Archive for the ‘Website Development’ Category

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SEO Basics

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Author: Prashant Shukla

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to “search engine optimizers,” an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients’ sites. Some commentators, and even some SEOs, break down methods used by practitioners into categories such as “white hat SEO” (methods generally approved by search engines, such as building content and improving site quality), or “black hat SEO” (tricks such as cloaking and spamdexing). White hatters say that black hat methods are an attempt to manipulate search rankings unfairly. Black hatters counter that all SEO is an attempt to manipulate rankings, and that the particular methods one uses to rank well are irrelevant.

Search engines display different kinds of listings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), including: pay per click advertisements, paid inclusion listings, and organic search results. SEO is primarily concerned with advancing the goals of a website by improving the number and position of its organic search results for a wide variety of relevant keywords.

Early search engines

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a site to the various engines which would run spiders, programs to “crawl” the site, and store the collected data. The default search-bracket was to scan an entire webpage for so-called related search words, so a page with many different words matched more searches, and a webpage containing a dictionary-type listing would match almost all searches, limited only by unique names. The search engines then sorted the information by topic, and served results based on pages they had crawled.

Organic search engines

Google was started by two PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, and brought a new concept to evaluating web pages. This concept, called PageRank, has been important to the Google algorithm from the start. PageRank relies heavily on incoming links and uses the logic that each link to a page is a vote for that page’s value. The more incoming links a page had the more “worthy” it is. The value of each incoming link itself varies directly based on the PageRank of the page it comes from and inversely on the number of outgoing links on that page.

The relationship between SEO and the search engines

The first mentions of Search Engine Optimization don’t appear on Usenet until 1997, a few years after the launch of the first Internet search engines. The operators of search engines recognized quickly that some people from the webmaster community were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and even manipulating the page rankings in search results. In some early search engines, such as Infoseek, ranking first was as easy as grabbing the source code of the top-ranked page, placing it on your website, and submitting a URL to instantly index and rank that page.
Due to the high value and targeting of search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference named AirWeb was created to discuss bridging the gap and minimizing the sometimes damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

About the Author:

Prashant K Shukla is a successful webmaster and author. Visit his website http://www.mysmartseo.com to read more articles on SEO. Know about lot of free tools to help link building, get back links, boost traffic and ranking of your website. Permission to reprint this article is granted if the article is reproduced in its entirety, without modification, including the bio information. Please include a hyper link to http://www.mysmartseo.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – SEO Basics

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One way Link Building: Securing Lasting Results for Your Website

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Author: Akhila Choudhary

If you are contemplating link popularity building , the best advice is think long term. Don’t rely on the traditional reciprocal links. They may give you link popularity for a short period of time but are not long lasting. On the contrary, the benefits you get from one way link building last for years and help improve your website’s ranking on search engines results.
Now, let’s see how one-way links are more beneficial than reciprocal links. It is true that both one way links and reciprocal links do a world of good to your website’s ranking on search engines. Link popularity is one of the criteria that Google and Yahoo use while evaluating web pages. Pages acquire link popularity depending on the pages that link to them. But if you use a number of reciprocal links, the popularity of your site may even be decreased. Though these links point back to your site, they may not be links which shares the same area of interest as yours. They may lead to sites which are quite different from yours in term of content.
One way links are difficult to acquire. But once you have them, you are guaranteed of lasting benefits. These are links that points back to site and they also lead to sites that share the same topical focus as yours. As such, they also add value to the users and search engines see this as an authentic and not an artificial way of building link popularity. Consult link building services providers to get one way linking sources.
Building links through this method also secures permanent results as website owners feels that their users can be benefited from your site’s content. Hence they don’t easily drop your link from their sites. So turn to one way links for link building.

About the Author:

I am the webmaster at www.synapseinteractive.com . Synapse Interactive is a one way link building company in India.

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SEO – Get your Business to the top of Google

Monday, May 4th, 2009

By Scott Van Achte

In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.
In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.
The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly.

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.
Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to improve your chances of success.

Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.
It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term “hotel” and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.
If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.

Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.
The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and not repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site should have its own unique description tag.
Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won’t influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.

Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.
This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.

Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.
To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as “~hotels”. Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the “~hotels” example Google brings up phrases such as ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘accommodation’, as well as various hotel chain names such as ‘Hilton Hotels’.

Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.
If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can provide some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.

Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL’s can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:
MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
While a link that simply states “click here” or “www.domainname.com” does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use “discount hotels” as its anchor.

Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.

Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google’s ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google’s Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google’s cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn’t mean Google won’t follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.

URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.
MyTourismSite.com/?locid=”victoria”&catid=”accommodations”
&type=”hotel”&comp=”hilton”
stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:
MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

SUMMARY
Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture.

Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott’s articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com

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12 Simple Steps to Effective Websites

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

By Nancy Fraser

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.

Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their website doesn’t get more traffic and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services.

It seems that the rules change as often as Oprah changes her clothes and who could ever hope to keep up with that!

Price quotes for search engine optimization are all over the map; the process seems never-ending and expensive.

How is it that some people seem to have great success on the web without spending a huge amount of money? Is it unrealistic to think that you can make a living working on the web?

When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge it helps to break things down into bite-sized pieces.

Effective websites should include the following:
1. Your website needs to focus on a specific niche.

2. You need to do keyword research and although Google no longer gives weight to Meta keywords some of the other major search engines still do.

3. Your website should have the main keyword used throughout and each page should be written around 5-10 keywords that are tightly focused on that particular page’s topic.

4. Content is still King. Well written, focused content is crucial.

5. Meta titles need to include your keywords.

6. Organization of content should include headings and subtitles to make it easy for readers to scan the pages. Be sure to include your keywords in these headings as well.

7. Most people on the web are looking for information. If you don’t give them anything of value or entertain them, they will be gone, probably for good.

8. Use keywords in links whereever possible.

9. Include a call to action and,if possible, offer a Free trial. You have to build trust before you can make a sale.

10. Check your website in various browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, etc.) to make sure it displays equally well in all.

11. Your personality is what attracts people to you so why would you create a generic website with all of the excitement of a flat glass of pop. Keep the content fresh so it has Fizz!

12. Most importantly, have realistic expectations of what you want to achieve with your website. With all the hype about overnight successes on the internet it’s difficult to put your results into perspective. If you expect instant success and it isn’t happening, it’s easy to become demoralized and quit before you reach your goal.

Some Other Important Web Marketing Tips

Google page rank counts! The higher your page rank number the higher you will rank in user searches. How do you find out your page rank? Download the Google toolbar here for Internet Explorer http://toolbar.google.com/T4/ or here for FireFox http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/install.html.

Improve your page rank by encouraging other highly ranked websites in complementary businesses to link to yours and by developing content with a niche focus. Page rank is also affected by traffic numbers. A couple of ways you can boost traffic are pay-per-click advertising and posting articles on the web.

Your web image is at least as important as your personal image. You wouldn’t go out to meet a prospective client wearing a mishmash of styles and colours but many businesses have websites with tools that don’t work, tables and text that are out of alignment, old information, dated colours, and confusing navigation. Those things are bad enough but when an experienced web developer looks at the code on a website they often find a website that looks good but is not built to encourage search traffic.

Be prepared like the wise owl and make the job of marketing your business as easy as possible with a website that enhances your brand image and is technically sound and purrrr your way to success.

About The Author
Nancy Fraser of Nota Bene Consulting has been helping clients get better results with their marketing and advertising for over 20 years. Sign up for Notable News and get free marketing tips at www.notable-marketing.com.

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Work On Your Web Content And Your Content Will Work For You

Friday, April 24th, 2009

Effective website content can generate targeted traffic, improve conversions, increase average sales value, and even increase customer retention levels.

It’s no secret that website content plays a pivotal role in generating traffic; virtually every marketing website and SEO newsletter extols the search ranking based benefit of keyword optimised content.

However, content that concentrates solely on keyword densities and extensive keyword lists is often benefit of character and may be doing more harm than good – you can generate as much website traffic as you like but if your content doesn’t effectively convert traffic into bottom line sales then your business will suffer.

You Can Improve Rankings With Good Quality Content

Website content CAN improve rankings, but improved search engine positions do not have to come at the expense of poor quality content.

Use your researched keywords but add inflexions as well as semantically, or topically, related keywords. Throw in a collection of Search Engine Presumed Synonyms (SEPS) and you have the ingredients to write high quality content that will perform in every way.

