AN INTRODUCTION TO SEO

Search Engine Optimization, though an integral part of developing a complete web presence, is something that’s often overlooked by both web design companies and their clients alike. This article is meant to serve as an introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and it will be followed with a 2nd article which contains a basic primer on how to go about properly optimizing a site. My intended audience for this first article is the savvy consumer who is trying to educate himself or herself, and the follow-up article will endeavor to help those design/development firms who are only just breaking into the world of SEO.

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of increasing a site’s ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Ideally, you want your business to appear as the first result to someone who is searching for a product or service you provide to your customers. For example, if you own a vegetarian restaurant in Philadelphia, it would significantly increase your restaurant’s exposure if your website were the first result for “vegetarian restaurant Philadelphia” on Google. This type of positioning is the goal of search engine optimization.

Organic Results vs. Paid Results

It is important to understand the difference between organic search results and paid search results. Organic search results are selected and positioned by the search engine itself, with no external bias toward one site over another. With organic searching, the order of results is determined exclusively by the relevance of the site to the user’s specific query, as determined by the search engine’s internal algorithms. Search engine optimization endeavors to “educate” the search engine about a site so that the site will be seen as relevant for certain queries, and therefore given better positioning in the results. This “most relevant site first” method of ordering search results is in sharp contrast to pay-per-click, in which the highest bidder for a given search query is given preference. However, pay-per-click results are generally shown on separate parts of the screen from the main organic results, usually at the top of the window or in a sidebar labeled “sponsored links”. Although there are compelling reasons to launch a pay-per-click campaign as part of your online marketing plan, this article focuses exclusively on organic search optimization.

Won’t the search engines just find my site on their own?

Modern search engines are very adept at crawling the web and creating a comprehensive index that contains every website they come across. However, the algorithms used by search engines take into account many different factors when determining where to position a site, and if your site doesn’t measure up when it comes to some of the more important factors, you will end up buried among thousands or millions of other sites.

Search engines have one goal: to return the most relevant results to a user’s query in order to help them find what they are looking for. Why is it, then, that if you do in fact own a vegetarian restaurant in Philadelphia, your website can still get buried on page 29 for the exact query “vegetarian restaurant in Philadelphia”? One reason for this apparent discrepancy is that search engines don’t view websites the way a person does. When a search engine downloads a web page, it sees only the markup code that was used to create the site - it doesn’t see visual elements like graphics or page layout. If the site hasn’t been optimized, more often than not, the search engine’s back-end view of the site offers little indication of what content is important and what the primary focus of the site is. These search engine “spiders” - the algorithms that do the actual searching and indexing - can make a good guess as to what the site is about, but without a clear understanding of why it would be a great result for a specific search query, the site will end up in a mediocre position at best.

SEO TOOLS

2. DN Fame

This is a nice tool that will get you a lot of basic analysis done like web rankings, traffic, domain info etc. Does less of SEO but more of domain popularity.

3. The Reaction Engine

A nifty tool that will do a lot more than what you’d expect. Analysis content, code, off site metrics etc and suggests changes/improvements with an overall score. Good one for fixing code errors.

4. SEO Header Checker Tool

This is an interesting one, it doesn’t check your onpage SEO metrics like many SEO Analysis tools do, instead it checks for header statuses. canonical issues, Redirect issues etc can be detected here

SEO TOOLS

W3 OPTIMISER
If you’re looking for running some quick health checks on your site with some basic SEO analysis done, here are some tool to the rescue !W3 optimiser Generates a one page report giving you a comprehensive report of basic SEO checks.

HOW TO MEASURE THE QUALITY OF A LINK PAGE

Spam O Meter

This is yet another free seo analysis tool that will check your website for spam. Basically it scans the outgoing links to see if you have “spam” in there. Also lists out the good and bad, with a nice meter that shows where you score – on the spam o meter.

10 TIPS FOR BETTER SEARCH ENGINE CRAWLING OF YOUR WEBSITE

Even if you have a kickass site, sometimes you have to wait for ages to get some pages indexed and crawled on Google. Why does this happen ? I’ve found many people complain that after building a great site, and doing the standard chores, waiting so long for the results doesn’t make any sense. Certain things just don’t happen as planned. Like certain pages on a site, doesn’t get indexed and if indexed doesn’t get the right visibility on the search engines. Strange.

