Aenigmatica - Armenian Girl That Loves Exploring Life

Conducting SEO Competitive Analysis: Part 4

2012-02-22T05:58:00.001-08:00

If you’re involved in search engine optimization that means you should always keep track of search engines updates. SEO requires a lot of analysis and technical work. One of the essential parts of it is determining competitors and revealing both their strong and weak sides.

Internet market research will greatly help you in revealing your competitor’s tricks to success and reasons for failures. Read their news and updates, check out their partners, their reputation on the web, PR, Alexa rank, reviews, activities on social websites and forums. However, emarketing research is definitely not enough. Financial and statistics data are also required.

Another important thing is to know your competitor’s history; where the story began and how it goes on. By discovering more about their product releases and annual profit, you can figure out what was the reason for a sudden growth or failure.

Know your competitor’s products, their description, advantages and disadvantages. Purchase your competitor’s products to have a better idea what it is and how to create a more valuable one. Nothing personal, just business.

Lastly, if you think your competitor doesn’t keep track of you, you’re wrong. Just like you follow their updates and discover company secrets, they also do the same. One of the main points is to make sure you have the right people on board and you can keep them in company as long as possible. Also make sure none of your company members puts secret information anywhere on the web.

Successful companies need the right people on board and the very deep analysis in market research!

Google Doesn't Use the Keywords Meta Tag in Web Ranking

2012-02-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

If you’re working hard on improving your keyword Meta tag, it’s time to concentrate on more essential factors that affect website rankings. Google algorithm change reveals more, less and non-important tips for search engine optimization.

Many times keyword tag was stuffed with irrelevant keywords, here’s one of the examples. Say your company name is AndrewCo and your competitors AnnaCo and you’re both involved in producing leather shoes.

AndrewCo puts leather shoes, shoes, best shoes in his keyword tag, while AnnaCo does the same and also includes AndrewCo to appear for her competitor search results. None of the parties should be concerned as starting from September 2009, Google ignores keyword Meta tag. However, AnnaCo is an example of keyword tag abuse.

I would recommend webmasters mainly focus on important factors and write relevant page titles and description tags, so skipping keyword tag is quite reasonable. Google does not pay any attention to keyword tag for web search rankings.

Description and page title Meta tags still matter for Google. While page title has a crucial importance, Meta description tag is important to a minor extent.

Page title should clearly describe what the page is about. Copy/pasting titles from similar pages is an irrelevant approach. Again, say we both produce leather shoes, and my page title is Shoes | Quality Leather Shoes, you can write Leather Shoes| Your Company Name. That would be a great way to promote your brand and keep to relevancy and unique style. Do not write neither too long, nor too short page titles; 50-70 character page titles are recommended.

Description tag should precisely describe your web page. It’s is recommended to keep from 170 to 250 character description. Write Meta description tags for important web pages. You can skip writing descriptions for terms of use, privacy policy and similar pages.

Make sure your website is SEO-friendly and you focus on the most significant SEO factors.

R.I.P. Whitney Houston: Your Voice Will Never Die

2012-02-12T04:26:00.000-08:00

R.I.P. Whitney Houston
The world has lost another legend!

Whitney Houston died at the age of 48. She was found dead in a Beverly Hills hotel room, on Grammy Awards eve. The details on great singer's death are coming in ...

Whitney's ex-husband, Bobby Brown, was often accused of “corrupting” Whitney Houston by enabling her use of drugs and alcohol and Houston once spoke about their explosive relationship on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Read more...

Indeed, the world has lost a great artist, but her voice will never die...

SEO: Link Building Tips

2012-02-10T05:54:00.000-08:00

What do you know about link building? Link building is one of the most important parts of emarketing. With quality link building campaign, you will increase both page rank and drive traffic to your web site. Link building campaign should be based on quality inbound/outbound link achievement.

Create a link page on your website and name it 'Links,' 'Partners' or 'Resources,' put your partners' links there and ask them for a link exchange.

How to ask your partner for a link exchange?

•    Show that it would be an asset for both of you; mention your website PR, traffic rank and the fact that your website is updated on a regular basis.
•    Then place his website link in your Link/Partners/Resources page and send a link exchange request.
•    Provide link partner with your website details such as URL,category, title and description and ask for his in case he does not like your link back information or has something to add/modify.

If your partner gets interested, he will accept your link exchange request. If he does not feel excited about the idea, you can simply remove his link from your web site.

Another question that might interest you is why link the related websites. Obviously, they contain the same keywords which will help your website to stand out for them. Note that if the web site that links to you is not SEO-friendly, for instance has some negative reviews or indexing problems, this can decrease your PR.

So study the websites you want to get a backlink from:

•    Find the related web sites (non-direct competitors)
•    Check the PR (You can use Google page rank checker, SEO quake tool or any other)
•    Research your partners' keywords
•    Read the content. It must be clear, quality and relevant.
•    If the web site you chose to link matches all the above-mentioned tips, don't hesitate to send the link exchange request.

The more quality websites link to you, the higher your page rank will be. Google also trusts what people say. If you get a lot of positive reviews (especially from authority websites), it will be a big plus. The age of your website also matters; the older the website domain is, the more trustworthy it is considered.

Finally, once you have a good PR, a lot of web sites will ask you for a link exchange. So go for it!

Save Teghut Forests

2012-02-07T02:24:00.000-08:00

Trees are crying...You can come across this phrase when searching for Teghut on the web...

