Search Engine Optimization

Rankings...Is that all ?

2009-11-13T14:37:00.000-08:00

It sometimes brings on a smile on my face whence Seo talk about achieving rankings on primary keywords. And end it at that....

"Is that all that matters?". I often think aloud.

Fetch the client site on important keywords...take your money and then vanish into thin air. Well my experience has shown that it is the Seo who seeks positioning on search engines for the client site.....the client seeks online business or goal conversion and just that.

Achieving rankings on SERPs are important for seo but more work needs to be done. Website promotion on right search terms matters. But do not go strictly by the statistics that keyword research tools offer. People type queries in their own sense of language usage...so it may not be the perfect phrase all the time. It could often be "seeking best website optimizer in India" "website promoting service India" rather than "search engine optimization company India". The users using above queries can all be potential clients, but achieving rankings on last phrase will be harder. While the former two can be achieved by using on page contents wisely and some off page exercise. It is like climbing a stepped embankment whence reaching the top needs negotiating the lower steps and achieving the final goal after lot of hard work and sweating. Over exertion in initial stages will mar your chances of reaching the top.

Conversions do not come easy and for some sites they do not come at all, in spite of rankings on lot of search terms.

Site build up the right way, adding elements of trust and offering a regular branding exercise are important. Sometimes design concept and page design need to be changed.

Getting conversions from client website can be a mind boggling comprehensive exercise. The involvement of the client and web designer for web site design changes becomes imperative.

Website content, graphics and their layouts matter a lot. How content is written and where graphics have been placed? Are graphics relevant to the topic? Are they of high quality?

As you dive deep down in making your client's site a success...you will unearth lot of goal conversion factors on page that matters in search engine optimization than rankings alone.

Understanding topics in Seo

2009-08-24T02:56:00.000-07:00

It is very important that whence you take an seo project in hand understand the topic. Unless you do so you analysis will never be accurate. It is imperative that you research the topic in relevance and in locality. The impact of both is greater than going head on with Seo straightaway.

In search engine optimization the web promotion technique matters, but what matters most is your approach. How you are going to position your client site on the net and yes....how?

Seo is comprehensive exercise it is not just primary keyword positioning. Branding and trust..site internal architecture....content...graphics....overall appeal of the site and the impression it gives of the company/owner etc.

Get hold of understanding and creating unique contents, understanding design, understanding the business...all that you can do. Only after this a substantial delivery can be made and justice done to your clients.

Podcasting: What is it?

2009-05-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

Simply put podcasting is making an audio file with content rich marketing message. It is aimed at delivering to target audience as part of Internet marketing strategy. Podcasts can be played on iPods as well as any device or reader capable of playing an MP3 file.

Like everywhere content matters so in podcasts. How powerful and interesting is you podcasting efforts? Are you able to attract lot of targeted listeners so that they subscribe to your podcast via RSS?

As part of their search engine marketing campaign companies produce podcasts on regular basis. If your podcasts are interactive and allow people to be part of teleconferencing or get to you by phone then the response will be greater.

Podcasts can be subscribed to via RSS feeds. RSS lets users know when a new podcast is ready and attaches the file to the feed. Podcast offers endless opportunity to telecast marketing messages, music, news and stories all of which can be utilized in a marketing campaign.

Using content rich and interesting podcasts you can introduce your products and services on Net. This is useful as a branding exercise as well. Podcast help create credibility amongst the targeted audience and improve conversions online.

W3C HTML Compliance

2009-03-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

The consortium set up in 1934, sets standard for website coding using HTML it is popularly known as W3C or World Wide Web Consortium. It is founded and headed by Sir Tim Berners Lee.

Simply put your coding in HTML (Hyper Text Mark up Language) must comply with regulations set by W3C. This is a prerequisite for a good practice in search engine optimization for ranking high on search engines. The search engines screen your coding for W3C compliance and if it is validated favorably then the site scores a point.

Whence your site ranks high on SERPs the traffic is rewarding. So you have build a website or hired a professional web designer to make website for you. But how do you check the coding for W3C compliance?

You check you coding here…

http://validator.w3.org/

If you are not a professional web designer it is unlikely that you will understand the issues enough to rectify the errors. Then best consult a web designer who understand HTML and Java Script coding since error in the latter may be shown as well.

Website optimization is as important as off page optimization please keep in mind.

External Linking

2008-12-18T09:26:00.000-08:00

External Links

Though the purpose of a website can be many, information dissemination is a key factor. Information is essential to all type of presence on the net, since all resources are information dependent be it an e commerce site or a product review site a company profile whatever.

Hence one of the key factors which determines the traffic to a website is its utility, which again is governed by the information it provides. Even if it is a highly popular utility and it is presumed that no information be associated - since the utility is universally known and understood.

