Search Engine Optimization Subway - Complete Free SEO Library » Tips & Tricks

SEO Tips #4 Sitemap

Saahir — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:02:54 +0000

SEO Tips #4 Sitemap- By including a sitemap, you are showing the user how to quickly and simply find information posted on the site. This sitemap gives you all the information in one area rather than having to click on each page.

A sitemap also has links to all pages of the site and should be placed on the homepage of the site for easy access. This will also help in search engine optimization, which in turn will give you a better ranking for the search engines.

I highly recommend using a sitemap, there are even sitemap builders on the internet that are FREE and will build you an XML file that you can upload to your website, although you can build the sitemap yourself which will help users find there way around your site. You can try a couple of these http://www.xml-sitemaps.com , http://www.freesitemapgenerator.com

Now this is only a few SEO Tips and I encourage you to keep up your results, if you can master just these few steps you will great success, its more about finding a niche within a product or service that will get you the best results. Once you have these practices in place you will begin to see yourself showing up on the organic search results, which are the results that show up in the main body of the results page. The ads you see on the right and top side are Pay Per Click ads that people actually pay money for, these are called your sponsored links.

These practices are used to generate traffic by means of complex methods and techniques also known as Search Engine Optimization. Optimizing is the process of attaining higher rankings by changing content, making the site more search engine friendly and making sure you have a good supply of incoming links that are relative to your site.

Studies have proven that organic results bring higher numbers or traffic than the sponsored links that people pay for; which is the main reason why companies should optimize there website and get moving on there rankings. Remember a properly optimized site will achieve a higher ranking in the search engines, and consequently bring new visitors and potential subscribers to your website.

Orignal Author : TheSEOtips.com

SEO Tips #3 Title and Description

Saahir — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:00:06 +0000

SEO Tips #3 Title and Description – One area that people overlook or try to shortcut is the Title of a webpage. What is the Title and where is it located? The Title is shown in the upper left corner of the web browser while visiting a page, the title is in the portion of your html code and is very important in your SEO process. The Title < TITLE>< /TITLE> tag tells the search engines what your page is about and it is recommended to have a different title, related to that particular page, on each page of your site. That way the search engine does not skip over the pages and think they are duplicates.

You want to use keywords or keyword phrases at the front of the title, then a category and then some sort of website title. So if I were making a page about a Playstation 3 I would do something like this…

Playstation 3 Accessories | Games | Wireless Game Controllers

And then from there every page of the site would have a different but related title, using other keywords based on the content of the page.

Next let’s talk about the description tag, this is the content that what will show up when you do a search on Google. In the description you want to use all your keywords and or phrases so that you make a good descriptive short paragraph of what your site is all about. Think like the user, what would you search for to find this website? You only have about 160 characters to make this happen so be descriptive but short. Also try putting the keywords in different order than the title, using plurals, singulars and try changing acronyms to full description for example SEO would be Search Engine Optimization.

Note: Since we are talking about the portion of the code, it’s a good practice to take your java script and css out of the code and make external files for this information, this will keep your page clean and readable for the search engines.

Orignal Author : TheSEOtips.com

SEO Tips #2 Unique Content

Saahir — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:30:43 +0000

SEO Tips #2 Unique Content – Content is probably one of the most important factors when developing your website, quality content will keep the traffic coming back again and again. I want to add that content is important but don’t over do it, and what I mean is you want good readable and informative content, you don’t have to re-invent the wheel here. When creating content use your keywords throughout the page and make them bold using the bold html tags , but don’t over do it, you may get looked at as spamming. A good practice would be a 2% density. So for example if you had 600 words, you would have around 12 keywords throughout the content. Also take advantage of using the header

,

etc… tags using the most important keywords with

and down to least important.

On your site navigation, if you are using images along with some java script instead of text the search engine bots may not be able to follow your links to other pages. A way around this is to add a site navigation along the bottom of the page using text links and this will in turn Aide the search engines while indexing your pages and it will also increase your anchor text links. The site navigation at the bottom of the page also comes in handy while your scrolling and reading content and keeps you from having to scroll back to the top to use the navigation on the site.

Another important note while creating content is to use links, these links add value to your site, but make sure the links are related to your subject matter. Another SEO Tip, use keywords as your anchor text, for example if you were using a link “www.bestskateboardsonthenet.com” you would want to show it like this Skateboard Wheels so the end user would only see the text and not the link.

