ABOUT SEO
So often when people encounter seo and want to start optimizing their sites they are lost as to where to begin. Filled with a few helpful and a few not so helpful comments from a forum or article they set out looking for the magic formula that will take their site to the top of the search engines only to get lost in a tangle of misinformation that can often do as much harm as good. To help you get started on your seo journey I have decided to write this tutorial on the basics of seo.
The subject of seo is not one that can be covered in a single post so I will continue this tutorial over several posts for the rest of this week and into the next. Even a few posts can’t hope to cover everything there is to know about seo, but a few posts can give you a solid foundation on which to build and add to your seo knowledge.
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Ask 10 search engine optimization consultants what seo is and you might get 10 different responses. Different consultants define seo differently. The industry is still in it’s infancy and not all agree yet as to what is and isn’t included in seo. I define seo as optimizing a website both on page and off page in order to achieve a better organic ranking in search engines and consequently driving more traffic to your website.
My definition doesn’t include pay per click advertising, which I consider part of the larger search engine marketing (SEM). I see seo as a subset of sem and while both can complement each other very well here we’ll just be considering seo or at least my definition of seo. SEO consists of four main areas which are keyword research and selection, site building, on page optimization, and link building. We’ll discuss each one briefly in turn and then cover each in more depth over the next few posts.
There’s one important point I want to make before continuing. There is no magic formula that will get your page to rank #1 on any of the search engines. There isn’t an optimal keyword density or a perfect place to use a keyword. And if there were don’t you think all the other sites that came before you would already be using that magic formula? SEO is about developing a strategy and tactics to help the pages of your site rank well enough to bring traffic to your site. For some keywords it will be relatively easy to get your pages a high rank, for others it will seem impossible. Good seo will take time and instead of looking for a way to be #1 tomorrow you’ll be better off simply working to bring in more traffic to your site next month than you are bringing in this month.
Keyword Research And Selection
All seo starts with keywords. Choosing the right keywords is perhaps the most important part of your optimization efforts. You may think it obvious what keywords you should be using for your site, but think again. Yes some will be obvious, but more often than not those obvious keywords will be the most difficult to to achieve high ranking for. Begin to identify keywords simply by brainstorming. Write down as many keywords as you can think of and then look for more. Fortunately there are some good keyword suggestion tools you can use to help build your list. Two of them are the Overture Keyword Selector Tool and the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Both offer many suggestions for other keyword phrases you can use on your site.
You should be able to build your list into hundreds if not thousands of possible keywords. No you won’t use them all. You’ll actually combine many of them into longer phrases, but before you can determine which keywords are going to bring the most traffic to your site you need to list as many possible candidates as you can. Once you’ve assembled your list you’ll narrow it down by comparing how many people actually search for those phrases and also what competition is out there on each of the phrases. Let’s skip the details of narrowing down your keyword list for the moment and move on to site building
Site Building For SEO
The way you structure the pages of your site and the way you code your pages will have a great impact on your seo efforts. Before any of your web pages can be found for a given search it needs to be indexed by the search engines. While you should always think about real people first when developing a site you must also make sure that search engines can spider your site and find and index all of your pages.
The main culprit in pages not being found is often JavaScript menus. JavaScript menus can be a great thing for site visitors and I’m not suggesting you never use them, but if you do, make sure you also include another form of navigation for search spiders. Usually this will end up being navigation at the bottom of the page. This search engine navigation should contain text only links. In addition to text only links provide a sitemap for all of the pages on your site and make sure this page is linked from the home page of your site and again it should be a text link.
On Page SEO
On page seo includes everything you can do on a given page to increase its chances of being found in a search engine. It includes all of your content and the way you present that content. It includes where, how, and how often you use your keywords on your page and even what other pages of your site and other sites you link to and how you link to those pages.