Not giving importance to information in case of popular utility or e commerce site is a point blank fallacy. Research and development are key aspect in such cases and information would become imperative when updates take place or new technology model is introduced. Hence in short, information is unavoidable factor on any website. And when competition creeps in you will be stranded.

Whence we talk about external linking then we should know that appreciable external linking is that which adds to the information and not that which merely provides leads - as in case of spamming using secondary sites.

Best way to provide additional or related information on page is to have that information contained within since in this case the outgoing link from say the index page can be voted back by the externally linked page of your website. However in many instance it may not be possible to provide information from within one’s website. In such instance external link should be provided in limited numbers.

The limit comes into picture naturally for if so much of the info is being accessed from out side then what is your web page for?

Most of the information provided by externally linked web pages should be explanatory of terms (related) or provide a definition etc.

One must keep in mind to provide external link to an authoritative website…for example “Wikipedia”. But in rare instance if information on lower ranked website is unavoidable then one should not hesitate to provide a link to it.

If you have website with relational pages containing generous information than external linking is naturally curtailed which is good. For most of the externally linked websites will not bother to link back to you.

But be assured...if your website is rich in content and provides additional related information as explained above you are definitely going be in good books of the major search engines. If you have number of web pages containing information then you can safely distribute external links to number of pages which are relevant.

Most important do not be confused between external linking as described here and reciprocal linking - factor about which I will write about later.

Monitor Your Rankings

2008-10-10T10:22:00.000-07:00

After a long haul, hard work and dedication you have achieved a desired rankings for your website. Thanks to good web design and content as well you now benefit from online presence and get visitors and business.

But you know by now the key to your websites online success is your website's position on carefully researched keywords that fetch business. Hence you need to monitor your website constantly and use seo techniques to maintain those rankings.

There are three monsters that can give one sleepless nights:

1) Changes in algorithms

2) Your competitors.

3) Inactivity

While drastic changes in algorithms are unlikely, minor tweaking can result in some loss in rankings or even a gain. The former should not bother you if your promotion and analysis is correct. There are some ranking criteria which are bound to change in the long run so hone your seo.

To fight competitors, your white hat techniques should continue albeit at a lesser pace than before. Remember there is no end to site building as customer trends change and what was fresh and useful to your visitors once may not be so in time to come. So update constantly.. .Monitor your competitors activity both on page and off page.

Sometimes others working on your site can wreck havoc with on page optimization so check the site each and every time someone...web designer...content writer..etc makes any change. This could result in sudden drop of rankings on SERPs...This is usually an indication of problem with the website...

Monitor the effect of all the changes you make on the website small or big. This could bring about negative or favorable positioning of your website on SERPs.

Search Engine Optimization costs in terms of money and time, hence be vigilant and attentive so as not to lose online presence gained. Keep building the site so as not to be inactive and redundant on net. Remember Mr. Google is watching you.....

Seo Articles

2008-10-09T01:26:00.000-07:00

Google Audio Search

Article Marketing

Directory Submissions

Quality Link Building

One Way Link Building

Creating trust among visitors online

2008-08-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

Getting your site ranking high is just not enough. Earning customer trust in your small business is as important. A vast majority of customers do not trust small online businesses. Hence the website fail to lure visitors into becoming buyers or subscribers.

It is simple no trust no conversion.

Remember your website may be competing with big portals selling the same commodity or service. To fight the competition you have to earn the customers trust.

But how?

As your stature grows on the net you should build your brand image this is also known as branding exercise. The best approach is to build highly suitable web design with company logo and of late a Favicon on the site. Your content should augur faith in the minds of the people.

The site should be user friendly and convey a professional image of your services and products. Stick some testimonials with contact of those who have bought the products or subscribed to the service.

Offer security by implementing SSL for electronic payments etc. There should be an explicit privacy policy on your site. The site should have registration or certification if any from a reputable organization, government or organization to increase visitors faith in your products and services and hence in you.

Lend personal touch add your bio or profiles of your team members. Add some content written by you or your team members. This gives a human angle to the ecltronic document or your business website.

Web Analytic - Challenges

2008-08-12T09:11:00.000-07:00

As the Internet grew by leaps and bounds several web analytic programs came into picture and more detailed info was available as log files, graphs and tables which brought web analytics to a level for a professional team work for marketing campaigns.

However the programs faced some challenges:

Page Caching by ISP...after the ISP had a copy of the page all subsequent pages were served from the ISP and the logs did not provide details of entries for requested pages.

Robots: Some bots which spider the site left their own imprints on the log files which were non-web-users entries. These entries got counted in the metrics.

Unique visitors: Identifying Unique visitors was difficult in case were dynamic IP were assigned and in cases which used proxy servers.

In spite of many challenges being overcome web analytic a new born baby has progressed to infancy.