I can probably attribute all these problems to a couple of SEO factors. Let me try and explain them below.

1. Set a sitemap, with the right priorities

Setting a proper sitemap solves most of the problems often. But don’t take this lightly as we have many automated plugins to do the job. Many a times, the automated plugins need good tweaking to ensure that they have the right settings for your site. I have written several posts about sitemaps, like this one, check it out.

2. Publish articles regularly in a predictable fashion

This is not a way to “control” how often the bots visit you. Google has its own algorithm to find out when it should visit you, but publishing more articles in a regular fashion sure does give Google clues on what your posting frequency is like. Nothing wrong in publishing articles in random, but I’d suggest you keep it pretty much in a predictable fashion so we make the process easy.

3. Link well contextually and often between posts

Cross linking between pages contextually is a great way to make sure that the bots visit all those pages. Contextual links are given more importance probably than any other link on the site, so make use of them.

4. Keep the directory structure simple

If you have a self designed website, make sure you keep the directory structure simple and not too deep. Having more directories to crawl will make the job difficult for the bots. Keep it simple.

5. Block the unnecessary pages with proper SEO techniques

Along with making sure that all the pages are crawled, also make sure that the ones you don’t need to show up in the search results are blocked. (Like the TOS page.) You could use the Meta Noindex and the robots.txt exclusion protocol to get things done.

6. Make the navigation bar simple and accessible

Often I see websites with complex, fancy navigation bar annoying. I mean, it doesn’t have to be fancy to impress your visitors right ? You could use classy CSS styling to get elegant looks and still impress them. The problem with fancy navigation bars are that they often do more harm than good like not allowing proper crawling of the pages linked. There are various techniques you can use to make the navigation bar attractive and still allow smooth crawling, employ them.

7. Practice deep linking

Always practice deep linking (you shouldn’t be having a deep structure in the first place.) if you have a big and deep directory structure. Do not miss out linking to any directory/pages. Use clever linking strategy to link all the directories/categories and pages each other. If possible link to all the main category indexes right from the homepage.

8. Make use of proper anchor texts and internal text links

Linking to pages with images and other elements may also result in poor crawling of those pages. Use proper anchor texts to share the contextual factor among your pages and directories.

9. Keep the URLs simple and easy to remember

Confusing URLs are neither good for Google bots as well as visitors. Google bots love simple, meaningful URLs and visitors love URLs with recall value and those are easy to remember. If you don’t want to screw up things, keep the URLs simple and easy to remember (both for bots and humans). P.S – Google does not have any problems with seemingly confusing or meaningless URLs. They still make out the content from the page, however having meaningful URLs are a definite plus.

10. Use the homepage very well

The homepage as you know is likely to gather the most link juice and importance compared to other pages on the site. (This is just a general observation, but if a page gathers more links to it, it could also get more authority and link juice than the homepage.) Use the homepage well, and add more links to the inner pages from it, so they share the authority.

Essentially, factors like how fast to index, how often to index and how deep to index are decided by the search engines. But to a certain level you can control their crawling speed and frequency. The points above are good pointers to this, hope they helped you.

What should your website do for you?

Your website should:

• Enhance your business or organization's online image
• Provide a gateway to your products or services
• Be a content rich, informative resource for your online visitors
• Deliver targeted traffic to your products or services
• Offer a secure eCommerce solution if you sell products or services
• Be optimized for enhanced search engine performance
• Be affordable and very low maintenance

Enhance your company's online image!

Your website is your online presence and needs to enhance your company’s image and products in a way that is both professional and useful to your prospective customers. The best way to attract targeted visitors and keep them interested is by providing informative content. Millions of websites offer products. Your website needs to stand out from the masses by offering information or solutions your competitors do not offer.

Your website is the Gateway to your products or services

When a visitor comes to your site, chances are they are looking for information, a solution to a problem or for a specific product or service. Your website needs to have the content and solutions to answer their needs. Informative content attracts visitors and helps to promote repeat visits.

