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If you want a try and factual way of generate plenty of transfer to your website – day in, day out – you can’t afford to ignore search engine optimization SEO Delhi Company. And it’s not as complex as it may first appear. In fact, let me outline some search engine basics…The major search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN – generate “natural” or “organic” search results or listings, as well as sponsored (advertiser paid) listings, whenever someone performs a search on particular keywords or key phrases. With SEO Delhi Company e-Fuzion you might imagine, listings that appear on the first page of results – whether paid or organic – tend to attract the vast mass of clicks on the links included in their listings and, consequently, traffic to their websites. Therefore, if you know that the objective market for your website classically uses meticulous keywords or key phrases to search for the kinds of in sequence, products or services you offer… you want your listing to appear as high as promising in the search engine position pages or “SERPs”. Pay-per-click advertising is as the names suggest: advertising where you pay each time someone clicks on the link in your ad. Some of the major compensation of PPC are that you only pay for the results you want – prospects clicking on your ad – and you can readily measure the effectiveness of a given keyword or ad by means of the click through rate. While it might seem as though your best bet is to be ranked number one in the SERPs for a certain keyword or key phrase, this may not always be the case. Most search marketing practitioners positively activist is becoming first in the organic results. However, there are diverging views about the usefulness of being first in the paid results.

Some search engine optimization marketers think that it’s more lucrative to be in the middle of the list of the paid outcome, as long as your ad appears on the first page of fallout. As well, the questions arise: should you promote in the paid results as well as strive for a high ranking in the organic results? There’s no hard-and-fast answer; it’s really something to experiment with SEO Delhi.

Studies show that over 90% of all online users use search engines to find what they are looking for, whether products/services, or just plain old information.

The following twelve points will, I hope, summarize a philosophy, approach and methodology to the SEO question which is both sound and effective, along with giving some helpful insight into the industry itself.

1. Content. Content. Content.
Effective, professional, optimized Copywriting is the single, most important factor in any SEO campaign. Search engines index websites based on the content found on each page of the site. With a thorough understanding of the language and grammatical conventions combined with intensive research, to find and exploit the market focus, one can move a website to the upper echelon of the “SERP’s” (Search Engine Results Page) in a methodical as well as ethical manner.

2. Analyze Web Logs.
Measure everything, at least twice, and then check again. While I would be the first to say that many of the procedures that make up website optimization are more art than science, one needs to take a very scientific approach to the results of the effort. This is done by methodically keeping a record of, and making an analysis of the sites web logs. There are a number of specialized software which make the job easier but at the bare minimum, one needs to keep a close eye on the site visitors and their activity while on the site. No matter how well planned the strategy, it is largely theoretical until proven by the results, which can only be measured by the logs, and a thorough analysis of their content.

3. No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google, or any other search engine.
Those who promise such feats will either optimize for such vague search term phrases (such as, “green stunted widgets with purple Polka-dots and icing”) that no one will ever likely look for, or they are making a false claim, which they have no intention of keeping, or they have an inside edge at Google, something which they will loose, quickly, when the honest folks at Google find out about it. The other option, that they will take the money and run, is worth mentioning here but I’ll be polite.

4. Some things are just plain silly.
You don’t need to submit your site to 50,000 search engines. Businesses which offer this service are suspect, at best. 85% of the search results on the Internet come from one search engine, which, if you have one link from an established website, or better yet, a directory, will find your site just fine, on it’s own. Four (4) search engines account for over 90% of the traffic on the web. As for any supposed benefit which may accrue from being listed in an obscure search engine in Botswana which specializes in safaris to the Kalahari Desert and receives 7 hits per day; well, you figure it out.

5. SEO is not Pay-per-Click.
While no one would argue the effectiveness of getting increased traffic and sales, through a well planned, pay-per-click campaign, the fact remains that the conversion rates are generally low and they cease the moment the “pay” stops. With a well planned and executed SEO campaign, while results may take a bit longer, they continue to produce, and in fact grow, long after the work is done and paid for. Quite often we have found that after a thorough optimization of a site, only minor adjustments are needed on an ongoing basis, primarily related to new content and/or new items of sale or service.

6. SEO is not witchcraft, Druidism, shamanism.
Neither does it require any special chants, ceremonial fires, or vestments, though some of us do like to howl at the full moon, on occasion. There are no “Top Secret” practices which a reputable SEO can not tell a client, a judge, or his mother, for that matter. The very nature of the Internet has always been cooperative and there is nothing about SEO that can’t be learned, with a heavy dose of time and money. A reputable SEO firm will give you an item per item breakdown of just where the money goes. Be wary if you sense a secretive atmosphere or any unwillingness to answer questions. While there are technical points which might take some background to fully understand, if one has a solid overview of the entire situation, a simple explanation should be easy enough to come up with.

7. Do-it-yourself SEO.
Yes, you can execute your own SEO campaign and find a reputable SEO firm to help plan and organize it for you. About one half of my own clientele do some part of the actual work themselves, or have their in-house dedicated personnel do it, after discussion of the goals and aims of the business/website, a thorough website analysis, comprehensive search phrase research, and focused instruction on the ways and means of achieving high SERPs. These preliminaries are followed up with a detailed program of suggestions and methods which the client can then implement themselves or hire others to perform. Average savings; 30-40%.

8. Phased Implementation.
While many companies spend thousands of dollars per month on Search Engine Optimization, an alternative is available which will pay dividends to you in increased sales and leads without the high initial investment. The most important consideration is to have a reputable firm handle the initial evaluation and suggested optimization planning first. The trial and error method will cost much more, in the long run, with or without the desired result. After studying the plan and establishing a workable budget you may implement the plan as finances allow.

9. Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
Never was this more true than in the realm of SEO. While concrete and measurable gains will always come from a well thought out and executed optimization strategy, the Internet is a competitive media and we all want to be number one. Accept that a steady upward movement, over time, will place you worlds ahead of a flash followed by a crash.

