Anchor Text: The High Value Of In-Text Links
Search engines have long valued textual links. That's why anchor text is one of the best ways to build your internal links. Sure, you can - and should - have a menu bar, either at the top of your web pages, on the side, or both. But a menu bar only takes you so far. I highly recommend in text links using keywords that will take your visitors from one page to the next. You don't want to overdo this though. Don't put too many in at one time. One or two per page is the most you want to include. Otherwise, it will look like search engine spam. So what's an example of anchor text? Let's say your keyword is search engine optimization. If you CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Copywriting Is More Important Than Web Design
One of the mistakes that Web business owners often commit is that they spend too much time on the design of their website, and not enough time on the content. Keep in mind that the content of your website is more important than the design, which is why people who invest too much money on site designs primarily instead of focusing on its content will only end up wasting it since this will only bring in a few people to visit their website. Instead, try to invest in copywriting initially, and only spend money on the site design later on. How true this is. Too many new webmasters or business owners who want to start a business online start a website and think that a CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
HTML Or CSS? Which Is More Important?
I recently witnessed an argument between two friends that centered around whether HTML or CSS was more important. I'll have to say that I believe they are equally important, though if I had to choose one or the other I'd pick HTML. HTML has a slight edge because of its nature. You can't build a website without HTML. This is the language of the web. Your website might not be pretty. It could just be a plain white background with words and hyperlinks on it. Believe it or not, there are still some web pages out there that look like this. Those pages you made in 1995 - they're still there. While you cannot build a website without HTML, you can build one without CSS. However, CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Google Universal And Vertical Search Optimization
SEOs are now speculating about Google Universal and how optimization techniques will change as a result of Google's new direction. The most intelligent thing I've seen so far is the idea that it will be necessary to optimize web pages, blogs, etc. for each vertical search technology owned by Google in order to ensure a more likely listing in Google Universal. I'd have to agree. What that means on a practical level is that you will have to ensure you have different elements of search engine marketing on your website and blogs and make sure you optimize them correctly. Here are some of the vertical search models you will need to target individually: Google Video Google images Google Maps Google Local Google News Google Blog Search Google Photos Google Books Google Patents Google Products These are just CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Search Engine Rankings Rely On Many Key Factors
It is important, when you discuss SEO techniques, that you not over-emphasize certain key criteria in ranking systems. For instance, a conversation recently between a colleague and I centered around keyword density. My colleague, as bright a guy as he is, kept stressing the importance of a density somewhere between 3% and 7%, saying that keeping the keyword density of your web pages in that range will increase your chances of ranking well in the search engines. Well, yes and no. It's a bit of a cliche and somewhat trite, but that's a standard response. Keyword density is simply the number of times a specific keyword is used during a body of content versus the number of words in the content itself. That is, you take CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Google Universal Is A Double-Edged Sword
Google Universal is getting a lot of attention right now. SEOs all over the world are speculating about how the latest change at Google will affect the way is SEO is done. If you don't know by now, Google has changed the way it returns results for search queries. Calling the new search model Google Universal, the search engine incorporates all of its technology in the search results. In other words, when you go to Google and type in your search query you are likely to see results from Google News, Google Videos, Google Images, Google Blog search, Google Local, and who knows what else. I see this as a positive for searchers and for SEOs. Here's why: Google Universal Will Mean Fewer Outdated Results We all CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Web Design Vs. SEO: Who Should Control Your Direction?
