Seo And Sem Strategies

Manish MalpaniSEM and SEO StrategiesDetails on SEM & SEO TechnologiesManish Malpani2/25/2010 Table of Contents TOC \o \"
1-3\"
\h \z \u SEM PAGEREF _Toc255496319 \h 41.History of SEM PAGEREF _Toc255496320 \h 42.Search engines with SEM programs PAGEREF _Toc255496321 \h 43.Ethical Questions PAGEREF _Toc255496322 \h 54.Different ways of SEM PAGEREF _Toc255496323 \h 5Some of the basic ways for SEM are discussed below. PAGEREF _Toc255496324 \h 54.1 Paid Inclusions PAGEREF _Toc255496325 \h 54.2 Pay per Click Marketing (PPC) PAGEREF _Toc255496326 \h 65 History of PPC PAGEREF _Toc255496327 \h 66 Types of PPC PAGEREF _Toc255496328 \h 76.1 Flat Rate PPC PAGEREF _Toc255496329 \h 76.2 Bid based PPC PAGEREF _Toc255496330 \h 77 Top PPC Search Engines PAGEREF _Toc255496331 \h 98 Best PPC Tools PAGEREF _Toc255496332 \h 98.1 Google Keyword Research Tool PAGEREF _Toc255496333 \h 98.2 Google Search-Based Keyword Tool PAGEREF _Toc255496334 \h 108.3 Google Adwords Traffic Estimator PAGEREF _Toc255496335 \h 108.4 Spyfu PAGEREF _Toc255496336 \h 118.5 PPC Web Spy PAGEREF _Toc255496337 \h 119 Advantages and Disadvantages of PPC PAGEREF _Toc255496338 \h 119.1 Advantages PAGEREF _Toc255496339 \h 119.1.1 Highly Targeted PAGEREF _Toc255496340 \h 119.1.2 Full user Control PAGEREF _Toc255496341 \h 119.1.3 Immediate Results PAGEREF _Toc255496342 \h 129.1.4 Predictions PAGEREF _Toc255496343 \h 129.1.5 High ROI PAGEREF _Toc255496344 \h 129.2 Disadvantages PAGEREF _Toc255496345 \h 129.2.1 Bidding War PAGEREF _Toc255496346 \h 129.2.2 High Cost PAGEREF _Toc255496347 \h 129.2.3 Big Guns Survives PAGEREF _Toc255496348 \h 139.2.4 Click Fraud PAGEREF _Toc255496349 \h 13SEO (Search Engine optimization) PAGEREF _Toc255496350 \h 1310 History of SEO PAGEREF _Toc255496351 \h 1311 Search Engines Relationship PAGEREF _Toc255496352 \h 1512 Methods of SEO PAGEREF _Toc255496353 \h 1612.1 On Page Optimization PAGEREF _Toc255496354 \h 1612.1.1 Domain Name Selection PAGEREF _Toc255496355 \h 16Name of Company as your Domain Name PAGEREF _Toc255496356 \h 17Use of most important keyword in Domain Name PAGEREF _Toc255496357 \h 17Registration of Domain Name PAGEREF _Toc255496358 \h 1712.1.2 Keywords Selection PAGEREF _Toc255496359 \h 1712.1.3 Optimization of Web pages PAGEREF _Toc255496360 \h 18Use of Keywords in Page Title PAGEREF _Toc255496361 \h 18Keywords in Meta Tag Description PAGEREF _Toc255496362 \h 18Use of Keywords in File Names and URLs PAGEREF _Toc255496363 \h 19Use of Keywords in Headings PAGEREF _Toc255496364 \h 19Use of Keywords in Page Content PAGEREF _Toc255496365 \h 19Image Optimization PAGEREF _Toc255496366 \h 20Keywords in Link Titles PAGEREF _Toc255496367 \h 21Use of Proper Breadcrumbs PAGEREF _Toc255496368 \h 21Creating Sitemaps PAGEREF _Toc255496369 \h 22Fixing Broken Links PAGEREF _Toc255496370 \h 22Compatibility in Different Browsers PAGEREF _Toc255496371 \h 2312.2 Off Page Optimization PAGEREF _Toc255496372 \h 23Directory Submissions PAGEREF _Toc255496373 \h 23Benefits of Directory Submissions PAGEREF _Toc255496374 \h 24Postings in Forums PAGEREF _Toc255496375 \h 25Social Bookmarking PAGEREF _Toc255496376 \h 25Press Release PAGEREF _Toc255496377 \h 26Benefits of Press Release PAGEREF _Toc255496378 \h 26Article Distribution PAGEREF _Toc255496379 \h 27Benefits of Article Distribution PAGEREF _Toc255496380 \h 27Link Exchange PAGEREF _Toc255496381 \h 28Blog Posting PAGEREF _Toc255496382 \h 28 SEM Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. The New York Times defines SEM as 'the practice of buying paid search listings'. History of SEM As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 90s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly. Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text in 1996 and then Goto.com in 1998. Goto.com later changed its name to Overture in 2001, and was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google Ad Words program. By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary money-makers for search engines. Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged. The term \"
Search Engine Marketing\"
was proposed by Danny Sullivan in 2001 to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Some of the latest theoretical advances include Search Engine Marketing Management (SEMM). SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO). SEMM also integrates organic SEO and PayPerClick SEO. For example some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor. Search engines with SEM programs Google - global Yahoo! - global Bing - global Ask.com - global Baidu - China Yandex - Russia Rambler - Russia Timway - Hong Kong Onkosh - Arabic Search, Middle East Ayna - Arabic Search engine, Middle East & North Africa Leit.is - Iceland Ethical Questions Paid search advertising has not been without controversy, and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports by Consumer Reports WebWatch. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader. Vested interests appear to use the expression SEM to mean exclusively Pay per click advertising to the extent that the wider advertising and marketing community have accepted this narrow definition. Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as Search Engine Optimization and Search Retargeting. Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement. The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years. In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term. Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate. Different ways of SEM Some of the basic ways for SEM are discussed below. 4.1 Paid Inclusions In paid inclusion, a site owner pays a fee in order to have web pages included in a search engine's listings. But it doesn’t guarantee that paid submissions will get top slots in the listings. The major search engines offering such programs usually inform that payment does not provide any ranking boost. For example, someone with a brand new web site might submit their home page through a paid inclusion program in order to ensure that the page gets listed within a day or two, rather than the typical two-to-four weeks it might take for a crawler-based search engine to find the page \"
naturally.\"
