Dot Com Note » seo

Secrets To Make Your Business Found In Local Search

Dotcom Note — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:55:47 +0000

Local search is the buzz word right now. Every day, hundreds of blog posts are created on local search and how to effectively leverage local search to catapult your business on the first page of search engine result pages. Many Internet Marketers have collected all these information, including free information from Google, and packaged them nicely and selling them for a big buck. They have suddenly become local search expert.

What is a Local Search?

More and more search engine users are not only using keywords for what they are searching, they are also using keywords indicating geographic location in their search queries to find relevant information in a particular region. For example, the other day I wanted to find an ac/repair person in my local area. So, instead of using the keyword air condition repair, I used the keyword air condition repair, middlebrook, fl. Because I was looking for a/c repair shop in middlebrook, florida. I did not want to know about an a/c repair outfit in New York.

Besides, the name of the place in a local search, you can also use zip codes, latitude and longitude of place, etc. The search engines are smart enough to figure out that you want search results restricted to your search region. Another example of local search I recently performed is Bangkok apartment to look for apartment in Bangkok only.

Why Local Search is Important to Your Business?

If you have a local business of any kind, restaurant, eatery, plumbing, computer repair, etc., you can easily rank in Google for local searches in your region. You can easily use Google features to offer discounts and coupons to people searching for your type of business in your area. You can increase your clientele using Google and other search engines for free. You can also advertise in local search at a far cheaper rate than in a non-local search.

Now the big question for all you local business owners is how do get into this craze and make sure your business is found in relevant local searches. What strategies you should adopt to become more relevant in local searches.May be you already have a presence in a local search but want to improve your positions.

I found an excellent article on DuctTapeMarketing.com about how to make yourself more relevant in local searches. DuctTapeMarketing is a blog about simple, effective and affordable small business marketing. If you’re a small business owner, you should check their blog regularly and you’ll find some golden nuggets their to improve your business and increase your bottom line. The article discusses 5 effective strategies with plenty of relevant links to other articles to make you a local search guru. Here is the article:

1) Location content

It’s important that you review the content on your web pages with an eye on adding geography based terms and content. Add it to your HTML through page titles. Add it to your page footer with addresses. Add it to your internal linking anchor text – Omaha plumbing supplies instead of just plumbing supplies. Don’t overdo it and makes certain that real humans are kept in mind, but amp up the local content, including the names of suburbs, neighborhoods, companies and events that are commonly linked to your area of service.

In addition to localized content on your own site, you should consider adding content to sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Slideshare and adding very localized tags, descriptions, links and file names. (Don’t get spammy, but do get descriptive)

2) Location pages

Google SEO education spokesperson, Matt Cutts, recently said without reservation that businesses that serve multiple locations and communities should create individual pages for those communities and optimize those pages so that search engines understood exactly what they were about. I think this is about as clear an invitation to having location based landing pages are you can get. Businesses should consider separate pages for each location, suburb and community they serve. These pages should feature unique content and be optimized for hyper local search. This is the place I would also add a sidebar of local events and happenings with neighborhood, school and not for profit organizations. (You could use RSS technology to ease this chore.)

3) Profile pages

Profile pages on local and social networks are a must. Hopefully you’ve already claimed your Google Places, Yahoo Local and Bing Local pages and taken full advantage of the fact that you can optimize that content with lots of links, photos, and descriptions.

Take a look at the new Google Places tags and posts features that allow you to buy enhancements to what shows on your listing for local search, including the ability to change coupons and special deals on the fly.

Build these same types of profiles on the major social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook, but don’t bypass business portals and community niche sites. (Here’s a list of business related social networks to get you started) Also, try this list of social bookmarking sites that allow do follow links. These may carry more weight if the site is popular at all. (Go for anchor text links when you can – local keyword phrases for the link as opposed to just the URL)

4) Citations

Citations are simply listings for your business in various high profile business directories. This factor is probably the least talked about, but considered very important in a recent survey of local SEO experts conducted by David Mihm’s fabulous Local Search Ranking Factors report.

