18th
January
2008
Source : Webconfs.com
Making efforts to optimize a site is great but what counts is how search engines see your efforts. While even the most careful optimization does not guarantee tops position in search results, if your site does not follow basic SEO truths, then it is more than certain that this site will not score well with search engines. One way to check in advance how your SEO efforts are seen by search engines is to use a search engine simulator.
Spiders Explained
Basically all search engine spiders function on the same principle – they crawl the Web and index pages, which are stored in a database and later use various algorithms to determine page ranking, relevancy, etc of the collected pages. While the algorithms of calculating ranking and relevancy widely differ among search engines, the way they index sites is more or less uniform and it is very important that you know what spiders are interested in and what they neglect.
Search engine spiders are robots and they do not read your pages the way a human does. Instead, they tend to see only particular stuff and are blind for many extras (Flash, JavaScript) that are intended for humans. Since spiders determine if humans will find your site, it is worth to consider what spiders like and what don’t.
Flash, JavaScript, Image Text or Frames?!
Flash, JavaScript and image text are NOT visible to search engines. Frames are a real disaster in terms of SEO ranking. All of them might be great in terms of design and usability but for search engines they are absolutely wrong. An incredible mistake one can make is to have a Flash intro page (frames or no frames, this will hardly make the situation worse) with the keywords buried in the animation. Check with the Search Engine Spider Simulator tool a page with Flash and images (and preferably no text or inbound or outbound hyperlinks) and you will see that to search engines this page appears almost blank.
Running your site through this simulator will show you more than the fact that Flash and JavaScript are not SEO favorites. In a way, spiders are like text browsers and they don’t see anything that is not a piece of text. So having an image with text in it means nothing to a spider and it will ignore it. A workaround (recommended as a SEO best practice) is to include meaningful description of the image in the ALT attribute of the <IMG> tag but be careful not to use too many keywords in it because you risk penalties for keyword stuffing. ALT attribute is especially essential, when you use links rather than text for links. You can use ALT text for describing what a Flash movie is about but again, be careful not to trespass the line between optimization and over-optimization.
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16th
January
2008
Source: E2solutions.net
It is famous chant in web that ‘content is the king’. But, how far is it true to believe that a single tool can make your website popular and desirable. What if you have a content rich website written on white sheets without any design? Will content be the king in that situation also? This and many more questions must have bugged you before designing your website. In this article you can find a brief discussion of the point that content is not the king in SEO.
Unique Content
Content is certainly not the king, at least always. You need to have unique content to make it royal. If you have simple content written for long then this can’t help you in getting traffic. Here your king fails to give you a royal welcome. When your visitors come to your website they look for information which should be fresh not stale. This makes you different from your competitors. You just don’t need to write content but to update it so that your visitors can have unique, informative content in your website.
SEO Writing
Many website companies hire professional writers for content writing, which is certainly the easiest way to get fresh and appealing content. But the problem comes when you don’t update your content and rely on your technical experts to write the content. Be concise in your approach. Make sure your copy should be search engine friendly. Edit your copy intermittently keeping your target audience in mind. If your destiny favors you and you get a professional copywriter then half of your content responsibilities will be covered.
Black Hat SEO
If content is every single alphabet featured in your website then it’s also the keywords which many SEO forcibly gorge in the website. Since content is the king so many website companies hire writers who can write the content which is a simple replica of the available content. This comes when the companies hire a third party content provider. This can lead you to copy right infringement. So avoid stolen content. Unique original content is the king so being original is giving your content the right treatment.
Spamming
Many SEO companies claim to give original content and end up giving stolen, copied content. This is what search engines avoid the most. If you repeatedly do the same then it may list you as a spammers, which is certainly worse than having a 30+ ranking in search engine pages. If you ignore the search engines then also this kind of content is less desired by the visitors. Hence have a clear idea of your content and use it to get traffic not unsavory reputation.
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16th
January
2008
Source: Searchenginecollege.com
The importance of attracting highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be overemphasized. Routing web traffic to your site can be your only means of survival, especially in the very competitive ecommerce world. Getting a high search engine ranking can be very difficult. Fortunately, there is plethora of website promotion strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website.
There is a wide variety of strategies you can adapt, from paid advertising to affiliate marketing. However, most of these techniques require payment. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything.
Writing articles is one of the best web site promotion strategies you can use, and they can be very effective. How, you may ask, can writing articles help improve your web traffic? Here are the top seven ways in which it can help explode your business.
1. Reach more people When you write good articles, you must share them with other people, and attract traffic to your site in the process. You can post your articles in your website or you can submit them to other sites such as e-zines and online publishers. By submitting your articles to these sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website. Simply include a link back to your site or include your information in the resource box. With this, you get exposure and free advertising as well.
2. Free Advertising Submitting your articles to other websites presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying exorbitant fees. Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site’s link in the resource box. In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully a purchase. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space.
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