The Armenian Teghut forests, located in Lori province, are in danger of vanishing. Starting from November 2007 the forests are being destroyed to make a way for a huge copper and molybdenum processing near the village of Teghut and Shnogh, 4-6 kilometers away from the mine.

Deforestation will obviously damage the ecology, besides there are about 55 000 rare and 45 000 valuable trees in Teghut forests as well as plants and animal species registered in the Red book.

The group of Armenian environmentalists which recently saved the Trchkan waterfall is actively trying to stop the process of deforestation. On January 15 the environmentalists consisting of 250 people went to Teghut to demonstrate their protest against harming ecology and explain people the effects of deforestation.

In his turn, the head of Teghut village - Harutyun Meliksetyan - told media that 170 of 780 residents of the village work on the mine and are paid AMD 60 000 per month ($150), assuming that stopping the process would mean leaving people unemployed. Is damaging the environment the only way to provide the population with jobs?

One of residents of Shnogh village said that that he’s happy with having a job but he already noticed the first signs of pollution in the running river…The land is lost in dust and who knows what happens in a few years.

Ecologists warn that in 25 years Teghut will become a dead zone; the rare and endangered birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, and unique fruit trees of the forest will disappear...Just look at the first image with the amazing green trees...and compare with what we have now...

Armenia has a small population and the government does all to make this land totally uninhabitable....

Special thanks to Armenian activists’ who do their best to save people and the pieces of this land...

Content Optimization Tips: Make Your Content SEO-friendly

2012-02-03T04:36:00.000-08:00

How to optimize the content of the website and why it is extremely important.

Quality and unique content is a keystone of a successful website. If the content is unique, relevant and well-written, the web site will get not only high page ranking but attract a huge number of visitors. How to get started?

Know which keywords to use. If your web site is new and has zero PR, using high-competitive keywords is not recommended. Properly chosen low-competitive keywords will help you better in the beginning of your SEO campaign. For instance, say you have a jeans shop in Romania, your website will not appear in Google first pages with keyword search "jeans shop", while it can definitely stand out with the keyword "jeans shop in Romania" or "Romania jeans shop."

Use keywords in the content. Do not include any keyword in HTML Meta 'Keywords' tag if it is not used in the text. Keep to proper keyword density, do not stuff your text with too many keywords.
Add keywords to H1, paragraph, etc. Besides using the keywords in the texts, add them in the headings (H1), in the first paragraphs of the texts and in the description part of the web site.

Write blogs/articles. Another important thing is writing blogs (news, articles), as updating the website on a regular basis helps traffic increase. When writing blogs for your website, you can use more and more keywords, gradually coming to the use of high-competitive ones and increasing the number of visitors. Note that the content should be easy-to-read, meaningful and relevant.

Name the images. If you upload the images with the blogs, then change the name of the JPEG into your blog title. Google bot can't read the text on the images, it catches the 'ALT' in the source code.

Show people why choose you. If you owe a business website that aims turning your visitors into potential clients, you need to write about the advantages of your business, the way you work and why should people choose you. Do it carefully, it should not look like pure advertising.

So write quality and unique content, do proper keyword research, update your website regularly and you'll see the amazing results of content optimization.

SEO: Prevent Web Indexing Issues

2012-01-30T05:12:00.000-08:00

SEO stands for search engine optimization and involves technical and others spheres of knowledge. Knowledge of HTML in SEO is very important. If you don't possess minimum knowledge in HTML, you won’t be able to manage quality SEO campaign.

How to get started?

Preventing web indexing problems is one of the most essential parts of search engine optimization.

Errors in HTML. When working on a website, make sure you have no HTML errors as some cause web indexing issues. Use HTML validators to check the code. One of the most popular validators on the Internet is http://validator.w3.org/. You can stick to this one.

Broken links. If you have broken links on your website, remove them. You need to make sure that all links on your website are active, otherwise your website will be low-ranked by search engines.

XML sitemap. Possessing some skills in XML is important as well. Submit XML sitemap as Google bot indexes it faster and considers SEO-friendly. If you have no sitemap, Google spider won't be able to crawl your website. You can check if Google spider can crawl all pages of your website in the following way. Type site: www.yoursite.com in Google search bar, press enter and you’ll find out all the pages it can access.

Robots.txt file. Does your website have a robots.txt file? If you want spider to index everything on your website, you don't need robots.txt file at all. Yet many website owners use robots.txt to make sure the file has the option "allow" in the script and all the pages are indexed. In case you want spider to prevent from indexing some pages, you need to indicate these pages in robots.txt and write "disallow". For instance you can disallow terms and conditions, or privacy policy. These pages do not need organic traffic.

Therefore, follow the below-mentioned SEO tips:

•    Get rid of broken links
•    Get rid of HTML errors
•    Submit XML sitemap
•    Know how to use robots.txt file
•    Submit your website to search engines (bing, ask, aol, etc)

The last one will significantly improve the visibility of your website and contribute to traffic increase. In my next post I'm going to talk about how web crawlers work, particularly about crawling, processing and indexing.

Exploring Wintertime in Tsaghkadzor

2012-01-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

The best things in life happen when you don’t expect any…Sometimes we plan our lives ahead, trying to make things go in the right direction... But there are things that come out of nowhere and just go in the right way…

I went to Play City – an amusement center in Yerevan – on a kart racing with my friend. Unfortunately, we were in the right place but not in the right time. 'Kart racing will be available from spring.' - the receptionist told us. Oh well, we both were disappointed, thinking what else similar can be done in this small city.