By far the most important piece of writing you’ll do on any given page is your page title. Search engines consider your page title to be very indicative of what can be found on the page so you’d better make sure to get some keywords in your pages titles. I’m not talking about spamming your page title with a long list of keywords, but your most important keyword for that page should be included in your page title.
You’ll also want to use keywords in your page headings and throughout your page content. Don’t worry about keyword density or looking for the perfect amount of keywords to use on a page. Use them where they are appropriate in the text and you will most likely be using them in the right amount. Do make sure you use keywords in your page headings.
Link Building
Link building will prove to be what has the greatest effect in your seo efforts. That doesn’t mean you should ignore any of the above, but in the end it will probably be the number and quality of links pointing to your site that will be what gets your web pages found in search engines. It certainly will be for competitive keywords and without many many quality links pointing to your site you will not be able to consistently rank on any competitive keywords.
Link building is a never ending process. It’s not something you do for a few weeks and then stop to rest on your laurels. You should always be looking for other sites that will link to yours and doing what you can to get other sites to link to yours naturally. While in general more links are better not all links are created equal and there are some you don’t want to spend your time trying to get. Free for all (FFA) links pages and link farms are best to stay away from. Most will simply do nothing for your site, but some will be harmful to your efforts.
There are many different ways to get links to your site and often it can be hard to decide where it’s best to get links. As a general rule if you think about that other site and if the visitors of that site will likely find your site useful and interesting and even better if visitors on that other site might be likely to click on a link to your site then you do want a link on that site back to yours. If visitors on that site probably couldn’t care less about your site then you might just want to move on to the next site. If the time it takes to get that link is short then go ahead and try to get it anyway. It probably isn’t going to hurt, but if it will be time consuming process to add a link on that site where people aren’t likely to click on it then your time will more than likely be better spent getting a link on another site.
Keywords, site building, on page content, and link building are the four cornerstones of seo. We’ve just scratched the surface of each here and I’ll expand on all four over the coming days and posts. Remember that this seo tutorial is about the basics of seo and there will be a lot more detail to learn, beyond this tutorial, but hopefully this seo basics tutorial will lay down a solid foundation from which you can begin to build your experience and knowledge.
I’ll pick things up next time in part II of this seo basics tutorial with Keyword Research and Keyword Selection.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
SEO / ARTICLES
ARTICLE SUBMITTING/ SEO /WEB CONTENT
Information for Authors, Publishers and Visitors
Authors:
GoArticles is a free content article directory. If you are an author that charges a fee for publication of your articles, you should NOT submit your writings to this site. If you are concerned about how your article(s) may be used, be sure to provide contact information so that prospective users and/or publishers are able to reach you with questions.
Publishers:
If you are interested in publishing articles by authors who have submitted to the GoArticles directory, we strongly recommend that you contact the author to notify him or her of your intentions and to confirm that the article is indeed free content. Articles must be published "as is" (unedited) and with the author's bio paragraph (resource box) and copyright information included
Article Requests:
A frequent question asked by authors is what the number of "requests" under each article title represents. A "request" is the number of times an article has been read online or requested via email. GoArticles, however, cannot tell you who requested an article or where the article might be used.
Visitors:
If you are interested in using articles by authors who have submitted to the GoArticles directory on your website, we strongly recommend that you first contact the author to obtain consent. Any article so used must be posted "as is" (unedited) and with the author's bio paragraph (resource box) and copyright information included.
Article Submissions
Authors and writers are invited to submit their articles to the GoArticles directory. Submissions are free and new additions to our database are indexed once a day. This means that any article you submit will be searchable by visitors within 24 hours of submission.
Voting for an Article:
A search on any keyword term or of any article category will bring up a list of article titles with summary information about each article such as author name, brief description, date of submission, word length, and number of requests. To the left of each article Title is a green box which shows the number of votes and a "vote" link.
A "vote" is a favorable thumbs up for an article. Readers who believe an article is helpful can click the "vote" link to give it a higher reader rating. The more "votes" or votes an article receives, the higher its reader rating. Only one vote per visitor is possible.