Best Approach to Seo Project

2008-08-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

When I left my job as Seo sr. and content writer recently - I decided to freelance. Since this is what I was aiming for. To be my own boss as owner of a home business for earning to make a living. I sat down as thought out the whole strategy. I first took a couple of projects for less money and worked on them to get some good rankings and hence credentials. It was an understanding with my ex company not to disclose project results I worked on there, something which I respect till this day.

Although my own website was having good rankings since more than three/four years, I have some more good credential now on basis of which I took on some projects recently this taught me how to take and handle projects.

When you first negotiate with a website owner for search engine optimization then consider the following points.

1) Price: The price which should be less for local search, and much higher for primary keywords. Why? Simple some keywords mainly primary will break your bones in getting substantial results. Highly competitive keywords will require a small team of link builders cum content writers. The latter is must now since you can no longer write one article and post it on multiple article submission sites etc. Hence the link builder should be a content writer who can write simple but unique articles under your guidance. He or She should be able to post to other resources using unique content under your strict guidance.

2) On Page Optimization: Decide whether you will get the website hosting server access? If not a professional web designer of the website client should make edits and fast content changes whenever required.

When this is has been decided, analyze the site, check for duplicate content/title/meta tags. Check for web design errors broken links, unoptimized images, white spaces, internal architecture etc.

Make a report, submit to the client and make suitable changes immediately. Once initial on page optimization is complete proceed to off page.

If you do not edit the site in the very beginning and if you do not have server access and later the client/web designer does not co operate, all your efforts in off page optimization will be in trouble and you may not be able to substantiate initial results. The project can end in a fiasco and bring bad name to you. (Developing a website gradually is a must)

3) Time: Optimizing a web site as per the criteria of search engines especially on primary keywords takes time. So state maximum time frame depending upon the keyword difficulty. Primary search terms take a lot of time to rank more so if the domain is less than six months old. The local search terms can be ranked of in few months time to encourage the client. (Shoo off hasty clients)

4) Traffic: Do not promise the sky. Explain to the client about focusing on relevant search terms to fetch focused web visitors on site. To substantiate numbers is difficult. If the website is not targeted correctly lot of visitors seeking something else may land up on the site, putting a load on bandwidth and increase bounce rate.

5) Process: The process of making the site worthy of ranking high on SERPs or search engine optimization is complex, but you can brief the client on this nevertheless. Keep sending proof of the work in progress.....later the results will speak.

6) Payment: Take payment in fixed installments. Some clients insist on making payments after results come. But then you are putting in labor...to accommodate clients let initial installments be small, gradually growing bigger. Once you have proven your capabilities, I am sure payment will not be a big problem.

Learning Seo

2008-08-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

When you wish to learn seo or search engine optimization or web promotion then learn "on page "optimization first. Very few web designers understand qualities that users prefer and hence search engines prefer. The ultimate exercise for a web designer is to come up with an attractive product that appeals to the client and that is that. Well that does not mean that there are not good web designers there are plenty of them. But the website production is so large that not so good ones and cheap web designers find business as well.

As a seo you cannot be a web designer as well - often. Since standardizing a website as per user preference and hence search engines is a daunting task which takes lot of strain and time - hard work.

By learning principles of good web design technology and content writing you can master control over a web design and guide processes which makes the client site well optimized - on page.

Understanding fine lines of web design technology and coding will help tremendously. You can do this by reading good web design articles which lead to on page optimization. All aspects of managing web designs especially coding and mastering web design tools may not be possible for a search engine optimizer. But if your concepts are clear you should be able to guide the web design and development team.

But for seo, learning basics of web design editing is a must. So learn to handle editing tools as Dreamweaver and Frontpage. Learning basic server handling and file transfer protocols should give greater control to the seo. This is because you can frequently tweak contents yourself rather then running to a web designer who may not execute the task in time.

The content "on page" and related content "off page" matter a lot for getting your client's site indexed correctly and for users to prefer the site for unique information that it conveys.

Turning yourself into a strong content writer is also a must since online activities are content driven to a greater extent. Once you are confident of tweaking the website proper and adding unique content yourself then move to off page optimization regarding which you will get only basic but helpful seo tips and guides....it is your experienced mind and analysis of algorithms that will produce results.

What you need to be a good content writer is a thinking mind and an honest approach to work for what the website visitors will find useful. Make your own website on a free server on topic you prefer and learn to write contents to perfection and this will also let you understand website development technologies.

Research and analysis is of great importance in search engine optimization. Check how results are produced by search engines. Use seo tools available on many websites and blogs on search engine optimization to analyize your website and learn.

You should not aim to master search engine optimization overnight for it is a constant learning process for all of us. Get a hold to produce results and keep learning.....for search engines are constantly tweaking their ranking algorithms.

Registering a Domain Name

2008-08-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

Choosing a domain name for your website is quite a challenging task as most of the name combination in that topic may already be registered. The domain name should be keyword rich and available.

