Understanding Paid URL Inclusion

The Internet contains numerous search engines, some of which offer what is known as “paid inclusion.” This means that you pay the specific search engine an annual fee for your web page to be included in their index.

Of course, every search engine already has an automated program commonly called a “spider” that indexes all the web pages it locates online, and it does this for free. So whether you pay or not, your web page will eventually be indexed by all Internet search engines, as long as the spider can follow a link to your page. The major issue is, then, how quickly your page is indexed.

A search engine that offers a paid URL inclusion uses an extra spider that is programmed to index the particular pages that have been paid for. The difference between the spider that indexes pages for free and the spider that indexes only pages for a fee is speed. If you have paid for inclusion, the additional search engine spider will index your page immediately.

The debate over paid URL inclusion centres around the annual fee. Since the regular spider of these search engines would eventually get around to indexing your web page anyway, why is a renewal fee necessary? The fee is necessary to keep your pages in the search engine’s index. If you go the route of paid inclusion, you should be aware that at the end of the pay period, on some search engines, your page will be removed from their index for a certain amount of time.

It’s easy to get confused about whether you would benefit from paid inclusion since the spider of any search engine will eventually index your page without the additional cost. There are both advantages and disadvantages to paid URL inclusion, and it is only by weighing your pros and cons that you will be able to decide whether to spring for the extra cash or not.

The advantages are obvious: rapid inclusion and rapid re-indexing. Paid inclusion means that your pages will be indexed quickly and added to search results in a very short time after you have paid the fee. The time difference between when the regular spider will index your pages, and when the paid spider will, is a matter of months. The spider for paid inclusion usually indexes your pages in a day or two. Be aware that if you have no incoming links to your pages, the regular spider will never locate them at all.

Additionally, paid inclusion spiders will go back to your pages often, sometimes even daily. The advantage of this is that you can update your pages constantly to improve the ranking in which they appear in search engines, and the paid URL inclusion spider will show that result in a matter of days.

First and foremost, the disadvantage is the cost. For a ten page website, the costs of paid URL inclusion range from $170 for Fast/Lycos to $600 for Altavista, and you have to pay each engine their annual fee. How relevant the cost factor is will depend on your company.

Another, and perhaps more important, disadvantage is the limited reach of paid URL inclusions. The largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, do not offer paid URL inclusion. That means that the search engines you choose to pay an inclusion fee will amount to a small fraction of the traffic to your site on a daily basis.

Google usually updates its index every month, and there is no way you can speed up this process. You will have to wait for the Google spider to index your new pages no matter how many other search engines you have paid to update their index daily. Be aware that it is only after Google updates their index that your pages will show up in Google, or AOL results.

One way to figure out whether paid URL inclusion is a good deal for your company is to consider some common factors. First, find out if search engines have already indexed your pages. To do this, you may have to enter a number of different keywords, but the quickest way to find out is to enter your URL address in quotes. If your pages appear when you enter the URL address but do not appear when you enter keywords, using paid inclusion will not be beneficial. This is because your pages have already been indexed and ranked by the regular spider. If this is the case, your money would be better spent by updating your pages to improve your ranking in search results. Once you accomplish this, you can then consider using paid inclusion if you want to speed up the time it will take for the regular spider to revisit your pages.

The most important factor in deciding whether to use paid URL inclusion is to decide if it’s a good investment. To figure this out, you have to look at the overall picture: what kind of product or service are you selling and how much traffic are you dependent on to see a profit?

If your company sells an inexpensive product that requires a large volume of traffic to your site, paid inclusion may not be the best investment for you; the biggest search engines do not offer it, and they are the engines that will bring you the majority of hits. On the other hand, if you have a business that offers an expensive service or product and requires a certain quality of traffic to your site, a paid URL inclusion is most likely an excellent investment.

Another factor is whether or not your pages are updated frequently. If the content changes on a daily or weekly basis, paid inclusion will insure that your new pages are indexed often and quickly. The new content is indexed by the paid spider and then appears when new relevant keywords are entered in the search engines. Using paid inclusion in this case will guarantee that your pages are being indexed in a timely manner.

You should also base your decision on whether or not your pages are dynamically generated. These types of pages are often difficult for regular spiders to locate and index. Paying to include the most important pages of a dynamically generated website will insure that the paid spider will index them.