Whether the site will rank well for a particular term will remain dependent on the various factors that search engines use to ordinarily rank web pages. In another example, someone might have a page that changes often, such as with new products for sale. Paid inclusion would allow this page to be revisited on a regular basis, such as every other day, rather than the more common monthly schedule that most crawler-based search engines tend to follow. Consider one more example. Even the best crawler-based search engines do not gather all the pages that a web site may publish. Some pages may be difficult to index because they are dynamic in nature. Others pages may be missed simply because a search engine can't get to everything out there. With paid inclusion, a content publisher can ensure that all their pages are included if they are willing pay for the submission services. Paying still doesn't guarantee placement, but being more deeply listed improve the chances of an advertiser appearing in search engines. 4.2 Pay per Click Marketing (PPC) Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than using bidding strategy. Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money which an advertiser has to pay search engines and other advertising hosts for a single click on its advertisement that brings visitor to his website. In contrast to the generalized portal, which seeks to drive a high volume of traffic to one site, PPC implements so called affiliate model that provides purchase opportunities wherever people may be surfing? It does this by offering financial incentives (in the form of a percentage of revenue) to affiliated partner sites. The affiliates provide purchase-point click-through to the merchant. It is a pay-for-performance model—if an affiliate does not generate sales, it represents no cost to the merchant. The affiliate model is inherently well-suited to the web, which explains its popularity. Variations include banner exchange, pay-per-click, and revenue sharing programs. Websites that utilize PPC ads will display an advertisement when a keyword query matches an advertiser's keyword list, or when a content site displays relevant content. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a web developer chooses on a content site. Although many PPC providers exist, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the three largest network operators, and all three operate under a bid-based model. Cost per click (CPC) varies depending on the search engine and the level of competition for a particular keyword. 5 History of PPC In February 1998 Jeffrey Brewer of Goto.com, a 25-employee start-up company (later Overture, now part of Yahoo!), presented a pay per click search engine proof-of-concept to the TED conference in California. This presentation and the events that followed created the PPC advertising system. Credit for the concept of the PPC model is generally given to Idealab and Goto.com founder, Bill Gross. Google started search engine advertising in December 1999. It was not until October 2000 that the AdWords system was introduced, allowing advertisers to create text ads for placement on the Google search engine. However, PPC was only introduced in 2002; until then, advertisements were charged at cost-per-thousand impressions Although GoTo.com started PPC in 1998, Yahoo! did not start syndicating GoTo.com (later Overture) advertisers until November 2001.Prior to this, Yahoo's primary source of SERPS advertising included contextual IAB advertising units (mainly 468x60 display ads). When the syndication contract with Yahoo! was up for renewal in July 2003, Yahoo! announced intent to acquire Overture for $1.63 billion. 6 Types of PPC Generally there are 2 types of PPC. Bid based and flat rate PPC. Details of them is mentioned below. 6.1 Flat Rate PPC In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In many cases the publisher provides a rate card for CPC that lists the charges for different areas or networks of the websites where the advertiser wish to display his ads. These various amounts are often related to the content on pages, with content that generally attracts more valuable visitors having a higher CPC than content that attracts less valuable visitors. However, in many cases advertisers can negotiate lower rates, especially when committing to a long-term or high-value contract. The flat-rate models are mostly used by shopping engines and also publish rate cards. However sometimes advertiser has to pay more that published in rate card due to greater visibility of his ads. These sites are cleanly diversified into product or service categories, allowing advertisers to target large mass of people. In many cases, the entire core content of these sites is paid ads. 6.2 Bid based PPC In the bid-based model, the advertiser signs a contract that allows them to compete against other advertisers in a private auction hosted by a publisher or, more commonly, an advertising network. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that he or she is willing to pay for the selected keyword. The auction is fully automated and the ad is displayed whenever a visitor search for selected keyword. The ad is displayed in accordance with the bid amount used by the advertiser. When the ad spot is part of a search engine results page (SERP), the automated auction takes place whenever a search for the keyword that is being bid upon occurs. All bids for the keyword that target the searcher's geo-location, the day and time of the search, etc. are then compared and the winner determined. In situations where there are multiple ad spots, a common occurrence on SERPs, there can be multiple winners whose positions on the page are influenced by the amount each has bid. The ad with the highest bid generally shows up first, though additional factors such as ad quality and relevance can sometimes come into play. In addition to ad spots on SERPs, the major advertising networks allow for contextual ads to be placed on the properties of 3rd-parties with whom they have partnered. These publishers sign up to host ads on behalf of the network. In return, they receive a portion of the ad revenue that the network generates, which can be anywhere from 50% to over 80% of the gross revenue paid by advertisers. These properties are often referred to as a content network and the ads on them as contextual ads due to the fact that the ad spots are associated with keywords based on the context of the page on which they are found. In general, ads on content networks have a much lower click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR) than ads found on SERPs and consequently are less valued. Content network properties can include websites, newsletters, and e-mails. Advertisers pay for each click they receive, with the actual amount paid based on the amount bid. It is common practice amongst auction hosts to charge a winning bidder just slightly more than the next highest bidder or the actual amount bid, whichever is lower. This avoids situations where bidders are constantly adjusting their bids by very small amounts to see if they can still win the auction while paying just a little bit less per click. To maximize success and achieve scale, automated bid management systems can be deployed. These systems can be used directly by the advertiser, though they are more commonly used by advertising agencies that offer PPC bid management as a service. These tools generally allow for bid management at scale, with thousands or even millions of PPC bids controlled by a highly automated system. The system generally sets each bid based on the goal that has been set for it, such as maximize profit, maximize traffic at breakeven, and so forth. The system is usually tied into the advertiser's website and fed the results of each click, which then allows it to set bids. The effectiveness of these systems is directly related to the quality and quantity of the performance data that they have to work with - low-traffic ads can lead to a scarcity of data problem that renders many bid management tools useless at worst, or inefficient at best. How the bid based PPC ads are displayed will become clear by the following picture. Suppose a visitor search for Seo Companies, the results are shown in the picture below. The area highlighted by red are the paid or sponsored results shown in accordance with the searched keyword. 