What Is Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is a process of choosing the most appropriate targeted keyword phrases related to your site and ensuring that this ranks your site highly in search engines so that when someone searches for specific phrases it returns your site on tops. It basically involves fine tuning the content of your site along with the HTML and Meta tags and also involves appropriate link building process. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, AOL and Ask Jeeves. Search engines keep their methods and ranking algorithms secret, to get credit for finding the most valuable search-results and to deter spam pages from clogging those results. A search engine may use hundreds of factors while ranking the listings where the factors themselves and the weight each carries may change continually. Algorithms can differ so widely that a webpage that ranks #1 in a particular search engine could rank #200 in another search engine. New sites need not be "submitted" to search engines to be listed. A simple link from a well established site will get the search engines to visit the new site and begin to spider its contents. It can take a few days to even weeks from the referring of a link from such an established site for all the main search engine spiders to commence visiting and indexing the new site.

If you are unable to research and choose keywords and work on your own search engine ranking, you may want to hire someone to work with you on these issues.

Search engine marketing and promotion companies, will look at the plan for your site and make recommendations to increase your search engine ranking and website traffic. If you wish, they will also provide ongoing consultation and reporting to monitor your website and make recommendations for editing and improvements to keep your site traffic flow and your search engine ranking high. Normally your search engine optimization experts work with your web designer to build an integrated plan right away so that all aspects of design are considered at the same time.

How To Improve Search Engine Rankings

Search engine ranking: Why is it so important?

Search engine ranking refers to the placement or position of a website in search engine results. Most companies aim to fall within the first 10 of the search engine results because typical visitor behavior indicates that most people do not go beyond the first 10 results page when searching for something. Essentially it is the first page of the search engine results that offers companies the most visibility and the most traffic potential. Therefore most companies scramble to get a ranking within the top 10 listings. It is what will differentiate between success and failure.
How to improve search engine ranking? With the immense competition and millions of websites, all wanting to get listed in the top 10 search engine results, how does one go about it? Here in this section we provide some tips and ideas on how to improve visibility among search engines:

- Position of keywords: Keywords are very essential for visitors to find what they're looking for on your website. The best place to have these keywords is the title of the article of webpage and the top of the page in the title bar.

- Zero downtime: Visitors are impatient and there are loads of websites that can give them the information you're giving. Added to that if your website is going to have downtime and slow pages, it is sure to make visitors disappear. 24x7 uptime is an absolute must on your website.

- Easy navigation: Nothing gives a website as much negative publicity as its navigation. If users are not able to find what they're looking for quickly, they will make an exit from your website. Website design is critical in determining search engine popularity. If users are happy with your website design, search engines will automatically favor your website.

- The right keywords: Having the right keywords can mean the difference between an "also ran" website and one that is top of the list. Using overly common keywords risks the chance of being lost in the crowd while using less popular keywords means losing traffic altogether. It is best to use strategic, powerful keywords that stand out, add value to your website and describe what your website offers in as concise a manner as possible.

- Meta Tags: These are machine friendly descriptions of what your website is about. They are embedded in the backend HTML coding of a webpage and are used by robots that crawl websites to gauge the popularity of your website.

- Avoid overusing graphics: Graphics cannot be read by the search engine robots and hence by overusing these graphics you miss the potential to increase the search engine ranking of your website. It is best to use HTML code as much as possible.

- Regularly monitor website listing: It is important to frequently monitor the performance of your website in terms of search engine ranking. In this age of tough competition and websites scrambling to get listed on search engines, it is essential to know where you stand.

- Article marketing: Article marketing represents a great way to enhance one's search engine ranking. For this it is essential to write articles on current topics of interest. Also it is essential to use the right strategic keywords for better search engine visibility. While posting articles on article directories, it is essential to post all mandatory information required by the website, as well as ensure strict adherence to website rules and regulations.

- Keyword research: Keyword research plays a crucial role in ascertaining the popularity of keywords, which ones are most used by visitors etc. Most organizations spend top dollar in getting access to this information and to enhance their website popularity in search engines.

- Incoming links: Incoming links refer to exchanging or purchasing links of other websites to direct traffic to your website. The more the incoming links the better the chances at enhancing search engine ranking.

- Press releases: Press releases, although they sound clichéd, are a great way to boost search engine ranking. They provide the latest updates on your website, the latest news and events and other important information which could be of interest to readers. Having frequently changing press releases helps to keep the buzz alive around your website and generates curiosity for website visitors.

10 Facts About Search Engines

As you well know, getting a good listing on the search engines can really help get some good, quality traffic to your site.
But how do you get a good listing? That's the million dollar question.
Rather than explain how search engines select the top sites or how to trick them into listing your site in the top 10, let's learn some of the facts about search engines.
Now in case you're wondering why I don't just give you the 'magic' formula or algorithm for getting a good search engine placement I'll give you:

1. Search engines change their formula frequently in an attempt to keep quality sites at the top of the listing. They do this because of all the attempts to 'trick' or 'fool' them and, to stay popular with their users, they need to list the most relevant sites first.