Submission Guidelines
Before submitting an article, please search the GoArticles database by author name to see if your articles are already there. GoArticles staff will be adding thousands of articles over the next several weeks that were previously submitted to us for our SiteProNews newsletter.
Authors and writers submitting to the GoArticles directory should keep in mind that there are length restrictions for each form field in the article submission process although they are fairly liberal. These are as follows:
Article Title: maximum 150 characters.
Article: maximum of 15,000 characters or roughly 2,500 words.
Author Bio: 400 characters or roughly 60 words.
The above-noted character maximums are provided for guideline purposes only. Problems may be encountered in some cases where quotation marks, colons, etc. are included in one or more of the form fields. The script interpreting text characters like quotation marks will add invisible characters to the field. Our suggestion is to try and stay under the maximum length guidelines whenever possible.
Serious thought should also be given to the formatting of your article submission. Although our scripts will re-format article submissions to 65 characters per line, we suggest that authors format article submissions to 65 chars/line prior to submission to prevent the possibility of spacing problems within articles when they are emailed to visitors who request them
Reporting Article Spam:
GoArticles receives 10,000 to 12,000 article submissions per week. The "report article spam" link was added so that visitors, authors or pubishers could assist GoArticles staff in improving the overall quality of the GoArticles database. An article that has one or more of the following characteristics is more than likely article spam:
* Too short. Articles under 300 words rarely provide any useful information.
* Makes no sense. If an article is a jumble of words, it may have been computer generated.
* Reads like a commercial or advertorial to promote a specific product or service.
Searching the GoArticles Directory
The search box at the top of any GoArticles page should be used for more wide ranging search results. Searches can be conducted by Author first name, last name or first and last name. If a search is made using the Content parameter both the Article Title and Article content are searched. Virtually all words in article titles and content are indexed, although only author names and article titles are displayed in the search results.
Clicking on any category link on the GoArticles homepage will result in a dynamic real-time search of the database for that category. For example, clicking on the category link "Webmasters" will bring up all articles submitted to date but within that category only.
Benefits to Authors
GoArticles offers visitors and publishers the ability to select exactly the content they want, when they want it. Visitors or publishers interested in a particular topic, say "search engine positioning", can select as many articles as they want on that topic by clicking a radio button below each selection and have their selections mailed to them within seconds.
Specific Benefits to Authors:
1. Posted articles are seen by hundreds of newsletter publishers and site owners looking for free content, providing much greater exposure than an article might normally receive.
2. Posted articles are downloaded daily by visitors to GoArticles, exposing your links, services and/or products to a targeted and interested audience.
3. Increased article exposure equates to increased traffic and link popularity with a consequent improvement in site ranking.
Your Contact Details
Only GoArticles.com staff are able to access database details for your contact information. We reserve the right to contact authors on occasion to provide information regarding updates to GoArticles.com or to communicate other information that we believe is of interest to the author community. Having said that, we would like to reassure all contributing authors that such communication will be infrequent to nil and that several unsubscribe options will be provided in the event such mailings are made.
If for some reason, you do not want to be contacted under any circumstances, Do Not submit articles to this directory.
Copyright and Violations
GoArticles's policy prohibits the use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates the copyright owner's rights. In general, this means that article content obtained from GoArticles must be used in accordance with the noted guidelines and without change or modification.
Authors, publishers and visitors should also be aware that there is significant personal exposure if they are found to be in violation of copyright laws. Anyone who violates copyright law is legally liable and subject to possible fines.
Information For Visitors
1. Why GoArticles?
Newsletters can be useful and informative but they have 2 major drawbacks. First, subscribers are subject to the ezine owner's publishing schedule. If you need detailed, expert information on a given subject today, a weekly or monthly newsletter won't be of much use to you. Secondly, newsletter subscribers are not necessarily interested in every issue they receive. If you need information on "search engine positioning", you might have to wait awhile to receive it and then have to depend on the viewpoint of a single author.