Sometimes a regular spider will drop pages from its search engine, although these pages usually reappear in a few months. There are a number of reasons why this can happen, but by using paid URL inclusion, you will avoid the possibility. Paid URL inclusion guarantees that your pages are indexed, and if they are inadvertently dropped, the search engine will be on the lookout to locate them immediately.

As you can see, there are numerous factors to consider when it comes to paid URL inclusion. It can be a valuable investment depending on your situation. Evaluate your business needs and your website to determine if paid URL inclusion is a wise investment for your business goals.

Tags: Google, Money, MSN, Profit, Search Engine, Sell, Website, Yahoo

The Best Way How To Improve Link Popularity

There are many ways how to improve link popularity. If you are webmaster who is hungry for better ranking in search engines, this article was written for you. There are hundreds of factors which determine your search engine position. Except on-page factors there are off-page factors too. And these factors seem to be most important for big search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

When I speak about off-page factors I mean not only the number of the links pointing to your website. If you want to achieve top positions in search engines you must care about relevance of your back links. Let’s say you are a web designer. In your case the most valuable links are from another web designers websites. Very valuable will be links from related industries like web hosting, search engine optimization (seo) or webmaster tools. By contrast, link from site like online casino will have minimal value for you. From this reason exchange links with relevant websites only. Internet is full of sites related to yours so why waste your time with gaining worthless back links?

When webmasters exchange links, a lot of them care too much about pagerank of partner’s website. Yes, you are right — link from PR8 site is better then link from PR0. But keep in mind that those new sites with PR0 will grow with time and their PR will grow too. It can easily happen that you exchange a link with PR0 website today and after 6 months this site gain PR5+. And now let’s answer this important question: What is easier — get link on PR0 website which will grow or on PR5+ site? From my point of view each link has big value as long as it is from relevant website.

Let’s look at another factors used by search engines to determine the value of back links. You have probably heard terms “one-way” and “reciprocal” links. One-way links are links where webmaster of site A links to site B but webmaster of site B doesn’t link back to site A. Reciprocal links are links where webmaster A links to site B and webmaster B links back to site A. There are two important facts:

1. One-way links have a little higher value for search engines. Search engines suppose that one-way links are most likely natural and predicate the quality of the linked website.

2. Reciprocal links have a little lower value from the reason mentioned above. But it is easier to get reciprocal link then one-way link (In case that your site is quality, of course. For poor websites it is always difficult to gain back links). Anyway relevant reciprocal link is always better then one-way link from unrelated website.

The last factor I will describe in this article is the age of the domain. If you get link from the 5 years old domain the link will have higher value then link from the new site. Many spammers register domains for one year, use them as link farms and when they are banned by search engines (it takes probably less then one year) then they don’t renew this domain and register a new one. On the other side, if the site is a few years old and had never used any unfair SEO tactics, search engines give this site higher importance.

So if you are trying to improve link popularity of your website, don’t forget that it is not only about pagerank. You need links from quality websites. Making your website the best in your field is the right way how to get these valuable links.

Tags: Google, MSN, Register, Search Engine, SEO, Tactics, Website, Yahoo

Search Engine Secrets – Get Top Listings On Google and Yahoo!

Let me show you How to Get Top Listings for every page of your site and Rank #1 for all of your Keywords in the Search Engines – Guaranteed.

Did you believe this? If your like me you’ve probably seen a million pages and emails like this that claim they can work miracles for you in all the search engines. They claim everything from having inside information or special relationships with Google and all the search engines.

The simple Truth is this: No one can guarantee top listings on any search engine, in fact, no one can even guarantee that you’ll ever be listed. So beware of big claims and unethical SEO firms as there are many out there.

So how do you get top listings in the major search engines. Let me try to answer that as simply as I can without thoroughly confusing you. CONTENT – yes that’s right… content is still king… the more you try to fool search engines the more damage you’ll do to your rankings. Search engines are getting smarter and smarter and they have seen every trick in the book done by every unethical SEO/SEM firm and spammer out there. So don’t fall pray to the hype and false claims.

Here’s the big Search Engine Secret

Well Written and Related Content, Relevant Page Titles and Meta-tag Descriptions. So there you have it, the secret is out… if anyone tries to tell you different or convince you otherwise – put away your check book and run. Yes, there are other things you can do to help your rankings using the 3 items above and a few more.

