Organic SEO | Your Best Place for Organic SEO: May 2009

Sunday, May 31, 2009

How to Optimize Dynamic Websites for Better Search Engine Rankings

There is a misconception related to dynamic websites that dynamic websites are not search engine friendly or they can’t have good positions in major search engines. This is absolutely wrong, dynamic websites can have better and more controlled positions in search engines comparatively than static websites.

What is a dynamic website?

A dynamic website is database driven website in which parts of the content are generated by Server Side Programs/ Middle Tier.
Dynamic webpage doesn’t physically exist as a file/document on (hosting) server, unless the request comes for a webpage. The request contains parameters, user identities, date & time, context etc.

Problems with Dynamic Websites according to Search Engines

This is true that search engines are not good at reading dynamic web pages, but there is always a solution for any problem, first you need to understand that why search engines are unable to read dynamically generated websites? What hurts them not to read dynamic web pages?

Dynamic webpage doesn’t physically exit on server
Dynamic website has complex URLs such as “ http://www.wahidqazi.com?name=value&blabla%blabla@session_id@2226897&blabla=77
Search engine bots/crawlers usually have difficulty in reading these characters “?”, “=”, “@”, “%”, “$”, “*”, “&”, “!” in URLs
Search engine usually considers dynamic website as group of never ending links
Search engine bots/crawlers might get stuck in an infinite loop, specially if the dynamic webpage has session id

Tips to Optimize Dynamic Websites

Now you know what hurts search engine bots/crawlers to index your website? What you need to know is that how you can keep your valuable website indexed by search engines, the more your web pages are indexed the better your website will impress search engines

Create an HTML sitemap with 100 text links or less. If you have more than 100 links, break the sitemap into more than one web pages
Google Sitemap will also be an advantage, specially if your website is big and dynamic
Get inbound links deep into your website from other relevant websites such as directories, classified directories, vertical industrial portals
Convert dynamic web pages into static web pages with the help of URL re-writing techniques
You can use some plug-in applications that will change your existing dynamic URLs into static ones, specially for shopping carts there are plenty of applications available
Avoid using session IDs in the URL, specially when user has not logged in
If you do need to include parameters, limit it to two and limit the number of characters per parameter to ten or less
If you do have small dynamic website and enough time you can apply this technique. Just right click on page by page of you website, copy the source code and create new static page with .htm or .html extensions

URL Rewriting Techniques and Tools

A rewrite engine is a piece of web server software application that is used to modify URLs before fetching the requested items for a variety of purposes.

Rewrite Engine for Apache HTTP server:

Apache HTTP server has a rewrite engine called mod_rewrite, which has been described as “the Swiss Army knife of URL manipulation”

Rewrite engines for Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS):

IISRewrite from Qwerksoft
ISAPI_Rewrite from isapirewrite.com
URL Replacer from Motobit
Ionic’s ISAPI Rewrite Filter (IIRF) (open source) from Ionic Shade

Rewrite HttpModule for Microsoft ASP.NET:

URLRewriting.NET

Rewrite engine for Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Servlet container servers:

Apache Tomcat, Resin, Orion etc)
HttpRedirectFilter (open source)
UrlRewriteFilter (open source) - allows you to rewrite URLs before they get to your Servlets, JSP’s, Struts etc
URL Rewriter (open source - LGPL) - URL Rewriter is a tool for rewriting URLs in Java Servlets. It is similar to mod_rewrite

Conclusion:

Dynamic websites are not impossible to optimize, it’s just a small fine tune that you need to keep in mind when developing a dynamic website, if you can understand the problems search engine bots/ crawlers have to face when crawling your website, you can better prepare your website, so that search engine bots/crawlers can easily index your valuable website.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Research Analyst, eBusiness and eMarketing Consultant, SEO Consultant, SEO Trainer, SEO Speaker and Author, specializes in eBusiness, eMarketing, SEO, branding and promotion and has trained dozens of qualified SEOs. He is a Professional SEO Consultant can be reached at http://www.wahidqazi.com/

How Effective are Your Title Tags?

Here is an easy method for testing title tag effectiveness - or how sexy your title tag is to searchers. Using this method you can easily estimate the CTR of your title tags.