Not so with GoArticles. In minutes you can search and select a number of articles on "search engine positioning", "meta-tags", "advertising", etc. and have them in your Inbox shortly thereafter.
2. Searching the GoArticles Directory
The search box at the top of any GoArticles page should be used for more wide ranging search results. Searches can be conducted by Author first name, last name or first and last name. If a search is made using the Content parameter both the Article Title and Article content are searched. Virtually all words in article titles and content are indexed, although only author names and article titles are displayed in the search results.
Clicking on any category link on the GoArticles homepage will result in a dynamic real-time search of the database for that category. For example, clicking on the category link "Webmasters" will bring up all articles submitted to date but within that category only.
3. Requesting Articles
The major advantage to using GoArticles is receiving detailed information on any topic quickly. Just perform a search on a subject of interest to you. When the search results appear, simply enter your email address at the top of the page, check the radio box under each article that you wish to receive, and then click the Send Article button at the bottom of the page. Your requested articles will be emailed to you immediately.
FROM http://www.goarticles.com
Information for Authors, Publishers and Visitors
Authors:
GoArticles is a free content article directory. If you are an author that charges a fee for publication of your articles, you should NOT submit your writings to this site. If you are concerned about how your article(s) may be used, be sure to provide contact information so that prospective users and/or publishers are able to reach you with questions.
Publishers:
If you are interested in publishing articles by authors who have submitted to the GoArticles directory, we strongly recommend that you contact the author to notify him or her of your intentions and to confirm that the article is indeed free content. Articles must be published "as is" (unedited) and with the author's bio paragraph (resource box) and copyright information included
Article Requests:
A frequent question asked by authors is what the number of "requests" under each article title represents. A "request" is the number of times an article has been read online or requested via email. GoArticles, however, cannot tell you who requested an article or where the article might be used.
Visitors:
If you are interested in using articles by authors who have submitted to the GoArticles directory on your website, we strongly recommend that you first contact the author to obtain consent. Any article so used must be posted "as is" (unedited) and with the author's bio paragraph (resource box) and copyright information included.
Article Submissions
Authors and writers are invited to submit their articles to the GoArticles directory. Submissions are free and new additions to our database are indexed once a day. This means that any article you submit will be searchable by visitors within 24 hours of submission.
Voting for an Article:
A search on any keyword term or of any article category will bring up a list of article titles with summary information about each article such as author name, brief description, date of submission, word length, and number of requests. To the left of each article Title is a green box which shows the number of votes and a "vote" link.
A "vote" is a favorable thumbs up for an article. Readers who believe an article is helpful can click the "vote" link to give it a higher reader rating. The more "votes" or votes an article receives, the higher its reader rating. Only one vote per visitor is possible.
Submission Guidelines
Before submitting an article, please search the GoArticles database by author name to see if your articles are already there. GoArticles staff will be adding thousands of articles over the next several weeks that were previously submitted to us for our SiteProNews newsletter.
Authors and writers submitting to the GoArticles directory should keep in mind that there are length restrictions for each form field in the article submission process although they are fairly liberal. These are as follows:
Article Title: maximum 150 characters.
Article: maximum of 15,000 characters or roughly 2,500 words.
Author Bio: 400 characters or roughly 60 words.
The above-noted character maximums are provided for guideline purposes only. Problems may be encountered in some cases where quotation marks, colons, etc. are included in one or more of the form fields. The script interpreting text characters like quotation marks will add invisible characters to the field. Our suggestion is to try and stay under the maximum length guidelines whenever possible.
Serious thought should also be given to the formatting of your article submission. Although our scripts will re-format article submissions to 65 characters per line, we suggest that authors format article submissions to 65 chars/line prior to submission to prevent the possibility of spacing problems within articles when they are emailed to visitors who request them
Reporting Article Spam:
GoArticles receives 10,000 to 12,000 article submissions per week. The "report article spam" link was added so that visitors, authors or pubishers could assist GoArticles staff in improving the overall quality of the GoArticles database. An article that has one or more of the following characteristics is more than likely article spam:
* Too short. Articles under 300 words rarely provide any useful information.