You can search until your eyes fall out but you are not likely to find a web development company that knows squat about SEO. Many will claim that they can SEO your website. Odds are, though, they can't. You have to understand the difference between a search engine friendly design and search engine optimization. They are not the same animal. The fact is, most web designers are not SEO savvy. That's why you should insist on having your SEO consultant be involved in the web design process. Too many companies hire a web designer, or web development company, and spend thousands of dollars only to later have to re-do their website because it isn't getting crawled, or not crawled well, by the search engines. You can CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
More On Google And Yahoo
Yesterday, I talked about marketing your website on Google versus Yahoo. There is yet another reason - and this could be the most important reason - not to focus too heavily on one search engine or another. Conventional marketing wisdom says market your website toward Google because they have the strictest rules and if you meet Google's favor then you'll receive the praise of the other search engines as well. Too bad it doesn't work that way in reality. The search engines all have different criteria. There algorithms weigh more than 100 factors in determining your rank. Each search engine chooses its own factors and the weight of those factors in their search ranking schemes. What works for one search engine doesn't work for another. Here's an CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Don’t Get Fixated On Google, Know Your Market
Let me start by asking you a question: What's the number-one business killer on the internet? The answer is obvious, but many people miss it. The answer is: not being found on the first page of Google. This is fairly common advice, but it's a bit misleading. Later in the article this author cites a comScore study that showed Google held 47.5 percent of the search market in February 2007 while Yahoo had just 28.1 percent. Then he justifies spending all of your time trying to please Google on these statistics. If you think about it, that's not really good advice. Suppose that there were three major automobile makers in the world. We'll call them Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler. Now assume that Ford sells 47.5 CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Dashes Or No Dashes? The Dilemma Of The URL
Websites that still use underscores for their URLs are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Some say that people who still use underscores are "old school" while dashes seem be used far more often these days. A usability related reason for using dashes rather than underscores is the elimination of the confusion created between a space and an underscore when the URL is viewed as a link, or when printing such a URL. More to the point, the chances that a combination of keywords contained in your Web site is included in the SERPs increase exponentially when using dashes. For exemple: a URL that contains "seo_techniques" will be shown by the search engine only if the user searches for seo_techniques (this kind of search is rarely performed); whereas searches CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Who Should Hire An SEO or PPC Consultant?
If you've been thinking about outsourcing some or all of your Internet marketing you'll want to think long and hard about hiring someone to do your SEO or PPC work. First, ask yourself if it's necessary. It may not be. It's not that I don't believe these are valuable services. They are. After all, I provide both services to a growing list of clients. But I realize that the services aren't for everyone. First, SEO. What is it? Well, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It is the science of optimizing web pages to rank well in the search engines for specific search terms. Everyone can benefit and everyone should engage in SEO. You can't really survive without it. But should you hire someone to do your CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What SEO Factors Are Important To Your Website?
SEOmoz has an excellent poll on search engine ranking factors. The poll includes a host of well-known, and some not-so-well-known, SEO experts. And, no, I'm not one of them. The contributors were asked to determine whether certain criteria are important for ranking purposes at the search engines. It's worth studying. I highly recommend that you take some time to look the list over. The macro-topics include: Keyword Use Factors Page Attributes Site/Domain Attributes Inbound Link Attributes Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes Within each of these general topics, experts were asked to judge the weight of more specific questions such as whether keyword usage within the title tag is a heavily weighted factor. In all, there are 53 out of the hundreds of criteria that could be judged on the list of topics discussed CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Rescuing Your Site From Supplemental Status
Search engine ranking is one of those things that website owners are constantly fighting to improve. The worst of search engine ranking is being termed "supplemental." With Google, once you are in the supplemental directory, getting your site back out is like battling upstream with a spoon though the rapids. Recently, an article was published that gave some very worthy tips on doing just that, rescuing your site from the black hole of "supplemental" listing. The first point the writer made is to make sure that the URLs involved are search engine friendly, and short. Making them search engine friendly is fairly easy, take out those special characters. They are not necessarily special so much as a hindrance to the search engines. Quite simply, putting that CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
When It Comes To Meta Tags, You Only Need Three
When it comes to HTML, you can always count on accuracy and detail delivering your website's content in proper order to the search engines. If you are new to website building, or are struggling to understand why your website is not performing this article may be of tremendous value to you. First, let's look at meta tags, these are the main points of interest to the search engines, they do not look at a webpage as humans do, so meta tags are the brail, if you will, to what they see. Meta tags should always be between the *head* and */head* tags, like so: *head* *title*(Your Website Title)*/title* *meta name="description" content="(Your website's description) "* *meta name="keywords" content="keyword,keyword,keyword,etc "* *meta name="Author" content="www.your-website.com"* *meta name="owner" content="www.your-website.com"* *meta name="classification" content="(The main subject matter of your CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Evaluate An SEO Firm
The SEO firms that I think are the best are smaller. If I couldn't do SEO anymore and I had to ask someone to do it for me, I could name three or four smaller shops, each with under 10 people on staff (I think). I would at least ask these firms for a reference. I wouldn't go to iProspect, iCrossing, 360i, or any of the other big I's. It's nothing against them, but I think I would get better service and more passion from the smaller shops. This says it all. I agree. You'll get better service from smaller firm. SEO is pretty static. If a firm is worth its weight in salt it doesn't matter how big it is. This question is not CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
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Nick Stamoulis:
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