10. A thought to ponder.
At stake, in the race for the top, is the very existence of your website, your business, and quite possibly your reputation. Beware of any “shortcuts” or less than ethical schemes that anyone might suggest to further your business goals. When it’s all said and done it is you, the business owner, who bears the responsibility for any company or individual you hire. Insist on knowing exactly what the strategy is and what steps are being performed to implement it. If it seems, in the least, suspicious, ask for and get an explanation. In this case, not only is Ignorance not bliss, it could very well be the beginning of the end for your business.

11. All incoming links are not created equal.
Both the relevance to your line of business and website subject matter and the PR value of the incoming link determine how valuable they are to your own PR ranking. With Google starting the trend, nothing new there, and most of the others following close behind, the days of grabbing all the inbound links, in any way possible, are gone. Not only will low ranked and/or irrelevant inbound links not help, they will, in fact, cause a penalty. Link farms, free-for-all link schemes, automated link accumulation software, or any other fad that doesn’t carefully screen the links and websites they are coming from will, in the long run, do more harm than good.

12. It’s more than just facts and figures.
The relationship between an online business and SEO is, perhaps, one of the closest of business relationships. In order to be effective, a SEO must know not only the facts and figures pertaining to the endeavor, but s/he must know something of the dreams and aspirations of the business principals. Things which don’t normally come out in a prospectus are often invaluable information when searching for the “right fit” into the complex world of the Internet. My own clients sometimes ask, due to the frequency of my calls and email in the early phases, “Am I your only client?” I usually laugh and say something to the effect that until I know your business almost as well as you do, yes, you are the only one that counts.

Experts who deal in SEO (search engine optimization) are of the opinion that in order to rank well in SERPs’ (search engine result pages), each webpage of your site must include 2 to 3 keywords (rather keyphrases) spread ‘evenly’ over the page. This will enable search engines to understand the importance of those keywords vis-à-vis your webpage and list accordingly in SERPs’ when queried for those keywords.

The trick here is how you can ‘evenly’ spread your keywords within your page content without making it too obvious. After all, the purpose of your webpage must usually be to retain your visitor long enough by imparting certain information or knowledge instead of typical hard-selling of your product or service right away. It is to be acknowledged that viewers who come from search engines are more than likely looking for information rather than deciding on an immediate purchase. The focus therefore will be to ensure that your visitor stays back awhile, so that a sale may result soon.

That being so, it follows that your webpage should be easily readable, yet contain subtle ways to serve your ultimate aim of selling your product or service. This calls for expertise in writing content suitable for your webpage such that a viewer finds sufficient interest to stay tuned to your website, and as a follow-up action, contemplates acquiring your product or service that would serve his need.

Since search engines tend to value your webpage content in a certain manner, it is thus important to have clear idea about where in webpage you must include your chosen keywords. This is necessary so as to convey to search engines the overall importance of your webpage with regard to those keywords.

This article (Part-I) will deal on the aspect of strategic positioning of keywords in your webpage. In the next part (Part-II), I will attempt to give examples of what an ideal content writing should be like. I will also glance through in Part-II what SEO experts say ‘must-do’ steps for overall optimization of your webpage for the search engines.

What search engines want to see?

Well, I am not about to explain complex algorithms of search engines. That, in any case, is beyond the scope of this article. However, from my experience, I have often felt that search engines look at your webpage just as examiners do while correcting an examination paper. Just as examiners expect that the content of your paper must be relevant, to-the-point and well-narrated, so do search engines.

Let us proceed with an example. Let us assume that you are to write an essay on ‘Hurricane Katrina’ to be assimilated in a webpage. For simplicity, let us further assume that ‘Hurricane Katrina’ is a keyphrase you have chosen for your webpage. We will now go step-by-step on how to proceed in order to make your page-content ‘optimized’ for search engines.

The title

Considering that ‘Hurricane Katrina’ is the main topic of your webpage content (and incidentally your keyphrase too), you may select to have the title (that is, the ‘title’ tag) as ‘Hurricane Katrina creates havoc’, or perhaps ‘Hurricane Katrina brings life to halt’. You may like to be a little more specific with the title ‘Hurricane Katrina rips through New Orleans’. Note that in all these cases, the title is concise and makes the subject of your essay clear at the outset. The second point to note is that the keyphrase is positioned right at the beginning of the title.

Description or synopsis

The meta-description (that is, description meta-tag) of your webpage ought to come right after the title tag. In reality the meta-description is more like a brief statement about the content of your webpage, just as you would write a brief outline or a synopsis if you are to write an essay on the subject. Let the sentence ‘Hurricane Katrina takes everyone by surprise and leaves thousands homeless.’ be our meta-description for the webpage.

There are a few points to take note here. First, the meta-description conveys an intent similar to the title above. Second, we have broadened the subject of discussion. That is to say, the content of the webpage will now deal not only on the surprise-factor of the hurricane as it hit the coastlines, but also the damage it did in its wake. This is necessary because search engines are known to quote from description meta-tag sometimes, and so a little elaboration is always a help.

Third, the keyphrase ‘Hurricane Katrina’ is once again located in the beginning, so that search engines begin to recognize that this keyphrase is indeed important for the page-content. And lastly, it is better that the description ends in a full stop.

At this point, let us ponder awhile. One may argue that the meta-description may not necessarily be one grammatically correct complete sentence. For example, what about ‘Hurricane Katrina taking everyone by surprise, leaving thousands homeless.’, or for that matter, ‘Hurricane Katrina takes everyone by surprise. Thousands left homeless.’. I am inclined to believe that variations such as these are equally feasible, and should not come in the way of search engines’ taking due cognition of page-content.

The second portion of this article (Part-I) describes how keyphrases must be placed in body content, including headings, main topic, sub-topic, etc. for search engine optimization. To read the full article, click here [http://www.prioriti.in/blogs/?p=48].

Search engine optimization has evolved over years. In good old days, tweaking on-page parameters like meta tags, headlines, alt tags, keyword shoving and anchor texts used to fetch good results. This is less likely these days since the techniques are simple to implement. As a result there is no dearth of optimized websites.