While we are discussing links, make sure to use text links vs. image links. The reason is your images usually don’t have relative names that would be useful to a search engine. So if you still have a need for an image link, make sure you use an alt tag and name your image using a keyword like “skatboardwheels.jpg” instead of “picture01.jpg”.

An excellent way to build content on your site is to use Articles. What makes Articles so appealing is the fact that you can link back to your site from the article and create a quality back link, which is what search engines love to see. You can also submit these articles to directories like www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com . These types of links will get you good quality scores and will last you for years if not for a lifetime.

Lastly on content, try to keep your content fresh and updated on a regular basis, the search engines like this as well as your users, it is always nice to come back to a page that has been updated.

Source : www.theseotips.com

SEO Tips #1 Keyword Research

Saahir — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:22:39 +0000

SEO Tips #1 Keyword Research – I had no idea how important keyword research has become, for example as a new person with your first site, let’s say you are promoting skateboards, your first thought would be to use the keyword “skateboards” right? Well that is not the best thing to do because that keyword has entirely to much competition so what you want to do is find a niche in that category like “skateboard trucks” or “skateboard wheels” your chances greatly increase of getting better rankings under a niche product. I would recommend using a keyword tool, there are plenty of them on the internet, one that I use is Google Keyword Tool and do some research, you will be surprised some of the search terms you use will not generate any traffic according to the keyword tool. If you are doing Pay Per Click or PPC campaigns the tool will tell you the average CPC or Cost Per Click, this will help you determine your budget’s for the campaign.

Also when you find a keyword or phrase, try and choose a domain name or URL with the keyword included, for example let’s say your keyword is “student loans” so your URL would be something like getyourstudentloans.com or studentloansguide.com this will greatly increase your ranking ability.

These 2 tips alone will take some time, I have spent hours and hours on the keyword tool searching for niche phrases, it does take some work but the results are so helpful, it actually saves you time and money on wasted keywords. Just think of all the time you would put into making a website and finding out at the end that your keyword gets no traffic on the search engines.

Source : theseotips.com

SEO Techniques – Step by Step to Drive Traffic

Saahir — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:01:02 +0000

Once you have some pages developed for your site – use the following techniques to drive more traffic to your site day by day:

* Search for Article Directories. Write and submit articles to those directories.
* Put a backlink to your site while you write comments on other people’s blogs.
* Go to Yahoo! Answers – Home and Answer people’s questions.
* Sign up on forums as many as you can, have a link to your site in your signature if they allow you to and then Post in those forums.
* Sign up on PRWeb::The Online Visibility Company. Write a press releases and submit.
* Search for some advertising companies on the web & advertise your website in the appropriate category.
* Start setting up a blog on your site & submit that to 100’s of free blog directories on the web.
* Search for some major search engines and manually submit your website to those search engines.
* For a particular keyword or search phrase, optimize each page content of your website.

* Get a little more traffic by adding a link in your email signature to your website.
* To redirect people to your home page, create a custom 404 error page for your site.
* PPC search engine advertising would be very useful.
* Add a “Bookmark this site” link to your pages.
* Create a tell-a-friend form. Add that on your site.
* Send/Submit articles to ezine publishers. Make sure to include a link to your website.
* Give away a free offers like ebook, report, e-course etc., so that people keep coming back to your site.
* Make sure to add an RSS feed to your blog.
* Find out any related niche directories on the net and Submit your site.

* There are many free link exchange programs on the net. Participate in such banner or link exchange programs.
* Give away free Software Program that you created.
* Purchase the misspellings or variations of your as well as your competitors domain name.
* Buy a domain name that is related to your niche and is already receiving traffic. Forward that to your site.
* Wherever you go, pass out business cards stating your domain on them.
* Let your affiliates send visitors by starting affiliate programs.
* There are many social bookmarking sites like MySpace, facebook etc. Start a page on them.
* Signup at youtube and Submit a viral video.
* Find out some joint venture partners that will send you traffic.
* Start your own newsletter or ezine.
* To keep people coming back, use autoresponder or email campaign.
* Signup on eBay and Sell or place classified ads on eBay – New & used products at low prices with a link to your site.
* Search for free classified ads sites that will allow you to post free classified ads on those sites with a link to your site.
* Exchange reciprocal links with other related websites.
* Purchase advertising in popular newsletters or ezines.
* List a free ebook that you created, on the “free ebook” sites.
* Submit reviews on books and other products that you have read after creating an Amazon profile.
* Start a lens on Squidoo.
* Use a traffic exchange – can be low quality traffic, but sometimes worthwhile.
* Get referrals form similar sites but non-competing sites.
* Get an Email, make a list and Email to your list.

