Sunday, March 9, 2008

Raise Your Page Rank In Search Engines Through Link Building


Page Rank is Google’s measure of importance assigned to a web page on a scale of 1 to 10. You can check the Page Rank value of any page by downloading the Google Toolbar. Initially, most of these search engines relied on meta tags to classify the relevance of websites based on keywords in the tags. But, with time, search engine results became cluttered with sites that spammed their content with relevant keywords but displayed poor content for the visitor.

This threatened the very essence, credibility and importance of search engines. The founders of Google evolved a formula called Page Rank (named after one of Google�s founder Larry Page) where the algorithm would count the number of sites that link to a page and assign it an importance score on a scale of 1-10. More the number of sites that link to a page, higher its Page Rank.

One-way linking:
One way inbound links are your links mentioned by the other websites, without your linking to them. On a website, each individual page acquires link popularity based on the pages that link to it. It�s difficult to obtain one-way link, but good, solid content on the website and ensure it.

Reciprocal linking:
It is an agreement between two websites to exchange links with each other, in order to boost ranking throughout any search engine.

Three way linking:
In this, the first website links to a second site, the second site links to a third, and then the third site links to the first one.

Top Travel Meta Search Engines


“While viral growth in traffic lowers marketing costs and has been important in fuelling Kayak’s rise, Meta Search Engines must invest heavily in online marketing to maintain the now multi-million consumer volume that is reaching their sites on a monthly basis,” Saks, Compete.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Finally, eBay jumps into Social Networking

With the superficial success of Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and several other social media sites, eBay - the e-commerce company launched their own Social Networking hub called Neighborhoods. It’s a meeting place for buyers, sellers or just a visitor to peek into the discussion and learn something there. They already had a buyer/seller section which, to an extent, did the same. However, these neighborhoods are not welcomed by all. The typical concern is that the spammers and scammers can take the control of these neighborhoods.

The time for Google has come

Google to Test Video Ads In Search Results Pages

These days, G is taking their loyal search customers for a ride. We all liked G for its simplicity, robustness and quick responsiveness. Why would they do any stupid thing to lose the value it has created already? Could it be the greediness for more advertisers dollars? Is G missing the lessons that TV had taught us? We all hate interruptions, avoid anything that gets in our way - Video Ads is more a nuisance than a gift. It’s time G finds a new approach to have balance over their greediness, or we the users will have to.

Saturday, February 2, 2008

Twelve SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make

Since I'm speaking this week at Search Engine Strategies on the topic of SEO through Blogs and Feeds, it seems fitting that this issue of "100% Organic" be related to blog optimization. Even the top SEOs make mistakes with their blogs (and yes, I make some of them too). What are they? Here's my list:

1. Allowing title tags to be auto-generated (from the post title, category name, etc.). Every category page and most permalink pages (i.e. post pages) should be hand-crafted. Don't just let the blog software reuse the post title or category name with your blog's name tacked on in the front. Why? Because an ideal post title is seldom an ideal title tag. Optimizing your post title or category name by working in synonyms, multiple verb tenses, etc. into it can ruin its punchiness and thus its reader impact. For example, "Marketing on MySpace" makes for a great post title but "Social Media Marketing on MySpace, the King of Social Network Sites" makes for a title tag with broader keyword appeal.

How would you accomplish this? If your blog is powered by WordPress, then you can use my WordPress plugin called SEO Title Tag. It even offers a "mass edit" administrative interface for making bulk edits across dozens or hundreds of pages at once. I am not aware of a similar plugin for Movable Type or other blog platforms, but perhaps this article will spur someone on to write it. ;-)

If you don't have the time or resources and wish to continue with auto-generated title tags, you should at an absolute minimum hand code the title tag on the home page, and then on the rest of the blog place the blog name at the end of the title tag rather than at the beginning (or remove it altogether). This will give you more uniquely focused title tags.

2. Letting pages get indexed that should never be indexed. Some pages shouldn't be allowed into the search indices because they are either basically content-less (like the "Email this page" form or "Enlarged photo" pages) or because they are substantively similar to other pages (like the "Printer-friendly" pages). Peruse your indexed pages in Google using the site: query operator and look for which pages don't deserve to be there. Then disallow them in your robots.txt file.

3. Having multiple homes for your blog. Does your blog have what search engine geeks refer to as "canonicalization" issues? If you can get to a page by multiple URLs, then the answer is "Yes." For example, ries.typepad.com and www.originofbrands.com and originofbrands.com all lead to the same page.

