Posted on 12.29.2008
Courtesy of Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - The kind of ratings used for films could be applied to websites in a bid to better police the Internet and protect children from harmful and offensive material, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said. Burnham told The Daily Telegraph newspaper, published on Saturday, that the government was planning to negotiate with the administration of U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to draw up new international rules for English language websites.
"The more we seek international solutions to this stuff -- the UK and the U.S. working together -- the more that an international norm will set an industry norm," the newspaper reports the Culture Secretary as saying in an interview.
Giving websites film-style ratings would be one possibility.
"This is an area that is really now coming into full focus," Burnham told the paper.
Internet service providers could also be forced to offer services where the only sites accessible are those deemed suitable for children, the paper said. Any moves to censor the Internet would go to the heart of a debate about freedom of speech on the World Wide Web.
"If you look back at the people who created the Internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach," Burnham told The Telegraph. "I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now." He said some content should not be available to be viewed.
"This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."
Burnham, who has three young children, pointed to the example of a 9 p.m. television "watershed" in Britain before which certain material, like violence, cannot be broadcast, and said better controls were needed for the Internet. The minister wants new industry-wide "take down times" so that websites like YouTube or Facebook would have to remove offensive or harmful content within a specified time once it is brought to their attention. He also said Britain was considering changing libel laws to give people access to legal help if they are defamed online.
Posted on 12.22.2008
by Armando Roggio
Google’s
PageRank technology plays an important role in how online stores show
up in search results. Understanding how this ranking system works will help
ecommerce merchants improve their search engine optimization (SEO) and
potentially increase website traffic.
PageRank is a proprietary mathematical formula (algorithm) that Google uses
to calculate the importance of a particular web page/URL based on incoming
links. The PageRank algorithm assigns each web page a numeric value. That value
is a particular URL’s PageRank.
The underlying assumption is that links are analogous to “votes” for a page’s
importance. The more votes a page has, the more important it is. What’s more,
votes from important pages/URLs have more weight than votes from unimportant
ones.
In this Ecommerce Know-How, I will (1) discuss why PageRank is
important and (2) provide an explanation of how to use a simplified PageRank
calculation to make sound SEO decisions about internal linking. In all, this
article should give you a foundational understanding of this ranking system. And
in future installments of Ecommerce Know-How, we will build on this
fundamental PageRank information and apply it to SEO techniques like bot herding
or siloing.
The Importance of PageRank
“Using PageRank, we are able to order search results so that more important
and central Web pages are given preference. In experiments, this turns out to
provide higher quality search results to users,” wrote Google’s founders Larry
Page and Sergey Brin (along with Rajeev Motwani and Terry Winograd) in their
January 29, 1998 paper, The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the
Web.
In spite of this paper and the complex calculations it included, Google’s
exact recipe for ranking web pages is not public information. But there is
enough data available to make some educated guesses and assumptions about the
PageRank algorithm and a search engine’s basic procedures.
Our search assumption goes like this: Jack starts a search for the phrase
“golf clubs.” Google first seeks relevant pages that include content matching
Jack’s query. Once Google has located the relevant pages, it ranks those pages
based on importance—that is PageRank. The first page/URL listed on the Google
results page had the most PageRank out of all the pages that were relevant to
Jack’s search query. The last page/URL listed had the least.
Good content that matches a search query determines whether a given web
page/URL will be included in Google’s results. But PageRank determines the order
relevant pages are shown in.
PageRank is important then because it will determine if your site shows up
first or last when a potential customers looks for your keywords.
Google’s Search Procedures
- A Google user submits a search query.
- Google searches all of the pages/URLs it has indexed for relevant content.
- Google sorts the relevant pages/URLs based on PageRank scores.
- Google displays a results page, placing those pages/URLs with the most
PageRank (assumed importance) first.
Simplified PageRank and Ranking Power Estimates
Google does not disclose its exact PageRank formula. But it is a pretty safe
bet that calculating PageRank is not easy math.
The folks at SEOmoz have come up with an
excellent guess about the PageRank algorithm in their paper, The Professional’s
Guide To PageRank Optimization. And I recommend that paper for site owners that
want to know how to estimate a page’s actual Google PageRank and don’t mind
spending $39.99.
But when it comes to making certain good choices about SEO (particularly
internal linking choices), you don’t really need to know a URL’s actual Google
PageRank. Rather, a simple model that estimates the effect of one SEO strategy
or another is just as good. For example, you’ll be able to compare two different
internal linking strategies, estimating how each one will affect a page’s rank,
without having to employ higher mathematics.