For example if you seek to register a domain say..."searchengineoptimization.com" it may already be registered. So you would try search-engine-optimization.com that also may be registered so then what should you do? You can try registering .net, .biz., org., .edu TLDs.

The last two are specific .org for an organization and the last .edu for being and education website. If your website is country specific then you can try co.uk, co.in or co.jp as the case may be.

You can also go for an extension as "searchengineoptimizationindia.com" or "search-engine-optimization-India.com" there are endless permutation combination for naming a domain. The crux is that somehow you have to include your primary keywords in the naming process. Thus I would also try search-engine-optimization-company.com.

But yes the domain name so generated should be easily memorable. Else try action oriented key words that define your activity or business. Hence choose "gettoprank.com" or "toprankingservice.com"

Visit a who.is website just type "who is" and you will get many resources.

or visit....http://www.whoseis.net

Type the domain name you seek to register in the box provided and find if it has been already taken or not. If the domain name is available then you should register it with an accredited domain name registrar.

ICANN or Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers maintains a list of accredited registrars on its website.

http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

Those not on the list may be resellers of approved registrars.

After registering the domain name you should park it if the websites is yet to be built.

Many web hosting service cum registrars fool the website owners by registering the domain name in their own name and quietly provide hosting space. Visit the "who is" website to confirm that it is in your own name that the domain is registered.

There are lot of good web hosting service which will park your domain name as a single page website and then subsequently park the whole website whence web designing is complete. Get full information about hosting services provided by the hosting provider and then host your website there after registering the domain.

Managing and protecting domain names.

Be aware of the following points to prevent domain name theft or neglect.

Know when your domain name expires.

Keep contact information updated

Enable registration lock which only you can open for transfers.

Create a strong password.

Register your domain name as trademark.

Read mails from registrar carefully.

Use domain name monitoring service.

Web Analytics - The birth

2008-08-06T09:50:00.000-07:00

In recent times the websites which companies nurtured as their symbol of pride has become an object of exploring online business prospects. This is because the net has grown and has enticed users to easy access of information as well as shopping online and seeking services which could be availed of in short time with little or no physical efforts. Online travel booking and shopping on net are two prime examples.

The onus of traversing heavy traffic to visit a land based travel agent or a shopping mall are a thing of past as one could book travels or by things of choice on the net with a click of the mouse. This is now applicable to lot of services and commodities as well as business to business possibilities.

Hence online presence of a website has become important for companies, organizations and individuals offering personalized services. For instance dating, online gambling, travel booking, shopping, gaming and selling software online has become a complete business online. The list is endless and is constantly growing phenom ally.

For a search engine optimizer creating and online presence for his clients website is not that easy as much analysis is done on search terms that prospective users type for that commodity, services or utility. Web analytic plays an important role in closing of effective search terms and positioning in search engines and resources that bring a large number of targeted traffic to the client's website.

The success an seo project does not depend only on positioning but positioning the site of focused targeted search terms that increase conversions and ROI.

Web analytic started with the discovery of server error logs which then were effectively used to extract more useful information. The server logs captured file names, time, referrer, IP address, identifying browsers and operating systems to name a few. An clever search engine optimizer can draw useful information for targeted his marketing campaigns.

When first script that automatically parsed the log files and presented basic metrics came into picture web analytic was officially born. Dr Stephen Turner wrote Analog which was the first log analysis program on the Net. The script is still very popular and is a valuable tool for search engine optimizer. Similarly but much more advanced is the program Google analytic which has been upgraded for better inference in recent times. There are many website analytic programs, stat counter which are in use today

Database driven websites - Seo

2008-07-29T09:24:00.000-07:00

What I want to stress is that database driven websites are a poor Seo response. Until unless you wish to add database driven web pages to add to seo efforts (to cover more keywords) else forget them.

Seo exercise is complicated unrewarding at times with ungrateful hasty clients who do not understand that search engine optimization is a process and not a trick.

No payment sir! Till site shows up high next month!OOOOOOOOOOOOF!!!!!!!!!! What about labor!

Search engine optimization is simply put up an gradation process where in an seo tries to justify the sites to rank high by virtue of following guidelines set up by search engines for onpage and offpage qualities. As simple!

Yes you can circumvent some aspect of site promotion by seo techniques, but believe me with recent upgrades to algorithms by Google ET.El this is not a lasting solution. It is better to upgrade to whatever guidelines that respective search engines subscribe.

Massive link building is not the sole answer....until unless I have understood the Search Engines wrong. Read about LSI....and Authoritative back link creation.

Complexities in search engine optimization process is terrible for an honest seo. He will end up all the time explaining changes in algorithms (to client) for whatever downfall that has occurred in rankings due to algorithms.....rather then earn money by honest labor/time and effort.

The answer for solving complexities of database driven web pages is leave them alone for they do not help search engines in proper indexing...and end up screwing your happiness in return.