2. Every search engine has it's own formula for determining the sites and the ordering of the sites it will list. And even though they all use many of the same factors in their formulas, there is no 1 formula that will work for all of them.
As for giving you some of the tricks that others have tried to use to get good search engine placement, I'll just say that the tricks that have worked in the past like using misleading meta tag keywords and embedding hidden keywords don't work today and the new tricks like creating lots of 'spam' sites using automatic search engine page creators won't be working much longer.

3. Search engine owners know the tricks being used and develop ways to filter them out.
Now that you know that there is no 1 'magic' formula and using a 'trick' won't work for long, you should also know:

4. Search engines do 'black list' sites they consider 'spam' and block them from being listed.
Because of all the articles and products about Google, you may think that Google has become the search engine of choice. And while Google is gaining in popularity,

5. Google still hasn't captured Yahoo's number 1position.
Even though Google isn't number 1,

6. Using 'good advice' on how to improve your Google position will also help you with your placement on Yahoo and many other search engines.
Some of 'good advice' for getting a good position is to have a site with good content and to use your keywords within your content. But the web has become so big that there are now thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of pages competing for the same keywords.
Because of this explosion in the number of pages available for generic keyword searches,

7. Search engine users are now adding more descriptive terms in their searches.
Another fact that most people don't realize about search engines is that:

8. Search engines don't rank or list web sites, they rank and list web pages. That means every page of your site has the potential to be listed if you set it up properly.
Since we're getting into the realm of less known search engine facts, let's talk about how

9. Search engines use their own traffic tracking information to help determine which sites to list. If they see that they have a top site that continually gets visited for a brief amount of time and the searchers usually come back and continue looking, the search engine may determine the site is of little value and either move it down on the list or remove it.
The last fact isn't really about search engines but has been included to help you measure your progress as you work to improve your search engine positions.
A couple of terms you've probably seen many times are 'Google Page Rank (PR)' and 'Alexa Traffic Ranking'. While both measure different things,

10. Google PR and Alexa Traffic Ranking are 2 of the best indicators on how well your search engine optimization work is going. Improving your Google PR and your Alexa Traffic Ranking can help you get a better search engine position.

Tools to monitor your website

You can’t just put your website on the net with right keywords and all the right touches and expect your traffic and ranking will remain constant. As the web is an ever changing landscape, you have to keep track of your own web results like what is happening with the competition and also the best and highest ranked sites. There are many useful tools to help you find out what exactly is happening.

1. A tool which you can use to test your own website links or other websites for broken links:

http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

2. With this tool you can check search engines for the number of back links to your URL i.e. other web pages linking to your site:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/backlinks/

3. It sometimes becomes important to know where the servers of your hosting company are physically located. Because, some search engines like Google have the ability to filter search results based on their physical location called geotargeting. This could be used to determine why your site is showing in only a certain country. This link can also be used to research the country location of a particular competitor’s website:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/

4. In order to track the location of the visitor or a customer to your website:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/geovisitors/

5. In order to check the Yahoo! web ranking of your’s or your competitor’s website use :

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/webrank/

6. Here is a link to check the web ranking of a website using a Mac or Apple computer:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/pagerank-mac/

7. You need a Google AdSense account for using this. This link provides you with charts and reports which will help you analyze traffic, clicks, and results from your AdSense advertising

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-charts/

8. If you have an AdSense account, you can analyze your website address or another website address to see what Google ads will be displayed when the customer selects certain website names or keywords:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/adsense-sandbox/

9. This link will take you to a cooperative advertising network where you can join to display and

share your ads with other website owners:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/ad-network/

10. You can add the Search Functionality on your website which uses Google. This works only if your site is listed in the Google Index.

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/search/

11. Here are some links to free website counters which you can use on your website to track your traffic and hits:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/counter/

http://www.amazingcounters.com/?ref=gad033

http://www.cyber-counter.com/signup.php

http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html

http://www.free-counters.net/

Website as Storefronts

A customer walks into the store, browses through products and shelves, picks up items, inspects, considers the prices, chooses a product and takes it to the cash register to pay. Now if you want to sell your products online, then your site must be enabled for e-commerce, where you must have the following features:

• You need to provide plenty of content and product description like sizes, dimensions, colors and comparisons with other similar products. It must allow the customer to choose a product, get a clear pricing and shipping costs on the product, complete the transaction and get an order number, and/or invoice confirmation via email. Allow your customer to choose a shipping method.

• You must tell the customer if the item is in stock or delivered against order. Ideally, you should have an email contact or live help if the customer has a question. Most importantly you must respond immediately! If you want to provide your own live chat and help desk services on your website, specialized softwares are available for purchase.
• Be sure your customer service links are large and clearly marked, so your client does not have to dig around to find information.
• Provide an ‘about us’ section or a section about your policies. If you have privacy statements and customer satisfaction policies, your customer will feel better about shopping in your store.
• You probably want to have customer quotes and references on the storefront page, as well, to let your prospective client know that others are happy with your service.
• Provide an FAQ with information about your return-back policies, guarantees, shipping prices and insurance charges if any.
• If you are so inclined, you can offer a print catalogue if the customer prefers to order one from your storefront and shop in the privacy of their homes.
• Do not annoy your customers by presenting products that are marked ‘sold’ or pages that say ‘under construction’ or ‘coming soon’.
• Do add new content frequently, so your returning customers will not be bored by seeing the same products they saw four months ago.
• If your site has got a date tag or has current references, be careful to change these references frequently so you don’t give the perception that nobody is attending or reading your site.