Two of the easiest ways to get more citations are to update and enhance your InfoUSA listing (they provide info to lots of directories) and to pony up the $30 a year to get a Universal Business Listing (another source provider for many directories). If you want to learn more about this topic you should also spend some time nosing around GetListed.org.

5) Location backlinks

Links from relevant sites have always played a very big role in how a site ranks. Quantity and quality count here, but quality is the biggest concern. When you are trying to rank highly for local search terms quality links from other sites should contain local anchor text what at all possible.

Look for local bloggers in sites like placeblogger, with an eye on finding related sites that might welcome your guest post and make sure you include a link back to your site in the body of the post in your bio.

Take advantage of associations, including alumni, Chambers and networking groups as potential homes for your content and links. Look for local publications that would welcome your guest columns for their online features. Work your vendors, suppliers and strategic partner network to develop opportunities for local links back to your site. Obviously if you are blogging (and you should be) you’ve got a ready make device to reciprocate and link out to other local businesses and events – a practice that both creates high value localized content and draws links to you.

Original article source: 5 Ways to get more from local search

Now you know what a local search is and how to make sure your business is found in local searches easily. You don’t need to buy any expensive Internet marketer’s guru product. If you cannot make it happen to due lack of time, you can make a list of things you need to get done and outsource it scriptlance.com or odesk.com

5 Ways To Improve Your Web Page For Higher Search Engine Rankings

Dotcom Note — Sat, 29 May 2010 16:37:51 +0000

To get higher search engine rankings you need two things. The first thing is the relevancy of your web page with respect to the search query and the second is the popularity of your web page. While the popularity of your web page depends on how others are linking to you your contents. In most cases, you don’t have any control or you have very limited control over it. But you do have complete control of making your page relevant to users’ search queries.

The on-page search engine optimization (SEO) is same as making your web page relevant to web searchers’ keywords. It is not complicated. You don’t need any technical knowledge for optimizing your web page for search engines. If you’re using a blogging platform like WordPress it is easier than what you think. Just keep in mind that you need to tell the search engine what the page is all about using keywords that people use to find information about your topic.

You don’t have to stuff keywords in your contents. Stuffing keywords is bad for user experience and you will incur search engine penalties for this egregious behavior. So, How do you make your web page search engine friendly? The article I found in Daily SEO Tip tells you 5 things to do to make your web page rank higher in search engines. I am reproducing the tips discussed in this article.

1) Write An Optimized Title

You probably think you can skip over this tip. While the meta title is the single most important on-page factor, writing a great fully search engine optimized title takes a few seconds. Wrong. There’s more to the most important meta tag than what meets the eye. So to start, look at the titles you came up with in the past. What do they focus on? Pulling in readers or telling the search engines what your content is about? If you focus your titles on pulling in readers and not search engine traffic, then you’re on the wrong track. Your meta title is where you should focus on SEO, not readers.

For example, “Click Here To Learn The SEO Secrets That The Experts Have Kept From You” is a terrible meta title. There is only one word in the entire 14-word title that you might want to rank for, (SEO) but it’s probably the most competitive keyword in the industry. “10 SEO Tips For Bloggers” is a great title that focuses on targetable keywords while still pulling in readers. Plus, it’s short and to the point. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that every piece of content on your page should be optimized like this.

If you’re a blogger, “Click Here To Learn The SEO Secrets That The Experts Have Kept From You” is a great post title that lures visitors into reading more. Just don’t make it your meta title. That’s right, your meta title can (and probably should) be different from the headings in your body content. If this wasn’t obvious from before, your meta tag should contain a lot of your page’s main keywords, all without being overly long. As you can see, writing a search engine optimized meta title isn’t so easy and requires some thinking.

Bonus: The same techniques mentioned above for writing a meta title can also be applied to effectively writing a search engine optimized meta description.