Orignal Author : magpk

Configuring GOOGLE sitemap for web page Index

Saahir — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:25:55 +0000

Configuring google sitemap for web page Index

Google sitemap is for suggesting information to google regarding your website like page imporance and updated web pages.Do it right now and google spiders and robots will follow your suggestion
through google sitemap and it will be XML Format.

Once you have created the google sitemap file, place it on your server and then visit Google Sitemaps to submit your map.

Google site map can be generated by many online free tools.You can find the tool using the keyword “Google sitemap generator” in google search engine.

Once google sitemap XML file is created, upload to your server and then visit google site map address to submit.Google sitemap address can be found here
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemap

Login with your Google account and submit sitemap, before that you have to upload a google verification html page, genetated as a random number from google.

After next spider visit you can find google indexed new updated web page.

This facility is mainly helpful for shopping and online product sale website.

Orignal Author : Jagadeesh M

Best 12 WordPress SEO Tips

Saahir — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 02:51:45 +0000

One of the best opensource I like is wordpress and wordpress can be used both as Blog and CMS

WordPress by default has some search engine friendly setup but we need to edit some part of the code and add plugins to make it more search engine friendly and the plugins will help us to do the work easier and better. Below are the tips to create search engine friendly wordpress blog

(1) Initially you can add search engine friendly theme with less image and your choice of image can go for logo, banner and bullets. Try to reduce code size and bytes.
(2) Install “All in SEO” Plugin“. Activate and edit in options according to your visitors focus

(3) Most importantly do add alt attribute for logos and banner, i see most of the blogs miss to implement this technique or alt attribute are not unique. To solve this you can try “Custom Header” plugin and enter HTML codes for each posts and pages

(4) Permalink a very important part that helps to create search engine friendly URLS. In wordpress admin you can find “Permalinks” under option. In this you can notice “Custom structure”, you may try adding this tag /%postname%/
(5) Create and configure .htaccess file and place the below code

RewriteEngine OnRewriteBase /RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-fRewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-dRewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Save and upload in root and confirm that .htaccess file is been enabled in your server and your done
(6) If your theme doesn’t have archive section, don’t miss to add because new visitors to you blog may also like to read your old posts, so try adding the code to your theme
(7) Again “Popular tags” one of the very important part for blog and seo which helps to show visitors and search engine to the importance of blog posts and subjects. The follwoing code will show tags popularity by size
(8) Intall “Recent post” plugin and activate. This plugin helps to retrieve list of the most recent posts for your visitors
(9) Add “Google Sitemaps” to the plugin folder and activate . Set write access to the root server and then go to options >> Google sitemap and then click “Build sitemap manually” link and this creates site map and as you add new post xml file gets updated automatically with new posts URL.
(10) Add this sitemap.xml file to Google and Yahoo Webmaster tool so that spider will crawl the URL on regular basis
(11) Configure and add Google Custom Search and Google Analytics
(12) Register to Feedburner and add your post RSS feed to Feedburner and create an option in the blog for your readers to subscribe your posts, by this as and when you post, your reader will be sent mail or noticed through browser about your new posts

Hope above WordPress SEO Tips and Advice will help you to create search engine friendly wordpress blog

Orignal Author : Jagadeesh M

Keyword Research Tips

Admin — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:17:10 +0000

Keywords are search queries visitors use on search engines. Keywords are one to six words in length, with a few longer exceptions. You know your site needs keywords, but which ones? How do you research keywords? Keep reading; that’s the topic of this article.You cannot have a successful search engine optimization campaign without keyword research. Your website must show in search results for key phrases that indicate interest in your products/services and deliver some kind of benefit to the company (sign ups, purchases, downloads, etc), so it’s important to find and test keyword phrases.

This article will teach you basic keyword research strategies and introduce you to more advanced local tactics.

Where Can I Find Keywords?

There are special tools on the web that help markers find keywords, called keyword research tools. There are free, subscription-based and pay-per-use tools. In this article I focus on the free ones.

Disclaimer: Subscription and pay-per-use tools are not always better than free ones. Search for reviews and feedback before spending bucks with any company. There are many bad products aimed at “newbies” and their curious wallets.

Free Keyword Research Tools

Google Keyword Tool – Search for keywords in over 50 languages. It features a very high quality, clean and frequently updated keyword database, with estimated search volume. The down side – keywords that don’t meet Google’s search volume criteria don’t make it to the database, rendering this tool useless for long keyword phrases (four to eight words in length). Regardless, this is one of the best keyword research tools.