PageRank for a given page = Initial PageRank + (total ranking power ÷
number of outbound links) + ...
Google assigns every new web
page an initial PageRank score. For the sake of our example, that initial
PageRank will be 1. If I create two new product pages, page A and
page B, those pages would each have an initial PageRank of 1.
A link from page B to page A would effectively be a vote
for page A’s importance, and that vote would increase page A’s
PageRank to 2—page A’s initial PageRank plus the value of page B’s
vote. Page B’s vote is worth its PageRank and is called
ranking power.
If we add a new page C, and page B also linked to it,
page A’s PageRank would fall from 2 to 1.5 while page C’s
PageRank would rise from 1 to 1.5.
Adding more links from page B to either page A or page
C will not change things, since only one link from page B to
page A distributes ranking power. A second link would not add
additional ranking power.
With just this simple model, we can now start to test some SEO tactics for
internal linking. Simply plot out two or more scenarios, adding up each page’s
PageRank to determine which tactic will work best for a given goal. For example,
let’s imagine that your ecommerce site has five pages, including a home page, a
category page, and three product pages, what is the best navigation strategy if
your goal is to boost your category page’s rank? Interconnecting every page
would give the category page a total PageRank of 2 as in Figure A.
Linking product pages to the category page only as shown in Figure B, would
result in a PageRank of 5 for the category page, making it the better
choice.
Summing Up
In this Ecommerce Know-How, I explained why PageRank is important
and provided a simple model for estimating PageRank for internal linking
tactics. This model is not faultless, but it should help you make informed
choices about the SEO tactics you use.
Posted on 12.10.2008
"I am an artist," the man proudly proclaimed. "I don't care," the critic proudly responded. "The frame is too large, the colors are dark and it will not match my furniture," the critic further explained.
Many times web developers experience a similar scorn but not always from humans. A site has been designed with an interface that pops with beautiful GIFs and JPEGs, dazzles with Flash and functions like a charm with JavaScript. The search engines do not care. The content, the keywords and the tags do not correspond with the criteria of the search engines. Therefore, you are ignored.
It is a struggle between art and science that frustrates many. The responsibilities of web developing -- the art -- clash with the role of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- the science. That is why some companies and development firms are designating web developer and optimizer as two distinctive jobs.
Yet many smaller companies and shops still have the web developer fulfilling both roles. The problem is that optimization is becoming challenging and competitive. So here is some information to help start the optimization before, after or during the developing.
Content
It's all about the text.
Remember that optimization is all about the text. Search engines are text driven but there are still some basic HTML tags to keep in mind (i.e., h1, h2, meta tags, title tag). SEO helps improve search engine results but does not guarantee top ratings.
Patience and realistic goals will keep the frustrations low. Search engines have to crawl a site to determine what a site is about. This takes time, usually about a month, before crawls and indexing are completed by the various search engine spiders.
Take time to think (a lot) about the purpose of the website. Write down a lot of stuff in a word processing program even if it sounds silly at first. Then edit what you wrote. Edit some more, get some feedback and then start working on the keywords and keyphrases that identify the unique quality of your website.
Keywords and Keyphrases
Keywords used to be easy. Those days are gone. Keywords are highly competitive. Using two-word or three-word, maybe even four-word, phrases makes optimization less frustrating. A keyword phrase (keyphrase) helps identify the uniqueness of a website.
The keyword "game" will generate about 1 billion(!) results. The keyphrase "card game" will generate about 50 million results. That is a difference of approximately 950 million. The keyphrase "magic card game" will generate about four-million results. Time will need to be spent finding unique keyphrases but the benefits of narrowing the results, with multi-word phrases, provides a better chance of being noticed.
Keyword Density
The density formula is D = WC/KC (D = density; WC = word count; KC = keyword count)
For major keywords target 3-7% density
For minor keywords target 1-2% density
Keyword density measures how relevant keywords are in a page. The formula density = word count divided by keyword count will provide a general idea of the density percentage. For major keywords try to keep the density between three and seven percent. For minor keywords keep density between one and two percent. Try to optimize between five to ten keywords per web page.
Avoid the unethical practice of keyword stuffing. You will be penalized and possibly banned from the search engines which is worse than doing no optimization at all. Keyword stuffing uses various techniques but it is basically stuffing a page and/or meta tag with several occurrences of a keyword or keyphrase.