2) Focus Your Content

Your content is the most important part of your website. Effectively focusing it on the right keywords can skyrocket your search engine rankings very naturally, all with little overall effort. Think of it like this: How will Google give you the search engine rankings you want for the keywords you want if it doesn’t know what you’re content is about? As you can see SEO is more than just building links, as it may appear to a first time optimizer. If you are a blogger, your posts need to be optimized if you want them to rank high in the major search engines. Even if you’re an internet business without a blog to write content for, the words on your website that your visitors see cannot be left unoptimized.

When writing content for your website, always keep SEO in mind. Be sure to mention your target keywords often – this is one of the most important on-page search engine optimization tips I can give you. If your content uses your keywords often, and those keywords aren’t overly competitive, chances are that you may just rank high for those keywords. However, do not overdo this. It’s OK to do this when your keywords fit, but being overly repetitive with your keywords may just give your website a bad rep with the search engines. You may say that because spammers are lowering the quality of search results by means of techniques such as keyword stuffing, search engines are lowering the amount of importance placed on real site content. This may be true to some extent but the truth is, no matter what, Google will never be able to stop heavily relying on page content, because without doing this, it will never be able to deliver relevant search results.

And now, back to how to focus your content. A great way to show search engines which keywords you think represent your page the best is using special text. Special text is any kind of text that stands out – bold text and more importantly, big text. For example, bolded text carries more importance in search engines than nonbolded text. Keywords present in headings (like

) really show that those keywords have a lot of importance. Just be sure not to overdo special text, as this may end up having negative effects.

It’s not hard to focus your content on the keywords that you target. It’s actually just a matter of focusing on your keywords while writing content.

3) Be An Internal Linker

Internal linking is important. While internal links don’t carry the same importance as links from other websites, it’s important to do this effectively within your own website in order to target important keywords using links. Using internal links, you can easily tell search engines what your other content is about all without leaving your own site! This is done using anchor text, the actual text that links to more content.

If you use online tools such as YSE to check backlinks, you may notice that by default, internal links are included. This is because they are important.

A great internal linking strategy is to always think about internal linking while writing your website’s content. More links to different content on your site will increase your pageviews/visitor and will also provide more quality content to readers. Most importantly, this powerful strategy will help your website become a network of internal links, helping raise the search engine rankings for the keywords you target. And now, on to more complicated on-page search engine optimization.

4) Have A Clean URL Structure

Having a clean URL structure is very important. Your URLs can be used to tell search engines what your webpages are about. However, most webmasters, especially bloggers, do not take advantage of this to properly optimize their websites.

For most websites, a good URL structure isn’t hard to think of. It may however, be hard to implement, which I will talk about later. But for now, what is a clean URL structure? A clean URL structure is made up of URLs that a web visitor could remember if necessary, but most importantly use have important keywords in them. For example, here are some “dirty” URLs: examplesite.com/page-number-47.html examplesite.com/47.html examplesite.com/?p=47 etc.

Now some clean URLs: examplesite.com/seo-tips.html examplesite.com/seo-tips/ examplesite.com/search-engine-optimization/seo-tips/ etc. As you can see, most of these URLs are within the main directory of the domain. This creates a sense of power within each page and is very important for search engine optimization. My personal favorite URL structure type is examplesite.com/seo-tips/ but any clean URL structure will work.

If you’re a blogger using Wordpress, editing your permalinks is as easy as 1-2-3. In the Wordpress Dashboard, simply go to Settings > Permalinks and than it’s pretty straightforward. But for the rest of you guys, you may want to learn how to edit your .htaccess files to properly set up a clean URL structure here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/misc/rewriteguide.html

As you can see, applying a good URL structure may be difficult for inexperienced webmasters and could brick your website if done incorrectly.

5) Have A Good Navigational Structure

Having a good navigational structure makes you’re site… you guessed it, easy to navigate, but also helps search engines index your website’s content. There are many ways to improve your site’s structure.

