higher in search engines like Google and Yahoo! A much better way of using the services of a Search Engine Optimization Specialist is to hire him even as far back as the website design planning stage to get much better results.

How do you know if the Search Engine Optimization Specialist you hired is competent in this field? Your Search Engine Optimization Specialist might simply do the usual integration of multiple keywords and phrases with those keywords into the content of the website (and into the HTML coding as well). Since this Search Engine Optimization Specialist practice is already being done by many, the effectiveness of this tactic is watered down significantly.

Choose a Search Engine Optimization Specialist team that can write content for you, assess the statistics of the website, are well-versed in HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), know how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be applied to websites for different industries and occupations, and can monitor the latest on search engine developments for you. This may entail several skills so you know you’re getting more bang for your buck when you hire a Search Engine Optimization Specialist team.

It is important that your Search Engine Optimization Specialist team be aware of the difference between directory enhancement and a search engine optimization effort. Directory enhancement means your Search Engine Optimization Specialist team will select the categories under which your website seems to be most related to. The Search Engine Optimization Specialist team will then create concise descriptions about the content of your website (excluding the keyword stacking tactic which we mentioned earlier.) Search Engine Optimization, on the other hand, requires skills in the design, writing and then encoding into HTML of pages from your website so that your preferred search engines will rank your website highly enough so when Internet users search for certain keywords, your website will appear in the top search results.

The Search Engine Optimization Specialist should be able to tag for you the specific keywords and phrases which seem to be used most commonly in most Internet searches. A little known fact is that search engines do not use the same algorithms for very long – these search

engines actually switch to new algorithms frequently. This practice helps keep spamming Search Engine Optimization Specialist from mastering the search engines and allows them to produce better search results for Internet users over time. So, apparently your search engine ranking is not cast in stone and may need to be pursued constantly by your Search Engine Optimization Specialist to insure that people will find your website among the millions out there on the Net.

If the web page uncovered by the search engine spider seems to differ from the web page viewed by the end user, that web page will be deemed spam and your website will be eliminated from the search engine database. This is tantamount, actually, to copyright infringement

whose Search Engine Optimization Specialist rely on the cloaking practice to get away with their stratagem. Unfortunately for these people, search engines are trying to get the practice of cloaking by any Search Engine Optimization Specialist to be banned altogether because cloaking does not benefit the search engine and may even have detrimental side effects on search engines.

Some software programmers will even resort to taking content owned by another site and putting it on their client’s website so that the Search Engine Optimization Specialist team can create “gateway pages”. Never resort to this because it does not produce the optimal long-term results you are looking for. Rather, your website should be dependent on original and excellent content produced specifically for it, as well as a spider-friendly navigation system applicable for search engine usage.

The best way for your Search Engine Optimization Specialist to work for you is still dependent on the basics:

1) Create a well-planned and well-designed website

2) Create web pages that your audience can follow, and

3) Rely on a navigation system that both end users and search engines can follow and use.

4) Have a good strategy increase you link popularity.

If you follow these basics, you not only assist in your users’ search activities but you also make life easier for the search engines themselves. In short, choose a Search Engine Optimization Specialist that really knows how to optimize search results for you the right way, rather than resorting to illicit tactics. Illicit tactics may work for a short time, but in the long term will only give you a bad rep among search engines and the wide, wide world of website owners.

(www.webaholic.co.in) In this video we talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The basic factors of SEO. Like organic or natural search results, on page optimization, off page optimization etc. Looking for search engine optimization???….Help us to help you…. Thanks & regards, Webaholic Team http Connect with us Facebook : www.facebook.com Twitter : twitter.com Blogspot : webaholic-webmaster.blogspot.com Linkedin : www.linkedin.com Rss Feed : www.webaholic.co.in Orkut : www.orkut.co.in
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Search Engine Optimization for Flash: Best Practices for Using Flash on the Web

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Secrets For 2010

SEO Secrets For 2010 is a book giving up to date information and 100% coverage of all the elements of Search Engine Optimization. Mike Monahan who consults with the best including SEO Guru Sean Odom outlines the secrets professionals keep to themselves and charge thousands of dollars to provide. These strategies will help anyone optimize their website and dominate the world’s leading search engines. The Internet is now the telephone book. So as a business you have to do the equivelent of a full page ad by being at the top of all the major search engines for your keywords. Your website has to stand out in the center of 80+ million other sites. This is the most up-to-date tell-all guide for anyone trying to reach the highly coveted #1 ranking on Google, Bing, Yahoo and any of the other major search engines. Whether you’re a search engine optimization expert or new to Web site rankings, the techniques revealed in this book will give you everything you need to dominate the leading search engines. This is the only guide you need to place your website at the top of the major search engines in 2010!

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by hongxing128

Search engine optimization Services are a vital part of online marketing. As an Internet business owner, one of the most important things that you need to do is get people to surf through your site so that they see what you have to offer and, hopefully, buy your products or services. Since the most common way that Internet surfers use to look for the information on products or services is a search engine, then it is to your advantage to “convince” the search engine that your site is responsive to the needs of the searcher based on the keywords that he enters into it. To do this, you need to optimize your website, either by yourself or through a SEO Consultant who is equipped to provide your site with various search engine optimization services.