How Do Search Engines Work - Web Crawlers

It is the search engines that finally bring your website to the notice of the prospective customers. Hence it is better to know how these search engines actually work and how they present information to the customer initiating a search.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site's Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example: Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

Your Checklist To SEO Reports

The most important online marketing strategies that can help you be successful with optimizing your business on the web include building a plan, blogging, an email list, press releases, and much more. Be sure to have these items on your checklist and you will have an excellent and productive website for your business.

The first and most important strategy for optimizing your search engine for your website is to create a plan for
The most important online marketing strategies that can help you be successful with optimizing your business on the web include building a plan, blogging, an email list, press releases, and much more. Be sure to have these items on your checklist and you will have an excellent and productive website for your business.

The first and most important strategy for optimizing your search engine for your website is to create a plan for your site and your business. You should determine all of the most important things. What are your goals for accomplishments with your site and who is your audience going to be? That is, what types of people do you believe will be interested in your products and what people do you believe you need to target that will continue to come back for more. You need to make a decision how you are going to make your website better than others, how it will stand out from the rest and grab the attention. All of these answers to these questions should be the base of your web plan to optimizing your website and they should be at the top of your checklist.

The next thing that you need to do for optimization of your website is to create a marketing plan that will work and get the word out about your business and your site. This includes writing press releases and getting them out to every contact that you have in the media. You should also post the press releases online to every place that will allow you to. In addition to writing press releases for your website, you should write extensive articles about your website, your company, your products, and more. These articles should contain important keywords that will take people back to your site. You should also include your website and company information in all of the articles including contact information if people have questions.

Creating a blog should also be on your checklist for total optimization. This is the one way you can have the keywords that you need for your site to be pulled up in search engines and remain at the top. You should start relevant conversations, add posts, and useful data to your blog and keep people coming back for more. If you are talking about a subject that is important to people they will discuss issues with you, in return, adding more keywords to your site. You should also get on other blogs across the Internet and talk about your website and your products in other blogs. This is good advertising for you also.

You should build a mailing list for optimizing your site. This can be done by determining who your audience is. Your email list may be created over time as people enter in their information and if they request to be on the list. It is important to respond to requests through email and to let the people that do come back know that you care about them as a customer. The best thing about email is that it is free and extremely helpful for your business.

Another way you can optimize your site is by offering incentives to people who visit your site. You can offer free stuff, discounts, and more. People often search the web just for free items and by doing this you are generating more traffic to your website.

There are many points you should add to your checklist when you are concerned about optimizing your website on the Internet for your business.

this articel taken from:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/site_promotion/article_1709.shtml

Effective SEO Comes Cheap

Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Maximizing the benefits of a well optimized website will yield lots of earnings for the marketer. However, optimizing your site might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area.

But to tell you the truth, you can essentially get information on low cost SEO anywhere in the Internet. But only several really show you how to work out an affordable search engine optimization endeavor. And those few that really inform include this article.

Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Maximizing the benefits of a well optimized website will yield lots of earnings for the marketer. However, optimizing your site might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area.

But to tell you the truth, you can essentially get information on low cost SEO anywhere in the Internet. But only several really show you how to work out an affordable search engine optimization endeavor. And those few that really inform include this article.

1. Link exchanges

One cheap SEO method that can get you best results is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites. Depending on the websites that you would like to exchange links with, this tool could even cost you nothing at all. Contact the author or owner of the web site you want to have a link exchange with. You will be surprised with the eventual spiking up of your page ranking using this means of getting your website optimized.

2. Write or acquire key word rich articles

Writing truly informative and keyword-rich articles is one surefire way to make your Internet business more visible than ever. It's either you write your own articles or you get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author's byline in tact. Just don't stuff your articles with keywords that even idiots would get bore of reading them. The readability and freshness of your articles will still be the basis of whether your writers will keep on coming back to your website or not.

3. Catchy Domain Name

What better will make your target visitors remember your website but with a very easy-to-recall domain name. Something sweet and short will prove to be very invaluable. Registering your domain name is not for free. But creativity is.

4. Organize your site navigation

Providing easy steps in navigating your site is one way to make your visitors become at ease with your site. This, in turn, will improve the flow of traffic to your website.

Low cost SEO is always evolving like any other approach in information technology. There are many methods that can very well land you on the top ten rankings of Google or on any other search engines. Some may cost a lot but there are methods that can give you the same results at a low price or you can even do on your own such as those mentioned above.

Tips to Get Repeat Web Traffic

top 10 tips to get repeat web traffic

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.
4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.


5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.

7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

9. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

10. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

Tips to Increase Ranking and Website Traffic

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.

• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document. * Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.

• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.

• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.

• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.

• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.

• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.

• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.

• * Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.

• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.

• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.

• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.

• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.