First get a title tag indexed and showing in the SERPs. Then start an adwords campaign, bidding high enough to stay on the first page for your target search term - and have a budget high enough so that your adds will not slow or go over budget. It’s also important to use “exact match” for your keyword. Let this run for a couple of days - or shorter if there are lots of searches for your term. Your goal is to find out how many impressions that search term generates.

After you have the impressions data, then run your log analysis software to see how many referrals came from google for that search term and time frame. Then use this formula….

CTR = google referrals for term / adwords impressions for term

This formula estimates the CTR for your title tag. Now change your title tag and see if you can improve the CTR.

Don’t blindly use that same old title tag when testing its effectiveness is so easy to do.

Footnote: The method above assumes constant google SERPs and constant title tags on competitor websites.

SEO Campaigns that Ruin Rankings?

A popular thread at HighRankings started by the owner of Gamer’s Corner (who was right to seek SEO help) shows, in detail, how a poor quality SEO firm has “optimized” a website. They primarily changed the meta-tags (yeah, I know) and the title tags of the site’s pages and it seems the SEs did not appreciate the new “over-optimized” pages and promptly dropped their rankings.

I particularly love this e-mail from the SEO company:

Hello I inform you that as the search enngine crwals the site also crawls depending upon the traffic generated. Its not your site there are thousands of sites crawl every day so this fluctation arises. It will almost take 90 to 120 days to get listed in major search engines according to the rules of search engines. I assure you once again that kindly be patience your site will be listed in search engines dont get panic.

There’s a lot of good advice in the thread form HighRankings members, but what I take away from it, more than anything else, is how ignorant much of the site-owning population is about SEO. It would be great if a few media publications could help to clear things up with some high profile articles on what does and doesn’t help/hurt in the SEs.

And the Perfect Title Tag is…

Thanks to Michael (Graywolf) for his exceptional effort to bring us the answer to a vexing question - what is the “best” possible title tag:

From his research, it’s - “keyword phrase” : site title

That would have been my guess as well, but I’m glad to see it confirmed (with some wiggle room). Of course, the SEs could always change the algo on us, but this format makes the best sense - it tells you what the page is about and who’s bringing it to you - the exact format a human could get the best data from.

Formatting the Title Tag

Back to the basics for a minute - let’s talk about how to create the ideal title tag. There are several best practices that, in my opinion, make a big difference for the major effects you’re shooting for in title tag optimization (CTR in the SERPs, rankings at the search engines and value to users as navigational data).

In the simplest situation, you’ve got 3 pieces of data to convey:

* Company or Website name (for branding and ID purposes)
* Location in site architecture (if on a non-landing specific page)
* Keyword term or phrase targeted for search traffic

There are several ways to put this information together. Examples are probably the best way to show this:

1. SEO | SEM | Articles >> Beginner’s Guide to SEO
2. Beginner’s Guide to SEO | SEO | SEM Articles
3. Articles >> Beginner’s Guide to SEO from SEO | SEM
4. SEO | SEM | Beginner’s Guide to SEO
5. SEO Beginner’s Guide

In most situations where you have or are attempting to build a long-term brand online, configuration #1 is preferable - it accomplishes all of the goals sucessfully. However, certain situations demand more attention to keyword usage, or don’t require navigational structure, in which case, #2 or #4 might be options. If you need to be “ultra-optimized” (mostly for Yahoo! or MSN purposes), #5 is also a choice.

What to avoid:

1. SEO | Beginner’s Guide to SEO from the SEO experts at SEO | SEM
2. Beginner’s Guide to SEO where you’ll learn all the basics about the subject from industry leaders at SEO | SEM
3. ||>>|| SEO | SEM ||<<|| Beginner’s Guide to SEO

#1 - No need to run on and sound unnatural. #2 will never be seen or read and run-on titles appear highly unprofessional. #3 may look like it stands out in the SERPs, but Google and the other engines have been cracking down on overuse of non-letter characters, even those characters they would normally display.