Suddenly we got an idea about visiting Tsaghkadzor, popular health and ski resort which is just 50 km away from Yerevan. Tsaghkadzor means the valley of flowers in Armenian and is located in the Kotayk province of Armenia, north of Hrazdan.

The city is located at the height of 1750 meters above sea level and is surrounded with alpine meadows. Tsaghkadzor offers its tourists a lof of amusement facilities for exploring wintertime holidays.

It was 3.30 p.m. that we rushed to take a taxi and soon were on the road to Tsaghkadzor. Why lose time? If there’s something you can do and do it now, just do it! We had no gloves and hats with us and that was really crazy. We thought of getting such stuff there because going home would mean losing time and it was already late.

In about 40 minutes we were in Tsaghkadzor, the beautiful valley of flowers, was now covered with snow. It was such a beautiful and breathtaking scenery! Snow, huge mountains, the bright sky with sparkling sun rays. There were a number of people around having fun, skiing, skating…

We took a tour to view the snowy Tsaghkadzor from the highest peak on the ropeway. It was not just amazing…no words can describe the beauty of this snowy town with lots of mountains and alpine meadows around, besides we enjoyed the sunset view.

Having reached the peak of the mountain, we had to go down on the ropeway again. Watching after people looked liked exploring a part of their being, Some were skiing, the others skating, while the kids were just exploring fun in lying in the snow. I managed to take a shot and wow.. Samsung Galaxy is just fine, I like its quality.

Despite the cold, we did not even look for gloves and hats…We just went to have a tea and eat Pizza at Italian Tiffosi to get warm. Almost the half of the restaurant visitors were tourists from Russia. Seems Tsaghkadzor is popular in Russia as well.

After a break, we went to walk in the snowy city, exploring wintertime holidays fun...

In a few hours it was getting dark and we had to go home. We were impressed by Tsaghkadzor and its lovely atmosphere.

Hope soon I can visit Tsaghkadzor again. This time I want to explore more…

Segafredo Zanetti: Revive Your Senses

2012-01-24T01:01:00.000-08:00

Where to drink coffee in Yerevan?

If you're looking for Starbucks, you're not in the right place; we have no Starbucks in Yerevan but we have the world-famous Italian coffee brand - Segafredo Zanetti.

Segafredo Zanetti is the leading Espresso producer in Italy and throughout the world, with more than 70,000 clients and 50 million cups of espresso drunk each day.

So if you want to have a cup of quality coffee, go to Segafredo. That’s where I usually go to enjoy the best Italian coffee and the lovely atmosphere of the cafe.

Segafredo is situated on the North Avenue, which is considered the center of the town. I went there on Sunday and ordered Vienna - coffee with ice-cream. Hmm...not bad. I have tried their Espresso, Americano, Frappuccino, etc, however Cappuccino remains my favorite.

‘Coffee is the beverage of the creative and active intelligence. It revives and awakes the senses.’ Absolutely...

And awaking senses on the dull Saturday day is just great. Actually, weekend is something you should definitely enjoy. Sitting in Segafredo, I looked through some newly installed applications on my Samsung Galaxy. This phone is really great and I guess there's a lot more I can explore about it.

Just in front of Segafredo is an ice-skating rink with crowds of people having fun, laughing and enjoying their time.

Sounds strange but sometimes I prefer noisy places and strolling down the busiest streets of Yerevan, watching people rushing from one place to another, exploring something new and just enjoying every second of my life.

Aenigmatica - the Armenian Girl That Loves Exploring Life!

My next post will be about kart racing.
Stay tuned!

Email Marketing Tips: Part 2

2012-01-23T05:18:00.000-08:00

We have already discussed many of SEO tips. This post will be devoted to emarketing tips and strategies, some of which were mentioned in the previous one.

Email content. Nothing will work out if you just can’t make the content attractive. Make sure you send valuable information that will definitely interest your users. Make your email subject interesting and if it is such a one, the likelihood that the subscriber will open the email is high. Besides, you can also set-up email –based learning courses which will help you get more subscribers on board.

Email preview. If you’re not sure whether your email really looks attractive, use preview pane before you send. Many email clients such as MS Outlook provide users with the preview option.

Email signature. If you do not provide any information about you, your company would hardly be considered a trustworthy one. For this reason include a professional signature in the bottom of the emails you send. This will help build trust in relationships with your clients. The signature must contain the company name, your position in the company and personal details such as phone and email.

SEO blog. Say your company provides SEO services, it would be great if you send the latest SEO news, i.e. search engine newsletters to your subscribers. If you have SEO blog (which is a highly-recommended SEO tip for SEO service providers) on your company website, you better send your SEO blog posts in your email. Another option is to notify them by email that you have updated your blog, so they will follow the link.

Autoresponder. Once you get a new subscriber on board, schedule autoresponder with a "thank you" message. This is another factor that helps you build trust.

Always on time. Say you always mail out on Tuesday, your subscribers will expect to get your email on Tuesday. So be consistent; make sure you’re on time every time. Additionally, keep to a consistent template; it will help you strengthen your company brand and features.

Feel free to contact me for questions or suggestions which topic on SEO you would want to be discussed in the next post.

Email Marketing Tips: Part 1

2012-01-19T04:09:00.000-08:00

Email marketing is one of the most essential SEO tips that requires a specific approach. If your email marketing campaign is successful you will get a huge traffic on board. How to lead a successful e-marketing campaign?

Avoid Spam. The most essential emarketing strategy is to avoid the spam filters. Many of ISP (Internet Service Providers) use spam filtering options to avoid spam emails in their inboxes. Each email service has its criteria for ranking email as a spam. For this reason do not use the words ‘free’, ‘discount’, ‘save’ and some specific symbols like £ both in the email content and subject line.