Keyword stuffing will result in being banned from the search engines.
Meta Tags
The meta tags are important although some will disagree. Meta tags have fallen out of favor because these tags used to be the magic solution to optimization. Not anymore. Keywords and content are more beneficial in getting a web site in top rankings. However, meta tags are still important. Meta tags are a part of the HTML and are used by most search engines to find a description of your website.
Therefore, no question about it, use the meta tags for description and keywords. Place these meta tags below the title tag on your page.The keyword meta tag helps you keep track of the keywords and having these meta tags give a small boost to search engine ranking. While it is true that meta tags do not perform the magic they once did it is better to have the tags than to have none. Think of meta tags like vitamins. Vitamins are not necessary for being healthy but vitamins do provide a healthy boost.
Title Tag
The title tag should be unique for every page because every page will or should have different information regarding your website. Therefore, some pages will have some but not all of your total keyword list. For example, let's say that your web site provides information about card games; one page has data about magic card games and another discusses bridge card games.
The title tag of the page with information about magic card games could have a title like Magic Card Games available at ourwebsite.com. The bridge card games page would likely have a title of Bridge Card Games at ourwebsite.com.
The name of pages should also have keywords like magic_card_games.htm orbridge_card_games.htm.
Developing websites is fun. Optimization can be a chore. Yet by focusing on content, keywords and tags you have a good start to decreasing the frustration of optimization. Granted there is more to optimization than the items addressed in this article but these are the items that can be and should be tackled first.
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About the Author: Lawrence Roth in an independent web developer who owns and maintainsrothline.com. Lawrence has worked on various e-commerce and website projects. Lawrence writes articles and stories to submit to online publications
Posted on 11.17.2008
How good is your Web site?
Is your Blog up to par?
There are actually websites that will measure the ranking of your website.
For those of you that don't know what page rank is, it's a tool put together by
Google that determines the effectiveness or efficiency of your Web site.
The higher your page rank, the higher your Web site is listed in the
various search engines, and that means more traffic to your site. This, in
essence, means more people are looking at your site, your products, your
services, thus putting more money in your pocket in the form of paying
customers.
If more people are going to your Web site then less traffic is going
to your competitors' Web site. Unfortunately most people don't even know what
page rank is but those visitors that do will place your website in a higher
esteem than your competitors and feel that your content is much more valuable
and insightful.
Now you are probably wondering how page rank determined? And more
importantly how do you increase your page rank?. Well, let's look at the first
part of that question.
One way to help determine your page is when another site links to your
page with a back link. The more back links you receive from other pages the
higher your page rank. It's a good idea to make sure the back links are coming
from sites that have content on the same theme as yours.
This process can get quite involved and a little messy because all back links
don't carry the same weight or force. The higher the page rank that a link is
coming from the more beneficial it is in terms of boosting your page rank. So if
you get links from a lot of pages with low page ranks it will not have as strong
an impact as a few pages with higher page ranks.
Now this is the complicated part: If you have a page that has a page
rank of 7 and it is already linked to 10 or 15 other pages then it will not be
any more beneficial to you than a page that has a page rank of maybe 3 or so.
There is only so much linking that a page can do. It's almost like the law of
diminishing returns, in other words after awhile it begins to have the opposite
effect.
Another way to improve your page rank is through the use of web
directories. Not only will this increase your page rank but it will also
increase the traffic to your site. So if you submit your site to a large number
of Web directories you will be able to increase your rank. There are a number of
web directories you can submit your website or blog to.
There's a host of other items that will definitely help you to
increase your ranking and the general traffic flow to your Web site. Also if you
are curious about the page ranking of your own site you can see exactly where
you stand by doing a Google search for page rank. This should help you to find
some of the sites out there that measure page rank. Once you find a site all you
have to do is put your own URL in the designated box and you will have your
answer. A page rank of 6 or higher is very high.
Posted on 10.22.2008
Are you launching a new website? There's no better time to think about search engine optimization than prior to launching a new site. By giving consideration to your on-page optimization factors, you can increase your chances of achieving top organic search results.
To prepare your site for easy indexing, be sure to follow these basis guidelines:
1. Design your site in html or similar format that minimizes the use of java script and flash. The more complex you make your code, the more difficult it becomes for the search engine spiders to read your content and prescribe the appropriate Google PR to your web page.