* Makes no sense. If an article is a jumble of words, it may have been computer generated.
* Reads like a commercial or advertorial to promote a specific product or service.
Searching the GoArticles Directory
The search box at the top of any GoArticles page should be used for more wide ranging search results. Searches can be conducted by Author first name, last name or first and last name. If a search is made using the Content parameter both the Article Title and Article content are searched. Virtually all words in article titles and content are indexed, although only author names and article titles are displayed in the search results.
Clicking on any category link on the GoArticles homepage will result in a dynamic real-time search of the database for that category. For example, clicking on the category link "Webmasters" will bring up all articles submitted to date but within that category only.
Benefits to Authors
GoArticles offers visitors and publishers the ability to select exactly the content they want, when they want it. Visitors or publishers interested in a particular topic, say "search engine positioning", can select as many articles as they want on that topic by clicking a radio button below each selection and have their selections mailed to them within seconds.
Specific Benefits to Authors:
1. Posted articles are seen by hundreds of newsletter publishers and site owners looking for free content, providing much greater exposure than an article might normally receive.
2. Posted articles are downloaded daily by visitors to GoArticles, exposing your links, services and/or products to a targeted and interested audience.
3. Increased article exposure equates to increased traffic and link popularity with a consequent improvement in site ranking.
Your Contact Details
Only GoArticles.com staff are able to access database details for your contact information. We reserve the right to contact authors on occasion to provide information regarding updates to GoArticles.com or to communicate other information that we believe is of interest to the author community. Having said that, we would like to reassure all contributing authors that such communication will be infrequent to nil and that several unsubscribe options will be provided in the event such mailings are made.
If for some reason, you do not want to be contacted under any circumstances, Do Not submit articles to this directory.
Copyright and Violations
GoArticles's policy prohibits the use of copyrighted material in a manner that violates the copyright owner's rights. In general, this means that article content obtained from GoArticles must be used in accordance with the noted guidelines and without change or modification.
Authors, publishers and visitors should also be aware that there is significant personal exposure if they are found to be in violation of copyright laws. Anyone who violates copyright law is legally liable and subject to possible fines.
Information For Visitors
1. Why GoArticles?
Newsletters can be useful and informative but they have 2 major drawbacks. First, subscribers are subject to the ezine owner's publishing schedule. If you need detailed, expert information on a given subject today, a weekly or monthly newsletter won't be of much use to you. Secondly, newsletter subscribers are not necessarily interested in every issue they receive. If you need information on "search engine positioning", you might have to wait awhile to receive it and then have to depend on the viewpoint of a single author.
Not so with GoArticles. In minutes you can search and select a number of articles on "search engine positioning", "meta-tags", "advertising", etc. and have them in your Inbox shortly thereafter.
2. Searching the GoArticles Directory
The search box at the top of any GoArticles page should be used for more wide ranging search results. Searches can be conducted by Author first name, last name or first and last name. If a search is made using the Content parameter both the Article Title and Article content are searched. Virtually all words in article titles and content are indexed, although only author names and article titles are displayed in the search results.
Clicking on any category link on the GoArticles homepage will result in a dynamic real-time search of the database for that category. For example, clicking on the category link "Webmasters" will bring up all articles submitted to date but within that category only.
3. Requesting Articles
The major advantage to using GoArticles is receiving detailed information on any topic quickly. Just perform a search on a subject of interest to you. When the search results appear, simply enter your email address at the top of the page, check the radio box under each article that you wish to receive, and then click the Send Article button at the bottom of the page. Your requested articles will be emailed to you immediately.