Personalize your email. Don’t be too official; personalize your email, like saying 'Hi Mike'. Addressing your subscribers with name, means you already set up a warm relationship which increases the likelihood of their click.

Keep it short and clear. Sometimes writing a lot means losing potential click-throughs. Make your text clear and short. Avoid using videos and images in the email, you better leave a website URL so the visitors will check it out themselves. Make the URL plain bold blue text link, ensuring your URL won’t be left unnoticed. According to research readers better respond to such kinds of mail.

Make the text attractive. Make the text attractive so the reader would really want to check your website and avoid giving tasks in your email; for instance, please click this and then this and you will discover our special order.

Tuesday/Wednesday Mail-out. Studies of web analysts and market researchers show that people usually show activity on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, after a tiresome Monday day. If you practice email marketing on these days, you will get a better result. Do not consider mailing out on Mondays as it’s the busiest day of the week and your subscribers may forget reading your mail on Tuesday.

Sign-up confirmation. Make sure you send sign-up confirmation link in your email to ensure that you avoid spamming and it’s really the visitor who subscribed for your blog/website. Indeed it’s a great option.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe. To show that you’re a trustworthy website, you need to provide both subscribe and unsubscribe buttons. If your website visitor changes his mind, he should have the option of unsubscribe which should be also mentioned in the email.

This is just the beginning of the beginning; my next post will discuss more tips for email marketing success.

Armenia: Yerevan Grapples with Eurovision Dilemma

2012-01-16T04:19:00.000-08:00

Eurovision 2012 song contest will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan on May 22-26.

Armenia will soon decide on its participation and come up with the final decision. The head of Armenian delegation in Eurovision – Gohar Gasparyan – said it's a pretty difficult task that requires a specific approach.

On the other hand, Azerbaijan offered security, however it’s not clear if the Armenian side is satisfied with the guarantee and will be really safe in Baku. Supervisor of Eurovision – Sietse Bakker - told Mediamax that the Armenian public channel did not apply to EBU (European Broadcasting Union) to secure special conditions for the Armenian participants in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan which is under dictatorship makes many European states hesitate on their participation, moreover Poland and Czech Republic have already rejected their participation in Eurovision 2012.

Armenia had always tough relationships with Azerbaijan. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict started in 1918 and was followed by a series of conflicts. On February 1988, the cruel Armenian massacres in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, received heavy coverage in the Western media. Ethic Azeri attacked and killed Armenians on the streets, invaded their apartments; men, women and kids were mutilated and killed.

In 1921 the Soviet Union declared the Armenian land - Karabakh in the part of Azerbaijan which lead to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In 1923 the Nagorno- Karabakh Republic (NKR) became autonomous. On February 1988, after the NKR Parliament asked the Soviet Union to join Armenia, the Armenian-Azerbaijani war started. Armenians won the long-lasting war of 1988 on May 1994.

SEO Tips to Increase Website Traffic

2012-01-12T04:27:00.000-08:00

If you’re running a website, you should always have SEO plan how to drive more traffic to your website. You may get confused, saying that there a lot of websites on the Internet and you can’t stand out the competition. No worries. There are a lot of essential ways to bring more traffic, increase your website visibility and page rank. Besides, many webmasters are unaware of basic SEO techniques.

Pinging services. Start with pinging services. What does it mean? Every time you update a website a ping will send a reminder to your readers that you updated a website so they will check it out once they get a notification. Ping service is included by Yahoo search engine, weblogs, Google blog search and Zingfast.

Technorati. Next step is getting to Technorati. Technorati is a popular website and a unique way of website branding. By signing up your blog/website on Technorati, you will avoid scammers that may use your property under their names and drive more traffic to your website due to a huge number of Technorati users.

Feedburner. Many of you have probably heard about Feedburner. Feedburner is an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) service. Feedburner is the service that enables people subscribe to your website and get the latest news via email or RSS reader. That’s a great option as many of the users which have already come across your website and liked it, would want to check it out again.

Social bookmarking. Delicious, Digg and Stumbleupon are the largest bookmarking websites on the Internet. Millions of users visit these websites on a daily basis to share their news and stories and read the others'. Social bookmarking is an effective way of getting more traffic on board and gaining popularity, however you should keep to the main rule - get connected to the websites you want to get traffic from and not just digg or stumble stories.

Post commenting. Post commenting is one of the essential SEO tips for traffic increase. Which posts to comment? There are three questions you should ask yourself before commenting a post:

• Do I need the traffic from this website?

• Is this post relevant to my website/blog topic?

• Do I have a similar story to share and get traffic?

If you don’t need traffic from the particular website, don’t waste your time by commenting and getting non-quality visitors.

Link building. Link building is one of the essential and crucially important SEO tips. Ask relevant websites with high PR and low Alexa rank for link exchange. This will improve not only your traffic but contribute to PR increase as well. Just make sure that this is the right website you want to exchange your link with.

Keyword research. Whenever you write a post, don’t forget using the right keywords in it. When choosing keywords, make sure that they are relevant and you definitely want to rank high for these keywords in SERP.

Follow the above-mentioned SEO tactics and you will undoubtedly get the right audience on board as well as increase website traffic. I will be back with interesting posts soon!

Writing SEO Friendly Page Titles

2012-01-10T12:41:00.000-08:00

Search engines pay a special attention to website page titles. The first thing the crawler checks out when visiting a website is a page title.

