Posted by Pradeep | Posted in What Is SEO Part II ? | Posted on 4:56 AM
VI. Static Versus Dynamic URLs
Based on the previous section, you might have got the impression that the algorithms of search engines try to humiliate every designer effort to make a site gorgeous. Well, it has been explained why search engines do not like image, movies, applets and other extras. Now, you might think that search engines are far too cheeky to dislike dynamic URLs either. Honestly, users are also not in love with URLs like http://domain.com/product.php?cid=1&pid=5 because such URLs do not tell much about the contents of the page.
There are a couple of good reasons why static URLs score better than dynamic URLs. First, dynamic URLs are not always there – i.e. the page is generated on request after the user performs some kind of action (fills a form and submits it or performs a search using the site's search engine). In a sense, such pages are nonexistent for search engines, because they index the Web by crawling it, not by filling in forms.
Second, even if a dynamic page has already been generated by a previous user request and is stored on the server, search engines might just skip it if it has too many question marks and other special symbols in it. Once upon a time search engines did not index dynamic pages at all, while today they do index them but generally slower than they index static pages.
The idea is not to revert to static HTML only. Database-driven sites are great but it will be much better if you serve your pages to the search engines and users in a format they can easily handle. One of the solutions of the dynamic URLs problem is called URL rewriting. There are special tools (different for different platforms and servers) that rewrite URLs in a friendlier format, so they appear in the browser like normal HTML pages. Try the URL Rewriting Tool below, it will convert the cryptic text from the previous example into something more readable, like http://mydomain.com/product-categoryid-1-productid-5.
VII. Promoting Your Site to Increase Traffic
The main purpose of SEO is to make your site visible to search engines, thus leading to higher rankings in search results pages, which in turn brings more traffic to your site. And having more visitors (and above all buyers) is ultimately the goal in sites promotion. For truth's sake, SEO is only one alternative to promote your site and increase traffic – there are many other online and offline ways to do accomplish the goal of getting high traffic and reaching your target audience. We are not going to explore them in this tutorial but just keep in mind that search engines are not the only way to get visitors to your site, although they seem to be a preferable choice and a relatively easy way to do it.
1. Submitting Your Site to Search Directories, forums and special sites
After you have finished optimizing your new site, time comes to submit it to search engines. Generally, with search engines you don't have to do anything special in order to get your site included in their indices – they will come and find you. Well, it cannot be said exactly when they will visit your site for the first time and at what intervals they will visit it later but there is hardly anything that you can do to invite them. Sure, you can go to their Submit a Site pages in submit the URL of your new site but by doing this do not expect that they will hop to you right away. What is more, even if you submit your URL, most search engines reserve the right to judge whether to crawl your site or not. Anyway, here are the URLs for submitting pages in the three major search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
In addition to search engines, you may also want to have your site included in search directories as well. Although search directories also list sites that are relevant to a given topic, they are different from search engines in several aspects. First, search directories are usually maintained by humans and the sites in them are reviewed for relevancy after they have been submitted. Second, search directories do not use crawlers to get URLs, so you need to go to them and submit your site but once you do this, you can stay there forever and no more efforts on your side are necessary. Some of the most popular search directories are DMOZ and Yahoo! (the directory, not the search engine itself) and here are the URLs of their submissions pages: DMOZ and Yahoo!.
Sometimes posting a link to your site in the right forums or special sites can do miracles in terms of traffic. You need to find the forums and sites that are leaders in the fields of interest to you but generally even a simple search in Google or the other major search engines will retrieve their names. For instance, if you are a hardware freak, type “hardware forums” in the search box and in a second you will have a list of sites that are favorites to other hardware freaks. Then you need to check the sites one by one because some of them might not allow posting links to commercial sites. Posting into forums is more time-consuming than submitting to search engines but it could also be pretty rewarding.
2. Specialized Search Engines
Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are not the only search engines on Earth, nor even the only general-purpose ones. There are many other general-purpose and specialized search engines and some of them can be really helpful for reaching your target audience. You just can't imagine for how many niches specialized search engines exist – from law, to radiostations, to educational one! Some of them are actually huge sites that gather Webwide resources on a particular topic but almost all of them have sections for submitting links to external sites of interest. So, after you find the specialized search engines in your niche, go to their site and submit your URL – this could prove more trafficworthy than striving to get to the top of Google.
3. Paid Ads and Submissions
We have already mentioned some other alternatives to search engines – forums, specialized sites and search engines, search directories – but if you need to make sure that your site will be noticed, you can always resort to paid ads and submissions. Yes, paid listings are a fast and guaranteed way to appear in search results and most of the major search engines accept payment to put your URL in the Paid Links section for keywords of interest to you but you also must have in mind that users generally do not trust paid links as much as they do with the normal ones – in a sense it looks like you are bribing the search engine to place you where you can't get on your own, so think twice about the pros and cons of paying to get listed.