2. Make sure that your meta tags are coded properly and include the Robots.txt tag. Many individuals downplay the importance of meta tags. Although meta tags themselves won't drastically change the organic ranking of your site, they do create the display text users will see when your site appears in search results. If your meta tags are search engine optimized and compelling, you increase the changes of improving click-throughs.
3. Apply the proper tags to your page. H1, H2, and H3 tags are a great wall to call attention to your content and promote your keywords and keyword phrases. Try to use each tag at least once, but don't force the issues. You want your text to flow and appear normal.
In addition to ensuring that you've made your page easy to access and presented text that is optimized, you also want to consider other factors that can help long-term with your SEO efforts. So often, web designers get caught up with on page factors, that they overlook the requirements for establishing a foundation that supports long-term initiatives.
In particular, consider adding pages that you can add to over time that support link building and accessibility for search engine spiders. Be sure to include:
1. An html sitemap and an xml sitemap. Including a sitemap on you site makes it easy for search engines to access all of your website pages and index your site accordingly. Your sitemap should be in both html as well as xml. Although users would not access the xml sitemap, search engine spiders use this version to crawl websites. Additionally, key search engine submission resources like Google's Webmasters Tools require xml site map versions.
2. Include a partners page. Previously referred to as a links page, the partners page is essential for reciprocal linking. This strategy isn't as powerful as developing one-way links, but until your site has been assigned a Google PR, one-way links can be difficult to acquire. So begin your link exchange program with a partners page that allows you add or remove link quickly and easily.
3. Submission pages that encourage new content. One of the most powerful seo techniques is the addition of new content. Make it easy for your users to add or submit content to your website. When search engines see new content, they rejoice. Don't underestimate how important it is to make it simple for your browsers to add or submit content.
When focusing on search engine optimization, especially with a new website, follow the basic ideas outlined above. There are a number of other factors to consider as well. However, you should always start with a strong foundation - a site design that meets basic SEO standards but one that also supports your long range search engine optimization goals.
Posted on 10.16.2008
When talking to clients about marketing their business online I am asked "How do you get to #1 on Google?" While this article is not specially about how to become #1 - I will explain what the process is and what's involved.
Despite our widespread acceptance and use of the internet - I am always surprised by how many people really have no idea what SEO (search engine optimization) is about. They instinctively know WHY they like to click on that first listing in the natural results; but they don't have the first clue HOW it got there. Making matters worse is the fact that the internet world is largely unregulated and still being figured out - so it seems that everyone has their own "best practice" and definitions of things like SEO.
I usually tell clients that their intuitive feeling of WHY they trust that first listing is that - simply put - it's the best result for the phrase you type in. People seem to understand that. However most people don't really understand why one site would be better than another so here goes with a layman's explanation…
What is SEO, really?
SEO is the process of configuring a website so that it has a chance to show up in a search result for a particular phrase. In other words it is our way of telling Google, Yahoo, or MSN what we think our site is about. Many of the search engines have a slightly different formula for how they determine these results. But the short version is that they look at different factors of each website page, rank them and then give those results to you.
Why is SEO Important?
One word sums it up - competition. Depending on what study you read, there are as many as 20 billion web pages being indexed at any given time. The major search engines do their best to go through these pages and catalog them so that they can tell you about it if you use their website to search. With so many website pages out there competing for similar phrases it is absolutely critical to make sure you are using every tool at your disposal to make sure your customers can find you when they are looking.
OK, So What Should I Be Doing for SEO On My Site?
The good news is that doing SEO correctly is not complicated. The bad news is that it is time consuming and requires regular attention in order to maintain results. Our advice is to ethically follow these simple guidelines for best long-term results:
Good site structure - as simple as this sounds many people overlook this. Every day we see sites with heavy flash animation, dated frame designs, pages that don't work and broken links. The bottom line is that if you can't easily navigate a site without problems chances are the search engines can't either. And if a search engine can't go through your site you have absolutely no chance of showing up for a key phrase - no matter how pretty the flash.
Good meta-data - Clients often draw a blank with this one. Meta-data is geek-speak for the page titles, page descriptions and keywords that you enter for each page. Each page on your website should have a unique title and description that summarizes what that page is about.
We often see 2 problems with meta-data. The first is that it is simply overlooked. I am stunned at how many sites have www.yoursite.com as the page title for every page - that's wasting prime online real estate.