FROM http://www.goarticles.com
SEO vs Key Words
A Brief Description About SEO/ Key Wards
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” The term may sound like optimizing an actual search engine such as Google, however this professional service focuses on tweaking a website to do well – to appear among the top listings on search engine results pages (SERPs). SERPs are web pages returned by search engines like Google or Yahoo! after a user performs a search. These pages contain links to web sites and documents that the search engine deems relevant to the word or phrase. These words or phrases are also known as “keywords.”
Using complex and proprietary algorithms, search engines consider hundreds of factors when gauging the relevance of a certain site or webpage. Search engines are constantly changing their proprietary algorithms – sometimes significantly – in an attempt to list only the most relevant results. Major search engines vary their results by geographic region and language. For example, Google’s German page will place more emphasis on German websites. Search engines use various pieces of information; among these is language, the physical location of a website’s server, etc. Thus, the results from Google.de may differ from the results of Google.com.
SEO is “keyword centric.” A major emphasis for professionals is to figure out what words or phrases a website’s target audience is likely to use when searching for a site’s content. Using this information, they strive to have the website appear within the first page of search results. SEO is strongly related to search engine marketing (SEM), which focuses on delivering advertisements that are relevant to an executed search. It is critical to the success of any SEO or website marketing campaign to have specific keywords in mind from the onset of the project. See Figure 1 to see where text ads appear on search results pages.
A website’s search engine “rank” refers to its position in the search engine’s results. There are factors that influence the rank of a website on SERPs that website administrators can control; others they cannot. Controllable factors include page title tags, page content, the website’s architecture, and the ease at which a web “spider” can examine a site. A web spider is a website discovery program deployed by search engines that scans the Internet looking for new pages and content changes on pages it has already discovered. There is little control over what competing websites can do to increase their search engine ranking; these actions may result in the down-ranking of other sites. Furthermore, website administrators sometimes can influence which other websites will link to their own site and how they will do so. In this document we’ll focus on what website administrators can control to increase their website’s ranking in search engines. There are many other tactics that a website administrator has little control over (like how to get other sites – and which ones are most valuable – to link to his or her site) that are also important which are not discussed in this document.
The Keyword
At the heart of successful SEO is determining what keyword or keywords to use when optimizing a website. The prevalence of a specific word or phrase on a webpage is critical to influencing SERP ranking. In most cases websites should be optimized for multiple keywords, and a simple way to do this is to optimize different sections or pages with different keywords. Of course, there are exceptions to this approach.
Below are some basic questions to ask when considering keywords to focus on. Once a keyword(s) is selected it should serve as the focus of a site’s SEO efforts.
1. Does anyone search for the word on search engines? If the site is about an eating establishment, what words would people use to search for the site? Restaurant, café, diner… Does anyone use the word “eatery”? 3
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” The term may sound like optimizing an actual search engine such as Google, however this professional service focuses on tweaking a website to do well – to appear among the top listings on search engine results pages (SERPs). SERPs are web pages returned by search engines like Google or Yahoo! after a user performs a search. These pages contain links to web sites and documents that the search engine deems relevant to the word or phrase. These words or phrases are also known as “keywords.”
Using complex and proprietary algorithms, search engines consider hundreds of factors when gauging the relevance of a certain site or webpage. Search engines are constantly changing their proprietary algorithms – sometimes significantly – in an attempt to list only the most relevant results. Major search engines vary their results by geographic region and language. For example, Google’s German page will place more emphasis on German websites. Search engines use various pieces of information; among these is language, the physical location of a website’s server, etc. Thus, the results from Google.de may differ from the results of Google.com.
SEO is “keyword centric.” A major emphasis for professionals is to figure out what words or phrases a website’s target audience is likely to use when searching for a site’s content. Using this information, they strive to have the website appear within the first page of search results. SEO is strongly related to search engine marketing (SEM), which focuses on delivering advertisements that are relevant to an executed search. It is critical to the success of any SEO or website marketing campaign to have specific keywords in mind from the onset of the project. See Figure 1 to see where text ads appear on search results pages.