4. Not using "optional excerpts" to minimize duplicate content. This may be known by other names in other blog platforms, but in WordPress the optional excerpt on the Write Post form is where you can define alternate copy to display everywhere but on the permalink page. That will make the content of the post unique to the permalink page, reducing the potential that you'll lose rankings for duplicate content because the post would otherwise be included in its entirety on numerous pages, including archives-by-date pages and category pages.

5. Not using rel=nofollow to strategically direct the flow of link gain. Some internal links aren't very helpful because they have suboptimal anchor text (e.g. "Permalink" and "Comments"). Some external links just leak link gain to nobody's benefit, such as "Digg this" links.

6. Over-reliance on date-based archives. Most blogs organize their archives by month rather than by keyword. That's a shame because the anchor text of links is so important to SEO, yet these date-based archives tend to have terrible number-based anchor text. Organizing your blog into categories is a step in the right direction, but implementing tagging and tag clouds across your blog is a much more search engine optimal approach. Then you can ditch your date-based hierarchy, or at least rel=nofollow all those date-based archive links.

7. No stability in keyword focus on category pages. When categories have been selected - at least in part - because of keyword research, then your category pages can be of great SEO benefit. But in order to really give those category pages the best chance at competing for their targeted keywords, the pages need stability in their keyword focus. However, in most cases the keyword focus jumps all over the place as new posts make it into that category page and old posts fall off. Using "sticky" posts which stay at the top of category page regardless of the age of that post will give you the opportunity to incorporate keyword-rich introductory copy into the pages. For example, the sticky post on the Politics category page at businessblogconsulting.com sets the stage with a keyword-rich, relevant and useful introduction to the posts within that category.

8. Suboptimal URLs. The most optimal URLs contain relevant, popular keywords and a minimal number of slashes, without any question marks. If using WordPress, be sure to change your "Permalink Options" to use rewritten URLs rather than the default of post IDs. If using TypePad or Movable Type, change from using the default of underscores to hyphens instead, as hyphens are preferred from Google's standpoint. TypePad and Movable Type also tend to truncate URLs mid-keyword. Consider for example the post on the TypePad platform titled "Hotels, Hospitality and Social Media" which converted to a URL of http://bloombergmarketing.blogs.com/bloomberg_marketing/2007/08/hotels-hospital.html. Note how the URL was truncated and the works "hospitality" and "social media" were lost. If using WordPress, make use of the "post slug," to custom write the filename of the post's URL and eliminate throwaway words from the URL such as "the" that appear in the post title but add no value in the URL.

9. Only one RSS feed, and it's not even optimized. Each category on your blog should have its own category, so that people who are mostly interested in just one topic can subscribe to - and hopefully syndicate - the category-specific feed. Same thing applies if you have tag pages hosted on your blog. Tag-specific feeds are great for users and for SEO. Optimized RSS feeds are ones that are "full text" not summary feeds, have more than just ten items (e.g. 20 or 50), have keyword-rich item titles, incorporate your brand name in the item titles, include important keywords in the site title, and have a compelling site description.

10. Offering suboptimal podcasts. If you are publishing podcasts on your blog, be sure to optimize the ID3 tag, include show notes with each podcast, create show transcripts (hint: CastingWords offers inexpensive podcast transcription), and ensure you have a presence in podcast directories like iTunes.

11. Putting your blog's URL or your RSS feed's URL on a domain you don't own. Does your blog's URL contain blogspot.com, typepad.com, wordpress.com, etc.? If so, please repeat after me in a Homer Simpson voice: "Doh!". This is a disaster waiting to happen. What happens if you want to move to another blog platform or service provider? You won't be able to 301 redirect. The best you can do is put up a "We've moved" post then abandon the blog. Like what my daughter had to do with her Neopets blog when she moved it from neopetcheats.wordpress.com to neopetsfanatic.com. Another mistake is using Feedburner without using their MyBrand service - which means that all your RSS subscribers are subscribing to a URL you don't control. You'd be in a pickle if you ever wanted to change from Feedburner to another service. After Google acquired Feedburner, they made the MyBrand service free. So there's no excuse for not using it. I use MyBrand with my blog, so my feed URL is http://feeds.stephanspencer.com/scatterings instead of http://feeds.feedburner.com/scatterings.

12. Using suboptimal anchor text when linking internally. It's not uncommon for bloggers to use "here" or "previously" or similar suboptimal phrases as anchor text within post copy. Resist the temptation and use relevant keywords instead.