Free SEO Tools (99 SEO Tools)
This Free SEO Tools a page with SEO Tools scripts that are free from your use. These tools will help you to optimize your website and move your search engine position higher.
View my SEO Tools page which has a collection of 99 tools from other sites.
- Website Analysis Tool (#1)
- Directory Search Tool (#2)
- Keyword Tool (#3)
- Keyword Data Miner (#4)
- Website Keyword Analysis (#5)
- Keyword Top 10 Site Info (#6)
- PageRank Tool (#7)
- Site Stats Tool (#8)
- Page Rank Checker
- Internal Page Rank
- Link Popularity
- Indexed Pages
- DMOZ Listing Checker
- SERP Checker
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Key Word Density
Key Word Density is the measure of the occurrence of targeted search terms with in a web page as a percentage of the page's total word count. When performing Search engine optimization an effort is made to ensure that an adequate density of key words / phrases occurs through out the web page. These key words can be represented in various areas of the page including:-
* Title tags
* The description
* heading Tags
* the body text
* alt text on images
* incoming and outgoing links
Key Parameters of SEO: Prominence, Weight, Frequency, Proximity
Keyword Prominence
Prominence is a measure of keyword importance that indicates how close a keyword is to the beginning of the analyzed page area (e.g. page title). If some word is used at the beginning of the title, headings, or close to the beginning of the visible text of the page, it is considered more important than other words. Prominence is calculated separately for each important page area. HTML markup lets you emphasize certain document areas against the others. The most important items are placed at the top, and their importance is gradually reduced towards the bottom. Keyword prominence works much the same way. Usually, the closer a keyword to the top of a page and to the beginning of a sentence, the higher its prominence is. However, search engines also check if the keyword is present in the middle and at the bottom of the page, and you should be aware of that.
100% prominence is given to a keyword or keyphrase that appears at the beginning of the analyzed page area. The keyword/keyphrase in the middle of the analyzed area will have 50% prominence.
Let's imagine our key phrase is "Office furniture" and look at the following examples of possible titles we could give to our pages:
- Furniture Market – Office furniture at affordable prices
- Office furniture at affordable prices – FurnitureMarket.com
The second title will definitely do better for "Office furniture" since the prominence of our key phrase is 100% (this word combination goes from the very beginning), while in the first example it's only around 60%.
The importance of keyword prominence is illustrated by the following example:
A search on Google for "Digital Camera", shows the following result for the top rank -
Digital Camera Reviews and News: Digital Photography Review ...
Current digital photography news, digital camera reviews, articles and discussion forums.
As you see, the word combination "Digital camera" has a 100% prominence in the page title.
Keyword weight / keyword density
These two parameters are used as synonyms, although there's a slight mathematical difference between them. However, in this course both terms will refer to one and the same indicator - a measure of the percentage of keywords to the general number of words on a page. The results on the SERP (search engine result page) are ranked, in part, based on the percentage of words on a page that are similar to the words used in the query. When keyword density is artificially inflated, it is called "keyword stuffing" and is considered spam by all search engines.
In other words, keyword density, or weight, is a measure of how often a keyword is found in a specific area of the Web page like a title, heading, anchor name, visible text, etc. against all other words. Unlike keyword frequency, which is just a count, keyword density is a ratio which depends on the type of keyword, i.e. if the keyword consists of a single word, its density within some context will be lower than if it consisted of two words or a phrase. Density is calculated as the number of words in the key phrase multiplied by frequency and divided by the total number of words (including the keyword). So, to increase the keyword density, you should either add some more keywords or reduce the number of words in the page area. The proportion of the keywords to all words will become larger, so will the keyword density.
Let's assume we're optimizing for "long-range weather forecast software" and look at the following title examples:
- Weather Screen: long-range weather forecast software
- Weather Screen is a long-range weather forecast software that shows weather forecasts and daily horoscopes on your desktop
In terms of keyword density, the first title is much more profitable: the keyword density there approaches 65%, while in the second one it hardly reaches 40%.
In the BODY text of the page, keyword density is almost never this high. The recommended density for body text is 3-7% for each keyword you optimize for that page. (remember that each page should generally be optimized for no more than three keywords or phrases). This means that every keyword or keyphrase should repeat 3-7 times for every 100 words.
By excluding the stop words like "a", "and", "for", "at", "to" (generally, all auxiliary parts of speech – prepositions, articles, and conjunctions), you increase the weight of your keywords.
Keyword frequency
Frequency is the number of times your keyword is used in the analyzed area of the page. Unlike density, it does not depend on the total number of words on your page– it's an absolute index. If you repeat your key phrase 7 times, your frequency will be 7, no matter if your page has 7,000 words or only these keywords 7 times and nothing more.
