SeoTipsBlogs -

Google - Online Tools and Applications

2011-11-12T00:56:00.000-08:00

Greplin - A Personal Search Engine
Greplin indexes the information you create on different websites (like Gmail, Twitter and Facebook) and provides lightning fast search of all your information.

DokDok - Track, Share, and Manage, Email Attachments
DokDok enhances your Google Apps inbox to make it easy to find, compare and work on versions of email attachments.

RainMaker - Supercharge your Google Contacts
Rainmaker is a web based application used to make your Google Contacts better by syncing social data from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Gpanion - Your Google Apps Companion
The easiest way to work with your Google Apps from your home, office, everywhere. Use Gpanion on your Computer, iPad, iPhone, mobile, and television.

ReadBurner - What's Shared on Google Reader
ReadBurner turns Google Reader sharing into an action similar to bookmarking a page on Del.icio.us or voting for an article on Digg. This approach to social news makes sharing interesting stories easier than ever, and adds a new level of democracy and transparency in determining what's the most newsworthy.

Google Sky - Traveling to the Stars has never been Easier
Google Sky includes a number of different ways to explore the universe. The initial view shows the visible universe and is a mosaic of images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Digitized Sky Survey and the Hubble Space Telescope.

What is SEO Copywriting?

2011-09-19T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Five Linking Mistakes You Didn't Know You Were Making

2011-07-05T23:18:00.000-07:00

External linking is an essential part of an effective SEO strategy. It is also, arguably, one of the most challenging aspects. Take a look at five common mistakes SEOs make when developing a linking strategy.

#1- Judging a Site's Authority by PageRank Alone:

Good link building strategies aim at getting a links from a diverse array of websites and as with most things in life, all websites are not created equal. How do you judge a good website?

The answer is authority. PageRank is a popular metric used to judge a sites authority. However, pagerank can be misleading. It is unclear exactly how a sites pagerank affects a sites position in the SERP. PageRank is also only updated about once a quarter, if that. Don't completely ignore pagerank but be aware of its limitations and use additional factors to measure a sites authority. SEOmoz has two helpful metrics, mozRank and mozTrust. Also look at how humans view a site, start by looking over the comments, user ratings or anything else that will tell you how internet users judge the site.

Read the rest of this article here: The Five Linking Mistakes You Didn't Know You Were Making

SEO Tips - Keywords Use

2011-04-22T23:37:00.000-07:00

What is keyword?

A word or words related to the topic that help you find information when conducting a search. It retrieves documents in an information system such as a catalog or a search engine.

Types of Keywords:
1.) Short tail Keywords

Short tail keywords are generic or broad keywords.
1/2 word terms
High Search Volume
Helps in bringing huge traffic but leads to highly competition.
For Example: Money

2.) Long Tail Keywords

Known as narrow keywords
3/4/5 word terms
Low search volume
Low competition
Rank shortly
Bring low traffic but real traffic
For example: Make Money Online Free

Keyword Research: How to choose Good Keywords for your website?

Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your website is an important part of the process of search engine optimization that helps in increasing relevant traffic to your website.

There are following steps to keep in mind to getting the right keywords for your site:

Determine your target audience - What are the primary products or services that the website offers?
Make a keyword List
Use keyword research tools i.e. Keyword Tool - Google AdWords
Finalizing your list

Now you are ready to use keywords for your website:

Where to use keywords on your website?

Keyword in Domain name (excellent for separating keywords with one or two hyphens)
Keyword in URL (Inner Pages)
Keyword in Title tag (Limits: Less than 70 characters, No special characters)
Keyword in H1, H2 and H3
Keyword in Description meta tag (Define about your website, Limits: Less than 200 chars)
Keyword in Keyword meta tag (relevant, descriptive words, less than 10 words. Every word in this tag MUST appear somewhere in the body text. If not, it can be penalized for irrelevance. No single word should appear more than twice. If not, it may be considered spam. Google purportedly no longer uses this tag, but others do.)
Keyword density in body text (5 - 20% - (all keywords/ total words))
Individual keyword density in body text (1 - 6% - (each keyword/ total words))
Keyword in alt text (Should describe graphic)

Navigation - Internal Links

* To internal pages (Link should contain keywords)

Grey Hat Seo - Is Good or a Bad Technique?