If you’re dealing with the need to optimize for multiple terms/phrases on a page, the best thing you can do is to cleverly combine them in a phrase or short sentence. Using comma separation is a surefire way to look spammy. For example:

* Cellphones, ringtones, Nokia
Cellworld | Covering the cellphone world from ringtones to Nokia
* Glass art, glassblowing, Dale Chihuly
Glas.com | The art of glassblowing & glass art from masters like Dale Chihuly
* Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Lenovo
CPUStyle | Machine comparisons from Dell, Gateway, Compaq, Lenovo & more

I know I just broke the comma rule, but since it makes sense and fits logically…

The important point to remember is that the evolution of search technology means that its less and less important to make the targeted KW first in the title tag or repeat it multiple times or avoid too much additional text. What’s good for the visitor is, largely, what’s good for the engines.

Be Wary of How the Engines Use your Title and Meta Description Tags

Check out this stellar example of how the major search engines display results for Netflix’s home page.

netflix-title-serps

We see a high level of variation because while Ask & Google use the title and meta description directly from Netflix, Yahoo! and MSN are pulling data from the Yahoo! directory and DMOZ (respectively). I’d bet $50 that Netflix could get a 20%+ boost in their CTR at MSN simply by using the NOODP tag?

Currently, there’s no way to opt out of the Yahoo! directory listing. We’ve been trying to do it with one client for almost two years, but they won’t throw us out even when we don’t pay our dues! Someone at Yahoo! needs to fix that issue.

As search engines start to use metrics like CTR in the SERPs, you might lose more than just eyeballs - you’ll slide in rankings to boot. Here’s the strategy I’d recommend - look at your top 20-100 search referral phrases for the year, then search for each of them at the major engines. Note not just where you rank, but how well your “ad” (after all, what is a meta description tag if not ad copy) is written. Just as you constantly tweak and refine copy in your PPC listings, so too should you apply that same logic to the natural SERPs. You’ll probably find a far greater rate of return.

Title Tag Showdown

In Rebecca’s Fresh Egg Internship experience, she mentioned a disagreement that Ammon Johns (Internet Marketing legend and someone I consider a mentor) and I have on the issue of brand names in title tags. The dispute centers around how a company’s brand name should be used in their title tags:

Ammon’s Strategy - Put the brand name first in the title tag of the home page, but at the end of the title tag on any interior pages. Thus, Amazon.com’s title tags might read: “Sony 46″ Bravia Televisions - Amazon.com”

Rand’s Strategy - If it’s a short brand name (not “Washington Mutual Bank” for example), always have the brand name preceed the content. So, in my view, Amazon’s title tag would read - “Amazon.com - Sony 46″ Bravia Televisions”

It seems like a small area to have a debate about, but both sides bring up good points.

Ammon’s Strengths:

You can fit more keywords into the visible portion of the title tag
Users only read the first few words of a title tag and are searching for information about a subject/product/etc, not a brand
Bookmark usability is far higher with descriptive title tags rather than brand-first tags

Rand’s Strengths:

The brand at the beginning serves to help remind the user of where they’re going and who’s providing the service - yeah, it’s beating them on the head a bit to have it on every page, but branding is an exposure-based system. Note the studies that say most TV ads have no recall until they’ve been viewed 7 or more times…
Having the brand first in the SERPs can make a user who knows/loves your brand choose you over results that may rank above you - think of the times you search for a product and see a C|Net review or an Epicurious recipe. Assuming those are brands you like, you’re far more inclined to click them than a dodgy brand/URL you’ve never seen before. Brands carry inherent trust.
Even if users don’t click you in the SERPs, seeing your brand front and center dozens of times over many searches will show them that you’re a strong brand, and brand recognition will follow. Sites like Expedia, Craigslist, Epinions and even, I’d argue, SEOmoz, have built brand recognition in this way.

For my caveat, I’d probably not put the brand name first in several of the clients Ammon was working on. I’d conceed the point that it’s not as valuable in many areas - just look at the title tags for our client, Avatar.

What’s your verdict? Is there a hard and fast rule? Should I be won over by Ammon’s years of experience and multiple strong points?

p.s. Somehow, I forgot to mention that Ammon is talking about this very same topic on the Fresh Egg Blog… Thanks to Kevgibbo for the reminder.