Be that as it may, for new websites it is always a good idea to start doing all that before exploring other avenues. In this article I will look at why search engine optimization is necessary, proceeding to unravel basic issues in this game before touching on aging factor which I believe is the cornerstone of success on the web.

Why search engine optimization?

When you are looking for information on a topic on the web, you usually query your favorite search engine for search terms relevant to your topic. The search engine on its part displays a list of web-pages which it thinks are closely related to your search term. The web-pages that appear at top are considered more important than the ones that appear successively below. Question arises as to how search engines must know which pages are more important for the search query.

This is where you step into the realm of search engine optimization. For all your painstaking effort, if your webpage is not considered important by search engines, you will remain undiscovered forever. Remember, search engines are not humans. They are machines. Which is why you need to let your webpage talk to them to achieve top ranking.

The mental block – do I need it?

If search engine optimization is important, why is it that many website owners still do not feel any need for it? One may say they are naïve, so they are. I have come across many of them who strongly feel that after a website is launched, nothing more needs to be done. There is a perception that once a website is there in world-wide-web, it is bound to be ‘known’ soon. Known to whom? ‘Why, Google will know me’ is a common refrain. It is only much later that one discovers that nobody, not even Google knows his site.

To be true, Google’s knowing your website is not a big deal. Just have an already-indexed website point a link to your main page. Google will shortly find out your main page and from there your other pages as well. This is exactly the way Google is indexing billions of new webpages everyday.

On the flip side, suppose your webpage has nice description of trekking in Himalayas. You have provided good information and pictures on the subject in the page. Yet if I am to search for the term ‘trekking in Himalayas’ in Google, will I get to see your webpage in the first 20 or 30 results? Perhaps not. Because, even though your website is indexed by Google, it still does not know that your webpage on ‘trekking in Himalayas’ is important enough to be listed high for the term.

On to optimizing web content

If indeed optimizing your web content is necessary, how do you proceed? As mentioned in the beginning, search engine optimization is an exercise of dressing up your webpage based on a chosen set of keyword phrases. This is to be done in such a way that the content appeals to human visitors as much as it does to search engine robots.

In a previous article [http://www.prioriti.in/blogs/?p=48], I have dealt on how to include keyword phrases to write an optimized content. To be sure, other than optimization you will need quality incoming links as well. But that is a different story.

The basic issues

If we have understood the inevitability of search engine optimization, let us briefly touch upon some basic issues.

1 Search engines list a webpage, not a website. This means one has to optimize individual web-pages (except those that are public disclosures) while maintaining overall aim and balance of the website.

2 Optimization of a webpage, in its primitive, centers around strategically locating one or more keyword phrases in that webpage. Number of keyword phrases to be used and frequency of each will depend on total number of content-words in that page.

3 Optimization for search engines is not an one-off exercise. Rather it has to be an ongoing effort to create web-pages. Websites that are veterans of many years have thousands of web-pages in their database.

4 Search engine optimization usually does not fetch immediate result. For new websites, specially in case of Google, it can be a long wait, sometimes several months.

5 If your website generates lot of traffic by itself, it has a fair chance to rank high in SERPs’ (search engine result pages), even if you have not done much of an optimization (for example, xe.com’s real-time currency conversion service). This means that your product or service is so unique that simple word-of-mouth publicity is enough to bring in torrents of visitors, while also ensuring prominent rank in search results.

6 Search engine optimization is not merely an exercise of shuffling keyword phrases. The content has to make sense to readers. In other words, ensure that your content passes usability test.

7 Apart from keyword-enriched content, there are more factors responsible for achieving top rank, specially building quality links that point to your website. To search engines, incoming links are like ‘votes’ in favor of your website. A good quality link carries considerable weight in the eyes of search engines.

8 Finally, lest one forgets, optimizing for search engines is only one part of the game. The other equally important necessity is to retain and satisfy your visitors.

Summing up – the aging factor

In Bengali, my mother tongue, there is a saying, which when roughly translated, means ‘seasoned paddy-grains make more rice’. In SEO parlance, nothing beats if you are at it for years. Search engines love the aging factor. Create good content. Allow it to settle. Revisit it to update occasionally. Repeat the cycle.

In other words, search engine optimization is all about letting it known that your website is a treasure-hub of great relevant content that only gets better as time passes.

So you’ve heard about Google Pagerank and you know what it is. Now that you know exactly what it is, I am sure you want to increase your pagerank so you can get better rankings in the SERP’s and get more website traffic. Search Engine Optimisation is the art of gaining a better pagerank through the knowledge and experience of an SEO expert. Search Engine Optimisation covers all facets of what it takes to get a website ranking well in the SERP’s, from onsite changes like titles and meta tags, to offsite SEO factors like linking. Since your website probably has a low pagerank and you would like to do something to increase it this article covers some hints and tips that will aid you in your efforts. Many so called SEO experts have brought to the SEO marketplace tools that you can assist you in increasing your website pagerank. However it should be noted that the majority of these tools are useless and really do not assist you at all. What will increase Google pagerank is applying some of the techniques listed below to your site. Using these proven methods will guarantee a way of boosting your websites pagerank and they are all completely free SEO techniques. So you should ask yourself, why spend the money to increase pagerank when we’ll tell you how to do it for free?

Increasing pagerank

As we said, there are several SEO techniques to increase a web site’s Google pagerank. Even if you only follow one of the techniques below, you can expect to see a positive difference in your website’s pagerank.

Technique #1: Content

Despite the fact that SEO experts constantly talk about the importance of content, most web masters ignore their advice to make sure their sites have quality content. It’s really crazy, particularly when you consider the fact that Google looks at content when determining pagerank. Thus, one of the greatest techniques toward improving pagerank is to simply make sure your site has quality content. This content should ALWAYS be relevant to the topic of the site. The content should not be too long (greater than 2500 words a page) or too short, should be informative and should include the right amount of keywords (a keyword density of 2-5%). If your content has all of this, you should be in very good condition to increase your pagerank.