Best seo practice is to create separate HTML pages with good content to target search terms ...and any client/web designer who resists these changes should best be avoided.

Adhering to database driven pages is like speaking in Latin when the search engines understand English. I hope you get my point....when you take over an seo job have additional static pages created for targeting search terms - after proper research - so that the content is useful to the targeted audience. Consider database driven pages as part of presentable content useful to user and not search engines.

Simply put it is high time we recognize elements for SEs and users as different components in a composite website.

Yes the static pages should lead to (link using anchor text) useful dynamic pages which are goal oriented and ultimately lead to conversion.

Do not try to solve riddles which SE algorithms will one day or other find solutions (Flash) . Best is to execute what you think is simply best for seo.

A search engine optimizer has to act like an editor who understands his job...and the printing process...as well as marketing of the newspaper or the magazine as well. In this case the client's website...

My theory is simple, have static pages built and added to web sites that you wish to target for search terms and let the rest of the site alone for user and the owner. WOW!

To rank or not to - Ugggh!

2008-07-23T08:50:00.000-07:00

Seo is not what Search engine optimizers thought it was now.... and it will never be ...for it is all about doing justice to a search query (Mr. Amit at Google).

So if someone types web design articles he is concerned only with articles on web design (website design)...he is not interested in a web design service...company...firm...well if a website design service offers website design articles as well on site...it qualifies for the query but the site will rank lower than a site which is solely dedicated to web design articles.. albeit the article that web design service offers are better than that of the highly relevant site (to search query) ....(Mr. Google thinks and rightly so!). In short if a customer asks for a ham burger...serve him one...spam in an Ad about chicken burger if you can ( if it sells more)...

So do not use anchor text that are irrelevant to your site even if they bring higher but irrelevant traffic.

But you can still rank for multiple search terms provided your site satisfies the user's search. So it would not make any sense for a web design company (service..firm) to rank in web design article since the users is not at all interested in a web design service/company/firm .....purely and simply because he/she does not wish to have a site designed but more so because he/she wants to design a site himself/herself by learning a lot from useful web design articles.

But then does a seo firm or a search engine optimizer has the courage to lose business by stating facts to the client....."It is not the number of visitors that matter Sir! It is the number of focused visitors that matter."

The latter, I presume would be much less than former in number, except for some unique searches. This is how locally relevant search result is justified as per Google's Mr Amit.

No harm in ranking for wider terms (less focused) after all you may find a minuscule converts but then the time and effort/cost put in web promotion for that is terrible. I have realized that it is better to refuse an over demanding client with no understanding of seo than accept. The number of saner clients are on increase....do not worry.

When I ranked high (ethically) a site belonging to eco travel company on focused ecotourism terms ....the client castigated me instead initially, since the number of visitors had gone down. The large number of search he was getting was on wildlife wild animals of India tiger, leopard, sloth bear which was purely academic.

Now you cannot earn a living as an online eco travel agent by answering queries on biology/habits of wild animals in India.

Yes the number of visitors matter but than it depends upon number of users seeking that info, service or utility. If the number is less than do not try to rank a ["web design service"] site on ["web design articles"] search term (i.e if you do not provide articles on site)....the number of visitors increased would be useless...and only an ignorant client will be impressed.....omit such clients as early as you can before they destroy you and your ego.

Care hell that - articles, ads, newsletter - advertisements talking about bringing thousands of visitors to the site...they are a bluff (in most cases).

If I own a period furniture shop, then I do not work for extra visitors in...those who are there for window shopping.

I would rather work for those who will come with an intention to buy.

Yes I would certainly attract visitors with no current intention to buy but with capacity and inclination to buy in future.....This is what keyword research is all about.

This all talk about dramatic number of visitors is blah! Blah! What is more acceptable is dramatic number of relevant visitors.

But like what an over enthusiastic seo in Ahmadabad, India told me is that it is all bread and butter so if you can rank a site well on local search by highlighting search terms well using h1/h2/h3 tags etc. Then why bother? Many clients do not understand the intricacies of the net... and before they do and SE engineers do as well ...take your payment and Wamoosh!

Unethically he was right for his focus was on making fast buck from black hat seo service and he succeeded often. But remember the clients/SE engineers (No pun) are becoming "online aware".

I for one state facts...in the process kick myself in the butt since there are less takers for reality.....

Let me make the picture more clear....A wise but incapable actress sleeps with a producer to get the main job...but what I am trying to say is that if she is incapable of performing as a lead, then she is going to loose future roles as a lead (after training/experience he!He!) and moreover since she has subjected herself unwittingly to a possible gross penalty..she has lost the job as a character actor or junior actor possibly... all because of deadly spam filters that caught her at the wrong place.

On the contrary if she was capable then there was no need to bear the producer's bad breath and weak and inefficient ****** and be labeled as a spam (later) He!He!.