The 2nd problem is spam. Putting in a page title or description that does not accurately match what the page is about is considered "spamming" a search engine. Doing this will get your page thrown out of the index and ruin any chance of showing up for a key phrase. Relevant content - People seem to understand that good content is really what they are looking for when they search for something. By "relevant" we mean that the content is specific to the topic in question and recently updated. More and more we are seeing sites that have regular updates or blogs showing up higher in the search results than sites which have larger quantities of older, "stale" content on them.
Our recommendation is to add well-written, grammatically correct and spell-checked content to your website on a regular basis. This ensures that, over time, your site will become a "resource" to those looking for phrases related to your business.
Responsible link building - This is perhaps the least understood part of SEO. In a nutshell search engines consider a link from another website to your website as a popularity vote. Think of it as power rankings for websites. In general the more sites which link to yours, the better; as this shows your site is relevant to the given topic.
Sadly though link building, like keywords and meta-data, have been abused by many site owners with schemes such as link farms where sites are setup simply to house links to other sites. We encourage careful and responsible link building with sites that are related to yours or through appropriate directories and article banks.
So there you have it - SEO explained for people with real jobs. Like most things it's not really that hard but it requires discipline which is where most people get off track. If you would like help with SEO for your website, or other online business needs we would love to hear from you.
Posted on 10.09.2008
Do not use the meta keywords tag. Many people still think of this as a quick fix for SEO. It's not. Google no longer uses it. Yahoo is perhaps the only search engine that still uses the meta keywords tag but places very little weight on it. By placing this tag on a web page, the primary beneficiary is your competition. How so? The meta keywords tag gives your competitors a nicely formatted list of your important keywords. Don't believe me? Try the free keyword research tool at the end of this article.
Most people agree that this tag is useless (read Danny Sullivan's 2002 Death of a Meta Tag article). I'll take it a step further and argue that it's hazardous. I know many people won't agree with me, but here's my argument:
Search engines used to rely heavily on the meta keywords tag to guess which keywords were relevant on a web page. Now search engines are sophisticated enough to examine the actual keywords in the body of a web page. Major search engines place little, if any, value in the meta keywords tag. There is more risk than reward in using the meta keywords tag because your competitors can view the meta keywords tag and can steal your keywords.
What do I mean by "steal" your keywords? By placing the meta keywords tag on a page, you are, in effect, giving your competitors a list of your important keywords. They can then use these keywords and buy PPC ads or optimize their own site for your important keywords. Why give them this sort of business intelligence? Having invested time and money on exhaustive keyword research to identify the important keyword phrases to use for your own SEO and PPC efforts, why on earth would you make a list of your high value keywords public? Perhaps a concrete example will help illustrate the point. I was playing with the keyword tool, entering domains of other search engine marketing firms to see if they were using the meta keywords tag, and, if so, what keywords they included. Plugging one site into the tool, I noticed the keyword phrase "targeted traffic" in the meta keywords tag. Looking at the site's home page and even viewing the source, that phrase is only in the meta keywords. Nowhere else. This is what people do - they just stick their important keywords into the tags. You don't have to study the title tag, study the meta description tag, see what alt text is "behind" the images, examine the content of the page, look at the links, etc. In other words, you don't have to take the time to think like a search engine or reverse engineer a competing site. Your competitors give you all of their important keywords in their meta keywords tag. I've never thought of "targeted traffic" as a keyword to optimize for or to buy with PPC ads. Perhaps I'll run some PPC ads and see if it's a valuable phrase for SEO. Point is, I'd never have thought of it if it wasn't in a competitor's meta keywords tag.
Here is our meta keywords advice: do not use the meta keywords tag. Instead, make sure the title of your web page has your important keywords and that those keywords are repeated in the body of your web page. If you want to, create a meta description tag. The search engines do use that meta tag, but it's not essential for SEO.
Creating good content is essential. Each page should have useful content and include your important keywords. Don't try to stuff all of your important keywords onto a single page. Create pages around a theme, a small collection of keyword phrases. For instance, target 1-3 keyword phrases per page. Write a title that incorporates those keyword phrases. If the title seems awkward from the point of view of your audience (site visitors not the search engines), scale back the number of phrases and try again. If you choose to write a meta description tag, it should reinforce the keywords already in the title tag. The body of the page should then include those important keyword phrases. Again, though, the content of the page should be written for your site visitors and not seem awkward.