Best Practices for Title Tags

It’s been a while since I provided some straightforward, back to basics style advice and there can be little doubt that the title tag is worthy of attention for beginners and experts alike. And so I present…

How to Make the Best Title Tag Possible:

Brand your traffic

Use the title of your site or brand at the beginning or end of every title tag to help searchers know where they’re going and to increase return visits. If you’re struggling to find justification for this component, think of all the ad studies showing that consumers are willing to pay more for a “brand name” product than an off-brand or store brand item of the same type - apply this logic to the SERPs and you’ll find that users will go further down the rankings to click on a “trusted” brand.

Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or less

There’s no reason to cut off the last word and have it replaced with a “…” Note that the engines have fluctuated recently and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters in some cases.

Incorporate keyword phrases

This one may seem obvious, but it’s critical that whatever your keyword research shows as being the most valuable for capturing searches gets prominently included in your title tag. It doesn’t have to be the first words, but it should be the semantic and logical center of attention.

Target longer phrases if they’re relevant

When choosing what keywords to include in a title tag, I often like to use as many as are completely relevant to the page at hand, while remaining accurate and descriptive. Thus, it can be much more valuable to have a title tag like “SkiDudes | Downhill Skiing Equipment & Accessories” rather than simply “SkiDudes | Skiing Equipment” - including those additional terms that are both relevant to the page and receive significant search traffic can bolster your page’s value. However, if you have a separate landing page for “Skiing accessories” than for “equipment,” then you shouldn’t include one term in the other’s title - you’ll be cannibalizing your rankings by forcing the engines to choose which page on your site is more relevant.

Use a divider

When splitting up the brand from the descriptive, I like to use the “|” symbol (aka the pipe bar). Others choose the arrow “>” or hyphen “-” and both work well. At times, however, I’ve found it useful to use the arrow or hyphen inside a title tag, as with a title like “SEO | SEM | Articles and Keyword Research - A Beginner’s Guide” hence my love of the pipe bar.

Focus on clickthrough & conversion rates

The title tag is exceptionally similar to the title you might write for paid search ads, only it’s harder to measure and improve because the stats aren’t provided for you as easily. However, if you’ve got a market that is relatively stable in search volume week-to-week, you can do some testing with your title tags and improve the clickthrough. Watch your analytics and, if it makes sense, buy search ads on the page as well - even if it’s just for a week or two, it can make a huge difference in the long run. A word of warning, though - be wary that you don’t focus entirely on CTR. Remember to continue measuring conversion rates. As MindValley Labs showed us, a lower CTR can sometimes be the better choice due to a higher conversion rate.

Target searcher intent

When you’re writing titles for web pages, keep in mind the search terms your audience employed to reach your site. If the intent is browsing or research-based, a more descriptive title tag is appropriate. If you’re reasonably sure the intent is a purchase, download or other action, make it clear in your title that this function can be performed at your site, i.e. “SkiDudes | View Snowboard Sizing Chart” or “SkiDudes | Buy Discount Snoqualmie Pass Lift Tickets”

Be consistent

Once you’ve determined a good formula for your pages in a given section or area of your site, stick to that regimen - you’ll find that as you become a trusted and successful “brand” in the SERPs, users will seek out your pages on a subject area and have expectations that you’ll want to fulfill.

Repeat in the headline

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 header tag can be valuable from both a keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to a page from the SERPs will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked - deliver and you’ve fulfilled that obligation. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they’re reasonably certain fits their intended goal or query.

Any other suggestions that you’d like to include? Disagreements? Valuable links I should point to?

The Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines (that’s really no secret at all)

How I despise those awful, cheesy pages promoting the “secrets” of search engine optimization. How I loathe the slick salesman pictured in fuzzy, 1980’s-style photography promising you “the hidden tactics SEOs don’t wan’t you to know.” When most search folks think of the “ultimate secret” in SEO,” they probably think about one of these:

Keywords in the Title Tag
Spiderable Links & Content
Anchor Text in Links
Links from Quality Websites

Those are all good pieces of advice, and important to high rankings, but even the last one (links from quality websites) doesn’t convey the most important part of successful ranking campaigns. If there is one key to high search engine rankings, a single piece of advice that unlocks the door to the top of Google & Yahoo! it’s this: Your website must appeal to a link-savvy audience.