Link to important pages within your navigation bar. You don’t have to link to every other page on your site from the navigation bar, but try to fit as many important links as you can. Be sure to use anchor text to target keywords. Your footer should contain links to more content and if you’re a blogger, you might be interested in a related posts plugin to increase internal links and have a good navigational structure. A great way to get all of your website content indexed by Google is submitting a sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. There are many Wordpress plugins available to do this, but I recommend Google XML Sitemaps.

I know many bloggers who go by the following navigational rule: That every page on your website has to be accessible from any other page using 3 or less clicks. I think this is a great rule to follow and I try to put it to use on my own website. Following this rule makes sure that each page on your website gets some link juice and that each page can be easily accessed by a user looking for it.

The original source of the article is 5 On-Page SEO Tips

You still need to produce quality contents. Quality contents that others will link to, combined with on-site optimization techniques discussed in the Daily SEO Tip post discussed above, is a sure fire way to make your page rank higher in search engines.

Image credit: KRWonders.

Do You Know What Are SEO and SEM?

Dotcom Note — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:59:17 +0000

Do you really understand the difference between Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM)? Here’s a “simple” explanation of what can be a difficult area to understand. SEO is the process of improving a web sites placement in the free listings of the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Bing etc. These free listings are also known as “organic” listings.

: Image by hongxing128 via Flickr

The Search Engine Marketing SEM aims to create additional traffic to websites by increasing their visibility on the search engine result pages (SERPs). This is where things can get confusing… because SEM can include tactics to improve your results in the ”organic” listings, as well as other tactics which cost money to implement. To avoid confusion, it’s probably best to leave any discussion of “free or “organic” traffic to come under the realm of SEO.

Search Engine Optimization involves:

On-Site Optimization – making changes to the HTML code on the pages of your web site to:
1. Improve the relevance of certain key words/phrases on each page – both in the content and meta tags of a page, and within the links on your site to that pages.
2. fix any problems which may stop the page being indexed by the search engines – looking at your site navigation structure and wording of links.
Off-Site Optimization – getting back-links from other relevant sites, preferably using key words (or “anchor text”) in the links themselves – e.g., links from directories, through article marketing, or even paid links on relevant sites.

The key to successful, long-term results with SEO is doing things within the guidelines suggested by the major search engines. In other words, using “white-hat” tactics.

Sneaky tactics (”black-hat”) will usually result in penalties being applied by the search engines – i.e., your rank may be reduced, or more likely, your site may be totally removed.

Black hat tactics include (but are not limited to):

1. Link farms (groups of web sites that link to one another in their hundreds)
2. Keyword stuffing (hiding lots of text/keywords on a page to influence search engines) or
3. Page cloaking (showing different pages to search engine and human visitors)

So if anyone suggests doing this to your site… heed the words of Elmer Fudd! “Be very, very careful”

Even though “white-hat” tactics are easy to implement, most people still overlook the basics of SEO. So if you make small changes to your pages, it can result in a huge improvement to your overall position in the organic search engine results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

And think of SEM or Search Engine Marketing as those marketing practices that COST MONEY to generate the traffic. The include

1. Buying placement in search listings (paid inclusion) where your paid listing appears before the free ones
2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising (i.e. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing) where the advertisements appear alongside normal search results, or on relevant pages on other sites.

Companies offering Search Engine Marketing services usually perform a range of BOTH SEO and SEM activities including:

Optimization projects on client web sites.
Managing paid listings at search engines.
Submitting client sites to directories.
Developing online marketing strategies for clients.

Now, you CAN do all this yourself if you have the time and the knowledge. If you choose to do that, you simply MUST become very familiar with PPC programs before you start. If you don’t, your expenses can be potentially quite large from making newbie mistakes with such basic things as the wrong keyword selections!

If you don’t have the time to do it yourself, and want to use a firm to do Search Engine Marketing for you, it also doesn’t hurt to better understand what happens before engaging someone. That knowledge will help you choose a reputable SEM company over the less desirable ones in this industry!