7 Top PPC Search Engines We want to share with you a list of the largest and oldest pay-per-click search engines currently available on the web. While there are over 500 PPC search engines operating at this time, these 10 are the most popular that produce over 85% of all the PayPerClick searches. Keep in mind that while they produce the most amount of traffic, there is quite a bit of competition, which makes the bid amounts larger for big search engines as compared to smaller ones. Search EngineMinimum DepositBonusGoogle AdWords Yahoo! Search Marketing $5$5None$25SearchFeed $25None7Search $25NoneMIVA $50$25Findology $25$50Ask.com $15NoneMarchex AdHere $100NoneBing (Microsoft) $5$50Advertise.com $25$100 8 Best PPC Tools There are many great PPC tools out there that will help you with everything from market specific keyword research to spying on your competitor’s keywords. The following are some used all around the world. 8.1 Google Keyword Research Tool This invaluable tool is essential to the first part of setting up a PPC campaign. Enter for example website development and see all of the variations that people are using to search for this particular keyword. 8.2 Google Search-Based Keyword Tool Running out of keyword ideas? Just enter your domain name & this tool will do the rest. Find out keywords according to your website content. 8.3 Google AdWords Traffic Estimator After selecting keywords now it’s time to check the competition for selected keywords. This tool gives you data for your selected keywords that includes estimated CPC, search volume, estimated ad position, estimated clicks/day and estimated cost/day. I think this is the best tool for checking competition on your keywords. 8.4 Spyfu Just enter the desired keyword you want to check or the domain name and this tool will provide all details on the selected keyword. It provides number of advertiser, average cpc, search volume and even organic results from Google first page. 8.5 PPC Web Spy The tool developed by Brad Callen. It has same features as Spyfu. There are several other tools than above mentioned but the above ones are very good to use and are very effective. 9 Advantages and Disadvantages of PPC Every technology has pros and cons. same is the fact with PPC. Some of its advantages and disadvantages are mentioned below. 9.1 Advantages Pay per click advertising can be very beneficial to website owners and online business owners when it is performed the right way. If you have full understanding of how pay per click works and you monitor your PPC campaign regularly, pay per click advertising promises a great deal of advantages for you. Some are mentioned below. 9.1.1 Highly Targeted PPC campaigns are highly targeted and can reach a vast number of visitors if everything is planned properly. 9.1.2 Full user Control This is the biggest advantage of PPC. All of your campaigns are fully user controlled and you can change everything you wish and can stop, pause or delete the campaign anytime. 9.1.3 Immediate Results PPC campaigns can provide you results immediately. You can see your ads being displayed in few hours after you start the campaign. 9.1.4 Predictions You can predict traffic volume, conversion rates and amount required for campaign with ease. 9.1.5 High ROI Generally people use landing pages for PPC campaigns. If proper landing pages are used you get higher amount of conversion rates and thus increasing your ROI. 9.2 Disadvantages Just like any other web marketing techniques, PPC also have some disadvantages. One major disadvantage of pay per click is the bidding war. When someone bids a higher amount than your bid, basically your position on search engine results will go down to a lower position. Some disadvantages are listed down. 9.2.1 Bidding War This is the most common disadvantage of a PPC campaign. You have to continuously monitor your bids and change them accordingly as the competitor does and increases your expenses for the campaign. 9.2.2 High Cost It incurs higher CPC then the organic one (SEO). 9.2.3 Big Guns Survives If you have a big gun as a competitor for your product, it’s difficult for the smaller company to survive in PPC as the big companies have no limitation for budgets. 9.2.4 Click Fraud This is the latest known disadvantage of PPC campaign. In this your campaign gets continuous clicks from same ip address or from same region without any conversions and increases the cost for campaign. SEO (Search Engine optimization) Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving traffic to a web site from search engines via \"
natural\"
or un-paid search results. Typically, the higher a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML associated coding for increasing its relevance for specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. The acronym \"
SEO\"
can refer to \"
search engine optimizers,\"
a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics are generally incorporated during design and development of website. So the web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure are generally referred as search engine friendly sites. 10 History of SEO Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloguing the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit the address of a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a \"
spider\"
to \"
crawl\"
that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words, and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date. Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both white hat and black hat SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the phrase \"
search engine optimization\"
probably came into use in 1997. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword Meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provided a guide for each page's content. Using Meta data to index pages was found to be less reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the Meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in Meta tags caused pages to rank for irrelevant searches. Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines. By relying so much on factors such as keyword density which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search, allowing those results to be false would turn users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate. Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed \"
backrub,\"
