The right search engine optimization(seo) strategy

The right strategy is crucial to the success of your search engine optimization activities.

Search engine users are some of the most qualified and motivated visitors to your web site you will ever have. After all, they have taken the initiative to hunt for online resources on a certain topic. And then they clicked your link to learn more.

However, getting listed in a search engine doesn't do you much good if you're number 415 of 1,259,000 search results. Surprisingly, it doesn't even help you much if you're result number 11. Most search engines display 10 results on the first page, and relatively few searchers click through to look at the second page.

Make sure your web site will get the best possible search engine rankings and you'll get as many visitors as possible. High rankings contribute greatly to the success of your Internet business.

The key to high search engine rankings is to do the right things in the right order:

1. Find the right keywords for your web site.
2. Optimize your web pages for these keywords so that they can get high search engine rankings.
3. Submit your web pages to all important search engines and directories so that web surfers can find you.
4. Get links from other web sites and make sure that these links contain your keywords.
5. Track the results.

Technorati Tags: seo,strategy,search engine,ranking

Search engine spiders and your web site

Are you sure that search engines understand your web site? Search engines see your web pages with different eyes than web surfers.

A web page that looks great to the human eye can be totally meaningless to search engines. For example, search engines cannot read the text on the images of your web site, and many don't understand web languages such as JavaScript or CSS.

If you have a great looking web site that is meaningless to search engines, you won't be able to achieve high search engine rankings with that web site - no matter how good and interesting your web site content is.

In general, search engines cannot see content that is presented in the following file formats:

• images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.)
• Flash movies, flash banners, etc.
• JavaScript and other script languages
• other multimedia file formats

Some search engines can index some of these file formats but in general, it's very difficult to obtain high search engine rankings if your main web site content is presented only in these formats.

Search engines need text to index your web site. They cannot know what's written on your GIF or JPEG images or in your Flash movies. If you use a lot of images on your web site, you should also create some web pages that contain a lot of text.

If you want to find out how search engines see your web site, you have to use a search engine spider simulator tool. A search engine spider simulator tool emulates the software programs search engines use to index your web site. They show you what elements of your web site are visible to search engines.

That allows you to quickly find out whether your web site lacks information that search engines need to properly index your web site.

Technorati Tags: search engine,spider,emulator,web,site,seo

How link popularity can help your search engine rankings

If you have optimized your web page for high search engine rankings and it still doesn't get better listings, it is very likely that your web site has low link popularity.

Link popularity is a very important factor for all major search engines. If your web site doesn't have good link popularity, it is very difficult to get good search engine rankings.

Note that link popularity alone is not enough. The content of your web site is also important so that search engines know what your web site is about.

A combination of optimized pages and high link popularity will bring your web site to the top of the search engine results.

What exactly is link popularity?

Link popularity refers to the total number of links that a search engine has found for your web page. The more web sites link to your web page, the higher the link popularity of your page. High link popularity contributes to a high search engine ranking.

The idea behind the link popularity concept is simple. The more other web sites link to your web site, the more important your site must be. Other sites wouldn't link to your site if there wasn't something interesting on your site or if your web site didn't contain any special content.

It's nearly impossible to manipulate link popularity. Previous ranking algorithms that took META keywords or similar factors into account have been quickly abused to mislead the search engines. On the other side, it's very difficult to manipulate the number of links that point to a site.

That's why link popularity is now one of the most important factors for search engines when they rank a web page.

However, you cannot get high link popularity by submitting your web site to thousands of FFA (free for all) link pages. Not all links are considered equal by the search engines. It does matter who links to you and how they link to you.

Not all links are considered equal

The more web sites link to your web site, the higher your link popularity. However, not all links are equal. Some links count more than others. Links from important web sites have a greater effect on your link popularity and your search engine rankings.

A link from www.Yahoo.com to your web site has more weight than a link from a small private web page. A link from a web site with high link popularity is better than a link from an unknown web site.

It's also important that the web site that's linking to you has a similar topic as your web site. Imagine that you sell shoes on your web site. A link from another web site that is all about shoes will count much more than a link from a web site that links to all kind of web sites.

Finally, it's important how the link to your site looks like. For example, one of your important keywords might be "brown leather shoes".

The link

<a href="http://www.domain.com">Brown leather shoes</a>

leads to much better search engine rankings for the keyword "brown leather shoes" than the following link

<a href="http://www.domain.com">Smith and Partners</a>

By the way, many people think that they can increase their link popularity by submitting their web site address to FFA (free for all) link pages and link farms (Web sites that link to all kind of web sites). This doesn't work.

More and more search engines recognize FFA pages and link farms and choose to ignore these pages. Usually, submissions to FFA pages are a waste of time that only results in many spam email messages.

In addition, you should avoid services that promise you 2000 links to your site within a week or so. If they link to you at all, these 2000 links are of poor quality or they don't have a similar topic as your web site.