2011-02-25T00:36:00.000-08:00

You are familiar with the respective definitions of ‘white hat’ and ‘black hat’ search engine optimization, that I had talked in my earlier posts. With this post I am starting to explore about Grey Hat SEO.

What is Grey Hat SEO?

Grey Hat SEO = White Hat SEO (Ethical) + Black Hat SEO (Non Ethical)

Grey Hat SEO is the kind of SEO which sits between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO. Since the color grey is between black and white, logically Grey Hat SEO sounds like a label for the middle ground. It is a balance mix of ethical and unethical SEO techniques to get higher ranking and better visibility.

It is about risk versus reward. Well, Grey Hat SEO techniques are those, which do have a thin presence of risk trudging around and may even be taken as purely unethical in the near future, but as for now they are better than the Black Hat techniques and are used by many SEOs. But to be very frank Grey Hat is not White Hat and should at no cost be considered as a substitute for it. One should try avoiding such techniques as long as possible.

Grey Hat SEO Techniques: There are some process of using grey hat techniques which are as follows:

Cloaking

Cloaking, also known as stealth, is a technique used by some Web sites for presenting two versions of a single web-page that deliver one page to a search engine for indexing while one set of content is shown to human visitors. In cloaking, human visitors are shown the actual web page, but search engines are shown a web page which is full of spammy SEP techniques such as keyword stuffing.

This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed.

One technique for determining if a web page is using cloaking is to view Google's cache of that web page. Unless the web page has turned off Google caching, the Google cache will show you how Google bot sees the web page. If the web page has turned off Google caching, that is also a possible indicator that cloaking is in use. There are also many cloaking detection tools on the Internet, you can search and check online.

Advantage: It works in many cases to achieve improved SERPs.

Disadvantage: It violates most search engine policies. Google and other highly ranked search engines will remove your site from their listings completely and sometimes blacklist it, once detected by them.

Paid Links
We all know how important links are for SEO. The practice of purchasing link on websites solely for the increase in link-popularity, could be considered shady. When paid links are purchased for advertising, they are considered legitimate. When they are bought to increase link popularity, they fall outside of the rules and can result in a penalty from the search engines.

Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is content that appears on the Internet in more than one place. Duplicate content can be considered legitimate in certain cases but rarely. There are times when duplicate content is considered legitimate by both search engines and visitors and that is on resource sites. A site that consists primarily as an index of articles on a specific subject-matter will not be penalized by posting articles that occur elsewhere on the net.

There are a few different reasons why search engines dislike duplicate content. One is that they don’t want to show the same pages in their search results. Another is that they don’t want to spend the resources in indexing pages that are substantially similar. This is a problem because when there are more than one piece of identical content on the Internet, it is difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query.

Now, A question arise: Should You Use Grey Hat SEO Tactics?

I believe grey hat techniques are questionable methods of SEO and these techniques are not pronounced as totally unethical yet, but they might be soon joining the league of evil world of Black Hat SEOs. So, It’s better, that you should try avoiding such techniques.

Breaking News: Google Page Rank Update

2011-01-21T00:52:00.000-08:00

PageRank is the most important metric that we can use to get an idea of the potential value of a website.

There are a lot of rumors on the internet that Google Page Rank is dead and no Google Page Rank Update was done from April, 2010.

Excited? Upset? Sad? Angry? ......

Yes, Here is good news for all those who have been waiting for Page Rank update from long time and Finally, Google rolled out a major Page Rank update on January 20, 2011 and you can see changes on all major websites.

Though it’s a bad news for some websites Page rank dropped from higher Page rank to lower. Anyways, I hope that in next update We will be able to bring it back to get higher or better Page rank. icon smile.

Congratulations to all blog and web owners, it’s time to celebrate! If you can’t see any changes in your Page Rank then please wait for few days, Google will definitely give you the results of your hard-works and SEO techniques.

Social Media Marketing

2010-12-11T01:33:00.000-08:00

Many of you interested in search engine optimization or internet marketing may have heard of the term social media. Social Media Marketing (SMM) has become a popular alternative for online business branding. They are valuable Internet marketing and networking resources for business.

What is Social Media?
"Social media essentially is a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking online."

"Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques."