Source:
searchengineland

Thursday, January 31, 2008

What is Web Analytics and How it Helps a Website Owner?

One of My clients was asking that how to read an analytical report and what is this and what is that? From these questions, I thought to have written few notes about the analytical reports which would be beneficial for my clients and the readers of this blog.

Definition:

A web analytics is a series of reports of quantitative indicator of the behavior of the visitors of the website. It tracks the movement of visitor and the reason of his/her visit. In other words, it provides the clear report of the performance of your website and the trends. From these reports and trends the website owner creates and implements more effective program to increase sales.

Web Analytics are based:

1. Collection of visitor's data from logfiles, and 2. by tagging each webpage with a Javascript.

A third web analytics method is a combination of the two whereby more relevant data can be produced than what is possible with either of the two methods.

Web Analytics Terms:

Number of visits means that how many visitors landed on any page of your website from any source. In the case of log files of server, it will log several files for each visit, while the page-tagging script will only consider the page as a whole seen by the visitor. In either case, each web analytics data will clearly identify if the visitor is new or has come before.

Page Views means different for the two web analytics methods. While tagging script considers the whole page as one request, the logfile on the other hand will record multiple hits (one for each file, including images, .js and .css) within a single page-view.

Hits denotes requests for files from server and is recorded only in logfile.

Unique visitors means new visitors, it is noticed by logfiles as well.

The length of time a visitor spends in seeing a website.

The keyword phrase used to arrive at the website.

The unique IP address and therefore the country from where the visits generated

Visits duration

Files type etc

Data transfer to and from the server is always recorded in server's logfile with clockwork precision. And these files can be easily viewed in web analytics programs such as Webalizer, Awstats, etc. which analyze raw logfile data and portray valuable visitor information in easy-to-follow graphics.

What is difference between Logfile and Page Tagging:

1. Logfile analysis is usually already available in the server. Page tagging is an outsourced option, which means that visitors' data is captured by provider's remote server. 2. Logfile analysis can be viewed only in provider's website, while Google Analytics and Click Tracks are examples of page-tagging web analytics. 3. Since page tagging requires javascript to be installed on every webpage, there is always a possibility that some visitors' browsers do not allow the script to run. Whilw logfiles have no such issue. 4. Logfiles enter transfer of all files, including images and scripts, and therefore certain parameters like hits and page views are not as accurate as with page-tagging web analytics. 5. While logfiles record visits by search engines, page tagging does not. 6. Logfile web analytics record failed visits too. Page tagging takes a request into account only when a webpage is successfully displayed.

Web analytics is a type of feedback from visitor which is available all times. These reports are a great source by which you can analyze relative strength and weakness of your website. From these, you can find which pages are most visited and which keywords are more related to your web site.

Please remember, no one can give guarantee of position one on any search engine as far as Search engine optimization is concened. However, professionally experts do their best and follow the procedures and maintain quality and required quantity, than there is no doubt that we can bring your website on the top position of any search engine. For More information visit our quality search engine optimization blog.

Source : seo4google

Blogs Versus Articles in SEO

Blogs versus Articles

Blogs have arrived as a means to get your message across in a personal way. Articles are usually considered to be more informative and accurate where details are concerned. From a search engine perspective, both are a great source of information. But which one to rank better?

First, let's look at the value each one brings:

Blogs:
Timely, personal, have "inside point of view" usually updated on a frequent basis

Articles:
Informative, Authorative, detailed, marketing driven.

From a freshness perspective, Blogs clearly win out over the articles.

Exposure:
Unless your blog is highly ranked, the articles will get more exposure, since there are more chances of your article being seen by more people. There are many sources on the internet that you can submit your articles to, here is a link for some: seoresources.seoforgoogle.com

From a business perspective, I can tell you that articles help re-enforce what you are selling. By writing an article instead of a blog, there is a perception that more care is taken to writing an article, therefore the information contained within is worth more.

People know that a blog will have a personal spin to it, whether the author is blasting a company, or promoting something that they have a personal or professional interest in.

From my own trials, no one has made any purchases for any product being pushed in a blog, but instead there has a distinguishable influx of sales that can be directly traced back to an article.

So what does this mean to you?

If you have a product or service you want to promote, use an article. If you need to get something off your chest, create a blog. While both are thought of very well by the search engines, you're ultimate goal is to convert the user, not confuse the search engines.

'Social
Source:
seoforgoogle


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