In Hollywood there is no room for reconsideration.

She should have had faith in organic growth and after proper development ranked as No1.

In short do not **** yourself for higher ranking make your self more deserving rather...The every day bread is better then an illegal bed! ....Make your client's site more deserving and useful with rock solid foundation.

Tell him what it takes to rank and how and on what.....A good professional web design. Good content and natural organic link building exercise...(subject sites/promotions to editorial scrutiny and win).

Google - Sand Box and Black Hat Seo

2008-07-04T11:16:00.000-07:00

The sand box is universal term in case of Google, the leading search company on the Internet.

Like in any business it is never easy for new entrants to do well, same for new domains on SERPs. Setting your mark on a search engine is as demanding as setting a shop in an established market. Nobody trusts a new service provider until unless he has proved that he is stable and provides quality and useful service and hence promises to be there for a long time.

Then why blame Mr. Google?

The search engines also wish to ensure that the site is stable before showing up on the SERPs. A site here today and gone tomorrow is a bad prospect for trusted search engines. Google produces results in SERPs that have proved their stability - that is a wise thing to do. There may not be something as a sand box , the term has been maligned much by the web masters.

The ranking would be inbuilt in the algorithms such that it is no show till you promise your stability and utility on Net - be it instant or eight months. I have personally seen many enthusiasts hosting web sites with over zealousness and then slipping into oblivion once the initial enthusiasm has died down. It is all the fault of unscrupulous web masters who promise millions on the Net in a jiffy.

There are number of black hats who can rank an undeserving site high on the SERPs with a care hell attitude since after the delivery and payment the site may well go down once the SE filters open up. It is well timed for a unscrupulous black hat Seo and bad for the unwary client who discovers that his site has vanished as the SE company's have come to discover the truth.

Anyway now you cannot get away with duplicate content, amassing huge links in a short time and solely targeting search term with high visibility (online dating...online dating...online dating...online dating..online dat........ The LSI or latent semantic indexing has come as a boon for White Hat Seo now....one has to seriously optimize the web site on page and off page and define your site well using an intelligent tag cloud.

As a wise approach, I tell the new domain owners that their site will take at least a year or a year and a half to rank. Even old domains that which have no rankings on Google SERPs should wait for their site to rank and move higher and this would happen after a lot of good on page and off page optimization has taken place and that which justifies high ranking.

Those who have the patience will receive the rewards since online presence is a very good prospect for business in case of many online services, products, marketing and information sites. In case of those where search and convertibility is less the time ahead is rosy. So business or no business rank high as early as you can and "Rank White" for stability.

Comply with techniques to build a good web site rather than trying to make a success of an undeserving website. Just pause and think... you yourself would not like to see undeserving results for the search term you typed...then why do you expect others to tolerate rubbish on the SERPs...a sensible approach to ranking high on the SERPs is to upgrade your web site while promoting it off page.

Type a search term and think what you expect in a site, implement those quality guide lines on your own site as well. The black hat techniques are a passe it is dying technique. Even if you are able to rank an undeserving web site high do not expect conversions...this will be more frustrating than your site ranking some where low where it deserves. For in inability to achieve high rank you are going to think and make your site better. Good content, good internal architecture, good reviews on Net (backlinks), good information and excellent utility, accessibility and web saturation - hence good website design. This is the right approach to rank high on the SERPs and be stable.

Fast rankings, high blasting traffic and magical results are all a way of fooling the client. Search engine optimization is a process and not trick. Once you make your client understand this, he is definitely going to be patience and co-operate as much as he can and even his web designer will comply with on page techniques you wish to implement.

Rank your site high with competitive web design and development and search engine optimization.

Top online presence is worth following the guide lines and waiting a bit if you believe in online millions or bounties...He! He!

Is Seo a Demi God?

2008-05-31T09:00:00.001-07:00

I opened a high end software training center approx a decade ago and there began my quest into the world of Internet and related technologies. I was managing the center, and ran it for about three years, the center was success, but the turn around was not, as the fees structure was too high for my home town.

Anyway the crux is that it is from here onwards that my foray into content writing and seo began. Since I could not deliver high end software training - naturally the faculties did - so I dived deep into website design and seo instead. Incidentally web design play a substantial role in rankings of SERPs.

Learning basic HTML I, built my first website that is still running in geocities : http://www.geocities.com/pateluday.

When you self design a web site however basic...you start thinking about content and seo. Since if the site does not appear visible on SERPs it makes the owner think. And it made me think, so I started reading/analyzing how search engine rank sites. I also started writing on travel at the same time. "edreams" "Themestream" etc and got published in "Bootsnall".

With some efforts, I could get my site ranking on few search terms..since at that time the picture about free hosting sites was dismal. Things changed eventually, my site started appearing on some major search terms and I started receiving inquiries on wildlife an tiger safari. Well this was all the site was about.