Your website needs targeted traffic

Targeted traffic means visitors that are actively searching for solutions, answers, products, or services that your website has to offer.

Once your website is ready to go, we will help you get the targeted traffic you need. We employ ethical search engine optimization techniques that will increase your rankings in the search engines, while minimizing the chance of being penalized or banned by the search engines (this is not always the case with some other SEO’s).

If you need targeted traffic in a hurry or are in a very competitive business, we offer affordable, effective search engine marketing programs to fit your budget and timetable.

When someone is searching for your products, what keyword phrases do they use? Are they searching for your product or an answer to a question or a solution to a problem? Keyword research is one of the most important parts of website development and is often overlooked by website design companies.

Visitors are not enough!

Simply getting visitors to your site is not enough in these competitive times. You need targeted visitors that are looking for what you are providing. Search engine optimization and marketing ensures visitors that are actively searching for what you have. Solid, informative website content will keep your visitors attention and give you the chance to present your products or services as an answer to their needs.

SEO TIPS

Some search engine optimization tips

Keep your design simple! Avoid gratuitous uses of flash, images/graphics, and special effects. As cool as these effects are, they hinder or sometimes block the search engine from seeing your sites content. Whenever possible use external elements (stylesheets and javascript). Less code cluttering up your page means search engines can find and index your content easier, leading to better search engine rankings.


Research your competition and choose your keywords carefully. Keyword phrases tend to be more effective. For example: use "Toronto real estate web design" instead of web design. This could mean the difference between competing with 6 million websites or 100 thousand.



Make sure your web pages include good meaty content of at least 250-300 words per page. Search Engines analyze the relevancy of your page/site based on the content. Your keywords should be represented in your content ? if your keywords are not represented, either you have chosen the wrong keywords or you haven’t thought out your content properly. Search engines like sites that change their content regularly so find ways to keep your content fresh but the message clear.



Use Meta tags (title tag, description tag and keywords tag) properly and use different Meta tags on each page of your site! Make sure your title is relevant and between 50 and 60 characters. Your description should not exceed 150 characters and should summarize the content of your page. Most importantly make sure the words/phrases in your keywords tag are represented in your content.



Use alternate image tags. Besides being a good design practice, alternate image tags help the search engines verify the importance of the images on your page. When appropriate use your keyword choices in your alt image tags.



Avoid using only image based navigation on your site. If you are using images as links to your other pages, make sure you absolutely use alternate image tags. Ideally you should also include text based links somewhere on your web page as well. You see this quite often in the footer of some web pages although you can always include test links in the content of your pages as well. Text based links help the search engines find ALL your pages not to mention they make your site more assessable. If your site is complex you should include a site map to help your visitors and the search engines find their way around your site. If you are using a sitemap put the link near the top of your page so that the search engine finds it quickly.



Use heading tags and bold to emphasize your keywords. Don’t over do this! If you have chosen your keywords properly, your keywords should already be in weighted areas of your carefully written content.




Do NOT use auto submit services to submit your site to the major search engines. As long as you have incoming links to your site from a site that has been indexed your web site should automatically be indexed. If you need to submit your website to a search engine do it manually and only once.

Research and gather external links from sites that are relevant to your own. If your site is promoting health food a link from a human resources site will not help your website rankings and may actually penalize your site.

To get better search engine rankings you need to keep it simple, natural and use your common sense. Don’t try to trick the search engines as this can often result in getting your site banned or dropped from the index.

Remember, it can takes month for your optimization efforts to pay off, but when they do you will enjoy better search engine rankings!

HOW TO GET GOOGLE SITELINKS & CONTROL THEM

Sitelinks are more common these days. Popular blogs and websites have been awarded Google sitelinks recently. Google’s explanation is that this is a completely automated phenomena and there’s nothing one can do do help the sitelinks appear for his/her site on the Googel SERPs.
I’ve found from my referral codes and content popularity checks on Google that the pages to which Google has placed the sitelinks are the most popular pages on searches from Google.
o I think for a link to appear on sitelinks (or sitelinks to appear for that matter) the factors Google would consider are,

1. Popularity of the article/page
   Popularity is considered as the number of times the article has been accessed from the site. Obviously the sitelinks are the ones that are the most popular on that website.
2. Natural link bait or not
   Link bait might be the wrong term for it. But yes, it’s something similar. For an article to get featured on the sitelinks, it might need to be linked most from other websites, at a quicker pace and naturally.
3. Search friendliness
   Another criteria believed to be taken into consideration for a page to be included in the sitelinks is the measure of it’s search engine friendliness/ likeability.
   It can be measured as the number of times the particular article was “searched and clicked on” through the search engines.