There are many categories of social media sites. A few examples of these social media websites are:

Social Networking:
Social networking websites are online services, platforms, that focus on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people, e.g., who share interests and/or activities. Most social network services are web based and provide means for users to interact over the internet, such as e-mail and instant messaging. Widely used examples of social networking sites are Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Bebo and Orkut.

Wikis:
Wikis are websites that allow you to create, edit and share information about a subject or topic. Wikipedia, wikiHow, Wetpaint and WikiFAQ are good examples of wikis.

Video sharing:
Video sharing websites allow users to distribute their video clips. Some services may charge, but the large majority of them offer free services. Many services have options for private sharing and other publication options. Video sharing services can be classified into several categories. YouTube, Yahoo! Video, Vimeo, Metacafe, GoogleVideo and Dailymotion are great examples of Video sharing sites.

Photo sharing:
Photo-sharing websites allow users to upload pictures and images to a personal account which can then be viewed by web users the world wide. Major photo-sharing websites: Flickr, Fotopic.net, SlideShare.net, MyPlick.com, Slide.com

Social Bookmarking:
Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online and Social bookmarking sites are a popular way to store, classify, share and search links through the practice of folksonomy techniques on the Internet. StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, Digg.com and Reddit are good examples of social bookmarking sites.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing:

Increase traffic to your website/blog.
Increase Brand Awareness
Increase Leads and Revenues

Free SEO Add-ons for Mozilla Firefox

2010-11-26T03:07:00.000-08:00

The Mozilla Firefox has been one of the most widely used internet browser in the world and there are many free SEO add-ons available for Firefox. In this post, I'll share some of the best Mozilla Firefox add-ons:

1.) SearchStatus: It displays the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and more.

2.) SeoQuake SEO extension - Seoquake is a Firefox SEO extension aimed primarily at helping web masters who deal with search engine optimization(SEO) and internet promotion of web sites. Seoquake allows to obtain and investigate many important SEO parameters of the internet.

3.) Flagfox: Displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website's server and provides a multitude of tools such as site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation, URL shortening, and more...

4.) SEO Doctor: SEO Doctor allows easy SEO diagnosis and problem solving for webmasters.

5.) SEO Status PageRank/Alexa Toolbar: See Google Pagerank (PR) and Alexa rank for each website you visit. Simple and customizable. You can see and use everything the toolbar offers, or strip it down to the bare essentials and place it in the status bar. Simple, quick, and very useful.

5.) SEO Workers Web Page SEO Analysis Tool: SEO Workers Analysis Tool extension allows you to perform a basic analysis of the page in your browser with a single click. The results from the SEO Workers Analysis Tool are structured into the following useful groups:

General status, meta tags listing, meta tags analysis, the pages displayed within search engine results, keywords found in the anchor tags, keywords found in the image "alt" attribute text, keywords found on the page, URLs found in the page, headers returned from the server.

6.) Google Global: Google Global is an unobtrusive Firefox extension that allows you to see what the Google search results that you are viewing look like from different geographical locations.

7.) Shareaholic: Shareaholic is the easiest way to share interesting links using Facebook, Twitter, Google Mail, Reader, Bookmarks, Evernote, Bitly, StumbleUpon, and more... from one simple ALL-IN-ONE add-on. This is the ultimate tool for the link sharing addict!

8.) ShowIP: Show the IP address(es) of the current page in the status bar. It also allows querying custom information services by IP (right mouse button) and hostname (left mouse button), like whois, netcraft. Additionally you can copy the IP address to the clipboard.

9.) Echofon for Twitter: Echofon (formerly TwitterFox) notifies you of your friends' tweets on Twitter. Syncs with iPhone.

10.) Foxy SEO Tool: Foxy SEO Tool offers tools for search engine optimization (SEO), web traffic and page analysis for webmasters and web professionals.

Difference Between Organic Search Results and Paid Listings

2010-11-15T22:28:00.000-08:00

There are two kinds of search results: paid results and organic (or natural) results that Most search engines, these days, return two types of results whenever you click Search:

Natural/Organic: The 'Real' Search Results (Often Called 'SERPs' for Search Engine Results Pages)
Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms. This relevance is calculated by criteria such as extent of keyword match and number of sites linking to that website. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant and important by the search engines.