I started making money online, offering bookings to resorts at Kanha, Bandhavgarh and Pench. My interest in search engine optimization grew further and I held seminars and lectures to enlighten the unaware about online prospects.

I then worked in an seo or website promotion firm to gain further experience on on page/off page optimization and handling and seo team. Today all I can say is that I do a good job of placing sites on SERPs. I do not call myself an expert. The field of deciphering algorithms is unfathomable. But with lots of experience, logic and hard work one can deliver well.

Those who realized that their site could fetch business online approached me with interest and faith.

Many have sites that could gain by online presence, but still do not realize the benefit of full scale ethical seo, they are giving seos like me some free time..he..he.

What clients want...Number of Hits...Online Magic?????

In advance countries it is obvious to website owners that your site should rank high on relevant keywords, else it is a dead site. But then the expectations is sky high. Clients talk on number of hits, I talk of number of relevant or focused hits...the difference is that former is glamorous and the latter is plain truth.

It is the hits that get you business...that matter. If the site gets thousands of hit on irrelevant or somewhat related/less used keywords - the latter is bit okay - but does that search convert. For in order to get unprecedented large number of hits (very fast) you are going to Kiss spam, which if search engines get wise about you are online dead.

It is better to focus on high conversion keywords rather than just going for large number of hits. What I mean is like this::: if you own a website selling "green tea leaf" than the search terms "buy green tea" or "green tea bag", are most fruitful...but number of hits will be less. So even then optimize on last two terms first.

If you first optimize your site on "green tea" than the visitors will not only be buyers of green tea but visitors with academic/scholarly interest as well. Even curious visitors who just wish to read about the health benefits or taste of green tea leaf etc.

Now read carefully the amount of exercise needed to get your site ranking high on Net on a highly competitive search term "green tea" is going to be phenomenal and time consuming. (It will be less for "buy green tea" and "green tea bag" which are not so competitive as of today. ) In the misguided process you may loose faith in the seo, who is doing a good job of creating natural linking building exercise etc, and write unique content to succeed in the useful terms.

So the wiser approach towards seo is getting ranked on highly relevant keywords at the first go (buy green tea - green tea bag). Since ethical search engine optimization is costly and if you can afford the cost, then pay the search engine optimizer to explore further search terms which increase visibility further e.g. "green tea".

I have a number of clients today and I strive hard ethically to get their sites high on focussed keywords or search terms so their money invested online is justified. But I sell reality and not sell dreams.....but yes I pursue dreams relentlessly...Have faith.

Article on Content Writing for seo

2008-05-15T04:22:00.000-07:00

Read tips on content writing for on page optimization of the website and adding external links to contents.

Content writing tip

Writing effective contents with a sound linking strategy is important for succeeding in ethical seo.

Steer spiders to crawl your site

2008-05-08T23:49:00.000-07:00

For regular and proper spidering of your sites do the following:

Provide unique and relevant website content. Add lot of content in relational pages as well. Add content on a regular basis on blogs, in case of websites create at least one relational page a year.

Get back links or in coming links from related sites and pages hosted on various servers. Acquire inbound links for the relational pages.

Create external links from your site to authoritative topic relevant sites for additional information. Limit such links.

Web design play a role in seo.Create good site architecture which is well themed, link relational and utility pages using text links. Inter connect your pages using text links.

Create both site maps XML one for search engines and HTML site map for users.

Use search engine friendly, short but keyword rich URLs.
Log each crawler visit and keep these data forever.
Use logs to improve your internal linking.

Use robot exclusion protocol to keep spiders away from pages that are not apt for caching. Such that the robots META tag to ensures that only one version of each page on your server gets indexed.

Use rel="no follow" in your links, when you cannot vote for the linked page

Search engines consider pages with no inbound links useless and usually do not bother to index indexing them.

Ranking algorithms analyze a site's internal linking and user friendly navigation. Deeply buried pages should be easily found within one or two clicks.

Creating Authoritative Back Links

2008-05-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

It is well known that page rank plays some role in ranking of websites on Google SERPs.

How to get an increment in the page rank of your website?

First Look at Your Web Site

The approach that I follow begins with on page optimization which is a part of web design process also. The design of your web site is considered while positioning the site on SERPs by Google as well as other major search engines.

Check The Following:

Web site Design

Internal Architecture: All pages are easily reachable in order of importance. The major pages should not be more than two clicks away.
Images: Use High Resolution Images that download fast. Optimize images with keyword driven file names. Provide caption or the label. In coding nominate the height and width of the website and add alt text.
Coding: Coding should be technically perfect. Use external CSS and server side includes. Use technologies that run on client side minimally. Do not use too much of Flash, Java scripting, Ajax etc which are not yet certified as search engine friendly. Do not use too much of animation until unless necessary . Avoid large sound files and embedded videos, podcasts etc on the index page .