Simple? Sadly, no. The truth is that the very best website in the world that sells your product, offers your content or promotes your cause may not be good enough to make it to the top of the engines. Why? Because the world of search has an inherent bias to those sites with more links. It’s not enough to build links now through manual link requests or link buying, nor is it enough to bolster these link acquisitions with a flawlessly “optimized” website filled with keyword-targeted pages. These strategies, while effective in the short term, won’t guarantee you success in the long run. To have a shot at keeping the top positions for years to come, you need a strategy that naturally drives links to your site again and again. The “secret” is that the audience most sites appeal to is NOT the same audience that provides links, yet this group (the Linkerati) has the power to make or break a site’s rankings.

Let’s walk through a brief history of search engines to see how this happened:

Hotbot Monster

No, Hotbot Monster, back in the early days, you really weren’t. Measuring repetition of keywords and keyword placement and density led to some pretty bad results and a lot of cloaking and spamming.

Googlebot Links Rankings

With the arrival of Google’s PageRank and Apostolos Gerasoulis’ Teoma (now called ExpertRank), the search engines got smarter, mapping the link patterns of the web and giving higher ranks to those sites & pages with more inbound links.

Googlebot Natural Links

Over the last 8 years, the engines have been refining the way they measure links, taking into account context, relevance, trust and other metrics to help indicate which links are worth counting towards a particular ranking.

All of this algorithmic evolution means that sites wishing to rank at the top of the engines must have high quality, naturally given, topically relevant links. Since search rankings are so valuable, massive amounts of time and money pour into campaigns for the most competitive queries, making the struggle for placement increasingly difficult. This brings us to the fundamental issue that site creators struggle against - segmenting visitors accurately and appealing to the “Linkerati.”

Three Groups

Above are three groups of visitors, applicable to nearly every commercial or goal-oriented website in existence. While most sites do a reasonable job identifying and targeting the 2nd group (in blue) from the first (in green), this isn’t the case with the 3rd group (in red). Those red Llinkerati are essential to your site’s rankings - they are the great “secret” of long-term SEO success. In order to leverage their power, you must create compelling content that appeals to their desires. This really is no “secret” at all. In every interview and on every stage, you’ll hear representatives from Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask repeat this same mantra (albeit without the benefit of colorful diagrams). As an example:

“…the sort of people who have been doing “new” SEO, or whatever you want to call it, that’s social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz, those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract back links, attract lots of discussion, those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward.” - Matt Cutts in an interview with Gord Hotchkiss

Why are these Linkerati so powerful? What makes their opinions and influence so important to average website owners? Easy - the power to control the web’s link structure.

Links Per Month

The web’s content may still be overwhelmingly commercial and organizational in scope, controlled by exceutives at companies, museum curators, government taxonomists, etc. But, the link landscape of the web, particularly those links that point externally from sites, are dominated by the Linkerati. If your competitors or even organizations like Wikipedia, About.com, niche bloggers or industry news publications become more popular with the Linkerati than you, how can you ever expect to compete for search engine rankings?

This is the great “secret” of SEO - that (at least) some content on your website must be targeted to the Linkerati - fulfilling their unquenchable thirst for new material to link to and share and spread virally. Although they may be a vastly different population than your customers, you need their respect and approval in order to continue to draw in targeted leads from the engines.

How to Write Effective Title Tags for Better Positioning

Title tag is the most important part of your web page, which is normally neglected by most webmasters and designers, in fact there are few SEOs who think optimizing “Title Tag” is worthless. Title tag plays very important role in page optimization and in this article you’ll learn how to optimize it.

What Is The Title Tag?

It’s an HTML tag use as a title or heading of the web page, it shows input text on the blue bar at the web page, it is declared at the beginning of the webpage under head tag. Your Home Page Title

Why Is The Title Tag Important?

Title tag is the most important tag, almost all search engines evaluate webpage with title tag and check the relevancy with other elements of the page as well, and search engines also present results of a search by displaying webpage titles as links in the first line of each query result.