How to improve your chances in the search engines rankings:

*** Know your top keywords.. Use Yahoo’s Keyword Tool http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/?mkt=us〈=en_US or Goggle’s Sandbox https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox to find what users are actually typing into the search engines to find sites like yours. Once you have all your top keywords – don’t loose them… you will use these over and over and over again.

*** Use your top keywords in the content of your pages, in your page titles and in your mate-tag descriptions. I don’t mean to use pages that are filled with nothing but keywords, use them in Real Sentences. Pages that are nothing but keywords will hurt you in the search engines, this is called keyword stuffing and will hurt your rankings or worse yet, get your site delisted or banned from the search engines. Simply take your current site content and use your top keywords in appropriate places where they make sense in real sentences.

*** Don’t over use keywords or try to use to many on one single page. Have your main keyword in the title, the description and a couple times on the page content is usually sufficient. Do this for every page of your site optimizing it for the subject of that particular page using the relevant keywords from your research. I see so many sites with the same Title and Meta Descriptions on every page. Make sure yours are different.

*** Get as many high value links as possible. Best way to determine High Value links is to install the Google Toolbar at http://toolbar.google.com/ and use Google’s Page Rank to determine link value. You can also use out PR Tool at http://www.i4market.com/tools/rankcheck.html. The higher the rank the better. You may have to pay for links on PR7 or higher sites – but don’t pay too much. You can also use Alexa Traffic Rank or their toolbar – http://www.alexa.com/. The more High Value links you have the better your Search Engine Popularity will be.

*** Install Link Exchange Software… but be selective about the link exchanges you approve.

*** Add value added relevant content to your site, such as articles, news, blogs or tools related to your business or industry. This will increase your search engine saturation. A site with 100 pages of good quality content has much a better chance of being found than a site with only 10 pages.

*** Use Google XML Site Maps or find and company that will create one for you. http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/about.html

*** Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, break the site map into separate pages.

*** Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. Search Engines do not recognize text contained in images or flash content. If you must use images, then always use the Alt tag to describe the link.

*** Check for broken links and correct HTML.

*** If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a “?” character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few. Don’t use “&id=” as a parameter in your URLs, as Google does not include these pages.

*** Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

*** Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it’s current for your site so that you don’t accidentally block the spiders from content you want included.

*** Understand the difference between a Search Engine and a Directory. A Search engine uses spidering technology and will search the web for new sites. Directories will not seek you out and you will have to be tell them about your new site manually.

*** Revisit your keywords on a regular basis. There are a 1000’s ways to search for the same thing, search patterns change from time to time. You’ll want to keep up with those changes.

*** Submit your site to the search engines if it has never been submitted or you are not listed in that particular engine. Most search engines still have a free submit for the “Natural Listings”, yet they may not be easy to find. You can find Google’s ADD URL here http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

*** Submit your site to the Directories including Yahoo! and DMOZ. DMOZ http://www.dmoz.org/ is the Open Directory Project and is used to power thousands of other sites and directories – Inclusion in this directory gets you links in 1000’s of other sites. DMOZ is also the directory Google uses. http://directory.google.com/

WHAT NOT TO DO.

– Don’t Use hidden text or links
– Don’t Use doorway or gateway pages.
– Don’t Use pages that redirect users to other places.
– Don’t use any type of cloaking technology – no matter how great it sounds. It might work for a short time – but you will get caught.
– Don’t use Flash content for important information. Flash is an application that is completely invisible to most search engines. Flash is good for animations and other page elements – not for an entire site unless you also have an html version.
– Don’t Use Misleading or overly repeated words
– Don’t Use Bait and Switch tactics… they don’t work.
– Don’t Use Duplicate sites or pages
– Stay away from Free For All or Link Farms schemes, as these will only hurt you.

There are many things that affect your rankings then just the content on your pages, so DON’T obsess about being #1 – you may never get there no matter what you do. Your time is better spent operating your business in areas you have more control over.

Following the above guidelines will get you the best results your site will achieve. That’s not to say that there is not more you can do – but these are the main items that will effect your rankings in the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages). The internet a huge place and technology changes all the time – so do the search engines – a site that is #1 today might be #1001 tomorrow.

You can try to do all this yourself or you can hire a company that specializes in SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing), however beware, there are many that will separate you from your money quickly and leave you with little to no results. We suggest you take some advice from Google concerning selecting an SEO firm for your company. http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

Above all else – remember this – There are NO GUARANTEES in any type of marketing campaigns, be it on the web, in print, on television or radio. So spend prudently and select your Marketing firm wisely!