Paid: Pure Advertising
This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word that is related to their product or service. The most widely used form of paid listing is Pay Per Click (PPC), where you pay each time someone clicks on the link in your advertisement. The Google, Yahoo!, and Bing search engines combine advertising and search results on their search results pages. In each case, the ads are designed to look like the search results, except for minor visual distinctions such as their background colour and/or placement on the page.

Figure Natural / organic search results v paid ads

When people use search engines, they normally pay a lot more attention to the natural results than the paid results because they know these results are more relevant (and they know the "Sponsored Links" are simply ads).

Which is more effective?
For most industries, the natural results are significantly more effective:

Organic search results are free. Unlike paid campaigns, there is no direct cost involved to get your website listed in organic search results.
Organic results get clicked 8½ times as often as paid listings excluding search results that have no paid ads.

What Is Google PageRank?

2010-04-07T23:35:00.000-07:00

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.

Google describes PageRank:

"PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important"."

In other words, a PageRank results from a "ballot" among all the other pages on the World Wide Web about how important a page is. A hyperlink to a page counts as a vote of support. The PageRank of a page is defined recursively and depends on the number and PageRank metric of all pages that link to it ("incoming links"). A page that is linked to by many pages with high PageRank receives a high rank itself. If there are no links to a web page there is no support for that page.

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Internet; this PageRank denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google. The PageRank is derived from a theoretical probability value on a logarithmic scale like the Richter Scale. The PageRank of a particular page is roughly based upon the quantity of inbound links as well as the PageRank of the pages providing the links. It is known that other factors, e.g. relevance of search words on the page and actual visits to the page reported by the Google toolbar also influence the PageRank.

PageRank Algorithm:

PageRank is a probability distribution used to represent the likelihood that a person randomly clicking on links will arrive at any particular page. PageRank can be calculated for collections of documents of any size. It is assumed in several research papers that the distribution is evenly divided between all documents in the collection at the beginning of the computational process. The PageRank computations require several passes, called "iterations", through the collection to adjust approximate PageRank values to more closely reflect the theoretical true value.

A probability is expressed as a numeric value between 0 and 1. A 0.5 probability is commonly expressed as a "50% chance" of something happening. Hence, a PageRank of 0.5 means there is a 50% chance that a person clicking on a random link will be directed to the document with the 0.5 PageRank.

Mathematical PageRanks (out of 100) for a simple network (PageRanks reported by Google are rescaled logarithmically). Page C has a higher PageRank than Page E, even though it has fewer links to it; the link it has is of a much higher value. A web surfer who chooses a random link on every page (but with 15% likelihood jumps to a random page on the whole web) is going to be on Page E for 8.1% of the time. (The 15% likelihood of jumping to an arbitrary page corresponds to a damping factor of 85%.) Without damping, all web surfers would eventually end up on Pages A, B, or C, and all other pages would have PageRank zero. Page A is assumed to link to all pages in the web, because it has no outgoing links.

For more information about PageRank Algorithm.

Off Page Search Engine Optimization Techniques

2010-03-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

Today, I would like to share a brief off page SEO technique that helps you to gain the needed traffic to your website.

Off-page optimization are strategies for search engine optimization that are done off the pages of a website to maximize its performance in the search engines for target keywords related to the page content. Examples of off-page optimization include linking, and placing keywords within link anchor text. Methods of obtaining links can also be considered off-page optimization.

If we thinking about SEO optimization then the on-page issues are know as the backbone for any kind of website but we can't deny the numerous off-page factors which is actually boosting the search engine ranking position graph into various search engines day by day.

Actually the entire cumulative effects of off-page optimization increases the search engine scores into various search engines which are practically reflects the SE ranking through the help of on-page factors of that site.

Off Page Optimization includes:

    * Press releases
    * Article distribution
    * Online advertising
    * Social networking via sites
    * Link campaigns, such as asking complementary businesses to provide links
    * Directory listings
    * Link exchanges
    * Three-way linking
    * One-way linking
    * Blogging
    * Forum posting
    * Multiway linking
    * Internet Marketing

Off page search engine optimization essentially refers to one very important factor and that is which other websites are linking to your website and how they're doing it. These include:

    * Anchor text used in the link
    * The title of the page your link is on
    * The page rank of the page your link is on
    * The "theme" of the website your link is on
    * The age of the website linking to you

Add your URL to major search engines:

If you're looking to kick start your search engine marketing, then first add your website URL to major search engines. Most important is the submission to Google, Yahoo! and BING.