A website’s search engine “rank” refers to its position in the search engine’s results. There are factors that influence the rank of a website on SERPs that website administrators can control; others they cannot. Controllable factors include page title tags, page content, the website’s architecture, and the ease at which a web “spider” can examine a site. A web spider is a website discovery program deployed by search engines that scans the Internet looking for new pages and content changes on pages it has already discovered. There is little control over what competing websites can do to increase their search engine ranking; these actions may result in the down-ranking of other sites. Furthermore, website administrators sometimes can influence which other websites will link to their own site and how they will do so. In this document we’ll focus on what website administrators can control to increase their website’s ranking in search engines. There are many other tactics that a website administrator has little control over (like how to get other sites – and which ones are most valuable – to link to his or her site) that are also important which are not discussed in this document.
The Keyword
At the heart of successful SEO is determining what keyword or keywords to use when optimizing a website. The prevalence of a specific word or phrase on a webpage is critical to influencing SERP ranking. In most cases websites should be optimized for multiple keywords, and a simple way to do this is to optimize different sections or pages with different keywords. Of course, there are exceptions to this approach.
Below are some basic questions to ask when considering keywords to focus on. Once a keyword(s) is selected it should serve as the focus of a site’s SEO efforts.
1. Does anyone search for the word on search engines? If the site is about an eating establishment, what words would people use to search for the site? Restaurant, café, diner… Does anyone use the word “eatery”? 3
Thursday, May 7, 2009
WHAT IS SEO
SEO is ..
Short for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.
SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.
Short for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.
SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
SEO - ADSENSE
How To Make Money Fast Using Adsense
May 1st, 2009I’ve been making money from Adsense for the past 3 years and have hit both the highs and lows before.
I’ve reach $100 per day before (using tedious greyhat methods) and have hit a low $5 per day (When Google changes algorithm).
Yeah, I almost gave up Adsense at one point.
Today, I’m back to just $600+ per month and after playing with black, grey and white hats, I came to some conclusions. I want to play a fair game with Google now and so I’m building my Adsense earnings properly with time-tested techniques.
Trust me, I’ll reach my $1000 per month by June and $2000 per month by end of this year.
Here’s what I discovered and if you should follow my advice, you should have no problems reaching a good $10 per day (which I think that’s a basic target that I read from most people in this forum):
Content is king - Heed this advice, friends. Content IS king. Google loves content and if your website keeps giving content they gotta love you.
Big website wins - When I say big website, I mean at least 100 pages of content. It should be built slowly from 10-20 pages, adding 1-2 new pages every week. I have a website that boasts a good 300+ pages of content and that is earning me $4-$5 per day.
Don’t be afraid of PLR - I use both original and PLR content for all my websites. There is not specific ratio between original and PLR content. I have one site with 100+ pages where 80+ pages are PLR and only 20+ pages are original and that site is still earning me a good $5-$8 per day. The key here is to make sure that all the content related to each other. It short, make it themed.
Put Adsense blocks at the upper fold - This shouldn’t be new to you. You ought to have a 728 x 90 block near the top, a 336 x 280 in the content and a 120 x 600 side block for EVERY page. That covers pretty much a lot.
Blend your adsense to the webpage - Nothing new here. You should understand this.
All your Adsense links should be blue - People are used to clicking on the blue link so don’t change them unless you have personally tested to show that other color works for you.
Participate in Ad Revenue sharing forums - This is mostly forgotten. Digital point is one of them. There are many other forums that allow ad revenue sharing. I had days where I receive ‘unknown’ $3 or $5 click out of nowhere. My guess is that it is from the ad revenue sharing forums like Digitial point. Don’t miss this.
Ignore the high paying keywords - Trust me, they will NEVER work. Stop aiming for those $20 per click keywords. People selling and offering these keyword lists are worthless. Why? Just run a competition check and you will see 20,000,000 competing sites for that keyword. Are you going to try that?