Tags: Adwords, Blog, Google, Guide, Money, Search Engine, SEO, SERP, Tactics, Yahoo

Sitemap Generators: Good investment for online businesses

For those who are not familiar with sitemaps, a sitemap is quite simply a map or a guide that lists all the sections and pages of your website. One may find that a lot of websites have this feature, particularly the HTML type, for the benefit of users or visitors who have specific needs that may be answered by content in your site that is not readily located by clicking on section links or using search engines. It is a practical way of ensuring that users of your site are able to maximise the site to suit their needs.

Aside from the HTML sitemap, other types are the Text and XML sitemaps. A text sitemap is a simple text file containing your website’s list of URLs, and that may then be submitted to a search engine, such asYahoo, to inform them that the pages are up. This, then, allows their search engine spiders to visit the site and index it for future searches. An XML sitemap, meanwhile, is one in a formatted file recognised by Google Sitemaps that helps the search engine index your site’s URLs and keep track of changes made in the site.

Those who do business online recognise the reality that their sites need to be constantly updated with offerings and content that are interesting and in high demand, to keep the business running. As your site grows with more and more pages, while the increase of similar sites—your competition—threaten to reduce your hits, an updated sitemap proves more vital in the survival of your venture. Moreover, using all three types of sitemaps can help boost exposure for your site.

For this job, owners of big websites or a multitude of small online businesses can make use of free sitemap generators available online. Purchasing an unlimited version sitemap generator is also a good idea for the most updated sitemaps. You can think of using sitemaps as free or low-cost advertising for your business.

Online businesses with constantly updated sitemaps of their websites can make sure Internet users who are voluntarily seeking out specific information will find their way to the site’s content that even closely matches their needs. For instance, when a user does a search for a specific product, an updated sitemap can help a website with a wide array of product offerings to be included in the results and provide the user with a direct URL. Consequently, both the website and the user benefit from it; with the help of a sitemap, the search engine takes the user directly from the results page to the relevant web page, and with more people easily finding your site, business profits are not that far behind.

The easy way to build sitemaps for your site is to find a website generator that creates all three types of sitemaps. One such product is provided by XML-Sitemaps.com, which has basic the information on sitemap generation, as well as easy to follow guidelines.

Tags: Google, Guide, Profit, Search Engine, Website, Yahoo

The Forgotten Fundamentals of SEO

Introduction:
Firstly, thank you for taking the time to view my SEO hints and tips e-book on the often forgotten aspects of SEO. This book was written from the collective knowledge and information gathered by Chris Diprose, owner and manager of Kanga Internet. Kanga Internet are located in Melbourne, Australia and they focus on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Web Development for the Joomla Content Management System (CMS).

With Search Engine Optimization there are lots of unknowns, educated guesses and knowledge gained from personal and associative experience. Google, Yahoo and MSN keep their cards close to their chest when it comes to revealing how their ranking systems actually work. They tell the community trickles of information on what things can affect search engine results, how they can be improved and what to do in certain situations, but mostly knowing what to do to achieve good results is achieved by studying and hard work. Much alike other SEO consultants I have gathered information from various sources and worked constantly on improving results for customers. I am always looking for new intelligent ways to improve search engine results. I believe in “White Hat” (or more appropriately, “Grey Hat”) principles.

Edition 1 of this e-book is intended for people looking to improve their websites from the ground up. I address SEO design fundamentals; the things you need to consider before embarking on any text and keyword analysis. I hope you find these hints and tips useful.

Enjoy the readings herein.
- Chris Diprose

The Website Revelation – What owning a website actually means.
As a Web Developer and SEO consultant I deal with many existing website owners who are looking to modify or improve their website. I also deal with many people who are looking to start their web presence with a new website. Through both of these interactions there is often a common theme; a misunderstanding or an attitude. I call this a misconception of reality, as often the reality of what the Internet can actually do for the persons business and what they think it can do differ massively.

Often it is presumed that by simply owning a domain and having a website built and published on the Internet, thousands of people will magically find the website, visit it and buy their products. “If you build it, they will come” should be removed from the vocabulary as soon as possible if you are to adjust attitudes to the underlying search technology. As a businessman in the real World, it is obvious that it would not happen outside of the Internet ether, so what is so different online? Maybe it was the Technology boom 10 years ago that caused a rift in understanding or maybe the buzz that caused the meteoric rise in the stock prices of Tech Companies, I can hear the thoughts of the small businessman, “surely this can be replicated for my business” – in answer I would say, “well, it is unlikely, but you should be able to achieve some results over time”.