3 Common SEO Myths Busted by Backlink Flood

Dotcom Note — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:14:25 +0000

To rank higher in search engines, you need to do search engine optimization, or SEO. What that really mean is you need to apply some techniques so that your fake affiliate review sites and long copy sales letter sites will displace higher quality, useful information rich site for a better ranking in the search engine result page. Backlink Flood will make sure that it happens.

: Image via Wikipedia

Internet marketers complain that Google is not fair because it is hard, time consuming, and expensive to trick Google algorithm to put Internet Marketers’ fake affiliate review sites, blogs made for promoting affiliate products, and one page long sales copy site on the top of the search engine result page. But now, it is going to change forever.

Every time you use Google to find some useful information, you will see these f*cking, mind numbing, brain freezing affiliate review sites, useless blog sites, and long sales copy sites on the search engine result pages because Backlink Flood is on a mission to render the search engines into useless piece of shit that only Internet Marketers and people looking to buy their stuff will find useful.

How do I know that? This is what I got today in my inbox. Read it and decide for yourself.

1. SEO is a long and slow process, it takes months or even longer to start seeing traffic and results.

2. Article marketing is easy… simply upload a few articles about your niche to high ranking directories, and you’ll get all of the traffic you need.

3. You can’t rank mini sites or sales letters for competitive keywords… you need an authority site, and trying to rank a small site is a waste of time.

Do any of those sound familiar? They’re all common beliefs in the world of SEO, and they’re all just plain WRONG. So, how can you rank your site for your keywords in days instead of months? What are more effective ways of driving traffic and building links than submitting articles?

And how the heck can you rank a minisite for extremely competitive keywords? We’ll tell you in a second, but first we have to let you in on a little secret.

When people like Paul Johnson and Angela Edwards rave about a new SEO product, smart marketers take note. And if you want to stay one step ahead in the SEO game – if you want to get that organic traffic to your site (or keep it coming if you already have it) – then you need to keep up with the latest industry news.

The newest breakthrough is Backlink Flood by Andy Fletcher. Andy isn’t a household name in the SEO world… yet. But he just released a product that’s going to turn the world of SEO upside down forever.

We’re talking about brand new concepts that have never been published before, like Rapid Link Indexing, and ranking for keywords in days that would take months using the old SEO methods you’re probably used to.

If you want to see the answers to the questions we posted above, or you’re just curious to see the product that is taking the SEO world by storm and has the biggest names in the business drooling, head on over to:

Backlink Flood web site and buy their product. Use all the techniques revealed in the ebook and your fake affiliate review sites, affiliate blogs, and long copy sales letter sites will be on the top of the search engine result page and people will flood to your site and buy from you how to make money quick online ebook.

A 14 Step Formula for Increasing Search Engine Traffic

Dotcom Note — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 05:29:43 +0000

If you are setting up a website, follow these simple rules to improve search engine rankings of your site. You can also follow these techniques if your website is not ranked high in search engines for certain keywords. Concentrate on the home page of your site and once you learn the techniques, you will be able to apply them to the other pages of your site that will have multiple high ranking pages.

1. Find keywords (or key phrases) relevant to your website. Go to the overture keyword selector tool (type key phrase overture inventory in Google) and check the popularity of the keywords you want to use. Avoid highly popular keywords. Highly popular keywords are very competitive and the least popular keywords are search engine traffic starved.

http://flickr.com/photos/espanyoldebarna/1398063603/

Select a dozen keywords and key phrases from the middle of the list. This is a very important exercise and you should spend at least a couple of hours, if not more, researching different keywords. While you are researching your keywords, check your competitors by doing a search in a couple of popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., using those keywords. Keep a record of your competitors’ urls and other information because you don’t want to waste your time doing the same search again in the near future.

2. Use the keywords you selected into the meta tags of your home page. Meta tags are located in the head section of a web page. Go to one of your competitor’s website and select View and then Source from your web browser’s menu to view the html source of the web page. You will see the meta elements.

The two important meta tags are keywords and description meta tags. Don’t leave them blank. You can list your keywords, separated by comma, in the keywords meta tag. Construct a catchy description using your keywords for the description meta tag.