Technique #2: Back links

The major determining factor in Google’s pagerank is back links. These are incoming links from one site to your site. What these links tell Google is that your site must have good content on it, or else other sites would not be linking to it. Now you might think that all that matters is the links, right? Not exactly. Google has gotten very smart and accurate with pagerank, and so they can tell bad links (i.e. Links from link farms, irrelevant sites etc.) from the good links (links in articles, links from relevant sites etc.). The most effective technique in increasing pagerank is to gather good back links. The next two techniques on our list deal with this.

Technique #3: Forums and Blogs

Google is known for quickly indexing forums and blogs. Literally the fastest way to gain a good back link is to simply post a link to your site on a forum or a blog. Most forums consider outright linking to be spam, so you’ll have to make sure you do this in the right way. Try joining forums relevant to your site’s topic and put a link to your site in your signature, if it’s allowed. Also, put a link to your site in your profile. Then post 1-10 times. Your posts should contribute something to the forum so that they are not edited or, worse, removed.

As for using blogs to gain more links, you can try to create a blog of your own and casually put a link to your site on it. You can also try commenting on other relevant blogs and including a link to your site in these comments. Once again, you need to be cautious in how you do this—you don’t want to make comments that are outright promoting your site.

Technique #4: Articles

An popular way of gaining a better Google pagerank is to write articles. These articles are based off of your site. For instance, if you run a photography site, you may write an article on digital photography. At the end of the article, you might include something like “for more on digital photography, visit insert site.com”. Article back links are very effective because they are considered credible by Google. One thing to remember is to not mention your site too many times; one or two mentions per article is fine. You can submit your articles to AssociatedContent.com and Ezines or you can use article submission services or Article Submitter software.

Conclusion

You don’t have to spend money to increase pagerank. All you need to do is just practice some of the techniques we’ve outlined here and you’ll be well on your way to a better Google pagerank.

In modern days, most of the sites built are database driven. That means that your site is actually an application which retrieves data from a database managementsystem, parses the data and shows the result to the user. With the evolution ofthese database driven sites a niche market for database internet marketingprofessionals has evolved. 18 months ago I was a person looking for a SEOprofessional for a database driven site I owned. Many professionals told me that it was impossible to do! My results show a different story, 6 months later my newdatabase driven site is now ranking exceptionally well for its keywords (at the top ofSERP’s for over 75 keywords).

The key to search engine optimizing a database driven site is in building splashpages which link into the database. These splash pages should have titles, h1 tags,content and inbound links relevant to the database result the page is linking to. For example if linking to a page about accommodation the splash page should haveaccommodation in the title, h1 tag, anchor text of links and in the content of the page. Then this splash page should link into the database results with the anchortext ‘accommodation’. This way both the splash page and the results page are listed in Google, MSN and Yahoo!

The mod rewrite code is also a great way of making database results more friendly to the search engines. It is a great way of getting keywords into the URL of the pageand is also human friendly as well. A little time spent in implementing this code canresult in improved search engine results. I tested this on two of my sites, 1 with thecode and one without. The results: Both sites ended up getting the database resultspage indexed and page ranked but the mod rewrite site got there quicker!

In short there is no need to higher a specialist SEO professional to work on your database driven site you just need to be creative in showcasing the results to your potential visitors

Has Google thrown the cyber world a curveball? Let’s fill in some blanks and connect a few dots regarding the recently-filed patent application for Google’s latest Search Engine algorithm – Search Engine 125. For those unfamiliar with the inner workings of search engines, each Search Engine uses its own unique formula for determining that all-important ranking for each web site. Remember, users who query a Search Engine rarely look beyond the first page, so if you want to increase visitor traffic, step one is to develop your website in a way that matches the major search engine’s ranking algorithms. You need to find out what the search engines like and make sure you feed it to them.

Now, over the years, the formulae used by search engines to rank a site have grown more complex. Pre-2000, search engines didn’t do much more than count keywords on a site. The more times the words ‘limburger cheese’ appeared on the site, the higher the site’s limburger cheese search engine ranking position (SERP). Of course, the key then became to develop SEO text with limburger cheese mentioned in every header, twice in subheads and at least once in every paragraph. Hardly compelling reading, except for the most avid of limburger cheese fans.

So, the Google, Yahoo, and MSN search engines moved to improve the quality of their SERPs, to provide users with helpful, expert information. Changes were made to the keyword algorithms (the weighing formulae), awarding more points for things like the quality of inbound and outbound links to and from a site. This meant that quality links from a relevant ‘authority’ site – a highly-prized designation, will move your site up in the SERPs.

Well, on March 31, 2005, Google applied for a patent on its latest search algorithm. For those who have no fear of their brains exploding from buzzword overload do a search on “Patent Application 0050071741” to read the entire patent. The patent application describes “a method for scoring a document comprising: identifying the document; obtaining one or more types of history (sic) data associated with the document; and generating a score for the document based on the one or more types of historical data.”

Apparently (or not), Google has determined that historical data associated with each site is an essential ingredient in developing the highest quality search results for users who query. And just what kind of historical data are we talking about here? Well, things like:

* the site’s inception date (more likely the date the Search Engine noticed you)
* how frequently documents are added and removed from the site
* how often sites change over time
* number of visitors over time
* number of repeat visitors
* number of times your site is bookmarked
* how often keyword density is changed
* the rate at which the site’s anchor text is revised
* inbound/outbound links – how long in place and high trust (quality) links

The list goes on and on. Factors associated with your domain include: how long your site has been registered, has the domain expired (ghost sites), is the domain stable – as in not moving from one physical address to another.

Links remain a key component of Search Engine 125. Links have to be relevant to your site. Links to your site increase in “SERP Power” as they age. Link growth should be slow and steady. A sudden influx of inbound links – especially links that have no relationship to the content of your site – is a surefire way to drop in the SERPs. Google gives such sites a much lower score.

How about data on your visitor traffic? How will Search Engine 125 weigh that? Number of visitors, growth in visitor rates, spikes in visitor rates, the length of each visitor’s stay, number of bookmarks to and favorite rankings of your site – all enter into Google’s new Search Engine algo according to the patent application.