It is most important when taking on a project like Search Engine Optimization for a website, to know that it is important to be committed for the long haul. It is no small task and sufficient funds need to be allocated to the project. Delivery deadlines need to be correctly scoped against required changes, in order to meet client expectations. The key points of responsibility to the SEO project are in knowing that there are big changes near the start and during setup but the changes do not stop after setup, there are a continuous ongoing refinements to the design and system over time. In this regard I find it important to manage expectations and set realistic long term goals on what a website can be expected to achieve and in what time frames those goals hope to be met.

So what should your goal be when you are delving into SEO for your website? Well, everyone’s goal is exactly the same; improve page rankings, improve page visits and hits and finally gain more sales through the website.

When it comes to SEO and achieving these goals you have to have principles and my main principle is, “Good websites get good ratings and bad websites get bad ratings or none at all.” As time goes on with the improvement of search engine technology and the refinement of search engine results this statement becomes truer and truer. I believe in results through “white hat”(reads; “Grey Hat”) principles and methodologies.

What are “white hat” principles? I guess I would compare it to doing things the honest way and the right way without risk. So develop a good site, promote good linking, have good informative content and keep working on it and then you are on the road to good rankings through “White Hat” principles.

So, why should you do things the “white hat” way? Well, search engines do have some kind of understanding, an artificial intelligence. They soon catch on to websites spamming or linking to websites with no relevance and bad cross linking. It’s about being smart, in for the long term and wanting your business to grow organically, naturally.

So how do I go about improving my site and making it optimized for search engines naturally? Well, that’s why you’re here! So let’s run through few of the things you should be doing in your websites from a fundamental level.

Domain names:
When choosing a domain name, choose one that is relevant to the product or service you are going to provide and that is as simple as possible. There are considerations of branding and product/service provided that should go into this choice. Involvement of marketing personal and product understanding is required but also consultation with your SEO professional is advantageous. In this step I would say, take some time and choose wisely. Keep it simple and easy to remember, often saying it out loud will make it clear whether it can be understood by a simple man.

It is a strongly held belief by many SEO professionals that buying a domain which is older, and that has been around for a while, means it will not be sand boxed by Google. What’s the sandbox effect? Well, it refers to what Google does to a website or domain that is new or is relatively unknown by Google. In many instances Google’s Sandbox effect relegates the new domain to sub-optimal inclusion in search results. Regardless of the sites optimization it lowers the websites relevance and ranking to the term searched upon. If you can use your old business domain name, then consider this very important.

If, however, you are buying a new domain name then keep it relevant to the product or service being sold or offered on the website. Keep it close, relevant and simple. Relevance is primary.

Location specific domain or international domain ( .com or com.au)? Personally I think dot com’s are better, mainly because they appeal Internationally but if you want to you can keep it location specific and to your region then consider purchasing all similar higher level domains, yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com.au, if you can.

Choosing a Host:
Fast, reliable and gives you all you that you need and want. Preferably gives a unique IP. Again some SEO professionals believe this can also have a detrimental affect in Google rankings but from my experience it sometimes does and it sometimes doesn’t. I have had some sites come in with high PR rankings on shared IP’s and others when I shifted to a new IP the PR of the site jumped, so this is still a bit of a mystery when it comes to Google rankings. I guess a consideration

Traffic considerations: When choosing your host ensure the plan you are on can be expanded so that any new increases in traffic can be accommodated accordingly.

Site Design:
There are several fundamental things to consider when you are modifying or designing a website.

Flash:
Flash is has been popular for a few years now and I truly believe it has its place. It is a great way of showing many products or services in a small area, has great visual impact if done properly and can set a good friendly tone to the website visitor. Having said that, I also hate flash; it can be an absolute nightmare when it comes to search engine optimization.

What you should know about flash; it cannot be read by a search engine as the search engine cannot read the text or the images contained within it nor can it interpret what is in the pictures being shown.

When it comes to flash I would suggest, not making your whole website flash. If you are designing a new website and you want to use flash then use it in high impact areas to capture the attention of your intended audience but use it sparingly. It is important to ensure that as much text content(to a maximum discussed in my next book, generally 300-500 characters) is available on the webpage and in simple HTML.