What search engine optimization services you will need will really depend on the needs of your website. There are several factors that you need to consider in determining your search engine optimization services requirements, including:

• Level of competition

If you are competing against a relatively small number of businesses, then your search engine optimization services requirements will not be so extensive. However, if your products or services are offered by hundreds of thousands of other Internet-based businesses, then you are going to have to avail of quite a number of search engine optimization services in order to rise above the crowd. This concept is nothing new; even in the brick-and-mortar world, the level of investment and intensity of advertising and promotions is dependent on how many businesses are competing in the marketplace.

• Keyword Popularity and Competition

Search engines operate on keywords, and search engine optimization services focus on these. Search engines utilize automated “spiderbots” that “crawl” through your site to get the keyword statistical data that is the main basis for evaluating its relevance viz. the said keywords. The higher the relevance of your website, the higher in the search engine’s list of keyword-responsive sites it will be. The intensity of search engine optimization services requirements will depend on the level of competition of that keywords that your website is aiming to rank for. For example, if your website is responsive to “book”, your search engine optimization services needs will obviously be more extensive than if your website was responsive to the keyword “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.

• Actual utility of your website

If your website is a single product or service website, you will need a lot of search engine optimization services in order to drive as much of your addressable market to your site. Statistically speaking, your relative success rate will more or less remain the same and it will probably be low so the trick is to make it up in volume. For example, if your success rate also known as conversion rate is 5% and only 100 visitors go to your site, then you will probably only get 5 customers. If your break even target is 100 customers, then you will have to convince 2,000 people to visit your site. If, on the other hand, your website offers a variety of products and services, your success rate will probably be higher, which means you need less visitors which, in turn, means your search engine optimization services needs will be less.

What kinds of search engine optimization services are available? There are several, actually, but the most common ones are:

• Homepage optimization

This is one of the most common search engine optimization services available. In this service, the text of your homepage is embedded with the keywords that your website is responsive to. What’s more, the HTML program itself is embedded with keywords in the meta-tag portion, or that area in the program that contains remarks and does not appear in the homepage itself. It is always good to optimize your homepage because this is mostly what the search engine “spiderbot” “sees” when crawling through your website.

• Link popularity analysis

One strategy to optimize your website is to get the links to your site embedded in popular websites so that when visitors go to that site, they also get to see the links to yours and, hopefully, click on them. You can accomplish this in two ways: buy ad space in the popular websites or offer to exchange link space. Either way, you will need to analyze the popularity of the candidate popular website by via link popularity analysis, which is one of the search engine optimization services that SEO firms or individuals offer.

• Website promotion tools

As mentioned earlier, you can promote your site via links to popular websites which, incidentally, rank high in the search engines. These strategies are part of an SEO firm’s website promotion tools and form part and parcel of the search engine optimization services they provide.

The list of search engine optimization services that SEO companies provide changes over time. Remember that your website is not the only one that undergoes optimization, and that there is absolutely only one position for each of the Top 50 ranking for each search engine. Your website may be number one today, but as your competition avails of better search engine optimization services, you may be dislodged tomorrow, so you will always need to search for even better search engine optimization services to regain the top position. SEO companies and individuals themselves will also need to find ways and means to offer better search engine optimization services so that they can continue to justify their existence.

In selecting an SEO consultant, be sure to look at its clients and see how popular they are. It’s the best way for you to find out if their search engine optimization services are effective and if they are constantly improving them.

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Professional Search Engine Optimization with ASP.NET: A Developer’s Guide to SEO (Wrox Professional Guides)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not only the job of the marketing department. It must be considered from a web site’s inception and throughout its lifetime by you, the web site developer. Making changes to the architecture of a web site and modifying presentation techniques can dramatically increase search engine rankings and traffic levels.

Written for the ASP.NET developer or tech-savvy marketer, this unique reference provides techniques for creating and maintaining web sites optimized for search engines. You’ll discover how to facilitate the indexing of your site, as well as how to leverage specific technologies and services for site promotion. You will understand the role of web site architecture in search engine optimization and explore various topics therein. Knowing this will help you to develop a site that achieves great search engine rankings.

What you will learn from this book

• Understand the criteria that influence search engine rankings

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• Use HTTP Headers to properly indicate the status of web documents

• Create optimized content and cope with duplicate content effectively

• Avoid being the victim of black hat SEO techniques

• Understand and implement geo-targeting and cloaking

• Use site maps effectively—for users as well as search engines

• SEO enhancements that can easily be applied to an existing web site

• Build a search engine–friendly e-commerce catalog

Who this book is for

This book is for ASP.NET developers who need to incorporate search engine optimization principles into their web applications, as well as marketers who want to gain a better understanding of the technologies involved in search engine marketing.

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Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

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