Another weighing factor is search results. The number of searches using a given query word or phrase, a sudden increase or decrease in click through rates, an exceedingly large number of quick click throughs (which might indicate ‘stale’ content), again all factors that Google believes will increase the quality of its search results.

Other factors are also listed as part of the patent application. A site with frequent ups and downs in traffic will lose points for untrustworthiness (even if your site sells only seasonal items!). Keyword volatility, focus change and other variables will also be employed in Google’s never-ending quest to quantify the quality of each site its Search Engine delivers to users based on their queries.

So, okay, where’s the mystery? The intrigue? The disinformation? The e-commerce community is abuzz with speculation – speculation that Google’s well-publicized patent is nothing more than a plant to throw off the competition, disinformation intended to keep the competition and SEOs off balance. So why the speculation? Well, even a quick scan of the patent application reveals large areas of gray, vagaries and downright inconsistencies within Google’s proposed ranking criteria. For example, sites are penalized for changing content often (untrustworthy) and rewarded for the frequent addition of new content (freshness). A paradox, you say? Or all part of Google’s master plan to feint right while going left.

The object, in the end, is quality search results. That’s what Google, Yahoo and the other popular search engines want – that perfect equation, the ideal formula that will provide high quality search results. And for site owners and designers who, in fact, do keep their sites fresh, who have quality links useful to visitors, who deliver the information the user is looking for – there’s no reason for concern. However, the owners of links farms, keyword dense sites and cyber garbage dumps should sit up and take notice. In the end, quality search engines will inevitably improve the quality of content available on the Internet.

First, the jargon.
Back link: this is where a website links to your site; i.e. Site X has a link pointing to your site, so your site has a back link from Site X
One-way link: where only site X links to your site, but your site does NOT link to site X
Reciprocal link: where two sites have swapped links so they both link to each other
Anchor text: the text/description that is associated with your link on the back link site.
Page rank: Google’s proprietary system for assigning a value (from 1-10 where 10 is best) to the combined number and the quality of back links pointing to your site. Often abbreviated to “PR”
Search Engine Results Page (SERP): we use the terms “SERPs” to refer to the search engine results page, and the position of a site on it. So if a website has a SERP of 3, it means for a particular keyword search it appears on page 3 of the results. Note that some people use SERP to refer to the position on the page, so that a SERP of 3 may also mean the site appears at #3 on the first page.

Check you page rank and backlinks now! Quick and easy Page rank checking at http://www.quickpagerank.com/

So, what does it all mean?
In the online marketing world, Page Rank means a lot. Increasing a website’s PR is one of the major foci of online marketing.

The goal is to get as high a PR as possible for your site. PR is measured by a proprietary algorithm belonging to Google. What Google does is measure the quality of the site linking to your site. How does it do this? By measuring, amongst other things, that site’s PR. There is also evidence that the degree of relatedness of content is also important. If you site is an e.g. Real estate website, then a back link from a site dealing in scuba gear may not be worth much to you. But back links from sites that have good PR and are related to you (e.g. by industry or by region/location) are well worth pursuing. By increasing the number and quality of links pointing to your site, over time you will increase your PR.

Note also that many other engines also use back links as part of their SERP algorithm. Some may not be as sophisticated as Google, but many measure the number of back links in their index and use this as part of how they rank your site under a particular search.

You can check your back links and page rank at http://www.quickpagerank.com/

So how do I improve my Page Rank?
Firstly, make sure your site has good quality content. Make other sites and their owners want to link to you. Then get out on the web and start making propositions to other website owners in related fields.

Ideally, you will get links from sites that have a higher Page Rank than yours, but this isn’t always possible. What you should look for are sites that:
Have good content
Are relevant or related to your site
Have some Page Rank already (i.e. not brand new)
Also, older domains may do better than newer domains

Some of the do nots.
Be wary of FFA (Free For All) sites; often these do you no good and can actually do you damage as they tend to be viewed as spam sites by some engines.
Don’t “spam” your anchor text; make it relevant and don’t overload it with keywords or repetitions.
Vary your anchor text. Use different variations or re-writes of anchor text on different sites.
Make sure the page where your link will be placed has been indexed by the search engines. If it has not been indexed (or can’t be for whatever reason) then you won’t get any benefit from it.
Make sure that the pages you place links on have limits to the number of links listed. Single figures are ideal, but not always possible.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website. There are a lot of ways, both good and bad, to influence the search engines. Some search engines react to certain strategies better than others. Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article.

However, there are a number of things that can be documented that will work for most if not all search engines. And let’s face it; there are really only 3 that make a difference between a successful and an unsuccessful SEO strategy. They are the big three: Google, Yahoo and MSN. These three search engines in any given month are responsible for over 90% of all internet searches.

So, what is this article about? It’s about what you can do as a website owner that will influence the search engines using commonly accepted practices of linking to other websites (outbound) and getting website links (inbound) back to you. There are basically 4 strategies that a website owner usually will employ to increase their website value in the eyes of the search engine.

They are reciprocal linking, one-way linking, multi-site linking and directory linking. A website owner should not think that using just a single strategy is the right answer – sure it will help your SEO but it won’t be the Best answer. The Best answer is to employ all 4 techniques and to do it naturally.

Each of the four linking strategies has specific descriptions that can be summed up as:

1. Reciprocal Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links back to Site A

2. One-Way Linking: Site B links to Site A

3. Multi-Site Linking: Site A links to Site B, Site B links to Site C, Site C links to Site D, and Site D links back to Site A. Could be 3..N number of sites involved.

4. Directory Linking: Site Directory A links to Site A

That seems simple enough but it takes time and effort to perform all 4 strategies and most website owners aren’t willing to spend the time or don’t have the time to spend on it. As a website owner, SEO needs to be one of the highest priority tasks that you need to address, just after Order Processing and Fulfillment and Customer Service. Without free traffic from the search engines, other traffic generation strategies that usually require payment must be engaged.

Now doing the 4 strategies above is great, but it gets even harder because you have to do it in a way that doesn’t trigger the search engines to enforce a penalty upon your website. No one except the search engine engineers know all of the exact penalties but we have some good theories for some of them.

