SEO Basics: Effective Iterative Keyword Research in 2008
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The value of any SEO effort lies in the keywords you choose. It's really that simple -- you can't overestimate the importance of strong keyword research.
Although keyword research is also important for search engine optimization (SEO), testing can happen more rapidly in PPC advertising, and changes can be made with immediate results. For SEO, you have to stick with the keywords you chose for at least long enough to get that page indexed and help develop links that utilize the keyword in the anchor text to that page.
Keyword research should be an iterative process that is never solely dictated by the client or by the agency/SEM firm providing the consultation. This week, we'll go over some of the keyword research basics, and hopefully some of our readers will share some additional tricks and tactics in the SEW Forums thread, "Back to the Basics 2008: Keyword Research."
Who's On First?
The keyword research process should be clearly defined and not resemble an Abbott and Costello routine. Additionally, no matter how much an organization trusts an agency or consulting partner, the keyword list should be developed iteratively. There should be no feeling that "this is the final list" until everyone is happy with the keywords chosen.
Above all, the keywords should be relevant to the products or services represented on the Web site being optimized. Keywords, which include single- and multiple-word phrases, should also be assigned to pages that are most relevant (more on this in a future column).
There may be a problem if your SEM partner insists on using only the keywords that they have chosen for optimization on your site. Many scammers will pick non-competitive keywords for a client that they're sure will get rankings, and then rely on ranking reports to prove results and demonstrate SEO success. Make sure that keywords chosen are actually popular, and will bring you qualified traffic. A dozen top-five listings for keywords nobody searches for aren't worth squat for bringing in organic traffic.
One Right Way
Thorough research that uses a number of data points and includes the client (who ultimately is the most knowledgeable about their products or services) is one of the "right" ways to do keyword research.
The chosen keywords must satisfy two major criteria: relevancy and popularity. Relevant keywords include those that are both brand- and product-related. Popularity is determined by using a set of proprietary tools. Our SEO strategists select keywords using a combination of the following processes (or all of them, when possible):
1. Research of the client and competitor sites. Beyond looking just for the meta keywords tab, keep a close eye on phrases being used in page titles, header tags, and alt attributes.
2. Information gathering sessions with the client. If we're designing or redesigning a Web site, the creative and marketing teams have often discussed and documented much of the desired product or service focus.
3. Careful review of analytics data. Fortunately, we deal with many larger clients that are already using "industrial strength" analytics systems, such as WebTrends, Omniture, or Visual Sciences (now owned by Omniture). These systems, assuming they have been properly configured, will provide granular keyword information, including conversion data if applicable.
4. Analysis of paid search impression and conversion volume data. This is the most valuable information you can get for predicting volume. If a client has been running a large-budget campaign, get that impression data. However one word to the wise: don't confuse "broad match" impressions with exact match, which are more valuable in this case.
5. The use of keyword research tools such as Trellian's Keyword Discovery (our top choice), Wordtracker, and WordZe (both used for verification by some strategists on our team).
6. Analysis of inbound link anchor text to client and competitor sites.
7. Evaluation of Forrester research data around the industry or product lines.
8. Evaluation of social sites. Looking for competitor or industry pages within social communities such as MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn can yield additional keywords through the analysis of consumer interaction with these portals.
9. Evaluation of trending tools, e.g., Google Trends, Quantcast, and now likely Google's new Ad Planner. Hitwise is helpful if the client has a seat license, as well as Nielsen and comScore marketer data. These tools all provide additional insight into the demographics and Web habits of target demographics. Truly enterprise level keyword researchers will take the time to understand these behaviors in order to find other sites and keywords that may be relevant by one or two degrees of separation.
10. Use of the human brain. This is the most important tool in keyword research, and this is where the client and the partner can work together to see from both inside and outside of the box.
Once a good starter list is established, use as many of the above tools as possible when you're ready to assign keywords to pages, which is an entire process on its own. Anyone looking for SEO help should ensure that people are using at least some of the above methods to choose keywords. Otherwise, you may end up with a lot of number one rankings and no traffic to show for it.