3. Use the keywords in your title tag. The text you use in the title tag appears in the title bar of the web browser. The title tag should be less than 64 characters long. Again, the key is to use a meaningful title using the keywords. Don’t just make a laundry list of your keywords for the title tag.

The title tag and your meta description may end up in many search engine listings. So, spend sometime to make these two elements interesting, meaningful, and relevant to your site.

4. Use the keywords in top heading (h1) tags of your page. Use one keyword (or a key phrase) for each h1 tag. Use these h1 tags for the headings of your contents.

5. In the home page content, use bold, using the strong html element, to highlight some of your keywords.

6. Italicize some of the keywords in your page.

7. Use the keywords in alt tags of images. You should always use the alt tag for all images.

8. Encourage others to use the keywords for text anchors when they link back to your site. Better yet, publish your own short link text with keyword anchors, bold and italicized key phrases and give it away for link exchanges.

9. If possible, use the keywords in your domain name. Try different arrangements of the keywords to come up with an available domain name that you can register.

10. If you are using php or asp or any other web programming language for your dynamic website, make your url search engine friendly using url rewrite techniques. Search the phrase url rewrite in Google to know more about url rewrite.

11. Don’t use frames in your web pages. Many search engines will not crawl framed pages. For a search engine spider to crawl a page, you need a clickable url. When you use a frame, the target url is not clickable.

12. Avoid fancy Javascript menus. If you use a Javascript menu, provide a html text menu with clickable links at the bottom of your web page. Use include files for Javascripts.

13. Provide 301 redirections if you move your pages or domain after they have been indexed by the search engines. Don’t use meta refresh or other Javascript tricks. Search for the phrase ’search engine friendly 301 redirect’ in a search engine to get more information on this topic.

14. If you use flash in a page, provide a html version of the page and hide the flash page from the search engine crawler using a robots.txt page.

Keep in mind these simple rules every time you want to launch a website. Spending a few days upfront in the preparation of your site will pay off in the long run with better search engine rankings.

How to Drive Web Traffic Using Long Tail Search Engine Optimization

Dotcom Note — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 05:02:16 +0000

If you are not using the long tail search engine optimization technique, you are missing a very important organic web traffic source. If you are starting a site and follow the same techniques others are using for search engine keyword optimization, it will be extremely difficult for you to rank well in the search engine result pages.

Everyday, a large number of people search a few popular keywords in millions. Most search engine optimization techniques rely on this high volume and low number of keyword searches to drive traffic.

In contrast, the search engine optimization (SEO) technique for the long tail depends on the low volume but high number of related key phrase searches. If you focus on developing your website based on a large number related key phrases, instead of a few popular keywords, you can essentially generate the same amount of traffic that you will get from popular keyword searches.

Photo Credit: http://flickr.com/photos/tjhaslam/363764795/

Why do you want to optimize your site using the long tail key phrases rather than popular keywords? For one thing, the competition for popular keywords is fierce. The long tail SEO technique is an excellent alternative to what everybody else is doing

To effectively use this technique, you have to create a large number of quality web pages that have relevant key phrases. As search engines crawl your site, you will have a lot of pages indexed. As a result, your chance of getting good rankings for the long tail key phrases will also increase. Eventually you will have good search engine rankings for a lot of low volume key phrases.

The long tail search phrases are more targeted to the exact needs of search engine visitors. These people are searching for some specific products or services. By using the long tail SEO technique, you will be able to increase your conversion and retention rates if you are able to meet your visitors’ needs.

How do you find the long tail key phrases that are relevant to your site? There are several techniques you can use. If your site does not have a search feature, your first priority will be to implement a search feature for your site.

Once you have a search feature in your site, monitor key phrases that your visitors are using for searches in your site. Regularly review those search queries to generate a list of low volume key phrases and then create quality contents using those key phrases.