The first is the rate at which links are created. There is a certain threshold for creating links that is too fast. It’s possible that the threshold is a sliding scale and is related to the age of the website according to the engine. For example, a young low-traffic website should not normally be getting 1000 links a month whereas an older website that gets a lot of traffic could be OK to get 1000 links a month. As you progress in your linking strategies make sure you keep this in mind, especially if you are thinking about buying links.

The second is that having a link to every site that links to you will likely reduce the value of the links. In other words, if all you ever get is Reciprocal Linking, you will likely move up the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page’s) but you won’t reach your sites full potential. Having a mixture of all 4 strategies will appear more natural to the engines.

The third is having all inbound links to your site on “linking” pages will make those links less valuable than having a natural link on a contextually relative page for a percentage of the inbound links. The higher you can drive this context percentage, the better your website will rank. These types of links are often some of the most difficult links to generate an exchange for because it requires more time and effort for both website owners.

The fourth is to have links inbound from all different ranking sites. If all you have linking to you is page rank 6 and 7 sites then you are likely to be sending the message that you purchased your links and that is not natural to the engines. Some would argue that purchasing links for driving traffic is just fine and it is. However, you should not expect the search engines to give those inbound links very much weight when calculating your SERP positions. It is significantly more natural for you to have a large number of rank 1 and 2 inbound links and a decreasing number of inbound links as you move up the page rank scale (0 – 10).

The fifth is to have the text of you inbound links varied. It isn’t natural to have every website that links to you to have the same text on the link description. The natural tendency would be to have a certain percent be the sites name, but after that it should be a wide variety of description. Your link text description is a key factor for how your site/page will rank, so make sure that you keep that in mind as you specify your preferred link text description on your website.

Finally, it would be best for a good percentage of your inbound links to appear within the text of a page that appears natural for the reader of that site. And for those links to not all point back to the home page of your website. It’s most natural for a good high quality link to appear in the text of a page and have it point internally within your site.

So, when you begin or continue your SEO activities keep all of these things in mind and don’t be impatient. Impatience could incur penalties or worse. Your website could end up in the “sandbox”. It is rumored and becoming more concrete that Google supposedly uses a sandbox that questionable sites are put in until they have aged to a point that Google no longer feels that they are being manipulated. Many of the search engines use similar protection schemes to eliminate spam sites and manipulation sites to keep their SERP’s from being cluttered.

Search engine optimisation or optimization (with a ‘z’ or is that ‘zee’ if your from across ‘the pond’) techniques are constantly evolving. This evolution is in response to the evolution of search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google in particular has come to be seen as the most sophisticated and advanced search engine as it is armed with an array of anti-spam technology.

Google’s increasing use of anti-spam features has meant that optimising websites for Google has become much harder and it’s now not just a case of opening your websites source files in notepad, adding some keywords into your various HTML tags, uploading your files and waiting for the results. In fact in my opinion and I’m sure others will agree with me, this type of optimisation, commonly referred to as onpage optimisation will only ever be 20% effective at achieving rankings for any keywords which are even mildly competitive. Those of us who aced maths in school will know this leaves us with 80% unaccounted for.

This 80% corresponds to offpage optimization. Offpage optimization is all to do with the amount of links pointing to your site and its pages, the actual linking text (anchor text) of these links and the quality of the pages which the links are on. Offpage optimisation is now for sure the overwhelmingly dominating factor which decides where a site will rank in Google. That then is what I mean by the 80/20 rule, I’m not talking about the pareto rule which means that in anything a few (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are trivial, I’m not sure that applies to SEO.

What is the logic behind this then, why does Google give so much ‘weight’ (80%) to offpage optimization efforts and so little (20%) to onpage optimisation. Well simply put it is all about the quality of their results. Whereas onpage optimisation is completely controlled by the webmaster and can thus be abused by an unscrupulous one, offpage optimisation is something that is not controlled by anyone as such by rather by other webmasters, websites and indeed the Internet in general. This means that it is much harder to conduct any underhanded or spammy offpage optimisation methods in the hope of gaining an unfair advantage for a website in the Google SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages), this does not mean it is impossible though.

Let’s elaborate for a paragraph or two just why offpage elements such as incoming links are deemed by Google to be such a good measure of relevancy, thus making offpage optimisation the most effective method of optimisation by far. Take the anchor text of incoming links for instance, if Google sees a link from SITE A to SITE B with the actual linking text being the words ‘data recovery london’, then SITE B has just become more relavent and thus more likely to appear higher in the rankings when someone searches for ‘data recovery london’. SITE B has no control over SITE A (in most cases…) and Google knows this. Google can then look at the link text and say to itself, why would SITE A link to SITE B with the specific words ‘data recovery london’ if SITE B wasn’t ‘about’ ‘data recovery london’, there is no answer so Google must deem SITE B to be ‘about’ ‘data recovery london’.

I said ‘in most cases’ above because often webmasters have multiple sites and would crosslink them with keyword rich anchor text, but there is only so many sites and crosslinks any webmaster can manage, again Google knows this and so as the number of backlinks and occurrences of keyword rich anchor text grows (and with that grows the unlikelihood of anything unnatural like crosslinking going on) so to does the relevancy of the site which all the backlinks point to. Imagine hundreds or thousands of sites all linking to a website X with variations of ‘data recovery london’ type phrases as the linking text, well then Google can be pretty dam sure that website X is ‘about’ ‘data recovery london’ and feel confident about returning it in the top 10 results. This is why they place so much importance (80%) on offpage ranking factors such as links; they are simply the most reliable way of checking what a site is about and indeed how well it covers what it is about. This reliance on hard to cheat offpage factors is what produces the quality search results we all know, love and use everyday.

The moral of the story from an SEO point of view then is to spend less time on those little website tweaks which you think might make a big difference (but won’t) and work hard on what really counts, what really counts is how the web ’sees’ your website, the more quality (keyword rich) incoming links your website has the better the webs ‘view’ will be and therefore the better Google’s view of your website will be. What Google thinks of your website is very important, as they ‘look after’ websites which they like.