Links from Quality Websites:

Link management is an important aspect of off page optimization and you'd be better off having fewer quality links than a whole bunch of unreliable and unrelated theme ones.

Similar Theme Links:

On-theme links or on-theme content is information (such as a hyperlink) on a web page that is related to the main topic of the page, website, blog, article, or section of a website. It's likely to be used by people who would be interested in what you have to offer. That doesn't mean you stick rigidly to sites that are exactly on topic. Look also for sites that are related.

Strategy For New Sites:

If your website is new or isn't yet ranked, it is important that you work on getting other websites to link to you. This may be from reciprocal link exchange or getting other sites to link to you without you linking back. Both will definitely help you increase your website's page rank.

Anchor Text:

The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. It's smart to use several different anchor text hyperlinks for backlinks. Make a list of all your major keyword phrases and create your link code.

Page Rank:

While many people argue that page ranks are not important as long as everything else remains good like your volume of sales and the profits you make, it is still being used as a major factor in credibility with your customers and website visitors. It also determines how frequently Google and other search engines visit your website. For these people who keep saying it is not important, it could be a case of denial before acceptance especially if they have had their page ranks lowered by Google recently.

On-page Search Engine Optimization Techniques

2010-03-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

On Page Optimization is the most important and complex part of search engine optimization. "On Page" SEO simply refers to the text and content on your web site pages. Basically editing your page and content so the Search Engine can find your webpage when a surfer is searching for your web sites particular topic.

There are many factors for on page SEO technique that search engine optimization is considered in the evaluation process. Recognizing these factors: words in the web page URL, title tags, meta tags, headlines, sub headlines, keyword density, words start page, page content, words that are bold in touch, words, site navigation, website link structure and a number of other reasons.

I have tried to put together a small list of things that should not be overlooked when optimizing your site.

On Page Optimization Factors:

1. Domain Name:
If your domain name as possible, try to prime your targeted keywords. Having a keyword or words in URL will help you somewhat. Having a key word in your URL is not by any means a guarantee, but it never hurts.

2. Title Tag:
The page title is probably the most important on-page SEO aspect – often ignored by many webmasters. Place your top keywords here. Ideally you should have a unique title for each page on your site, as pages with identical titles tend to be treated as “duplicates” by Google. The best practices for page title tags are common sense: choose a title that communicates the content of the page and avoid using titles like “untitled” or titles that have nothing to do with the content. If the title is too long (usually more than 60 characters), is that Google will only show a snippet in the search results.

3. Meta Description:
Many search engines use the description tag at any time, but it is best to set it properly just in case. Meta descriptions should summarize accurately the page’s content, and you should avoid writing descriptions that are unrelated to the content of the page. You should also avoid using descriptions like “this is a webpage”, too short descriptions and keyword-stuffed descriptions. Copying the entire content of the visible text of your page into the description meta tag is a undesired as well: descriptions should usually be less than 160 characters. As with page titles, meta descriptions should be unique for each page of the site too.

4. Meta Keywords:
Many search is now not counted meta keywords, but use less engine search engine keyword tags, meta keywords using the search engine is still worth something to have your site rank. Keep it simple and relevant. 10 - 20 Keywords per page.

5. ALT Tags:
Alt tags are great for adding keywords to images, so take advantage of them. Alt tags in images help the search engine to "see" what the image is about. Alt tags are another place where you should insert your keywords to improve your rankings in SERPs. Even if your text already have keywords you could still improve and reinforce your most important keywords.

6. Links:
Any links you have on your site should have key terms in them. Never use "Click Here" or other unrelated words when creating links. Remember that all of your important pages should be short and static URLs.

7. Header Tags:
Header tag should be considered important. Make headers uniform on your site. H1, h2, and use the h3 title tag to define their key subject categories, and putting your keywords in style at least once a title.

8. Site Content:
The first paragraph of your site is a crucial part of your optimization. This will also be used as your site’s description. Be careful not to overdo it on the keywords. Make sure your content makes sense. Your keywords should make up a total of 6% to 8% of your page content. An average of three hundred words is a good rule of thumb.

9. Valid HTML:
Use the W3C HTML validator on your page's HTML is valid. A web page for more HTML errors will create not rank well in SERPS.