Use common sense. Offers that sound too good to be true probably aren't true.

Summary:

• try to get links from important web sites
• try to get link texts that contain your important keywords
• don't use FFA or link farm pages
• don't use services that promise lots of links within days
• focus on quality links, not on quantity

How to find good potential link partners

As explained above, it's important who links to your site. web sites that have a similar topic as your site are more important than web sites with different topics.

In addition, if you can convince web sites with a similar topic to link to your site, you'll also get targeted traffic from these sites.

People who visit your topic partner sites are usually interested in what you have to offer. They are more likely to come to your site and to buy something. It's the quality of the traffic that counts, not the quantity.

Conclusion

Building a good link popularity requires some work but the results will pay for it. Link popularity is already one of the most important factor for search engines to rank web sites.

The sooner you start with your linking campaign, the better the results for your business.

Technorati Tags: link popularity,seo,search engine,ranking

How often should you submit your web site?

You've probably seen them on the web and you've probably received many spam email messages from them: services that promise you to submit your web site to thousands of search engines and that tell you that your web site will get high search engine rankings if you just submit your web site often enough.

The frequency of your search engine submission is not important

When you submit your web site URL to a search engines, you basically ask the search engine spiders to visit your web site and to evaluate it. If the search engine spiders cannot find anything useful on your site, they won't list your web site. It doesn't make sense to submit your web site again and again if it isn't search engine ready.

Search engines must be able to find out what your web site is all about. They need to find text and links on your web pages and they also need to find the keywords for which you want to have high rankings on your web pages.

Submitting alone doesn't guarantee visitors

Submitting your web site to search engines is important, but it is not the most important step in your search engine marketing campaign.

It's much more important that your web pages are optimized for search engines. Many web sites are designed in a way that prevents them from showing up in search engines.

If your web pages are not search engine ready, it's pointless to submit them. If the search engines index your web site at all, it will be listed on position 17,352 or worse. With a listing on that position, you won't get any visitors.

The key to successful search engine submission

Before submitting your web pages to search engines, you must make sure that they are optimized for your important keywords and for the special search engine you target.

If your web pages are prepared for a special search engine and for a special keyword then it's much more likely that your web site will receive high rankings.

Make sure that your web pages contain enough text and that search engine spiders can find the pages of your web site trough normal text links. Don't use web site intros and don't use too many Flash elements on your web site. It is extra work to optimize your web pages for search engines but it is well worth the effort.

Professional search engine submission takes some time

Don't fall for services that promise you to submit your web site to thousands of search engines. It will only result in thousands of spam messages. Invest some time in optimizing your web pages before you submit them and then submit your site to important search engines. You'll get much better search engine rankings.

Technorati Tags: professional,search engine,submission,optimisation

Frames and search engines

It's very difficult to get a good rankings on search engines if your web site uses frames.

The problem is that search engines do not index framed web sites well. Actually, the search engines do such a poor job of indexing frames that we recommend rebuilding your web site without them. For some search engines, rebuilding your site without frames is the only way to get a good ranking.

If you must use frames on your Web site for some reason, make sure you use the NoFrames tag so that search engines can find some text to index. The NoFrames tag is a tag specifically for search engines that cannot read the actual pages in your frame set.

Some search engines will be able to index the text you enter in the NoFrames tag. The contents you enter there should be text that is related to your site. It should contain your most important keyword phrases, but should remain readable to your Web site visitors.

You should place the NoFrames tag just before the </frameset> tag in your frameset, for example:

<frameset cols="25%,*" border="1">
<frame src="this.html" name="this">
<frameset rows="*,5*">
<frame src="that.html" name="that">
<frame src="whatever.html" name="whatever">
</frameset>
<noframes>
<body>
<h1>All about fishing equipment</h1>
If you're looking for fishing equipment, you'll find it
here. We offer rods, reels, lines, flies, waders, vests
and apparel, tubes and boats and more.
<p><a href="this.html">More about fishing equipment</a>
</body>
</noframes>
</frameset>

An easy way to do this is to create a new not framed web page for your site that describes your products and services. Often the content can be taken directly from one of your existing framed pages.

Once you've created the new page, view the HTML source of the page and copy everything from within the <body> and </body> tags. Then paste the new content within the <body> and </body> tags found within the NoFrames tags of your frameset.

Note that the text between NoFrames tags in our example contains a link to the main frame set page. That way, Web surfers with older browsers that don't support frames will also be able to visit the page.

Don't use a list of keywords within the NoFrames tags and don't try to overuse this tag because the search engines might penalize your web site for that.

Even if you use the NoFrames tag, it's still difficult to get a good ranking for a web site that uses frames.

If at all possible, avoid frames on your site.

Technorati Tags: frames,search engine,keywords,index