Frames:
Many older websites were designed with frames. Frames are where the main home page is actually a frameset page that includes several other pages into it. This makes the page hard to index in search engines and should be avoided. While Google do now index framed sites, it is important to note that most of the other top search engines still cannot follow frame links. They only see the frameset page and ignore the rest of the inner frames. This presents an SEO problem to us because it is highly likely those inner pages contain our content keywords.

Nowadays this is not really a huge issue as it is so uncommon for a designer to actually use frames but the easiest way to resolve the issue would be to enforce a no use policy on frames.

Page Layout:
According to research the Googlebot trawls web pages from left to right and top to bottom. So given this little tidbit of information it is clear that you should be putting our most valuable keywords and information on the left and near the top. Of course this is a blanket statement and does not take into account design principles and beautification. Just keep it in mind during design of page layout. Position your move relevant keywords to the left of the page and near the top.

Good HTML Coding:
A lot of HTML generator programs out there bloat HTML to the point it is 3-4 times larger than what it would be if you hand coded it. Keep it simple, use a text editor, edit your HTML the old school way; until there is a HTML generator tool worthy of use. If you can’t code HTML then do a search on the Internet and find a decent, free, e-book and learn how to do it.

Javascript:
This is very popular among many web development professionals for menu’s, popups, scollers etc etc. It would be my suggestion to use simple plain HTML menu’s or as little Javascript as possible in web pages. There are many small JavaScript menu’s out there that are slim on JavaScript code to reduce this issue and make it almost negligible. Don’t over clutter your site with JavaScript as it increases page size, page load times and the search engines won’t understand it.

Image Sizes:
Keep them small and use only what you need to. This is essential for decreasing page loading times and getting information onto the users screen as soon as possible.

Overall page size and loading:
The overall page size is an important factor. It should load quickly and be easily trawled. If you have followed the HTML hand coding, used minimal javascript, used simple table layouts and good image sizing then you should be fine. There is much evidence that supports the fact that Google and probably the other search engines also, do not like to scan huge files, so keeping your overall HTML page size below 25k is my suggestion.

Dynamic URL’s and page/file names:
Dynamic pages are roadblocks to high search engine positioning. Especially those that end in “?” or “&”. In a dynamic site, variables are passed to the URL and the page is generated dynamically, often from information stored in a database as is the case with many e-commerce sites. Normal .html pages are static – they are hard-coded, their information does not change, and there are no “?” or “&” characters in the URL.

Pages with dynamic URLs are present in several engines, notably Google and AltaVista, even though publicly AltaVista claims their spider does not crawl dynamic URLs. To a spider a “?” represents a sea of endless possibilities – some pages can automatically generate a potentially massive number of URLs, trapping the spider in a virtually infinite loop.

As a general rule, search engines will not properly index documents that:
• contain a “?” or “&”
• End in the following document types: .cfm, .asp, .shtml, .php, .stm, .jsp, .cgi, .pl
• Could potentially generate a large number of URLs.
To avoid complications, consider creating static pages whenever possible, perhaps using the database to update the pages, not to generate them on the fly.

Slightly Off Topic Thoughts:
The topics covered here are not considered completely SEO topics but in terms of overall objective – increasing sales, this section is very important. Take these things on board, consider them, consult with your designer and marketing team. Make educated and informed choices on these topics when considering your audience and what your website objectives are.

Screen Size:
Over 65% of all screens in the World are set to run at the 1024×768 resolution. Of the remaining percentage, 13% are running at 800×600, 20% running at larger sizes and 2% are unknown. So this affects the way you design. It would be my suggestion to always design for the smallest user to visit your site, but often I find 800×600 restrictive so I tend to design for slightly larger. Not large enough to make an 800×600 user angry but large enough to make it look good on larger screens also. I weigh up my target users, my intended amount of content and find some happy medium. I generally design for 1000×620 as this is the perfect amount of real estate for a 1024×768 user when they have the browser top bar and status bar and Windows taskbar.

colors and themes:
One important aspect of marketing – selling – is the use of color. Meanings are attached to colors in the same way meanings are attached to words.