Wordtracker – Their free tool has a limit of 100 results. If you want to see all keywords, you must pay. Its free database is very detailed, so in most cases 100 results is enough. Wordtracker gathers keyword data from two meta search engines – Dogpile and Metacrawler. Both search engines hold around a one percent market share, so to estimate real search volume numbers across all search engines you must multiply Wordtracker numbers by 99.

Keyword Discovery – This tool has a noisy database, so use it with caution. It gathers data from toolbars installed on many computers. I find their free database needs a huge clean up.

Yahoo Search Marketing – Follow these steps to get to Yahoo’s keyword research tool. When you click on the link, you will get to a page that says: “Start Advertising with Yahoo! Search Marketing in 5 Simple Steps.” On the right side, select your “market” and “time zone,” then click on “Get Started.” You will see Yahoo say: “1. Target Customers by Geographic Location.” Leave everything as is and click on “Next: Keywords.” You now have access to Yahoo’s keyword tool. There’s no need to register further. Copy your keywords when finished and close the window.

There is a big down side to using this tool; you have to go through this process every time. If you don’t like the hassle, you can pay Yahoo $50 to open an account with their pay-per-click service.

SEO Book Keyword Research Tool – This tool gives exactly the same results as Wordtracker (above). In fact, its database relies on Wordtracker. What you will like about the SEO Book tool is all the extras that come on top of regular keyword research. You can search Yahoo Suggest, Google Suggest, Google Traffic Estimator, Google Insights, Quintra, News Search, Directories, Blog Search, Tag Search and more, all in one place. Play around with it a little.

Now you know where to find keywords. To find more, search with “keyword research” or “keyword research tool” on search engines.

Basic research is easy. Enter a word or a phrase that describes your business/ web site and keyword research tools will give you the results, including synonyms. For example, here’s what Google tool gave us for the word “mortgage”:

Keyword	Search Volume Per Month
mortgage	83,100,000
mortgage lenders	201,000
mortgage brokers	201,000
home mortgage	20,400,000

Now I know that around 200,000 people search for “mortgage brokers” in the US, every month. If I run a mortgage website, it makes sense to optimize for this keyword (though a keyword with this level of popularity will need tens of thousands of dollars for content and links).

Go through the list and spot key phrases you would like to rank for on search engines. Make a list and build an Excel spreadsheet of all the phrases. The trick is to select keywords that will deliver the most for your dollars/efforts.

For example, “shoes” is a popular phrase. People searching for “shoes” may want to find running shoes, high heels, winter shoes, boots, sandals and more. The phrase is too general to know for sure.

On the other hand, the key phrase “buy athletic shoes” tells us clearly that visitors want to buy athletic shoes! There’s no guesswork. This keyword also takes less time (or less cost) to optimize for than “shoes,” because it’s longer, less competitive and has less search volume.

Be realistic with keyword selection

We all want to rank for the word “shoes,” “car,” or “mortgage,” but competition is stiff. It would take several years of optimization and hard work to get to the first page for those keywords — oh yeah, and did I mention that it will also take a fat budget for links and content creation? Search engine optimization companies charge at least $100,000 for those phrases, so you must have big wallet.

Unless you have big budget, you must compromise with less competitive keywords and go for local markets.

What city are you in? Write it down.

What is your main keyword? Write it down.

Combine the two and get to a keyword research tool.

For example, I am a mortgage broker in New York. My main keyword is “mortgage broker” and my city is “New York.” Combined, those two give: “new york mortgage broker.”

Plug this into a keyword research tool and wait for results. Here what Google gave me:

Keyword	Search Volume
new york mortgage brokers	1,600
new york mortgage broker	2,900
mortgage broker new york city	140
new york state mortgage broker	260

As you can see, those keywords have less search volume than our previous keywords. The up side, however, is that there are fewer competitors and it will take less time, effort and money to have a web site optimized for those keywords, while still enjoying a good flow of customers.

Optimization for local keywords is the first stage of optimization for new web sites. We usually optimize our clients for their local city first and only then for more competitive keywords. This way clients see the power of search engine optimization, gain rankings fairly quickly (no delusions; search engine optimization takes at least four to six months if you’re going for the first page) and start making profits on a local level. It also costs less.