Sign up for Google analytics. Besides monitoring your site traffic and their sources, Google analytics provide a wealth of information about keywords and phrases used in the search engine to get to your site. Make a list of all the low volume and obscure key phrases found in the Google analytics.

Once you have the list, search for those key phrases in Google and check out your site’s position in the search engine result page. If they are not in the top three, you need to develop more contents based on those key phrases for better ranking.

Create new key phrases using the local variations of the original key phrase. For example, if your site is about cheese recipes and you find a low volume key phrase “cheap cheese recipes” that drives some traffic to your site, you can create new key phrases like, “Wisconsin cheese soup.” Use Google AdWord keyword tool to determine the search volume of these newly created key phrases.

Analyze your competitors’ long tail keywords. How do you do that? Visit their sites and check out their meta tags and titles. You can also use a free web tool called SEODigger. This tool will tell you what keywords your competitors are targeting once you enter their URLs in the input box.

With the intense competition for search engine optimization using popular keywords, you have an excellent opportunity to drive more organic traffic using long tail keywords. Once you create a list of substantial number of long tail key phrases, optimize your site by creating quality contents based on those key phrases. Search engines traffic will flow to your site.

How to Develop Search Engine Optimized Web Sites

Dotcom Note — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 05:43:40 +0000

If you want to drive organic traffic, make your site human friendly and search engine optimized. Search engine optimization is not brain surgery. Anybody can learn the basic principles and apply them to while developing web sites. You also don’t have to buy tons of books and spend thousands of dollars.

Though most of the SEO techniques are as old as the web and they will remain timeless in the future, lots of people still wonder what is SEO and how they are going to implement it in their web site. By following the steps described in this article, you will be able easily incorporate the most important SEO techniques in your site.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aloshbennett/2427637199/

1. Know what people are searching. Before you rush to develop your site, you need to do some keyword research. You don’t have to buy any tool. Use the Google Adwords keyword tool. It is free. Let’s say that you want a website to sell oranges. And the thing that differentiates your business from thousands selling oranges online is the freshness of your product.

Using the Google Adwords keyword tool, you search “fresh orange” to obtain approximately 50 key phrases that are related to fresh orange. For example, a few of these key phrases are: “fresh orange”, “fresh orange juice”, “fresh orange cake”, “fresh orange juice recipe”, “fresh orange chocolate”, etc.

These keywords are what people are searching in the Google search engine. Your site should effectively use these key phrases to improve your search engine rankings. The list will help you guide in your SEO efforts.

2. Every body has a title so also a web page. You can see it in the browser’s top left hand corner. In the HTML language, the language used to write web pages, this is called a title tag. Your home page should have a title that is short but descriptive enough to convey what your site is all about. Don’t use the same title for all your pages. Use different titles for different pages to describe what the pages are about.

Use keywords in your title that makes sense to human reader. Don’t stuff keywords hoping that search engines will love your pages. Search engines are becoming smarter and soon they will figure out that your site is designed for ranking higher in search engines rather than informing your visitors about your site’s contents.

Using the keyword list you have developed earlier, construct an effective sentence for your home page title. For example, your home page title may be: Buy Fresh Orange From Orange Store. Call 1-800-xxx-xxx.

3. Meta is all about a web page. The second element of SEO is the meta tags. Though there are lots of debates about the effectiveness of meta tags in SEO, Google still uses the meta description of your site in the result pages. Put your unique selling point in your meta description. For your orange store, you may say: Guaranteed fresh orange shipped to your door. Price starting at $2 per pound. Free shipping on orders of $100 or more. Call 1-800-xxx-xxx.

4. Contents need headers, emphasis and links. Use one top level header (H1) tag in the very beginning of your page. Use your keyword in the header tag. Separate different sections of the page using H2 and H3 tags. Use key words in those sub-titles. Emphasis key words using bold element in paragraphs. Don’t over do it, otherwise it will look like you are trying to game the search engine for higher rankings.