Search engines use frequency as another measure of keyword importance. Pages with more keywords will be rated as more relevant results, and as such get higher rankings. However, using too many keywords is considered "keyword stuffing" (as well as excessive attempts to artificially increase your keyword density), and most search engines will penalize you for this practice. It is known as the oldest spammer's technique to artificially inflate rankings.
To see how frequency influences rankings, do a search on Google for any competitive and generalized keyword.
In our case, it is "design" and the first result on Google goes:
We see that keyword frequency in title is 2 and it is repeated in the extract from the body text.
Keyword proximity
Some engines, such as Google, use the concept of "keyword proximity" as part of their ranking formulas. "Keyword proximity" refers to how close keywords that make your key phrase are to each other. Remember our advice to optimize for a phrase that consists of more than one word. You should try to use your keyword combination as a unit, keeping your keywords together; however it's not always possible to sound natural by rigidly sticking to this rule. In these cases, try to put your keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.
International Widgets Inc is selling electronic widgets for 7 years. International Widgets is a company that specializes in electronic devices, widgets and other stuff...
You see that we try to use words "electronic" and "widgets" close to each other in the text so the spiders will understand we are targeting people who seek these kinds of widgets.
The logic of the search engine is such that if the words follow each other as they are typed in the search box, chances are these words are relevant. If they all appear in one paragraph, then the page is possibly relevant. The use of this is perhaps most obvious with Google due to the way they usually provide a description. Google will normally provide "quotes" from the text of a page that contain the keywords.
For instance, let's search Google for "Web design". One of the top results has the following description:
"Learn good web page design by looking at bad web pages…"
Notice the proximity of the words "web" and design (together with the frequency of "web").
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Target of SEO
· to create a SEO friendly web site,
· to increase site traffic,
· to attract targeted visitors (potential customers, clients)
· to have ranking higher than competitors
Basic SEO Tips
1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags.
2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.
3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.
4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.
5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag
6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods. A good rule of thumb is if your pages do not contain any words that reflect the content of the site you are linking to, do not link to it.
7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans.
8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.
9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.
10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.
Benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
· Search engine optimization will absolutely provide the lowest-cost traffic to your site but results generally take months to show up
· Search engine optimization could be thought as an investment for your site
· Search engine optimization involves a one-time fee and minimal monthly outlay
· Search engine optimization is time-consuming to implement, can mean recoding entire site
· Search engine optimization take months for results to kick in
· There is no guarantee for a specific ranking in Search engine optimization.
· Targets a relatively low number of high-trafficked keyword phrases in Search engine optimization.
· Over the long-term is much cheaper than pay-per-click
· Produces long-lasting results - good Search engine optimization can last for a year or more
· Substantial Increase in Search Engine Traffic, When the site ranks for words which people search often we get lots of targeted traffic, Compare the Organic listing search engine traffic with other types of online advertisements this one is much cheaper,
· Return of Investment is very fast and well worthy, Since Search engine optimization send only targeted traffic to a site the ROI for a site is quick and pretty high
· Return of Investment has direct impact in the conversion Ratio since this is targeted traffic the conversion rate is very high.
· Search engine traffic never stops once achieved high ranking for you, Search engines promote your site 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
BLOG:
A blog is a web page made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically — like a what's new page or a journal. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly — from links and commentary about other web sites, to news about a company/person/idea, to diaries, photos, poetry, mini-essays, project updates, even fiction.
Blog posts are like instant messages to the web.
Many blogs are personal, "what's on my mind" type musings. Others are collaborative efforts based on a specific topic or area of mutual interest. Some blogs are for play. Some are for work. Some are for both.
Blogs are also excellent team/department/company/family communication tools. They help small groups communicate in a way that is simpler and easier to follow than email or discussion forums. Use a private blog on an intranet to allow team members to post related links, files, quotes, or commentary. Set up a family blog where relatives can share personal news. A blog can help keep everyone in the loop, promote cohesiveness and group culture, and provide an informal "voice" of a project or department to outsiders
Sandbox
The google sandbox prevents sites from ranking in the Search Engine Results for around 6-15 months if your site was not in googles index previous to 15 months ago and you have more relevant anchor text than your competitor then your site is more than likely in the sandbox.
Doorway pages
Doorways are typically, in size, small websites. The sole purpose, are most of the time, to earn commission by either redirecting you, or placing ads all over the place. The site itself usually present no real value for its visitors. Google is smart - it can detect these kind of pages, and you will be penalized when caught.
Ways to Build Backlinks
Even if plenty of backlinks come to your site the natural way, additional quality backlinks are always welcome and the time you spend building them is not wasted. Among the acceptable ways of building quality backlinks are getting listed in directories, posting in forums, blogs and article directories.
The first step in building backlinks is to find the places from which you can get quality backlinks.