Only after we achieve good rankings for local keywords do we optimize for more competitive ones. This strategy is perfect if your web site is new and is not found anywhere on search results. Here are three reasons why:

It establishes a link profile (links are everything for Google, and Google is becoming everything).
It establishes a level of trust from search engines.
It tests effectiveness of keywords and search engine optimization for a particular business model.

Research several local keywords and test.

If you’re skeptical about search engine optimization, you can test its effectiveness. Here’s how to do it.

Research your keywords (described above).
Set up a pay-per-click account with Google Adwords.
Run a campaign with your selected keywords for a week or so, and measure the results.
Research more keywords if you don’t like the results.

I recommend Google Adwords for testing, since it’s the best pay-per-click platform. Some Adwords ads will be shown on Yahoo, due to the Google – Yahoo Partnership.

It’s very easy to use Adwords. You can learn how in detail here.

When you test keywords, make sure you have effective landing pages. A landing page is a page that users see after they click on your advertisement. It’s important to create a separate page for pay-per-click advertisements (and SEO) instead of directing visitors to your home page because:

A landing page can contain and expand upon the content your advertisement had, giving a strong information scent to visitors.
A landing page can have clear calls to action such “buy it now,” “call us now,” “fill out a form,” etc.
It’s been proven that landing pages are more effective in converting visitors into customers than home pages.

You must test your keywords for at least a week to have real measurements. Analytics software can help you figure out how much time visitors spend on your web site, when they exit, which pages they spend time on and from which pages they leave. The biggest measurement however, would be your bottom line. If you spent $1000 on pay-per-click during your test week and only got back $200, then your keywords aren’t good enough. Go back and research more keywords. Test to see if results improve.

Once you see at least a double return on your investment, you’re safe. If your returns are poor, you should also examine your landing page and fix any problems there. Take the keywords you tested and optimize your website.

Good luck!

Article from SEO CHAT

10 SEO Tips

Admin — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:59:42 +0000

It is not hard to be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to getting search engine traffic because there is so much out of date information being circulated.

That is why it is always best to also learn many other traffic generation methods like viral marketing for example.

Not only is there out of date or invalid SEO advice getting around, there is also information which if acted upon, can result in your pages being banned.

The SEO tips below should assist the reader in forming a basic understanding of how to create human friendly web pages which are easily understood by the most popular search engines.

Know this. There are thousands of search engines but only two of them will bring you most of the traffic. They are google and yahoo. Another search engine that brings me a little traffic is msn but I do not focus too much on tactics for that engine.

Focus your attention on the engines that will bring you the most visitors first and work your way down.

Basic SEO

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. Inserting a keyword or key phrase will greatly improve your chances of bringing targeted traffic to your site.

Make sure that the title tag contains text which a human can relate to. The text within the title tag is what shows up in a search result. Treat it like a headline.

2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.

3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.

Adding the exact same text for your h1 tag will tell the reader who clicks on your page from a search engine result that they have clicked on the correct link and have arrived at the page where they intended to visit. Robots like this too because now there is a relation between the title of your page and the headline.

Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your article. The most important keywords can be bolded or colored in red. A good place to do this is once or twice in the body at the top of your article and in the sub-headings.

4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.

I always use the headline of my pages as the title tag to help the robots know exactly what my page is about. A good place to insert the headline is within the h1 tag. So the headline is the same as the title tag text.

5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. SEO pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were. I just place my headline once within the keywords and description tags.

6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods.

7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.

8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.

My site contains navigation menus on the left and right of the page. The menu consists of links not images. When you hover over the link with your mouse, the title of the link appears. View the source of this page to see how to add this tag to your links.

9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.

Here is the submission page for google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Submit only once. There is no need to submit every two weeks. There is no need to submit more than one page. Robots follow links. If your site has a nice link trail, your entire site will get indexed.

My site has a nice human friendly link trail which robots follow easily. All my pages get indexed without ever submitting more than the main index page once.

More SEO Tips

Get the facts here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/. This page will explain most of what you should focus on along with what you should forget about.

If you have been thinking about handing over the task of SEO to someone outside of yourself, you should read some warnings before you part with any money. http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

SEO Discussion

Most SEO Professionals will not tell you about the goose that laid the golden egg. The following link will take you to a jealously guarded FREE SEO discussion.

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=google.public.support.general

You can search the forum for specific questions you may have. I like to just lurk around and read the messages.

The author, Ed Zivkovic owns his own website which contains articles with all sorts of tips for work at home webmasters. Here is the site: http://www.ezau.com