Frank Watson Fires Back
It's funny how this area of our industry seems to have become so established. Given how important it is, there's a need to constantly be adjusting how and what we gather. Over the past five or six years, there has been a noted change in the number of keywords people use on average when searching, yet many people still concentrate on one- and two-word phrases.
What many forget is that SEO and PPC are different. Paid search in most cases is broad matched, so the expanded terms are covered. But in the optimization space, each combination needs to be worked.
Great topic, Chris. We need to keep focused on this integral part of our industry. While many of our efforts spill over to longer terms, keeping it in mind at the start is something that should be part of the established method.
Share your keyword research tricks and tactics in the SEW Forums thread,
Monday, June 22, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
SEO BASICS
What are the best Internal Website Search Optimizations?
stockxpertcom_id277758_size1These are things you can do, or have your Portland Web Designer do for you, to your website, to increase its visibility in search engines. Do you want to know all of them? A search for the SEO Basics brings us up #10 so we are somebody, but who searches with THE before their real keyterm :)… nobody. We have only just begun, to liiiiive! Wow, it’s late… SOO… We have yet to optimize our site on optimization. That is the thing with good web designers, they rarely have time to work on their own projects!
The best Internal Website Search Optimizations to make are:
* Keywords throughout your site, including within:
o Page Filenames
o Page Titles
o Page Headings
o Image Alt Tags
o Link Anchor Text
o Content, bold and italic add further benefit
And then a few more after that:
* If we had to isolate a few two things people can do to get the best highest Search Position ROI, they would:
o Add a blog and write on it
o Create a keyword text menu on all/most pages on your website
o Add fresh content
o Create a Keyword Domain Website
stockxpertcom_id277758_size1These are things you can do, or have your Portland Web Designer do for you, to your website, to increase its visibility in search engines. Do you want to know all of them? A search for the SEO Basics brings us up #10 so we are somebody, but who searches with THE before their real keyterm :)… nobody. We have only just begun, to liiiiive! Wow, it’s late… SOO… We have yet to optimize our site on optimization. That is the thing with good web designers, they rarely have time to work on their own projects!
The best Internal Website Search Optimizations to make are:
* Keywords throughout your site, including within:
o Page Filenames
o Page Titles
o Page Headings
o Image Alt Tags
o Link Anchor Text
o Content, bold and italic add further benefit
And then a few more after that:
* If we had to isolate a few two things people can do to get the best highest Search Position ROI, they would:
o Add a blog and write on it
o Create a keyword text menu on all/most pages on your website
o Add fresh content
o Create a Keyword Domain Website
Monday, May 25, 2009
SEO - Optimizing Anchor Text and Titles
Optimizing Anchor Text and Titles
Jakob Nielsen recently put up a nice article about link text, titled First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye. In it, he covers some guidelines for creating anchor text, reviews some specific examples, and reports on usability testing they did of various link implementations. The article is worth a read for any SEO.
Here is how he summarizes the main things you should do:
* Use plain language
* Use specific terminology
* Follow conventions for naming common features
* Front-load user- and action-oriented terms
Basically, the lesson is don’t force users to think hard. They are busy, have other things they need to do. Making them work to find what they want is just a bad idea.
In addition, users have been trained to look at the top left of pages all over the web, so that is what they do. What it means is that you have to left justify the action or benefits keywords in your link text.
This is all great advice and the article is well worth a read. In addition to link text, I would argue that all this advice applies equally well to page titles. After all the page title often becomes the link text for your page when it shows up in the SERPs. Having a title that will entice a click through starts to sound like a really good thing. In addition to these usability benefits, it is a commonly held belief among SEOs that the search engines also weight the words at the start of a page title more than the words at the end.
So to put it into my own words for do’s and don’ts for page titles and link text:
1. Get the benefit of a page in the first 2 (or 3) words of its title and links to that page. Among other things, this means don’t lead with your brand or site name.