a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links. PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer. Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design. Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming. By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. The leading search engines, Google and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs. SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms. In 2005 Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users. In 2008, Bruce Clay said that \"
ranking is dead\"
because of personalized search. It would become meaningless to discuss how a website ranked, because its rank would potentially be different for each user and each search. In 2007 Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank. On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the no follow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat no followed links in the same way, in order to prevent SEOs from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting. As a result of this change the usage of no follow leads to evaporation of pagerank. In order to avoid the above, SEOs developed alternative techniques that replaces no followed tags with obfuscated JavaScript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash and JavaScript. In December 2009 Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results. Real-time-search was introduced in late 2009 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results. This new approach to search places importance on current, fresh and unique content. 11 Search Engines Relationship By 1997 search engines recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms in an effort to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings. Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers. SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients. Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban. Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients. Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, chats, and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Google guidelines are a list of suggested practices Google has provided as guidance to webmasters. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information. 12 Methods of SEO SEO can be a 30-minute job or a permanent activity. Sometimes it is enough to do some generic SEO in order to get high in search engines – for instance, if you are a leader for rare keywords, then you do not have a lot to do in order to get decent placement. But in most cases, if you really want to be at the top, you need to pay special attention to SEO and devote significant amounts of time and effort to it. Even if you plan to do some basic SEO, it is essential that you understand what basic steps are involved in SEO.SEO can be divided in 2 parts, On Page Optimization and Off Page Optimization. We will discuss both these aspects in details. 12.1 On Page Optimization On Page SEO can be defined very easily. It is text and content of your site edited in such a way that whenever a user search for specific keywords related to your site, search engines easily find them in your site content and display the page in top results. On-Page factors are related directly to the content and structure of the website. This normally consists of pages written in the HTML but also applies to other document formats that are indexed by search engines, for example Microsoft Word or PDF formats. On-page optimization involves modifying keyword frequency in the URL, Title, Headings, Hypertext Links and Body text. Major on Page Factors are discussed below. 12.1.1 Domain Name Selection After finalising your website objective, next step is to select a domain name. In doing this you should be very careful. Probably the biggest decision you face here is to choose between a Company Name Domain and a Keyword Domain. Name of Company as your Domain Name Suppose you own a web design company located in India called XYZ Ltd., you will definitely want to register your company name as your domain name (xyz.com). One advantage is that your customers already know your company name and it will be easy for them to remember how to get to your website. Another advantage is that a company name domain provides professional look in any of your printed materials used for advertising. But the main disadvantage here is if you are a small business, it will probably not help you very much with the search engines if it doesn’t include some main aspects related to your business. Use of most important keyword in Domain Name If search engine marketing is pivotal to your overall marketing and customer acquisition strategy, you may want to use what is called a “keyword domain”. If those keywords are part of your domain name, the search engines will tend to give your site better placements for those keywords. The disadvantages of a keyword domain are that the good ones are almost not available, those available becomes long and presents bad impression when printed on company materials. For example: india-web-design-company.com may very well give you an edge over xyz.com when it comes to search engine placement, however, it won’t look very good. A good solution can be achieved by adding one or two keywords to your company name, provided that the end result is not too long, for example: xyzwebdesign.com. If you are planning to start a new company it’s recommended that you must choose domain name before finalising the company name. As it often happens that if you finalise the company name first the domain name is not available. Registration of Domain Name Domain names are registered on-line through accredited domain registrars. There are thousands of companies that offer domain registration services. Once you have checked that your domain name is available, you can register it by using your credit card. 12.1.2 Keywords Selection You must now select the right keywords for each of your individual pages (keywords or search terms are words which a user type in search box of search engines to find web pages like yours). The best keywords will be those that are popular search terms that clearly describe the purpose and the content of your pages. Also you must keep one thing in mind that the keywords selected by you have a low competition so that they can be optimized more easily than those having a high competition. There is no sense in trying to optimize your pages for keywords with extremely high competition as these keywords will make your chances fewer to be ranked in top slots of search engines. Specific keywords make lot easier for your keywords to rank well in search engine results. You should therefore target key phrases with two or three words to improve your chances for ranking well in search engines. Choosing the wrong keywords will badly affects your entire search engine optimization strategy. It will force you to re-work your pages for new keywords and wait for the search engines to re-crawl your site. So it is better to spend more time on keywords research than submitting a site for re crawl. To start, take a look at your pages. Look at them carefully and write down the words and phrases that best define your site. Try to build a list of two or three word phrases. Once you have finalised your most targeted key phrases now you need to analyze the demand and supply for those key phrases, and choose the keywords with more demand but not enough supply. There are several tools for doing this. Some of them are discussed above in SEM strategy. 