Getting Listed in Directories
If you are serious about your Web presence, getting listed in directories like DMOZ and Yahoo is a must – not only because this is a way to get some quality backlinks for free, but also because this way you are easily noticed by both search engines and potential visitors. Generally inclusion in search directories is free but the drawback is that sometimes you have to wait a couple of months before you get listed in the categories of your choice.
Forums and Article Directories
Generally search engines index forums, so posting in forums and blogs is also a way to get quality backlinks with the anchor text you want. If the forum or blog is a respected one, a backlink is valuable. However, in some cases the forum or blog administrator can edit your post, or even delete it if it does not fit into the forum or blog policy. Also, sometimes administrators do not allow links in posts, unless they are relevant ones. In some rare cases (which are more an exception than a rule) the owner of a forum or a blog would have banned search engines from indexing it and in this case posting backlinks is pointless.
While forum postings can be short and do not require much effort, submitting articles to directories can be more time-consuming because generally articles are longer than posts and need careful thinking while writing them. But it is also worth and it is not so difficult to do.
News Announcements and Press Releases
Although this is hardly an everyday way to build backlinks, it is an approach that gives good results, if handled properly. There are many sites (for instance, here is a list of some of them) that publish for free or for a fee news announcements and press releases. A professionally written press release about an important event can bring you many, many visitors and the backlink from a respected site to yours is a good boost to your SEO efforts. The tricky part is that you cannot release press releases if there is nothing newsworthy. That is why we say that news announcements and press releases are not a commodity way to build backlinks.
MISCELLANEOUS POINTS
1. SEO is also known as Organic SEO.
2. Finding the proper keywords to use for optimization is the most important phase of the SEO process.
3. Links count as a vote for your site.
4. The most important part of your website is quality content.
5. We must choose keywords carefully.
6. When you want search engines to crawl your entire website, the best thing to do is adding a site map to your website
7. The least amount of keywords you can place in the title, the more weight Google will give to each of the keywords and the higher you will rank.
8. Keywords increases our website Traffic.
9. Keywords are at the heart of achieving high search engine rankings.
10. Link building helps drive in traffic.
11. First, take care about the ratio between outbound and inbound links. If your outbound links are times your inbound, this is bad. Second (and more important) is the risk that your link exchange partners are link farms. If this is the case, you could even be banned from search engines, so it is too risky to indulge in link exchange programs.
12. A lot of search engine optimization techniques involve editing the basic HTML code. At least you should be able to view the source code of any page and understand what it all means, and basically edit it as necessary.
Use the right keyword phrase
Title character count to be 60 characters. The first three of four words in your title tag should be the key word phrase you are trying to optimize for.
Write a compelling description tag
Title tags are for search engines, description tags are for people. Spend time researching and writing a description tag that compels the reader to click on your listing. Come up with a great offer, use action words. Use shock and awe. Use anything that will get them to click.
Use H1 tags
An often neglected search engine optimization technique is to put your keyword phrase in H1 tags on your page. This tells Google that the following text is about your keyword phrase. Google weights H1 tags nearly as highly as title tags. This tip alone can drastically improve your Google. Similarly, the use of bold and strong html tags can emphasize a key word phrase within the paragraph text where it may not be appropriate to use H1 or H2 tags.
Get the right Keyword Ratio
Aim for a keyword density of around 3-5% of the page contents. Try to work your key word phrase into the page so that it reads naturally. This may take some research and analysis of successful web sites. Remember to use headings and sub-headings that include your key words.
Use alt tags and description tags on images
Key words used image file names, alt tags and description tags add to the key word density of any web page. They doesn't make a huge difference, but every little bit helps. In some product classes a Google image search may lead web surfers to your web site.
Get quality one-way incoming links
Links can be generated through article marketing and directory submissions As far as Google is concerned; link exchanges are just about dead. They can help to get your web site spidered and indexed more quickly, but these days they add very little in terms of Google search engine rankings unless the link is on a trusted site and that site has excellent page rank. Wikipedia and DMOZ are examples of such trusted sites.
Informative Articles
A more effective approach is to write interesting and informative articles and submit them to article directories. Make sure that you use the author bio/resource box to maximum advantage by using your key word phrase in the link anchor text, AND, by pointing the anchor text to the correct page. Your home page may not be the best choice of pages for your selected key phrase. This will also ensure that more pages than just your home page gets indexed.
Use Social book marking
If you have something newsworthy, humorous, quirky, unique or shocking to say, submit a link to your web page to sites like digg.com or redit.com. These up and coming web 2.0 power houses can create a buzz overnight driving thousands of interested visitors to your web site. Note, just because you build it doesn't mean they will come. If it's boring link it will quickly get buried by newer and more interesting stories. But what the hell, it's free to submit links to these sites and you never know your luck.
If you use all the above mantra’s then definitely your site will rank among top ten on the Google searches. Just go ahead do the best for successful future in the internet marketing world.
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