Your goal when copywriting for your web site is to get your site to the top three pages in the SERPs (search engine results position). Any further back than the first three pages or thirty sites, and your site won’t be found because that’s where the average web site surfer stops—after just three pages of searching. And web site information seekers account for the vast majority of click-throughs on your site.

Copywriting for search engines should be part of your search engine optimization strategy, but it’s challenging to say the least. Most of us are either artistic or scientific types; few are both. But that’s what online copywriting is all about. It’s both an art and a science, and that’s what gets most people on the wrong track.

In a nutshell, good web site copy needs to be rich, keyword-specific and topic-based. Many inexperienced web developers simply use brochures for their web site copy. Don’t let them talk you into it! Search engines most likely won’t find your web site if you do.

The optimal web site page size is around 2 MS Word pages. If you have more copy than that, consider splitting it into two or more. If you find you’ve got more than one topic on a page, split it into two or more.

If you’re like me, your first instinct is to sit down and start plunking away at your keyboard and get as many of your thoughts out as quickly as possible.

And that’s fine for your basic outline, but that’s about as far as it’ll get you. That’s the artistic side. And it just might be the wrong side to start with. I’ve learned over the years that, contrary to my instinct, starting with the scientific is actually easier and faster.

So, where do you start?

The first thing I do is find the right keywords to base my copywriting on, and there’s a relatively simple way to figure out which keywords to use. Open your favorite spreadsheet program (I use MS excel), and head four columns with:

Keyword #Searched #Returned Ratio

Then, find a good keyword suggestion tool. Wordtracker has one and so does Overture, and both have free trials. There are also several others out there to use.

Tip: Keyword suggestion tools suggest more keywords and phrases for your search terms.

So, what you’re going to do is brainstorm some keywords and phrases for your product or service, enter them in the “keyword” column, and find out how often it’s searched for in your keyword suggestion tool.

Next go to a search engine and search for the phrase in quotations to find your competition for that word or phrase. And then figure out the ratio of “#searched” to “#returned”. What you’re looking for is a low number of returns for a highly searched word or phrase, or a relatively low ratio.

Tip: Keyword phrases often work better than keywords alone.

You want brainstorm a hundred or more words and phrases, and choose two to four to use in your web site copy. And as the saying goes, “two heads are better than one” so ask your family, friends and neighbors for input if you can.

Try a general keyword and start there. You’ll find a general keyword will be searched a lot, but you’ll also find there’s too much competition in most cases, so your ratio is too high. Then try different spellings, misspellings and more specific phrases. You’re looking for two to four target words or phrases per page.

For example “bodybuilding” has a ratio over 4,000, but “body building” is under 3,000. To get more specific, try targeting women. “Body building woman” has a ratio of around 500.

Once we’ve found our target phrases, we can start writing our web site content. But where do we put our targeted keywords and phrases?

Search engines look in specific places to try to determine your web site’s theme, yet they’re all slightly different as to exactly where they look and relative importance of each placing.

Nearly all search engines use page title as one of the most important, so try to make sure your page title uses at least one targeted phrase, or better yet, two. Our example title could be “Body Building Supplements – How to Build Muscle | Company Name” for example. That uses two of our target phrases and our company name. Or we could substitute the protein shake name for the company name.

Some search engines use meta tags, others do not, so I generally include meta tags for the search engines that do.

Heading tags are next in importance, ranging in importance from H1 and down. If you recall, in our last newsletter, we mentioned that headings are also high on your list for catching clients’ interest, so h1 heading tags carry lots of weight for both. One thing to watch for is cute headings, which can work for clients, but won’t work for search engines. To make the search engines happy, you need to include your keywords in your headings.

The last thing to be aware of for search engine copywriting is keyword density and placement. Again, each search engines seems to want something a little different, but you’re pretty safe if you have keywords near the beginning, middle and end of your copy. You’re looking for keyword density balance though because too many and your site is seen as spam by the search engines, while too few mean your web site theme isn’t clear enough to be found by your target audience.

So, now you have your keywords and you can start writing, right? Well, you can, but unless you keep a few points in mind, your copywriting won’t be as effective as you’d like it to be. But that’s the subject for another article.

Tough question, “What is SEO?”. As with pretty much all internet-related terms, concepts and notions, that of “SEO” does not have a unique definition and it is a blurry concept in most people’s mind.

Still, what is SEO? Since there is no ultimate, fully comprehensible definition for “SEO”, the only way to go is to take a look at several definitions and try to merge them in order to have the right perspective.

Wikipedia : “Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings. The term also refers to an industry of consultants that carry out optimization projects on behalf of client sites.”

Fakezilla : “The changes that are made to the content and code of a web site in order to increase its rankings in the results pages of search engines and directories. These changes may involve rewriting body copy, altering Title or Meta tags, removal of Frames or Flash content, and the seeking of incoming links.”

The Web Search Workshop : “The term used to describe the marketing technique of preparing a website to enhance its chances of being ranked in the top results of a search engine once a relevant search is undertaken. A number of factors are important when optimizing a website, including the content and structure of the website’s copy and page layout, the HTML meta-tags and the submission process.”

6am Media : “The process of improving web pages so that it ranks higher in search engine for targeted keywords with the ultimate goal of generating more revenue from the web site. There are many SEO techniques. In general, these techniques can be categorized as On-Page Optimization, On-Site Optimization, and Off-Site Optimization. There are also two schools of SEO: white hat SEO and black hat SEO. White hat SEOs are those that play by the rule (actually guidelines provided by search engines). Black hat SEOs are those that push the limit of SEOs and employ some questionable or prohibited techniques (according to the guidelines). These black hat SEO techniques are also commonly known as spam.”

Website NOVA : “acronym for search engine optimization. This is the process of making a website ‘search-engine-friendly. Search engine optimization is primarily used to increase rankings in SERPs, and effective SEO can increase the potential of your website and bring in more traffic.”