From your home page contents, link to other pages using keywords in the anchor texts. If you have a page that describes how to prepare fresh orange cake, use the phrase in your anchor texts. The keyword list that you have created during the keyword research phase will give you ideas for creating contents that use those popular and longtail keywords.

5. Images should speak. Use images related to your products. You can use flickr images for free. However, use only the images that are released under creative common license. When you search in flickr, go to advanced search and narrow your results to images that you can use for commercial sites under creative common license. Creative common license requires you to acknowledge the source. If you acknowledge the source using active links, use a nofollow tag in the anchor tag.

Give some meaningful names to your image files. Here again, the keyword list created earlier will help you. Use the alt and title attributes in the image tag. The alt attribute should be short and it should use an appropriate keyword from your keyword list. Title attributes show the tool tips when a user moves the mouse over the image. Use the title tag to completely describe the image and use only one keyword in the title tag.

Though the basic search engine optimization techniques are not difficult to master, many websites skip this important step in their zeal to develop a web presence as quickly as possible. You will reap organic traffic benefits by knowing these simple timeless techniques and implementing them in the initial stage of website development.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in 60 Seconds

Dotcom Note — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 01:38:07 +0000

Who has the time to read a 400 page SEO book? I know lots of you don’t. At least I don’t have. We all want to make money, not read for days. Even after reading for days, there is no guarantee that we will understand every thing and retain the important points. So, I have boiled down a 400 page SEO book for you to read, absorb, and retain in 60 seconds.

Phote credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/carlcollins/330671914/

1. For each web page, use a specific key phrase that describes the theme of that page.

2. Use the key phrase in an H1 tag (only one H1 tag per page).

3. Some where in the content of the page, use the key phrase only once and make it bold using a STRONG tag.

4. Use the key phrase in the TITLE tag.

5. Use the key phrase once in META description tag.

6. Put an image and use the key phrase in title and alt attributes of the IMG tag.

7. Use at least the width attribute of the IMG tag.

8. Turn the key phrase into a hyphenated word and use it for the image file name.

Do You Know What is the Key to Search Engine Ranking?

Dotcom Note — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 05:29:44 +0000

So it’s the end of 2007 and you are wondering what the coming year will bring in terms of SEO changes. The changes can be summed up in 1 word – “relevancy”.

When we talk about trends in SEO we really are talking about what Google is doing. Since Google is by far the leader in this field it is rare that another search engine innovates before Google.

Earlier this year, Google filed some new patents that are sort of interesting to read if you get into it but for the rest of us I’ll sum them up. In essence, Google’s new patents talk about using relevancy to determine whether a site is worthy of including in the search engine result pages (serp). Relevancy in Google’s mind is about how the words on your page compare to others site’s pages that are on the same topic.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddwick/175478322/

So, let’s say your site is about politics. Specifically, republicans. Pages on your site will be compared to other sites that have similar pages about republican politics. And let’s say you have a bunch of pages talking about George Bush Jr. Those pages probably should also mention the White House and possibly the Vice President, Congress, current affairs, etc. Because other sites are relating George Bush to those other key phrases, you’d better work them into your content also.

Using Relevancy to your advantage will help your site to be viewed as a possible authority site. Authority sites have a distinct advantage when it comes to higher placement in the search engine results. Often times, education and government pages are viewed as authority (still a debatable practice) because of their domain. It is very tough to beat these pages but it can be done if you provide better content.

Your goal is to have the search engines consider your site an authority by providing content that is not only original but also viewed as relevant when compared against the web as a whole. No longer will keyword stuffing a web page get you a high placement. The search engines are working towards a learning machine with the ability to recognize patterns and use those patterns to manipulate their output.

Even though Google was the first to file patent, you better believe that Yahoo! and MSN are not far behind. I also don’t know that I would expect all of Google’s patents to be accepted due to the wide ranging impact of the relevancy concept. It could be that the technique passes but the overall concept is rejected. Only time will tell on that subject, which could be a couple of years…

So, for 2008, build quality sites with relevant content and quality user design and you will have a web site that will stand the test of time, at least for 2008.