• Gold is the color of wealth and prosperity.
• White is the color of pure innocence and cleanliness.
• Pink is the color of femininity and softness.
• Green is the color of natural things and freshness.
• Red is the color of danger and stress.
• Blue is the color the calmness, intelligence. The majority of the World selects blue as a favorite color. It often represents “trust”

Use of color to establish an image or a brand is common in the marketing community, yet when you visit the websites of many search engine optimization professional’s, it’s obvious that color significance plays no part in their own web optimization. Some of the colors I found on SEO websites:
• Baby Blue, a color which implies weakness.
• Red, a color which implies risk, or danger.
• Orange a color which implies a cheerful “levity”. Orange is one of Americans’ least favorite colors.

Although color selection is off topic for SEO I would consider it a very important factor in what SEO is trying to achieve, in the end, for your website – selling more product, creating loyalty to your brand and customer impact. color research is something you should seriously consider. In summary of color choices I would suggest studying and learning more about your customers, researching color choices and their relevance to your underlying products and making informed choices on these in collaboration. If in doubt then I suggest sticking to safe and trusted colors within safe eye pleasing designs.

Gifs for logos and jpgs for pictures:
Ensure you are using gifs for logos and background placements and jpgs for photos on your website. This helps reduce size and improve clarity of the web site overall.

Browser:
It is vitally important to ensure your web page works in both IE, Firefox and Opera. Testing other browsers is also an advantage but these are the main three in use nowadays (2007). I think quoting stats on the browser breakdown are irrelevant as you need it work in all browsers. W3C cross browser compliance is great for this.

So, this brings us to the end of Volume 1: Fundamentals of SEO Web Design. There are many things to consider when designing a website or modifying a web site to make it more SEO friendly. Clearly I have a few more volumes left in SEO for websites.

Tags: Ads, Buy, Google, MSN, Search Engine, Sell, SEO, Tips, Website, Yahoo

SEO Best Practice: Befriend The Directories

Why Directories Are Important

Directories should play a major role in your SEO efforts, well, at least the big and important ones, for the following reasons:

- Listings within major directories provide “context” to search engines. For example, if your web site is listed in the Open Directory Project under the category Pets -> Weird Pets -> Blue Cats, search engines will assume your web site has something to do with blue cats. Your web site and pages will be indexed faster and might have a better ranking in search results for specific terms (in this case, “blue cats”).

- Major directories (such as Yahoo! Directory, ODP, Jayde etc.) have high page ranks and as long as you obtain a non-reciprocal listing from them, paid or unpaid, your page rank will benefit greatly.

- Major directories are often replicated by other web sites (think of ODP, with hundreds of copies) which means that a listing somewhere in such a major directory will cause listings in all replica sites, contributing towards your link popularity efforts and boosting page ranks.

- The ODP (Open Directory Project) feeds results to Google, AOL, AltaVista, Lycos, Netscape – once again, a presence in ODP can get you quite far.

Submitting to Directories

As with most good things in life, you need to make efforts to get into quality directories. Although detailed instructions on how to submit your web sites are always provided by the directories, there are certain aspects to consider before you start hunting for directories and submit your web sites:

- Start with Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project: being listed in the two of them is worth more than being listed in all other directories together! You will find soon enough that, unfortunately, being listed in these two is the hardest thing to do: Yahoo requires a $299 annual fee for regular web sites (only non-commercial sites qualify for a free listing) and $600 for adult sites, while ODP is free but you need A LOT of luck to make your way into it. ODP is so large yet is strictly human edited, which means the waiting time for a listing can extend to even years! Make your duty as a SEO worker and submit your web site, but don’t get your hopes too high, unfortunately.

- Religiously follow the submission guidelines provided by directories: read them as many times as you need to make sure you will not upset its editors by submitting your site the wrong way, with inaccuracies, the wrong description style, or to the wrong category.

- Try to find niche directories if your web site’s content is suitable for that. For example, if your web site covers Marketing topics, focus your efforts into finding a Marketing-only directory (such as MarketingWHO.com) and submit your site there: search engines love links from sites relevant to yours!

- You will probably come across many directories with paid inclusions: use your common sense to appreciate if it’s worth it or not. A good criteria is to check their Google Page Rank: if it’s at least 3 levels higher than your site’s Page Rank, it’s probably worth spending the money for the inclusion fee. However, do look for directories with a flat, one-time fee rather than recurring monthly or annual fees: you’ll end up spending less money!

In the end, remember a simple rule: if it’s too easy to get into a directory, it’s probably not worth the effort to get into it in the first case.

Tags: Google, Guide, Money, Search Engine, SEO, Yahoo