12.1.3 Optimization of Web pages Once you have chosen your key phrases, you need to optimize your pages for those key phrases. You do that by adding your key phrases in strategic locations within your page. There are several factors for which keywords allocation is of utmost importance. They are described below. Use of Keywords in Page Title Your web page title is very important as search engines display it as link text in the search results. The title must include your important keywords. Don’t use your company name in page title unless your company is big one or well renowned. It’s advisable to start page title with most important keywords. Don’t split your key phrases. Keep them together. It’s highly recommended to use a shorter title with not more than 8 words. You can use your company name in end for some pages. Look at an example for a home page title of a web design company in India. Web Design Services | Web Site Development in India | XYZ Ltd. Keywords in Meta Tag Description Since some search engines use Meta tag description to go with the results link it is important to have keywords and key phrases in description Meta tag. As the name indicates Meta Description provides user a brief description of your site. Use your keywords (Primary and secondary) in your Description Tag. Make your description to the point and make it look professional. Don’t split keywords. Use them together. A perfect example of Meta Tag description is mentioned below. Hire Leading ISO certified Web Design & Development Company specialized in professional & innovative website design, website development, e-commerce solutions, SEO/SEM, custom website design, graphic designing & other IT outsourcing services. In above example you will find that how the main keywords are used beautifully and thus providing all details about the company. Primary and secondary keywords are highlighted in bold letters. Use of Keywords in File Names and URLs In general the domain name and the whole URL of a site describe prominent factors of a website. It is assumed that if your site is about web design, you will have “web design”, “web development”, or “website design” as part of your domain name. For instance, if your site is mainly about website design, it is much better to name your site “websitedesign.com” than “yorcompanyname.com”, for example, because in the first case you have your major keyword in the URL, while the second one is missing keyword. From SEO point of view it is better to have 5 keywords in the URL, but using 5 keywords in URL will make it look sluggish and will also be difficult to keep the whole URL in mind. So you need to maintain a balance between the keywords in the URL and site usability according to which more than 3 keywords in a URL are too much. So just use max 2 keywords in your URL. Use of keywords in URL increases its chances of visibility to search engine spiders and thus helping your site to get good ranks on result pages. In short you have to use search engine friendly URLs for your site. Use of Keywords in Headings Normally headings separate paragraphs into related subtopics and from grammatical point of view, it may be useless to have a heading after every other paragraph but from SEO point of view it is extremely good to have as many headings on a page as possible, especially if you are using keywords in them. There are no technical length limits for the contents of the <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, ... <hn> tags but common sense says that too long headings are bad for page readability. So, like with URLs, you should take care for the length of your headings. Another issue you need to consider is how the heading will be displayed. If it is Heading 1 (<h1>), generally this means larger font size and in this case it is recommendable to have less than 7-8 words in the heading, otherwise it might spread on 2 or 3 lines and you must try to avoid this situation. Use of Keywords in Page Content After choosing the keywords that describe your site now you have to make your site keyword rich and to have good keyword density for your target keywords. Keyword density is a common measure to find page relevancy for selected keyword. Generally, the idea is that the higher the keyword density, the more relevant to the search string a page is. The recommended density is 3-7% for the major 2 or 3 keywords and 1-2% for minor keywords. Use your key phrases several times, and place them as close to the top of the page as possible. Write your keywords in bold type at least once. Repeat your keywords often to increase your keywords density. Repeating your keywords between 5 to 10 times for every 100 words in your page is considered effective. You must also take into account your visitors. They should be able to read your page fluently and effortlessly and your content should adhere to the keywords selected by you. If there is a left navigation bar, the search engine will read it before the body of your page so make sure to add your prominent keywords in left bar too. Image Optimization If your site has lot of images, you need to optimize them too as they can’t be read by the search engines. It’s very easy for a human reader to interpret the image into its meaning. However for a Web crawler the whole interpreting process is completely different. Search Engine spiders can only read text but not images. So you need to use some special tags for your images in order to give them some meaning. Some important image tags are discussed below. Alt text ALT text or Alternate Text is the text to describe your image when your mouse moves over an image on your web page. The text should be meaningful but short. You can use your relevant keywords as ALT text. Naming a Image File Always use meaningful file name for your images, use names like “Nokia-N97.jpg” instead of meaningless “DSC12345.jpg”. Keep image file name same or similar to the ALT text. Title of Image Always use the title tag in images which will show the title when a user moves his mouse over the image. Example of an image with title tag: [img src=”http://nokiamobile.jpg” alt=”Nokia N97 Mobile” title=”N97”] Linking of Image If you need to link your image, use the image keywords in your link text. Example: use “view an Nokia N 97”, instead of “Click here to view” as the anchor text. Keywords in Link Titles Using link TITLE attributes has become more popular since the rise of such widely used scripts as Word Press which by default