Since many web sites do still use the meta keywords tag, we have developed a free keyword research tool that will analyze the meta keywords of your competition. Use the tool to see what keywords your competitors are embedding in their meta keywords tags and then research these keywords using other freely available tools. When I begin work for a new client, I ask them for a list of their competitors' web sites. I plug those into the tool and it gives me an instant list of keywords. That's only the beginning, a starting point for further keyword research. These companies have spent hours upon hours performing keyword research. I can take 30 seconds, scrape their meta keywords tags and have solid keyword ideas for PPC ads to create or SEO work to perform for a client. That, coupled with the fact that Google doesn't use the meta keywords tag, convinces me that it's downright silly to use them.
As time goes on, I expect online businesses to become a bit more savvy regarding meta tags and this tool will no longer provide a quick start. In the meantime, use the free keyword tool and crush your competition!
To view orginal posting please copy the following link into your web browser: http://www.searchengineguide.com/richard-ball/meta-keywords-a.php
Author: Richard Ball
Date Published: October 31, 2005
Posted on 10.01.2008
The most important function of a website is to help a company to sell their services/products to new clients.
When potential new clients/tourists need to choose between two companies with whom they aren't familiar, they are most likely to compare the websites. This is because a website is almost the only method for a person to actually see beforehand what he/she pays for. In general, more than 90% of these potential new client's decisions are decided upon the impression that is reflected from the website, regardless of the competence of these companies. The general truth is that most potential clients do not know how to technically compare companies, and therefore trust that the website's professionalism will reflect the expertise.
Therefore large amounts are invested in corporate website development.
Unfortunately most companies tend to overlook the importance of building a trusted web presence. Without having a web presence with authority almost no new visitors will end up at your website. And since every company wants to expand, they need to focus on improving their web presence in order to increase the chance of getting new customers.
The best and most effective long term solution to increase your web presence is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It is a highly specialized field that focus on improving the amount of trust the rest of the world will have in your website. The more trust you have, the more potential new clients will visit your website daily.
The amount of trust your website has, is most of the time determined by search engines (for example Google, Yahoo, etc.). This is because the search engines have the most advanced mathematical algorithms available today, hence the acronym, SEO. Of all these search engines, the world's most accepted benchmark of website trust is known as the Google rank (or page rank) of your website. Therefore, if you could increase your Google rank, your number of new visitors to your website will most certainly increase.
Google Rank of well known organisations' home page:
4/10: Pick n Pay, Steers, KWV, News 24
5/10: Anglo Gold, Checkers, Spur, Shoprite, Nedbank, Old Mutual
6/10: Anglo American, Absa, Stellenbosch University, Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, Mobil, Virgin, Standard Bank, Die Burger, Sasol
7/10: McDonald's, Ford, General Electric, Nike, Coke
8/10: General Motors
9/10: Microsoft, eBay, Amazon
10/10: Google, Facebook
Another reason why Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is so important is because of the quality of the traffic (website visitors) you receive on your website. If somebody visits your website due to a search engine query, as opposed to other reasons (such as typing in the web address/clicking on a link from another website, etc), the new visitor will most likely already be looking for your services. For example, if someone types in the word "wine" in Google, they are probably looking for wine. So if your site comes up first on Google you can probably sell a bottle of wine if your offering is satisfactory. The contrary is that the person accidentally lands on your website, but has no immediate desire for the product or services.
Please note that it is possible to buy quality traffic, but this is expensive (depending on the product value and competition) and only effective in the immediate short term i.e. while it is active. SEO has a long term cumulative effect and is relatively inexpensive to maintain once a certain level of optimisation is reached.
Tips when hiring SEO experts:
- Whenever using a company in order to improve your SEO, always check out the Google Rank of their website. Since SEO is not that well known in management circles, there is a lot of companies that will try to sell SEO skills while there own SEO are terrible.
- Also try to get some form of guarantee. It is very rare that marketing companies ever give guarantees about the effects of their efforts, but if they actually do, you know they are serious about their skills.
- Try to get clear benchmarks to calculate the results of the SEO campaign. For example monitor the number of visitors that your website receives that came from natural search engine queries during and after the time of your campaign. (If your marketing team don't know how to get these figures, don't use them!)
- Make sure your SEO team have a clean record. Sometimes SEO companies may get desperate in order to get results and might step over the moral line by trying to fool search engines with unnatural 'black hat' methods. When caught out, these websites are usually banned from search engines and will not show in any search result. To look into any company's track record simply Google them. Disgruntles clients tend to write their bad experience in public forums that will normally be listed in Google's search results just below the company's own website.
Good luck with your marketing campaign!