Volume counts - Don’t worry with lower paying keywords. You can slowly build it up. Volume counts in the end. You can get paid a measly $0.10 per click but if that is a well search keyword, you can get 10-20 clicks of $0.10 each, which still represents a good $2 for that keyword.
Never stop the SEO game - SEO is crucial if you want to win the Adsense game. So, always do these everyday: Find good keywords (ie. high search, low competition), write and submit articles, build backlinks legally and naturally, etc. Do it everyday, and you will see the fruits.
Lastly, remember that Adsense is just another monetization tool for all of us. For me I love to monetize via Adsense because I only care about CTR. I don’t have to be concerned with salesletter conversion, landing page CTR, etc. My visitors just click and I make money, easiest money ever.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Search Engine Optimization Methods
2004-01-11 - Search engine optimization methods and Internet marketing strategies may include, but are not limited to;
- Restructuring of Your HTML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.
This could mean a complete rebuild of your sites architecture. Coding is optimized by stripping away deprecated html tags. All presentation attributes are built into a css declaration, or an external .css file. JavaScript functions may also be placed into external files to minimize the amount of code behind your pages. File naming conventions may be addressed, and image, file and directory names may be changed. - Restructuring of Your Existing Visible Content - Web Copywriting
This could mean a complete rewrite of your existing content using web copywriting strategies. Many traditional copywriters are not familiar with writing for the web. If your website content was extracted from your traditional print media (brochures, product specification sheets or line cards), it may not be written properly for the web. - Refinement of Existing Visible Content - More Definitive Pages
Sometimes single pages are packed with great information about all of the products and services that you may offer. So much so, that the page now becomes somewhat diluted. It is very difficult to target specific keyword sets if the page is full of other keyword sets. You will need to break that content up into additional, more refined pages, see next item... - Development of Additional Content Rich Pages - No Doorway Pages
If your website was designed properly from conception, then every page of your site should be content rich. If not, then expect to make changes. These changes may consist of a complete restructure of content.Instead of having one long page discussing in general a group of products or services, you may now end up with four individual pages discussing each product or service definitively. The basic concept is that you have now developed a group of content rich pages that are an integral part of the website adding to the overall relevancy and theme structure of the site.
For example, instead of a six (06) page website, you end up with a twenty (20) page website. When the website was six (06) pages, those pages were packed with information and more generalized, not targeted.
Now that the website has twenty (20) pages, we still have the same amount of information, but, we've taken those six (06) information packed pages that were not targeted or focused, and have refined them to be more specific for each product or service we are offering. We have also strategically linked those pages together to form a logical navigation structure for the user, and for the spidering robots.
- PPC and/or CPC Bid Management Programs - Short and Long Term
Pay per click and/or cost per click programs are a quick and effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website. They can also be a long term strategy if your budget permits this type of expenditure, and you realize an ROI or return on your investment. Listing of Pay Per Click Search Engines. - Development of an Effective Link Strategy Campaign
This requires extensive research and only those website properties that are relative to your website content should be part of the campaign. Anything else and you are wasting your time. Irrelevant links may have a negative effect on your link building campaign! There may be exceptions to the rule.
About SEO Q & A
The Basics of SEO - Some FAQs
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain.
Q: Why are Search Engines Important To Me?
A: 85% of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2% of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42% of users click on the no.1 result. For the under-40 age-group, the Internet will become the most used media in the next 2-3 years.
Q: How Do Search Engines Decide on Their Rankings?
A: IMPORTANT: You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out 'spiders' or 'robots' which 'crawl' (analyze) your site and 'index' (record) its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine's search results.
Q: Can't I Just Pay for a High Ranking?
A: No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived search engine.
Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search:
Natural/Organic - The 'real' search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.
Paid - Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled "Sponsored Links", and normally take up a smaller portion of the window.
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