duplicates the post title link in its TITLE attribute. Web browsers have added the ability to pop up a short explanation of a link before the user selects it. Such explanations can give users a preview of where the link will lead and improve their navigation. The goal of the link title is to help users predict what will happen if they follow a link. From SEO point of view link titles can help in increasing keywords density for your prominent keywords. You have to be careful while adding link titles. Appropriate information to include in a link title can be important keywords, name of the sub site and little detail of the page. Link titles should be less than 80 characters, and should only rarely go above 60 characters. Shorter link titles are better. Do not add link titles to all links. When creating your link titles, optimize for keyword phrases you’re targeting on the linked to page (just as you would with anchor text). Search engines only use them in consideration to the page being linked to, not the page the link is on. Use of Proper Breadcrumbs Bread crumbs are a basic navigational tool used on many Web sites. You'll see them at the top of the browser window. Bread crumbs are links to the pages you've already been to in order to get to the page that you are currently on. They are a \"
trail\"
for you to figure out where you've been, basically. Example of proper breadcrumb is: Home-->Services-->Internet Marketing Types of Breadcrumbs There are three types of web breadcrumbs: Path: path breadcrumbs are dynamic and show the path that the user has taken to arrive at a page. Location: location breadcrumbs are static and show where the page is located in the website hierarchy. Attribute: attribute breadcrumbs give information that categorizes the current page. Breadcrumb navigation is wonderful for usability and for SEO. This text-based navigation shows where in the site hierarchy the currently viewed web page is located and your location within the site, while providing shortcuts to instantly jump higher up the site hierarchy. If the breadcrumb contains text links with relevant keywords in the anchor text, that is a significant SEO benefit. Incorporate breadcrumb into your online catalogue and your checkout, try to make the anchor text keyword-rich and don’t take a spider’s click path into account in your breadcrumb. Creating Sitemaps A site map is basically an additional page on your website which shows a list of links to every single page on your site. Site maps can be used on websites of any size however if your website has more than 16 pages, implementing a site map is essential to improve usability and the effectiveness of SEO. Although it is not necessary to include site map in your main navigation, you should locate link to your sitemap in a standard position on every page of your website. Site Maps becomes necessity when it comes for implementing search engine optimization techniques on large websites. Although adding a site map to a website will not directly increase your rankings it does help in the following ways:A site map gives search engine spiders or robots a point of reference with links to all pages on the site, enabling them to spider and index your entire website quickly and easily. Without a site map, pages that are buried more than 1-2 clicks from the home page will take a long time to get indexed which in turn will result in delayed ranking increases.Keeping usability in mind, all links on your site map can contain target key phrases which will count as an additional vote on the importance of those pages and boost the pages’ search engine rankings.The 3 major search engines see large websites as more informative and useful to users. By adding a site map, although only 1 page, you are increasing the size of your website which in turn will help boost your rankings. Something to keep in mind when creating a site map for an extremely large site it is recommended that you should split your site maps in different pages as major search engine like Google don’t follow more than 100 links on a single page. Fixing Broken Links One of the most crucial responsibilities of a website owner is to check for broken links to his website. Broken links can be considered as one of the worst things that can happen to a website. In fact, broken links are plaguing so many websites that it is being considered as a serious problem on the web. Many reasons can be cited for the spread of broken hyperlinks, the general causes of broken links include: Websites not being maintained with the appropriate degree of dedication, the architecture of the website and how information is placed within the site constantly changes, and the large incidence of websites that are closing down. Website owners and webmasters should be very aware of the bad effects of having broken links in their websites. They should diligently weed out and fix any broken links. Nowadays many tools are available for checking broken links and you can fix the links after detecting them. Some major tools are mentioned below: Google Webmaster Tool Xenu W3C Mark Up Validation Compatibility in Different Browsers Browser compatibility has not much impact on SEO but it’s nice to design the website in such a way that it runs fine on all major browsers. Browser Compatibility refers to the ability for a website, web application, HTML construct or client-side script to support all the web browsers. So if you are a designing a website, your task is to code a site for maximum browser compatibility so that the pages look correct in all popular browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape, Opera and text-based browsers. 12.2 Off Page Optimization Off-page optimization are strategies for search engine optimization that are done off the pages of a website to maximize its performance in the search engines for target keywords related to the page content. Examples of off-page optimization include linking, and placing keywords within link anchor text. Methods of obtaining links can also be considered off-page optimization. The primary focus of off-page optimization is creating back links to your web site. Search engines assume that if you have more back links to your website, then your website is more ‘popular’ than other similar web sites. Unlike on page optimization off page optimization is a continuous process and never ends. You have to work continuously to increase number of back links until you achieve the top position for your selected keywords. Even after achieving top slot you can’t stop working as you have to maintain the top position for your keywords. All SEO’s use different off page optimization techniques and it is important to note those techniques are constantly changing. There are different types of Off Page techniques which are described below. Directory Submissions Submitting your site to relevant directories creates one way linking for your site. Mostly directory submissions are done manually. Once you have submitted the link, a human reviewer