Posted on 08.27.2009
5 SEO Mottos for Redesigns
Starting over? Here’s some helpful advice.I’m often asked to make search engine optimization recommendations during a site’s redesign process. From our clients' points of view, they’re making a major investment and they need to safeguard their existing SEO success in addition to growing their natural, post-launch search traffic and conversions. However, so many different decisions influence SEO from the conceptual stage through launch that it is very difficult to identify a single best practice for SEO redesign.
SEO Motto 1: One Page, One URL
Live by this motto when planning and testing URL and navigation structures: Each unique page of content should have a single, canonical URL.
Some testing and analytics programs append tracking parameters to URLs; and some servers aren’t canonicalized to a single protocol, TLD (top level domain), domain, subdomain, directory or file extension. If you publish a single piece of content in multiple subdomains or subdirectories, your site can suffer from several duplication sources, which can multiply to hundreds or thousands of URLs for the same page of content. The best way to stop content duplication is to ensure that it never starts at the platform and server level.
SEO Motto 2: Crawlable Links
If dynamic content is being served on a page, recite this motto: Navigation must be crawlable with JavaScript, CSS and cookies disabled.
Links provide the ability to crawl a site, passing link popularity and keyword signals. So, a site that is not crawlable will not index by a search engine, which will produce no organic rankings, which leads to no natural search traffic or conversions.
Whiz-bang interactive sites designed in AJAX and Flash are likely to be only minimally crawlable, and only if specific optimization techniques are used. Although search engines are improving their ability to detect hidden spam, it's best to provide an accessible version for SEO and the visually impaired. Expandable navigation, fly-outs and rollovers can be formatted with CSS to be crawlable. Don’t just take your designer’s word for it, there’s too much at stake. Always test your site's functionality on staging, with JavaScript, CSS and cookies disabled.
SEO Motto 3: Crawlable Text
f dynamic content is being served on a page, recite this motto: Plain text must be crawlable with JavaScript and CSS disabled.
HTML text on the page confirms the keyword signals provided by links to a page. Many sites rely on images, video, and other visually engaging content to communicate information to human visitors, but that content is not readable by search engine crawlers. If the only crawlable plain text on the page is the navigational header and footer, then every page will send a very similar keyword signal to crawling search engine spiders. Unique text on each page needs to be plain text, formatted as desired with CSS.
SEO Motto 4: Unique Keyword Theme
Live by this motto when making content and content management system decisions: Every page must send a unique keyword signal.
Every page has a unique reason to exist. The platform must have the ability to expose unique keyword signals on every page in a unique title tag, meta description and keywords, HTML headings, and permanent body copy.
Every template should be designed to contain at least an H1 heading and one sentence of permanent body copy. For very large sites, each field (except the body copy) should be automatically populated with a formula that places specified text from the database in a specified order. Each field also needs to be manually editable to enable individual optimization.
SEO Motto 5: Almost Always Use a 301 Redirect
Any time a URL is changed, recite this motto: Create a permanent 301 redirect.
This mantra is generally abhorred by IT teams, and surprisingly misunderstood overall. But, 301 redirects are the best tool to channel the existing link popularity from old URLs into new URLs. 301 redirects give the site a chance at holding steady and/or growing instead of starting over from scratch, and obeying this mantra is critical to a redesigned site’s SEO success.
302s only redirect, allowing link popularity to wither and legacy URL indexing to remain. 404s can only de-index, which means link popularity withers and neither humans nor bots will receive the desired page. But, 301s can redirect, pass link popularity and de-index legacy URLs.
URL changes can be as small as a single value change in a long parameter string, or as large as static keyword URLs replacing scraggly dynamic URLs. 301 redirects can be done with pattern matching if both the legacy and new URLs follow predictable patterns. If not, determine which URLs have the most link popularity to pass to the new URLs and 301 those directly, while 301-directing everything else to the major category or homepage.
Lastly, be sure to test any 301 redirects with a server header checker. As easy as it sounds in theory, many servers default to 302 redirects, and it can be easy to accidentally implement an incorrect redirect.
Article Credit: www.practicalecommerce.com
Posted on 08.07.2009
A steady flow of organic search engine traffic can be the difference between a successful website business and a failed one, so choosing a professional to help you optimize your website may be one of the most important business decisions you will make. But how will you decide which SEO professional to hire for an in-house position or which SEO firm to hire
as a consultant? Well, you might consider my three principles for
selecting a good SEO optimizer. These principles provide a starting
place for your decision-making process. With them, you will better
understand what questions to ask SEO professionals and how to look for
more information about what SEO professionals do or how search engines
index, analyze, and rank URLs.