Tips To Write Effective Page Title:

Try to place your most important keyword phrase at the beginning of the tag
Use your primary keyword phrase in the title tag at least once
Avoid using the same words multiple times
Use plural form of keyword phrase, specially which includes complete singular word in it (Example: manufacturers)
Use sentence case for keyword phrase but keep preposition in lower case
Keep your title tag’s limit under 70 to 90 characters, longer sentences won’t give any value but they can be hurdle in deep crawl of your web page
Avoid using special characters such as ! @ # $ ^ & * ( }[ | ? /
Avoid using stopping words such as or, and , with, for, by, etc
Use unique title tag for each page, since each page has unique content
Make your title interesting and “compelling” to the reader to convince them why they should click there

What to do when website ranking stuck? How to keep improving positions in google, yahoo and msn?

It is seen many times that website rankings get stuck and some times started going down. Is it due to lack of SEO knowledge? Weak link popularity? Poor content? Pathetic coding? There must be a way to get things going. In this article you’ll come to know what makes your web ranking stuck and how to improve your rankings!

Search Engine Minimization!

The term search engine optimization is not valid specially after Google’s Florida update, in that update google introduced a new term called “Over Optimization” and it’s very well known today. Well there is no measurement tool to analyze either the practice is optimized or over optimized that’s why SEO should go for search engine minimization, what is search engine minimization? Search engine minimization is a technique that deals with basics and its primary purpose is to get the website listed in top 500 website rather looking directly for top 5 placements.

Focus on the Competitors!

When your website rankings stuck and you are short of ideas, what to do? How to move forward? The very first thing you should do is to not worry, but don’t get relax it’s time to keep an eye on your competitors, observe the top 5 competitors and the top 5 above of your rankings that means 10 for each keyword, look at them and try to find out either there is something missing what you are doing or your competitors are very intelligent enough. Your competitors can make you learn the best lesson sometimes.

There are certain areas in search engine optimization which should be improved with time, if you don’t take care of those elements, your website will be out-dated and miss-fit in front of your competitors, since all your competitors are fighting for top positions.

On Going Content Improvisation

Look at the content either your website has fresh original content with balanced keyword density, content is still king, never ignore the value of quality content, you can compare keyword density balance with your competitors.

Active Link Building Campaign

The more inbound qualified links your website has the better position it will get, never let your link building campaign die, link popularity is like oxygen for life, try to find out more relevant and qualified incoming links, permanent and one way links will be obviously preferable than temporary reciprocal links.

Optimized, Validated and Error Free Coding

Your website code is one of the very important element of your search engine ranking, you must check your website code for quality assurance periodically, sometimes everything looks fine but you never know your competitors, they might be doing something very special which you might have ignored.

Some other Tips to Get an Extra Edge over Your Competitors

Increase domain registered period for at least next five years
Keep the same address at website and at domain registration
Apply proper formation technique such as H1, H2, Bold, Bullets…
Don’t miss Alt tags
Don’t miss title tags for image base links
Proper directory and file structuring

An Overview of Unethical SEO SPAM Techniques, Be Aware of Black-Hat SEOs

SEO SPAM techniques are practices and tactics, which are banned and strictly prohibited by search engines, you may find few websites applying these SPAM techniques and having good positions, it doesn’t mean that search engines have allowed those websites, it may be because those sites are not yet caught, I would like to mention one thing here that I’m writing about these techniques to create awareness in Young SEOs so that they can avoid using them, I would highly recommend everybody to avoid using these SPAM techniques.

List of the SEO SPAM Techniques

Hidden Text
Doorway Page
Hidden Tags
Useless Meta Tags
Search Engine Specific Pages
Redirection
Keyword Stuffing
Duplicate Content
Cloaking / IP Delivery
Link farming / Un-natural Linking
Over Optimization
Mini-Site network
Blog / Forum Abuse
Link Exchange / Reciprocal Links
Excessive CSS Playing

1. Hidden Text

There are two types of hidden text, the first type of hidden text is invisible text to human visitors by keeping text color same as background, the second type of hidden text is text that is hidden behind images or under document layers.

2. Doorway Page

Doorway is one of the oldest SEO SPAM techniques, in this technique web pages are developed keeping search engines in mind, they point to website but they are not linked with website that’s why they are called doorway through which website will be accessed.

3. Hidden Tags

There are plenty of tags used by webmasters to perform variety of functions such as “comment, style, noframe and http-equiv tags”. Unethical SEOs use these tags by inserting keywords to them.