Page titles result in website page ranking; relevant and effective page titles contribute to page rank increase, while irrelevant ones drop down the website PR.

How to write page titles?

•    Number of characters. Do not write neither long nor short page titles. Your website page titles should be about 50 characters.

•    Quality title. Some company owners demand including a company name in website page title, however it is not a good idea for all cases. If the company is not famous and is hardly searched by people, then it’s better to concentrate on putting relevant keywords to get high rankings in SERP and achieve popularity on the web. After gaining audience, using a company name in page title will make a sense.

Let's make an example. Say your company name is Mary M, then including it in website’s page title will not show any effect) as people do not know you and won’t search for Mary M on the Internet. Even if you put your company name in page title then consider adding a business activity and services the company provides after slash. For instance Mary M | Clothes for Kids, or Mary M | Children’s Clothing Store. You can start using your company name in all page titles once you become more or less popular in the market or Internet. Using a company name in page title perfectly suits such world-famous companies as Google, Microsoft, Cisco, etc.

•    The must. All website pages need to have page titles, even the ones you don’t want to optimize. For instance Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. It’s obvious that you would not want these pages to appear in SERP. The visitor will check out this information after scrolling the website. In this case you may skip writing meta tags like keywords, however page title is obligatory.

•    Know how. Say you’re US, Chicago-based company and want to promote your business within the Unites States, particularly Chicago. In this case, being more specific would be a good idea. For instance Mary M| Chicago Children’s Clothing Store will be a great title. However if you want to broaden your geographical scope and work not only for people in Chicago, do not mention any state/city/region.

Some useful tips on page optimization will be discussed in my next post.

Top 5 SEO Dos: Build SEO-friendly Website

2012-01-03T06:18:00.000-08:00

With the growing number of websites on the Internet, search engine optimization becomes highly-important.

Every website needs content updates, backlinks, search engine marketing (SEM), social media optimization (SMO) and so on. If you have a website, it means you should always work on it and improve its visibility and rankings on the Internet. Websites which are not optimized are low-ranked by search engines.

Here come top 5 SEO dos every website owner and admin should be aware of:

Website structure. Firstly, your website should be user-friendly, i.e. website design, structure and navigation. Secondly, it should be SEO friendly as well. Write proper meta tags and use XML sitemap. Note that XML sitemap is considered search engine friendly. Also make sure your website has no HTML errors, broken link and crawling issues.

Content. Write unique and interesting content, targeting the desired audience. Choose attractive images for your content/blogs and make your content seo-friendly, i.e. titles, tags, etc,

Backlinks. The more quality websites link to you, the better it is. Try to get high-ranked and relevant link partners on board. This will significantly improve your rankings. Send link requests or make these websites want to link to you. The last one mainly depends on the quality of the services you provide and on your website popularity.

Keywords. Keyword research makes an integral part of website optimization. Choose the most appropriate keywords, the ones for which you want your website to rank first. If you choose irrelevant keywords and still appear on the first pages of SERP, this is not something you should be happy with. High ranking for irrelevant keywords will drop down the page rank of the website.

Social media. Nowadays, SMO optimization makes an important part of SEO.

• Create the proper company/business profile
• Target the needed audience
• Lead effective social networking and bookmarking campaigns
• Put the widgets on your website/blogs, making tagging and bookmarking easy

I would also recommend putting Alexa website info box on your site. This will definitely improve Alexa ranking. Note that Alexa rank is based on your website traffic and its popularity on the Internet. Unlike Google rank, the lower the Alexa rank is, the more popular the website is considered.

The above-mentioned tips will significantly improve your website ranking in Google-the world's largest search engine, Yahoo, Alexa and not only. However, it’s not enough; my next post will discuss the further tips on SEO dos.

Happy New Dragon Year

2011-12-31T09:40:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers!

Happy New Dragon Year!

Wish you love, happiness, prosperity and success in every step you make! May all your wishes come true in 2012, may you be always surrounded with the nearest and dearest, may love accompany you forever and may the year of the Dragon bring you all the best!

I have great expectations from 2012 maybe because I was born on the year of the Dragon and hope that this year I will achieve all my goals and conquer heights!

Thank You for reading my posts, sharing your opinion and just being a part of Aenigmatica blog!

Stay with Aenigmatica in 2012 and you’ll learn a lot of interesting stories, emarketing tips and tricks and much more!

Best regards,

Diana Davoyan (Aenigmatica)

5 SEO Don’ts to Avoid Low-ranking

2011-12-25T12:37:00.000-08:00

For building SEO-friendly website, you should be aware of SEO do’s and don’ts. This post will discuss the things you shouldn’t do.

Don’t deceive search engines: The first thing every webmaster should consider is not deceiving search engines. Hiding texts, links, cloaking, making sneaky redirects will lower your website page ranking or even may spam your website.

What does cloaking mean? Cloaking means showing one content to search engines and another content to users which is considered black-hat SEO. Many websites put on uncensored content to get more traffic and show different pages to search engines to avoid low-ranking. However, spider is not as primitive as you may think. You can’t deceive thousands of crawlers on the Internet and once they discover the abuse, your website will be put into spam-list.

Don’t deceive users: First of all, make your website user-friendly. If users can’t find what they’re searching for on the website, they will bounce. Website structure and navigation should be well-organized.

Don’t submit to every directory. Avoid submitting your website URL to every free directory you come across on the Internet. Know where you submit URLs and analyze if it’s worth it. Choose the best directories, read the reviews, check out the traffic they get and only then submit your website URL. You better concentrate on several high-ranked directories rather than 100 useless.