2. Keep it simple. Remember, people don’t want to think. They want to get something done.
3. Don’t invent new buzzwords. People don’t care. They want what they want, and they want it quickly. New buzzwords, or unique new trademark phrases do not help your cause.
Let me illustrate this with a made up example. Consider an Atlanta based car rental company called “In-Car-Nation”. Chances are that someone there might pick a home page title such as:
“In-Car-Nation provides superior quality service and car rentals”
Contrast to:
“Atlanta Car Rentals from In-Car-Nation”
I know which one of those two I would pick.
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, keywords | 3 Comments »
Jakob Nielsen recently put up a nice article about link text, titled First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye. In it, he covers some guidelines for creating anchor text, reviews some specific examples, and reports on usability testing they did of various link implementations. The article is worth a read for any SEO.
Here is how he summarizes the main things you should do:
* Use plain language
* Use specific terminology
* Follow conventions for naming common features
* Front-load user- and action-oriented terms
Basically, the lesson is don’t force users to think hard. They are busy, have other things they need to do. Making them work to find what they want is just a bad idea.
In addition, users have been trained to look at the top left of pages all over the web, so that is what they do. What it means is that you have to left justify the action or benefits keywords in your link text.
This is all great advice and the article is well worth a read. In addition to link text, I would argue that all this advice applies equally well to page titles. After all the page title often becomes the link text for your page when it shows up in the SERPs. Having a title that will entice a click through starts to sound like a really good thing. In addition to these usability benefits, it is a commonly held belief among SEOs that the search engines also weight the words at the start of a page title more than the words at the end.
So to put it into my own words for do’s and don’ts for page titles and link text:
1. Get the benefit of a page in the first 2 (or 3) words of its title and links to that page. Among other things, this means don’t lead with your brand or site name.
2. Keep it simple. Remember, people don’t want to think. They want to get something done.
3. Don’t invent new buzzwords. People don’t care. They want what they want, and they want it quickly. New buzzwords, or unique new trademark phrases do not help your cause.
Let me illustrate this with a made up example. Consider an Atlanta based car rental company called “In-Car-Nation”. Chances are that someone there might pick a home page title such as:
“In-Car-Nation provides superior quality service and car rentals”
Contrast to:
“Atlanta Car Rentals from In-Car-Nation”
I know which one of those two I would pick.
Posted in Online Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, keywords | 3 Comments »
Sunday, May 17, 2009
SEO / KEY WORDS
Introduction - KEY WORDS
The importance of keywords cannot be understated when writing an article to promote your business. When you submit an article for distribution you also include with it the Keywords. Most publishers will simply copy and paste them into the keywords Meta Tag if they are using the article as a web page, exactly as I have done with this excellent article from Leah West which I found on EzineArticles.com.
The easier you make if to the publisher the better, and if you make sure that your article is totally optimised with the right keywords you dramatically increase the chances of driving traffic to your web site. Remember all the keywords are being associated with your web address listed in your resource page.
I particularly recommend the free ebook Leah offers to help you use WordTracker - I found it an excellent resource.
Please note that the web links in Leah's orginal article were not active, ie the article contained no html code. They have been made active on this web site for your convenience.
The importance of keywords cannot be understated when writing an article to promote your business. When you submit an article for distribution you also include with it the Keywords. Most publishers will simply copy and paste them into the keywords Meta Tag if they are using the article as a web page, exactly as I have done with this excellent article from Leah West which I found on EzineArticles.com.
The easier you make if to the publisher the better, and if you make sure that your article is totally optimised with the right keywords you dramatically increase the chances of driving traffic to your web site. Remember all the keywords are being associated with your web address listed in your resource page.
I particularly recommend the free ebook Leah offers to help you use WordTracker - I found it an excellent resource.
Please note that the web links in Leah's orginal article were not active, ie the article contained no html code. They have been made active on this web site for your convenience.
ABOUT SEO
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.
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.
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
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