Now, what is some page crawled up the sitelinks which you does not want to appear on the sitelinks? What can you do to control the links that appear on the sitelinks?

Here’s what you do.

1. Register at Google Webmaster Central – It’s a shame if you have’t already. Do it now.
   
2. Goto Dashboard > Links > Sitelinks
3. If you have a sitelink, Google will show the existing links for the sitelink and the “block” option
4. Click “block” for those link you think are unnecessary.

That’s it. So even though you don’t have the access to decide what links appear on the sitelinks, you have the access to decide as to whether they should appear or not.

MICROSOFT NEW SEARCH ENGINE IS BING NOT CUMO

BING

So what’s new ? Just a re-branding and a new name ? No..there’s more. MS is trying to re invent the search experience altogether.

We spent lots of time listening to you, learning how you use search today and what you’re trying to accomplish with search. We found that search is no longer just a tool for mapping a keyword to a document. If you’re like many people, you’re increasingly using search to help you make decisions: from everyday decisions, like which restaurant to eat at, to complicated decisions, like which digital camera to buy or when to fly and where to stay on your next vacation.

Problem is: search engines themselves haven’t evolved all that much to address the new ways that people like you are using search today.

So today we’re introducing a new kind of search that goes beyond traditional search engines to help you make faster, more informed decisions. It will do this by combining a great search engine (with powerful new features to improve your results for any query), more organized results, and unique tools to help you make important decisions. We think of Bing as a Decision Engine.

So Microsoft calls Bing a “Decision Engine” and not a “Search Engine”. Cool !

SEO BASICS

The process of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has gained popularity in recent years as a
means to reach target audiences through improved web site positioning in search engines.
However, few have an understanding of the SEO methods employed in order to produce such
results. The following tips are some basic best practices to consider in optimizing your site for
improved search engine performance
Identifying Target Search Terms
The first step to any SEO campaign is to identify the search terms (also referred to as key
terms, or key words) for which you want your site pages to be found in search engines – these
are the words that a prospective visitor might type into a search engine to find relevant web
sites. For example, if your organization’s mission has to do with environmental protection, are
your target visitors most likely to search for “acid rain”, “save the forests”, “toxic waste”,
“greenhouse effect”, or all of the above? Do you want to reach visitors who are local, regional
or national in scope? These are considerations that need careful attention as you begin the
SEO process. After all, it’s no use having a good search engine ranking for terms no one’s
looking for.
Your target terms should be at least two words in length and, of course, be relevant to the
content of your site pages. Your own intuition and team brainstorming are good places to start
with key term selection. However, there are tools designed to assist you in validating your
choices and researching search term possibilities you may have never even considered.
WordTracker and Overture offer two of the most popular such tools:
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
(https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) allows you to search
Google’s database for the query volume (popularity) of various search terms; the tool
also offers recommendations for related terms. This is a free tool.
WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com) is a commercial tool used for search term
selection research. Although there is a fee for using the full version of WordTracker,
they also offer limited trial where you can test out the system.
By strategically selecting terms that are popular enough to bring you visibility with target
audiences, yet not so general/competitive that a prominent ranking will be difficult, you can
ensure that your SEO efforts are built on a stable foundation from the start.
We Have the Terms, Now What Do We Do With Them?
Once you have selected the search terms you want to target, the next step is to integrate the
terms into your site pages to make them relevant.
Selecting Pages for Optimization
Initially, the pages that you select for optimization should be those that offer the most focused
content relating to the terms you want to target – you may already have such pages on your
site, or you may need to develop them from scratch. You can optimize as many pages as you
like, but each page should focus on no more than one or two of your target terms.