Don’t have duplicate content. It’s obvious that writing one text for multiple pages is easy, however it may drop rankings. Unique content is one of the main criteria for Google high ranking so make sure you have minimized similar content.

Don’t make it too commercial: Pure commercial websites are usually low-ranked. That does not mean you should reject all kinds of advertising, however do not abuse. Besides, the advertisements you put into your website should be relevant to your content.

Keep to quality in everything you do. The next post will discuss SEO do’s.

Google Panda Update: How to Avoid Low-ranking

2011-12-20T14:17:00.000-08:00

What is Google Panda?

Basically Google changes its algorithm in 4-6 months to improve search rankings.

Google Panda – a change to the Google's search results ranking algorithm - was first released in February 2011. Google released Panda to keep the right balance on the web, i.e. to lower the rank of low-quality websites and improve the rankings of high-quality ones. Soon it was noticed that Panda dropped the rankings of the websites with large amount of advertising. So while some of you may think that advertising brings money and does no harm, it has negative effects as well. Pure commercial websites are usually low-ranked; accordingly when building and maintaining a website, some website quality guidelines should be taken into account.

After some time, many people started complain that website with original content is ranked lower than the one with copied one. Google detected scrapers and updated Panda to measure quality of the websites in a more sophisticated and precise way than previously possible. It was successful and the Panda update was globally released in April 2011.

The next update is expected in January 2012.

What to consider before and after Google Panda update?

In 2012, search engines will pay a strict attention to three main SEO tips:

Keyword density: If the content is not unique and simply contains a bunch of words, instead of quality and appropriate ones, the website page rank will drop down. According to Google, the keyword ratio should be between 5-8 %; otherwise the search engine may skip the website until the next update.

Keyword relevancy: Keyword relevancy is also important to search engine. Google Panda will pay even stricter attention to keyword relevancy of the websites after January update. Some of the high-ranked and reputable websites like Forbes and PW Newswire have been affected for ranking for the keywords that are often abused. Thus, pay attention to keyword relevancy, determine whether you want to get traffic for the particular keywords and consider the type of the websites that rank for these keywords. This way you’ll discover the keyword authority.

Broken links issues. If the website contains broken links, you need to get rid of them or fix. There are a lot of broken link checkers that will save your time and show up the list of no longer active URLs on your website. Just type your website URL and the program will check it. Once you’ve found such a problem, immediately solve the broken link issues.

Update and maintain your website, following the search engine rules and your website will be ranked appropriately. Only one month is left until the update, hurry up with making your website search engine friendly!

Google Zeitgeist: Google’s Top Ten Searches For 2011

2011-12-17T13:53:00.000-08:00

World’s most popular search engine –Google – has recently released the list of top ten searches (Google Zeitgeist) for 2011. Zeitgeist is a German word which means “spirit of the times.”

John Waley, the lead designer for Google search said: “What we’re trying to find the fast rising search terms. These are the things that typified, or were the hot items in 2011.”

The most searched for 2011 is Rebecca Black - an American pop singer - who gained extensive media attention with the 2011 single "Friday."
Google’s newly launched product G+ is the second most search in 2011.
In the third place is an American reality television personality and Jackass star – Ryan Dunn.
A scandal around Casey Anthony with killing her two-year-old daughter, however found not guilty by a jury, made her the Google’s fourth search.
The fifth position takes highly anticipated shooter video game, Battlefield 3. It’s just striking that 5 million copies of the game were sold in its first week!
The next one, the sixth search for 2011 is Apple’s product - iPhone 5.
Adele, British singer-songwriter, sold 208,000 copies of her somophore album “21” in its first week and reached international acclaim. Adele, 22 year –old UK singer is the seventh in the Google’s top searches list.
Tepco (東京電力) is Tokyo electric power company. After the 2011 earthquake badly damaged several nuclear reactors, tens of thousands of people who lived near Tepco were displaced, making the town uninhabitable.
American businessman and creativity genius – Steve Jobs – is ranked 8th. Jobs who served as Apple’s CEO, died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56.
The tenth place in Google top searches belongs to iPad 2. 500,000 of iPad2 were sold on the debut weekend.

My next post will be about Google Panda and the most important SEO tips for 2012.

Choosing Seo-Friendly Domains

2011-12-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

Many of you know that website domain name should be relevant to web content and serve its purpose. Meantime, few are aware of SEO-factors when choosing it. There are some major SEO tips that should be taken into account.

Age of domain. While many of you may wonder what the age has to do with domain, in fact it really matters. Search engines give more priority to old domains as they are considered more trustworthy. Consequently, the older the domain is, the more important it is considered and the likelihood that it will be ranked higher by search engines is high.

History of domain. History is another important and prioritized factor. Search engines always check the history of domain, if say the domain was penalized or it contained any illegal content, it will be ranked less. Thus, keep in mind that before deciding on a domain name, you need to study its history first. It is important not to hurry as you can always buy the appropriate SEO-friendly domain on the web.

Google Page Rank. It’s highly recommended to buy a relevant high-ranked domain as your website will get a lot of traffic and it will be easier to attract more visitors. So find out its Google page rank. If it is zero or low-ranked, keep in mind that it will take a lot of time until changes show up considering that Google updates website once in 4-6 months depending on an algorithm change.

Indexing. Make sure that the domain is indexed by Google, Yahoo and other big search engines, otherwise you won’t get visitors from them. Search engines generally easily index website domains and if they don't catch, that means something is not quite right about your website, i.e. spam and other content issues maybe the reasons for that.