4. Useless Meta Tags

There is a huge list of meta tags but search engine spiders don’t read all, using all meta tags probably won’t make your website penalized but it could badly hurt your website ranking, since all those useless meta tags will occupy initial characters of your web pages and search engines gives lot of importance to initially used web content.

5. Search Engine Specific Pages

Search engine specific pages are multiple but similar documents, specially designed to focus the requirements of various search engines algorithms. This SPAM technique is no longer applicable, today search engines are more intelligent and enough efficient to catch this technique.

6. Redirection

Redirection is a technique in which one page redirects the visitors / search engine spiders to another page or domain, redirection is a SPAM technique and it is usually done through JavaScript or meta refresh tag.

7. Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is 100% SPAM technique, in this technique bunch of keywords are kept at webpage it may be in anchor link, alt tag or at bottom of the webpage.

8. Duplicate Content

There were days, when you can copy content from other website and keep it to yours and even bring good results in search engines, but search engine are getting smarter everyday. It’s even hard to have duplicate content on similar domain these days, search engines are extremely intelligent to recognize either the content is original or copied.

9. Cloaking / IP Delivery

Cloaking is a SPAM technique, in which one set of information is served to search engine spiders and another set of information is served to visitors, it’s mostly done by IP tracking that’s why it’s also called IP Delivery, search engines don’t like webmaster to treat them different than visitors.

10. Link farming / Un-natural Linking

Link farming or un-natural linking is a technique in which webmaster try to have more incoming links pointing to their domain unethically by FFA or link buying. Search engines are very smart these days, they can easily recognize un-natural linking by link monitoring.

11. Over Optimization

After Google’s Florida update, there is a new term called “Over Optimization” introduced to SEO industry, in that update, those websites got penalized which have excessive optimization. There is no criteria to measure search engine optimization efforts either they are balanced or over, but one thing is for sure and that is excessive optimization or implementation of SEO techniques comparatively than your competitors.

12. Mini-Site network

Google gives huge importance to qualified incoming links to any domain that encourages Black-Hat SEOs to create multiple relevant websites pointing back to a central sales website. The primary purpose of those multiple relevant websites is to win Google Trust and get good PR because they can control everything on all these domains, since they belong to same company and behave as mini-site network.

13. Blog / Forum Abuse

Blog / forum abuse is another SPAM technique, in this technique unethical SEOs try to get link back to their domains by posting their links to blogs and forums, it may be through their signature or through their own promotion.

14. Link Exchange / Reciprocal Links

Link exchange is Black-hat technique in which two or more websites exchange their links to influence Google, these links can be two ways and three ways, and this technique is also called reciprocal linking.

15. Excessive CSS Playing

Excessive CSS playing is very hot technique these days, in which webmaster controls website formatting through CSS. Actually search engine likes heading, bold, italic, paragraph, hyperlink, anchor link tags but sometimes utilizing all these tags can spoil the look of the website, that’s why webmaster control formatting through CSS.

How Well Your Website Can Communicate with Search Engines?

Search engines don’t talk with websites directly, they use bots to communicate with websites, their bots come to websites and start reading the websites, whatever they read at websites they go back to search engines carrying the messages and store those messages in search engine’s database.

Search Engines are NOT Human Beings!

Search engines view websites with different prospects. They don’t have eyes to analyze beautiful colors and animations, don’t have ears to listen music and don’t have feelings to fall in love with your catchy slogans. Apart of all these disabilities they can evaluate your website better than a human being.

When you develop or going to get your website developed, what things you should keep in mind? Being website Owner you might think of website design and content, being Webmaster you might think of easy navigation and flexibility of website. You might be missing one very important aspects of search engine positioning, and that is how search engine is viewing your website?

What Things Search Engines Like at Your Website?

Good communication can increase the performance, it applies the same to search engines, if your website can communicate well enough to create good impression to search engines, your website will be facilitating with high rankings then, here is a list of elements search engines like.

Validated and Optimize Code
Rich Content
Unique URL of Each Webpage
Plain URLs
Proper Internal Linking
Healthy Incoming Links
Text Based Navigation
Neat Table Structure
Good Directory and File Structure
Proper Headings, Subheadings, Captions
Title, Meta Tags and Alt Tags
Robots.txt

What Things Search Engines Dislike at Your Website?