Principle No. 1: Be Sure the Cobbler Has Shoes
Not too long ago, I was working as the marketing communications
manager for a multi-billion dollar semiconductor company. We had a
great new website, a few rich Internet applications to spice things up,
and good web copy. But we wanted to do more, so we began interview SEO
experts. One call still stands out in my memory. The conversation went
something like this:
SEO Expert: "...so as you can see from what I am
telling you, my firm is one of the smartest SEO consultancies on the
planet. Why we even invented sliced bread..."
Armando: "So while you were talking, I was
searching for terms like "search engine optimization," "SEO
consultancy," and "search engine ranking professional" and your firm
does not show up on the first 25 results pages."
SEO Expert: "Well you know what they say about the cobbler's shoes."
Armando: "No, actually, I don't know what they say about the cobbler's shoes."
SEO Expert: "Well, the cobbler's shoes are never as nice as the shoes he makes for others."
Armando: "Really, well can you provide a list of the shoes you've made for others?"
SEO Expert: "I'm sorry, we keep client information in strict confidence."
Armando: "Goodbye." (A click is heard.)
Before you hire any SEO professional or cobbler, you need to see
some shoes. Have the SEO candidate provide a list of at least ten
comparable websites he has optimized and the associated queries those
ten websites were optimized for. Then visit the top five search
engines—Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, and AOL Search—looking at each
search term to see how well your SEO pro makes shoes, so to speak.
If the SEO firm or professional you're interviewing cannot provide this list, move on to a professional who can.
Principle No. 2: Avoid "Guaranteed" SERP Results
If the SEO professional you are interviewing tells you that she can
guarantee a top result on Google, Yahoo!, or Bing search engine results
pages, he or she is lying.
There is no way to guarantee a top position in any good search
engine. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and the like do not have "special
relationships" with any SEO professionals.
Furthermore, sometimes there is just too much competition. Yes, like
it or not, there are some keyword phrases that your site will never
dominate or even rank well for in organic results. Sorry, not every
page is worthy of a No. 1 ranking.
Principle No. 3: Analyze SEO Tactics
Ask the SEO professional you are considering about the particular
optimization tactics he will use to improve your URL's performance.
Take note of these tactics, and do a bit of research. Avoid so-called
SEO professionals that use tactics that are not effective or
black-hat/gray-hat techniques, which could get your site penalized.
As a specific example of a time-wasting tactic, watch out for SEO
professionals that tout keyword density or localized keyword density.
Certainly, keyword phrases are important, since we search for keywords.
But the idea that keyword density (which is often calculated by
dividing the number of times a term i appears in a given document j by the total number of terms in that given document l)
measures anything is nonsense. Keyword density, at best, measures an
effect not a cause, and an SEO professional that imagines this
technique will work is akin to an alchemist.
Some of the black-hat/gray-hat tactics to avoid like the plague include:
- Cloaking – Showing one kind of content to human visitors and different content to search bots.
- Comment spamming – Leaving comments on blogs or other websites that are designed just to link back to a target URL.
- Link farming – Developing pages just so those pages can link back to a target URL.
- Link buying – Purchasing links in body copy of sites in order to generate links to a target URL.
- Spamglish – Creating nonsensical, keyword dense pages to "trick" search engines.
- Shadow domains – Sites that funnel visitors to a target URL by deceptive redirects or similar means.
Conversely, look for SEO professionals that use tactics that seek to
make the user experience better, to organize a site according to World
Wide Web Consortium recommendations (i.e., proper use of an <h1> tag not using tables for layout), or to use siloing or PageRank sculpting to focus PageRank.
Summing Up
SEO is an important part of ecommerce marketing. If your business
has grown to the point that you need help making good SEO choices, you
should consider either hiring a professional to work for you directly
or retaining a firm to act as an advisor.
A good SEO professional will always focus on user experience, since
that is what search engines focus on. You can expect services like
content review; site structure review; web content suggestions,
including advice on redirects or error pages, title tags, header tags,
and URL rewriting; and keyword research.
Finally, be sure to check out Greg Laptevsky's "8 Tips for Choosing an SEO Professional" and Stephan Spencer's "SEO: Choosing a Vendor" which provide a background for my three principles for selecting a good search engine optimizer.
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