DMOZ and Yahoo Directory Listings. Check out if the domain is listed in Yahoo and DMOZ directories as this will save your time. However, if it meets all the above-mentioned criteria, you can submit it to these two directories manually. It won’t take much time but you will have to wait a bit until it is submitted. Normally directories do not reject the submitted domains if the website has not any serious issues or bugs.

Backlinks. Research the domain and see how many backlinks it has as backlinks improve visibility of the website. The more backlinks it has, the better it is, however it’s not that simple. Backlinks matter, they need to be relevant and quality, i.e. from high-ranked websites. If a domain has a number of worthy backlinks, you will save your time and efforts.

To get maximum return from your website, you need to carefully choose a domain. Thus, consider these tips before you decide on one. Keep in mind that the quality of a domain is important to search engines. Your website traffic, page rank and visibility crucially depend on it.

World Renowned Artists Say 'Never Again' to the Armenian Genocide

2011-12-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

The “Never Again” peace concerts that aim to bring world musicians towards the 100^th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide (2015) will take place in Russia and Eastern European countries. Armenia will host the concert in 2015.

Famous recording artist Eric Benet, Hollywood actor and poet Michael Stone, Chaka Khan, Lalah Hathaway, Bobby Brown and international superstar Stevie Wonder said “NO” to the Armenian Genocide on November 1, in Los Angeles.

Stevie Wonder, who is also the United Nations Ambassador for Peace, was honored at this event.

“I participate in this concert not as an Ambassador of Peace, as I am usually called, but rather as Stevie Wonder the individual. I am delighted and I have heard Flora Martirosyan singing with special pleasure. She has a unique and exceptional voice. It is more than pleasant for me to say that today I did not only get acquainted with the Armenian community, but I also got new friends. I have promised to write a new song for this great singer, and most probably it is going to be a duet by the two of us,” Wonder said.

Flora Martirosyan - Armenian People’s Artist, the founder of international charitable organization “Artist for Peace” and one of the concert organizers - received US Congressman Brad Sherman’s special certificate for her invaluable contribution to the Armenian community and world peace through music.

The Armenian Genocide refers to the systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, implemented through wholesale massacres and deportations. The Great Crime, as the Armenian people call it, took the lives of 1.5 million Armenians.

Top 5 SEO Factors to Evaluate Backlink Quality

2011-12-06T11:01:00.000-08:00

Link building helps websites achieve high ranking positions in search engines. The more quality backlinks you get, the better it is. However, backlinks matter.

If the backlinks are from relevant high-ranked websites, your website will definitely benefit; it will increase both page rank and improve its position on SERP (search engine result pages)

How do I know if I can benefit from a backlink? The below are top five SEO factors that define backlink quality.

Relevancy. Say your website is about finance and you got a link from a traveling blog, than it is not surely the best deal. It’s better get 10 relevant backlinks rather than 100 irrelevant. Obviously, you need to ask relevant high-ranked websites for a backlink.

Reputation. Additionally, before you send a link exchange request, check the reputation of the particular blog or website on the Internet and whether or not domain is banned by search engines. In case of negative reviews and feedbacks, avoid connecting. If you found nothing similar, then go for it.

Page Rank. Page rank of the website crucially matters. If you get a link from a higher ranked website, you’ll improve page rank and SERP. Say your page rank is 4, you should look for a website which has a higher PR, or at least not less. One of the common and beneficial methods is to get a link from dofollow forums, blogs and websites.You can check the page rank at http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Domain Age. The older the website domain is, the more trustworthy it is considered by search engines. However, judging only by domain is not a proper e-marketing strategy. The above-mentioned SEO tips as well as the history of domain, its listing in directories and search engines should be taken into account.

Alexa Rank. While you may think that the high page rank is enough, it’s not, Alexa ranking plays an important role as well. Some webmasters use Alexa page rank checker tool (Alexa toolbar) at http://www.alexa.com/ to measure the popularity and the traffic of the website, as Alexa rank is based on these two factors.

Therefore, before you start your link building campaign, evaluate the quality of the targeted websites according to the above-mentioned SEO factors.

Quality brings value to your business!

My another post tells how to get quality backlinks. http://aenigmaticusblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/link-building-get-quality-backlinks.html

Blog Commenting Tips and Tricks

2011-11-29T04:03:00.000-08:00

Blog commenting is one of the ways that helps bloggers bring traffic to their blog. However, for many reasons you may not get the desired result from every single comment.

If you want to generate quality traffic, you need to know how to comment.

The below tips will help you analyze how to get visitors and turn them into permanent readers.

How to get started:

Read the post. Many people just look through the post without realizing what it is really about. Such a way of commenting is a pure waste of time. Authors can easily figure out whether or not you have read the post.

Be unique. Comments like “nice blog,” “a great post” are far from being attractive, try to write something unique, for instance mention the part of the blog you liked the most and why as well as whether or not you agree with the author on the particular subject. Even if you disagree, it’s natural and normal, the thing is not to be offensive and rude.

Make the look unique: Besides writing a unique comment, make it look unique as well. Use HTML formatting, i.e. make the text bold, italic and you can also use numbering for making the list of points. Formatting will help your comment look different and stand out among others. The likelihood that it will be read more than other comments is high.

Get personal. It’s always more polite to add a name, like it’d be much better if you write “Thank you, Victoria” rather than “thanks.” It would be great if you also leave a regard, i.e. “best,” “sincerely” etc.