visits your link. So all your links are subjected to high level of scrutiny, which is not possible with software assisted submissions. When your link is approved and included in the directory, the search engines consider it as a validation and hence they attach more value to your presence in the directory rather than on some other website. Another benefit of getting your link included in web directories is that your link is indexed by the search engines quickly. The search engine crawlers crawl the Internet to obtain information on the recently updated or created links, and they start crawling the web directories and first crawl all those links present in the directory. Besides, whenever new search engines are launched, they automatically go through the Internet directories to quickly index the already-validated links. Benefits of Directory Submissions Here are few benefits of submitting your links to web directories. Directory submissions give you one-way links Search engines give importance to the number of inbound links to your site and from web directories you get one-way inbound links. Web directories, while including your links, don’t expect you to put their link on your website. Although some directories ask for reciprocal link but in most cases it’s not mandatory. Search engines discourage link-exchange tactics but they consider one-way inbound links with high regard. Directory submissions allow the anchor text of your choice When you submit your links to web directories they allow you to enter a site title that can contain your keywords. This generates SEO anchor text for you and this helps you improve your search engine rankings. Directory submissions are mostly free Yes, you don’t have to pay for most of the web directory submissions. There are some highly professional web directories that charge a high premium for adding your links but their number is negligible as compared to free directories. Directory submissions send you targeted traffic The organizations of web directories make people find the right links under the right categories. Even if you, by mistake, submit your link under a wrong category, there is a great possibility that the human editor will place your link under the correct category. So you see there are many reasons to submit your links to the various web directories. You should either do it yourself or assign the task to a company that does directory submissions professionally. It provides you real value for your money. Postings in Forums There is no doubt that quality back links from relevant sites are important for SEO success. If a page has good content, other websites will start linking to it in a natural manner; this is the main hypothesis for including back links as part of the search engine ranking algorithms. Thus, a page with better content will naturally have more back links, and will rank better. Generally, search engines index forums frequently, so posting in forums is a good way to gain quality backlinks with the anchor text of your choice. While submitting articles to directories can be a time consuming process, it does not require much effort and time to post in forums; however, one has to do his homework and take some precautions in order to be successful using forums for gaining back links .You must do some research before joining any forum. You should join forums that are relevant to the sites you want to get back links for. You should only choose forums that are popular and active. Back links for high authority forums are very valuable. The number of active members and the Google Page Rank of the forum can give you a good idea about its popularity. You should keep your signature short and link it to your main website. You should never create posts that sound like a propaganda or which are irrelevant to the post topic. You should pay attention to the TOS of the forum, or you will risk yourself of getting banned and losing all the back links you built. If you post something which is important or useful to other readers, they will visit the site in your signature. Thus, posting in forums can give a significant traffic to your website, apart from building relevant back links. Forums are also good for creating your brand or image. Some of the best bloggers, Internet Marketers and SEOs spend a significant time posting on forums to increase their publicity. Social Bookmarking Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources. Unlike file sharing, the resources themselves aren't shared; merely bookmarks that reference them. It can also be defined as tagging a website and saving it for later. Instead of saving them to your web browser, you are saving them to the web. And, because your bookmarks are online, you can easily share them with friends. Generally the social bookmarking sites allow adding bookmarks along with a small description and a title to give an idea about the linked resource. When the user searches for bookmarks, they get listed based on keywords that are in the description and title. If the user feels that the bookmark, from a list of bookmarks is worth a look can go ahead to follow the bookmarks. Most of the bookmarking sites have options like \"
public\"
or \"
private\"
, so a bookmark can be seen by others only if the bookmark is given permission to be a public one. So people started bookmarking to promote their web pages using these social bookmarking sites. Implementation of Social Bookmarking in SEO \"
Start with one bookmarking site and one page from your site. Set up your account with the bookmarking site and add your page to the bookmarks. Make sure you use the best tags and description you can. Doing this in itself will help you get more traffic. Now you can go one step further and work both sides of the system. Add a link to your site that will lead back to the bookmarking site that has your page bookmarked. Ask your visitors to bookmark your site on the social bookmarking site. Thus social bookmarking increases the chances of your sites visibility on search engines and increase chances of getting your site in top results. Press Release A press release is a written or recorded communication directed at members of the news media for the purpose of announcing something claimed as having news value. With the growing commercial nature of the web it is becoming harder to get quality one way inbound links without spending a fortune. By submitting free or cheap press releases you can build link equity without spending a ton of money. SEO press releases can bring you first-page visibility for your keywords very quickly. Sometimes, you can take over multiple spots on the first page of Google for your keywords. Traditionally, a press release is short lived, it has a limited amount of time make your impact on the media before it becomes old news and is replaced by fresh press releases. Benefits of Press Release There are plenty of benefits of SEO press releases if you do them correctly. They are as follows: This is a one-way link to your website.