Content
On Page Content: There should be good seo content on site. The content should be unique, relevant and not plagiarized at all. Your content matters to both - search engine and user. It is the main tool for conversions. More people will buy the products, utilities and subscribe to services if the content (keyword driven) is appealing. Keywords help search engine algorithms index and rank websites.

Make designs using aesthetic designing sense where there in harmony between various elements of the web site. Remember the website will be scrutinized by editors of major web directories which give and authoritative back link. "Dmoz" is one such directory.
Off Page Content: Publish good off page content for website promotion. If you are going to publish an article on page rank five or seven article site, travel portal, and on any other subject than you should be able to write well in fact really well. The style should fit as well else in spite of well written content you will not succeed in publishing the contents which will fetch you an authoritative back link.
Write accurate title and description.
Avoid spam both on page and off page.
Keep refreshing the site with addition of content or highly relevant resource pages. Even if you are an online shopping or e-commerce site, do add pages with relevant information on the technology or products.
Keep adding utilities or downloads without error and say if you are gaming site have the best down loadable or instant software. Do not describe a utility or service if you are not providing them properly. So site owners do to get into the bracket of high hitting key words.

Back Links

2008-04-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

Read an article by me on back links published recently in an Internet Marketing School site. Learn about how authoritative back links are created and how web design and content writing can play a part in search engine positioning on the SERPs of major search engines and directories.

Web design for Seo

2008-04-07T10:05:00.000-07:00

Search engine give your websites the maximum of traffic. The referrals give less traffic but if you have done your seo well then it will be highly targeted traffic.

Search engine optimization begins with website design process yes sir web site design process. For most of the elements crucial for favorable response from the search engines are as a result of on page optimization. The irony is that many web masters do not understand website design from the angle of search engine optimization and a search engine optimizer does not understand the process of web design.

But a good seo will understand the elements of web design though not necessarily the process of web development as programming scripting etc. In fact you have to know the elements of web design as a professional seo else you will not do well in on page optimization and loose rankings considerable. How much can you deliver by off page optimization is not much of a speculation where the keywords competition is high.

Most of the cheap seo service providers do just this they go in for quick fire off page optimization and do get some success with rankings on low competition keywords. The difficulty that professional search engine optimization service face is that the client is bent upon getting cheap solutions and is quite convinced by the cheap service providers of magical solutions.

Proper web promotion and Internet marketing is...as all honest white hat seos know... an extensive mind boggling and an exasperating exercise at times. Therefore the it is not possible for professional web promotion professional to charge less.

Web promotion professionals in India charge less as labor is designated as cheap in India (sic..in this case) but there is no way out. Anyway outsourcing survives on scale of economy provided to the client.

Another crucial element for being a successful search engine optimization professional is content writing for however good content you buy you can not synchronize your mind as an seo with that of the content writer who is not an seo himself. So however good your content writer is you are still a lame duck. So if you wish to enter this field start to develop your content writing now or else be a lame duck.

Reason search engine index and rank site on basis of content since they use the technology of natural language processing and of late latent semantic indexing. The on page elements constitute contents but technology counts as I have stated above but then it is still content that counts to very large extent.

Content and Web promotion

2008-01-21T03:43:00.001-08:00

Seo content plays a key role in web promotion by providing accurate indexing in search engines be it on page or off page content. Since search engines take a clue from content for indexing and ranking a website to great extent, it is important to provide highly focused contents. This is applicable to both on page and off page contents.

Writing off page content is even more difficult since it is not static and requires tremendous variations in content to avoid duplicate penalty. On page content usually stay as it is with minor changes here and there. The difficulty is greater since in spite of writing unique content all the time on still has to be on one track for a focused results of targeted search terms.

Web Promotion Blog on Technocrati

2007-12-22T22:59:00.000-08:00

Technorati Profile

Google: Change in Algorithms

2007-12-15T03:54:00.000-08:00

For professionals search engine optimization is becoming more and more challenging as constant changes take place in the way major search engine like Google, Yahoo and MSN index and rank the websites on the Net.

The way sub domains benefited in ranking and indexing would now change, it will not be considered as a separate site as most of the website owners presented it as on the Net and took advantage of a larger spread of keywords and more pages to rank on the search engines.

In Matt Cutts own words:

“Google is now treating sub domains much more like subdirectories of a domain " in the sense that they wish to limit how many results show up for a given keyword search from a single site. In the past, some search marketers attempted to use keyworded sub domains as a method for improving search referral traffic from search engines...”

To read the full article click on the link below:

http://www.searchnewz.com/topstory/news/sn-2-20071213AdviceonSubdomainsvsSubdirectoriesforSEO.html

The changes in algorithms are taking place regularly as a process of evolution of the search engine technology in the cyber space. To algorithms are a closely guarded secret and an seo has to constantly keep tab of the changes taking place by constant analysis.