Leave your name: Leave your name and surname, so that people who’re interested in you can search for you on the Internet and get connected.

Leave post URL. Leave your post URL, instead of your homepage one. It’s less likely that the reader would search for the particular post on your homepage. Leave a catchy comment with your URL, as it will push readers click it. For instance, “I have a similar post on this subject and after a deep research, I managed to discover some quite interesting facts…”

No hyperlinks: Don’t hyperlink your text, leaving a post URL is quite enough. Most of the authors react negatively if they see a pure advertising in their post-related comments.

Be natural: Finally, there’s no need to write, long and unnatural comments. None really enjoys reading dull phrases that don’t make a sense. Keep it simple and reasonable.

These are some valuable tricks and tips for blog commenting. If you manage to follow them, your blog won't be left unnoticed.

Tips for Making Friends on Social Networks

2011-11-25T02:35:00.001-08:00

Some people develop a strategy that having many friends on social networks helps them become popular, promote their business and bring traffic to their website. However, it depends on what you want to promote and the networks particularly.

Say you want to promote a personal blog, company brand and product on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking websites, then keep reading some useful how-to-do tips.

Tips for Making Friends on Social Networks:

Real Friends: Friends in real life make an integral part of your social network.

Search for people you know: Don’t add neither random people nor those whose profiles do not provide you with the least information. Getting thousands of friends on board is a real mess. Instead, start adding the people you know personally, the likelihood that they will show interest in your postings is high.

Develop warm relationship: Be attentive to your friends’ activities and they will turn to you as well.

Interests: Expand your network, start adding people with similar interests. It’s a wise and an effective approach.

Location: If you want to promote your business to be popular say in the US, add people from America, again paying attention to likes and interests.

Deep Analysis: Analyze if your product can become popular among your virtual friends: gender, interests, age, everything matters.

News Feed: Check out news feed, leave comments and like whatever you find is worth it.This way catch attention, bring people to your page and engage them in conversation.

Commenting: Know what to write and how. Many people leave comments and do not get any feedback, just because their comments either seem non-relevant or too primitive, for instance “wow,” “cool,” etc. When writing comments start with the name and make the comment catchy, for instance “Emily, I really enjoyed watching this video, thank you!”

Sharing: Besides sharing your company page, share whatever you like. This way sharing one and the same pages will not seem boring.

Smart research and analysis of social network friends will help you get a quality audience that will always return to you.

My next post will discuss the further analysis on social networks.

How to Be Successful in Life

2011-11-21T05:21:00.000-08:00

This is a completely extraordinary post in my blog; it's neither about search engine optimization, nor life in Armenia but just my inspiration.

I will be happy to receive your comments, opinions or maybe you have some success stories you want to share with people. Go ahead then!

Are you tired of your daily life, job and one and the same routine? Do you want to excite new emotions? Then do your best and make your life beautiful!

You may say sounds easy but how. The main point is to trust yourself . Never say that you're not lucky, that something bad occurs whenever you start planning your life ahead! Forget it! It's the first symptom of depression and apathy! Psychologists say that people always need to experience new positive emotions and excitement but we don't have to expect that these all comes from nowhere! Struggle for your happiness and remember if you do nothing for it or "if you have lost confidence in you, you have the universe against you!" Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Try not to speak of the subjects that hurt you or cause unpleasant reminiscences! And never say "NO" to negative, don't waste your time, the best way is to ignore whatever you don't like! Maybe while reading this article, you'll say that it's too primitive, while life is much more complicated! Yes, it is but who said that we can't overcome the obstacles? Who said that the problems have no solutions? Find the key solution to your problem, don't be afraid because if you really want to, you will do it!

Be ready to take a challenge and "don't be afraid to take a big step, you can cross a chasm in two small jumps!" David Lloyd George.

Don't think of difficulties, do the best to overcome them and I'm sure you'll face a positive result soon! Even if something did not work out the way you wanted to, don't get upset, just "don't let today's disappointments cast a shadow on tomorrow's dreams!" Because tomorrow will be a new day and you can start everything from the new sheet!

Nothing in life comes easily...everything requires hard work and great patience but it does not seem to be awful and tiresome when you are strong enough! Don't say like this "if I do," "if I try," "if it does not work out." Forget the word "if"! It simply does not exist in your vocabulary because the questions that make you hesitate contribute to depression. So, create your own universe, move towards your aim and you'll kick a goal!

People who are depressed usually fail in everything whatever they plan ahead! In order to be a successful professional or businessman, you should be aware that there can be situations which require working under the pressure! But your efforts are not in vain! Who struggles achieves the best and in the end you'll sum up your achievements and smile! As Eleanor Roosevelt said, "the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." Indeed!

Great minds discuss ideas and consider the ways how to turn them into reality! And if you're strong enough, you'll make your dreams come true! "Be great in act ,as you have been in thought!" William Shakespeare.

We can consider some Hollywood stars as an example, for instance Madonna. She is the best example of strong will, vigorous nature and fighting spirit! The one who started from zero and today is one of the most popular figures ever.

Do you think you can't do the same because you have no enough money? Consider the fact that many successful people had absolutely nothing at the beginning of their career and today they have everything they could ever dream of! Why? It's because of the hard work, permanent struggle and strong will! Don't lose your chance of happiness, chance of being successful! Remember, we have only one life and we must use the opportunities and abilities we are given!

Dream of best, to have the best and don't blame yourself if once you've suffered misfortune! Remember, it's not the only chance! So, put a difficult experience behind one and progress mentally and emotionally to accomplish all your tasks!