You can choose anchor text of your choice

The link is within a natural context of the press release.

Back links from credible news sites which increases the ranking chances of your website or blog for your keywords.

Increased visibility in search engines.

Chance of ranking in Google News and Yahoo News for your keywords.

Thousand of headline impressions across hundreds of blogs, websites, and news sites that run RSS headlines.

It provides potential media coverage.Article Distribution Article distribution is one method of gaining links to your website. One of the most difficult aspects of using articles for SEO is getting the articles distributed on the right websites. If you did this correctly it helps in boosting the rank quite easily. Each article that you submit using these services goes out to many websites around the internet which builds a lot of links backlinks to your landing pages. These links helps your web pages rank high in the search engines for relevant search terms which in turn brings me high traffic. Some article distribution services (such as Unique Article Wizard & Article Marketing Automation) allow you to “spin” your articles so that each article can bypass the “duplicate content” filter that may affect articles that are exactly the same on multiple domains. Benefits of Article Distribution Article distribution can greatly assist those who have the skills in article creation, but have never done it online. Users get the following benefits. Time Saving Time is one of the greatest obstacles in article marketing since it can be quite tedious to not only create new articles, but also find article directories to post in and revise it to adhere to the site's guidelines. Services who distribute articles are good because they do the difficult part by accepting the articles that you make and then publish it to the article directories as advertised, leaving you with more time to create your articles without the worry in figuring out where and how to submit them. Provides more Visibility to your Articles Submitting an article to a single directory doesn't help you all that much in the long run. Even if you found a very popular article directory and decide to submit some great works there, you might find yourself behind with the competition, since other Internet marketers spread their articles to different places for more site exposure. This is what you need to do and the distribution service may give you that competitive advantage because you are letting professional people decide where the articles will go, and often times they are updated with good sites to post them in. Using for Increasing Revenue to your business Those that have nice work at home business opportunities will have the primary objective in making as much money as possible through sales and when manual methods do not yield much, investing in some help could give you a greater return. Article distribution is a good investment because you are paying for the article to be distributed to thousands of sites that thousands of visitors each visit every day. Link Exchange A link exchange is the process of exchanging hyperlinks with a quality site that is some way or the other related to a company's product or service. Good link exchange processes can increase a company's PageRank and also the number of visitors who are targeted. Proper website promotion results in increased page ranking, greater website traffic and better search engine placement of your website listing. Link exchange has been and still is a major part of internet marketing with the main benefit of link exchange being that it is one of the leading factors in improving placements in search engines. Undeniably link exchange is the easiest way to improve your website link popularity, and by doing so, to achieve better search engine positioning and increase your website traffic. If done properly Link exchange is a very effective and inexpensive approach of gaining popularity and prosperity on the web. As has been proven over many years now link exchange is the most successful way for increasing your visitor traffic without paying any money for advertising. In addition link exchange is one of the most effective ways to increase website ranking, measured for example by Google page rank, therefore increasing traffic to your site. Link exchanging can expose your website to Internet users on a worldwide basis as link exchanging is one of the best methods of getting exposure to your site on a limited budget. Increased and targeted traffic can definitely be achieved by utilising effective and relevant link exchange to attract larger, quality and targeted traffic for your web site. Websites with large exposure to the online market receive thousands of visitors a day, having a text link pointing to your site from one of these sites in a key area can filter huge volumes of traffic to your website. As we all know and have experienced the success of every web business lies in its traffic. Link exchange should be a crucially important strategy for every internet business owner, as by using positive and relevant link exchange will prove to be the most accessible way to improve your web sites link popularity. By doing so, you will also achieve much better search engine positioning and increase your web sites traffic. Link exchange is also one of the most important steps in search engine optimization. Blog Posting Blogs have been effective tools for companies to publish content and demonstrate the conversational side of their corporate personality. Blogs have also long been promoted as a SEO tool. Search engines thrive on and reward web sites that publish content. Blogs are content management systems that make it easy for companies to publish that content. Publishing blog posts creates new web pages that can be linked to and therefore, discovered and ranked by search engines. The more blog posts and links from other sites, the greater the presence in the search results.

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