Convert Visitors To Customers

Writing good quality web page copy isn’t enough to ensure you get conversions. The copy needs to sell and it needs to sell to your target market.

If you don’t know or understand your target market then you should start researching and really get to know the people that will be visiting your website. Effective copy should also give visitors a reason to buy your products or pay for your services and to do so immediately.

Generate A Buzz

Word of mouth marketing has been one of the most effective forms of marketing for small businesses and service providers for generations.

Websites can benefit in a similar way but on a much grander scale. Offer something of genuine value that causes intrigue, answers a question, or offers credible and useful information. Not only will your visitors appreciate it and be more likely to trust what you say but they’ll also be inclined to tell others with similar interests. The end result could be the type of viral marketing you only dreamed of.

Enjoy Greater Average Sales Figures

If you’re adequately tracking your website’s performance then you should have a good knowledge of the average sales value your site generates. The greater the average figure, the more you can afford to spend on design, development, marketing, and other website and business improvements.

Your return on investment will be greatly improved if you can provide content that persuades visitors that they need to buy a handful of products rather than one. As well as offering discounts or offers such as free shipping for orders over a certain value, directed content can help towards this end.

Gain Greater Customer Retention Rates

The most successful businesses are those that retain their customer base. This is true whether you’re selling products or services, whether you’re promoting your own products or those of an affiliate program.

A returning customer costs you less in marketing, improves your website ROI, and increases your sales figure. What’s more, a returning customer that’s happy will already be sold on the service that you offer; they will trust you and believe your word.

Offer useful and insightful tips and articles on how to get the most from your products or services and always provide a high level of after sales customer service to enjoy the best possible customer retention rates.

Author: Matt Jackson>

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Twitter! Twitter! What is Twitter?

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

by Dianne Ronnow

Everyone online seems to be talking about Twitter these days! But what exactly is Twitter?

This is Twitter.com’s official definition:

“Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co-workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.”

It’s pretty simple really. Twitter is a site where you toss out short notes on the web that tell people what you are doing, feeling, thinking right now. It’s a great way for busy people to keep in touch with friends and quickly broadcast information about where you are and what you’re up to. Twitter is like an instant messaging blog that posts your conversations to the world (although you can also have private conversations.) You only have 140 spaces to write something– so you have to keep it short.

With Twitter you have the option to link it to your mobile phone or to your instant messenger. This turns Twitter into a powerful mobile communication tool, since you can both send and receive updates on your phone, and stay in touch wherever you are.

What is the point? Well, if you’ve ever been hooked on Facebook, MySpace, email, blogging, one of the instant messaging clients, or even just spent a lot of time texting on your cell phone, you probably get the idea. It is a quick way to stay in touch, meet new people, and have some fun. It is like a mini blog.

Twitter isn’t just for personal use, it also has many applications for business use. It can be used to broadcast your company’s latest news and blog posts. Twitter is good for interacting with your customers and employees. It can also enable easy internal group communication, feedback and collaboration.

For the entrepreneur and home worker, Twitter is becoming an important part of business promotion, web marketing, personal branding, and the social networking scene. It can be a great tool to get your messages out to a targeted audience and find new business leads.

There are some great twitter resources and tool out there on the web. One of my favorites is Tweetdeck.com. It organizes your Twitter information and gives your Twitter account an instant messenger style format. Firefox has some great Twitter add-ons. Another good Twitter tool is Tweetlater.com. You can send postdated tweets and auto reply tweets with this. There is also a Twitter download that you can add to your Apple/Mac Dashboard. You can also add twitter feed and wigets to your Facebook, WordPress and Blogger blogs.

If you are going to be using Twitter to promote your business, here are a few important Twitter Business Tips:

1. Don’t blatantly promote. This is more of a passive promotion media. Blatant promotions turn your audience off.

2. Don’t let it take over and distract you from other important tasks. It’s easy to get too caught up in Twittering and lose track of time.

3. Don’t let it take the place of real communication in your life. Twitter is a communication tool not a communication replacement.

4. Do have fun! Share interesting non-business as well as business related tidbits of information that others might enjoy learning.

So, are you ready? Let’s Twitter!

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