Thousands more definitions are available, almost as many “SEO guru’s” you will find online (“The Guru Problem” is actually the title of another article to be published soon).
As you can see, no definition is like another, but they all tend to converge to a certain common understanding.

There are numerous techniques and tools used to achieve SEO goals, and they should NOT be included within a definition.

Since it is not correct to define a concept through its tools, here is a definition I have come up with after long deliberations. The suggestion is to define SEO as follows:

SEO = abbreviation for “Search Engine Optimization”, the process of optimizing and tuning a web site and gaining online awareness for it, in order to deliver targeted visitors and ensure high conversion rates.

When done correctly, SEO activities must:
- make search engines crawl the site;
- make search engines index the site;
- ensure a high ranking among SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) for given keywords;
- achieve a high page rank;
- drive targeted traffic;
- achieve high conversion rates among the site’s visitors.

Since nothing is definitive and ultimate in the world of SEO, I’d like to receive your feedback and comments: TeaWithEdge.com is a way to contact me and speak up about your Marketing concerns.

The quality, as well as the amount of your inbound links is vital criteria utilized by search engines to rank your pages. Inbound links are links placed on other sites to direct traffic back to your own site, and there are numerous ways to obtain inbound links. One way to obtain inbound links is to exchange links with other similar websites. Contributing to forums and blogs is another way to get inbound links, and you can also request that visitors to your website link to your site. Submitting your website for reviews and offering free web hosting space in exchange for links is another opportunity to get inbound links.

Outbound links are also important, and while some people worry about adding external links to their websites, if done properly, outbound links can offer a boost on the search engine results page. When placing outbound links, only place links that will send visitors to reputable, authoritative sites. Be choosy when placing outbound links, and be positive that none of the links you place are broken.

Inbound, as well as outbound links should be a part of your linking campaign. It doesn’t make sense to have one without the other. Both of these are somewhat of a life- line that can either make or break your site on the SERP. It would be worthwhile to try and get as many inbound links as you can, not only on a variety of websites, but also on numerous different networks.

The SERP, or search engine results page, is a complete listing of the web pages returned by search engines in response to a keyword query. The results on the SERP generally include such details as a list of web pages with their titles, a link to that particular webpage, and also a brief description showing where the keywords have matched content within the webpage. The search engines construct the SERP once and it is then saved for future inquiries. Search engines do crawl the web periodically to account for new pages, and then the SERP is rebuilt.

Recently, the SERP has begun to offer users of the search engines new and improved features that include suggestions for alternate keywords, images, definitions, local matches and even files on the users very own computer.

Without the aid of inbound and outbound links, your website will not have favorable results on the search engine results page. It is a known fact that only 7% of all websites are even visible to the search engines. This means that 93% of the websites in existence are not optimized correctly, and are losing out on the SERP. Utilize those inbound and outbound links, and be a part of the 7%.

Because of the anonymous nature of the internet people are generally more skeptical when it comes to doing business online. Owing partly to famous internet scams sensationalized by the media and to bad personal experiences online, people are less likely to trust a party whom they&ve never met in person.

As an online marketer, you face the challenge of building trust and loyalty without the benefit of a physical handshake, a face-to-face meeting, or even a smile. To this end online forums can provide an excellent way to build meaningful relationships with people and attract new customers.

By joining a forum in your area of expertise, you gain access to a community that shares your interests as well as a pool of potential customers. There are countless forums dealing with just about any topic imaginable. The vast majority of forums do not charge you a fee to register or post messages. Many allow you to include with your posts self-promotional “signatures” that you can use to promote your business and link to your website.

A good way to locate a forum relevant to your line of business is to do a keyword search using one of the major search engines. Why a major search engine? A Google search for “website marketing forum,” for example, will not only return dozens of relevant forums on website marketing, but will also give you an indication of how highly they are regarded by the search engine giant, as gauged by how high they rank for that key phrase. Forums that rank higher on the search engine result pages (SERPs) are the ones of which you&ll want to become a member.

Forums allow you to share knowledge and gain reputation as an expert in your field. Offering concrete advices that are immediately useful to other people is an especially effective marketing technique. Once you&ve gained credibility in your field, you will be sought after for your professional expertise without your having to promote yourself.

Participating in forums is also an excellent way to humanize yourself and your business. When people deal with you, they&ll know that they&re dealing with a real person, not a nameless, faceless business entity. By staking your reputation online, you demonstrate that you are willing to accept some degree of accountability for your actions.

If you&re a generally honest and agreeable person in the real life, there is no reason to hide behind a company name when conducting business online. The personal qualities that make you likable in the real world will also make you likable in cyberspace. Indeed, establishing meaningful relationships online is a lot like making friends in the real world. After all, on the other side of the terminal is a real person with real emotions just like you.

Another key to meaningful online relationships is to create an atmosphere of openness and transparency. Although you normally use a nickname to start and respond to posts in public forums, you should use your real name in private correspondences. It is good practice to begin your messages with a salutation, addressing them by their real name whenever possible. A little courtesy can go a long way in building loyalty and trust.

Apart from selling your personal qualities, you must have something of value to offer to people– and at prices that are fair to everyone! On a venue where your personal reputation is not at stake, you can price a widget for any amount you want and hope someone will come along and buy it. When you do business on forums, however, you must be extra value-conscious when pricing your product or service. If you overprice your widget, you risk receiving flames from other members that could harm your reputation. This is why it&s so important to research what other members are charging for a similar widget and to price yours competitively. Often you&ll end up charging lower prices to members of your forum than to other customers with whom you have not developed as close a relationship for the same widget.

Building positive relationships is about making people feel important. Just as you want to feel good for having sold your product or service, people want to feel good for having bought it. This is why it is so important to promptly answer their questions and attend to their concerns. Listen to their inputs and incorporate their ideas into your business practices. This is how you make your customers a part of your team. It&s not a stretch to speak of your customer as a member of your team. When you really think about it, no business can exist without its customers. Teamwork is not limited to interacting with other members of your company. It also takes teamwork to build a constructive, mutually beneficial relationship between you and your customers.