Take care of the elements which can hurt your view to search engines, thought each search engine has its own criteria of viewing websites but all major search engines dislike these mentioned elements.

Broken Links
Invalid Code
JavaScript
Orphan Links, Images and Files
Under-construction Page/es
Pop ups
Redirectors
IP Tracking
Dynamically Generated Pages
Frames
Same Background and Font Colors
Multi Nested Table Structure

Search engine bots crawl website with different time frame period, it depends upon how frequently your website updates? Each search engine has its own time frequency to crawl websites, now you know what things do matter to search engines, take care of them so that your website can delivery its message well enough to get top rankings.

Best of luck

Sunday, May 10, 2009

10 Tips to have Successful Blogging

Creating a blog is easy but managing a successful blog is something every Blogger wants, a Blogger’s success depends on the amount of audience that Blogger is known to and repeated traffic is the most valuable asset for a Blogger. In this article you’ll get to know ten (10) tips to effectively and successfully manage your blogs and brining your audience back to you.

What is Blog?

Blog is a short word representing “Weblog” and weblog is an online eDiary that is used to display chronological order of postings by one or multiple individuals. It’s an online journal that is regularly updated and accessible publicly to everyone, people can post their comments openly on blogs. It’s basically an interactive media to share thoughts, where author and readers can interact each other on single platform.

Blogger is a person who writes Weblogs, it has become a successful and dynamic profession internally, there are industries OR topic specific bloggers who are equally popular as start.

Tips for Effective and Successful Blogging

There are some very effective blogging tips through which you will be able to entertain your audience and they will keep coming back to your blog, it’s the LOYAL AUDIENCE who is the difference b/w a normal blog and a successful blog.

Purpose of the Blog
Who Your Target Audience Is
Think Big
Keep It Simple Principle
Short And Brief
Informal And Friendly Attitude
Truth And Honesty
Frequency Of Post
Quick Reply To Comments
Don’t Treat Blog Like An Advertisement Or Marketing Campaign

1. Purpose of the Blog

You should be clearly know the purpose of the blog, either you want to make it professional, topic or industry specific, want to project it as story or want to use it for PR of certain company or product. The best think is to write something you are crazy about.

2. Who Your Target Audience Is

Once you know your targeted audience, their interests and their likeness, you can easily facilitate your audience and can reach to comfort zone or your audience.

3. Think Big

You can create a blog easily, it’s free and quick but it requires your valuable time and continuous input. You just can’t have blog for anything. You have to have something new to your readers, so that they keep coming back to your blog and frequency of their visits depends on your input.

4. Keep It Simple Principle

There is no alternate to simplicity, keep your content simple and easy to understand, so that it will have wide range of audience. Find out simple alternate to difficult words, if somehow you have to use technical word, you should explain it.

5. Short And Brief

You should always write short and brief, people normally don’t like to read too much content. You should be very specific and to the point while posting your blog, if you try to irritate your audience they will never come back to your blog.

6. Informal And Friendly Attitude

Your blog should have informal and friendly attitude of writing, so that you can get quick interaction with your audience who will read your blog, you have to have immediate friendship with your audience through your expression of words and tone.

7. Truth And Honesty

You should always blog with honesty and truth, people like to read your original thoughts rather a point of view of someone else, this way you get closer to your audience and your audience tries to communicate with you.

8. Frequency Of Post

You have to have something new to your blog that will get your audience stick to it, if you are able to post thrice or twice a week that will be good frequency to get your audience back to your blog.

9. Quick Reply To Comments

Your audiences want quick reply to their comments, you should ideally reply back same day. You can set email alert on your blog, so that whenever someone post comments, you get an alert in your email and this way you can keep your blog up to day.

10. Don’t Treat Blog Like An Advertisement Or Marketing Campaign

Your blog is not one way communication, it’s a two way communication where your readers will have equal rights to share their comments openly, if you treat your blog like an advertisement, there are chances that you will have negative feedback or your blog will have less attraction to your readers. Today’s readers are smart enough to understand the purpose of the blog, if you want to use your blog for PR, then you have to keep the balance and be true to your audience.

I hope that above mentioned points will help you manage your blog more effectively, and if you still don’t have a blog, I would highly recommend you to create it today and feel free to ask if you have any question or query.