10. Robot. Txt:
The robots.txt file is a set of instructions for visiting robots (spiders) that index the content of your web site pages. For those spiders that obey the file, it provides a map for what they can, and cannot index. The file must reside in the root directory of your web. The URL path (web address) of your robots.txt file should look like this... /robots.txt

11. Sitemap:
Site maps are at the heart of Search Engine Friendly Design. They make it very quick and easy for the search engines to find and index every page on your web site by putting links to every page in one spot.

In Summary, Good on-page SEO is a big help in the crucial days before the launch of a website.

White & Black Hat Search Engine Optimization

2010-03-09T22:00:00.000-08:00

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO methods are the approved, natural ways of building traffic to your website which are well document in The Google Webmaster Guidelines. These techniques often make for a pleasant user experience, and more importantly, they follow the rules and regulation of search engines.

For example, a Web site that is SEO optimized, yet focuses on relevancy and organic ranking is considered to be optimized using White Hat SEO practices. Some examples of White Hat SEO techniques include using keywords and keyword analysis, backlinking, link building to improve link popularity, and writing content for human readers White Hat SEO is more frequently used by those who intend to make a long-term investment on their Web site.

Black Hat SEO

In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, Black Hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines rules.

Some examples of Black Hat SEO techniques include keyword stuffing, invisible text and doorway pages. Black Hat SEO is more frequently used by those who are looking for a quick financial return on their Web site, rather than a long-term investment on their Web site. Black Hat SEO can possibly result in your Web site being banned from a search engine, however since the focus is usually on quick high return business models, most experts who use Black Hat SEO tactics consider being banned from search engines a somewhat irrelevant risk. Black Hat SEO may also be referred to as Unethical SEO or just spamdexing, as spamdexing is a typical frequently used Black Hat SEO practice.

The major difference between black and white hat techniques:

	Black Hat	White Hat

Content and Links	Search Engines	Humans

Visibility to Humans	Hidden	Visible

Quality of Work	Hidden	Visible

Search Engines	Enemies	Nothing / Friends

Domains/Brands	Disposable	Cherished, Primary Domain

Site & Relevance	Apparently Improved	Actually Improved

Results	Yes, "Short" Term	Yes, "Long" Term

Ethical Techniques	No	Yes

Legal	No?	Yes?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Major Search Engines Guide

2010-02-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

In the search engine list below, We provides a guide to the major search engines of the web. Why are these considered to be "major" search engines? Because they are either well-known or well-used.

Google

Google search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. and is the most-used search engine on the Web. Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services. Google search was originally developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997.

Google Search provides more than 22 special features beyond the original word-search capability. These include synonyms, weather forecasts, time zones, stock quotes, maps, earthquake data, movie showtimes, airports, home listings, and sports scores.

Google provides the option to find more than web pages, however. Using on the top of the search box on the Google home page, you can easily seek out images from across the web, discussions that are taking place on Usenet newsgroups, locate news information or perform product searching.

A Google search-results page is ordered by a priority rank called a "PageRank" which is kept secret to prevent spammers from forcing their pages to the top. Google Search provides many options for customized search (see below: Search options), such as: exclusion ("-xx"), inclusion ("+xx"), alternatives ("xx OR yy"), and wildcard ("x * x").

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Search is a web search engine, owned by Yahoo! Inc. and was as of December 2009, the 2nd largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 6.29%, after its competitor Google at 85.35% and before Bing at 3.27%, according to Net Applications.

In addition to excellent search results, you can use tabs above the search box on the Yahoo home page to seek images, Yellow Page listings or use Yahoo's excellent shopping search engine. Or visit the Yahoo Search home page, where even more specialized search options are offered.

Yahoo! Search, originally referred to as Yahoo! provided Search interface, would send queries to a searchable index of pages supplemented with its directory of sites. The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and storage/retrieval of data was done by Yahoo! itself. In 2001 the searchable index was powered by Inktomi and later was powered by Google until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. Yahoo! Search major competitors are: Google Search, Bing and Ask Search.

Like Google, Yahoo sells paid placement advertising links that appear on its own site and which are distributed to others. Yahoo purchased Overture in October 2003.

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.

Bing

Bing (formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is the current web search engine (advertised as a "decision engine") from Microsoft. It went fully online on June 3, 2009, with a preview version released on June 1, 2009.

Notable changes include the listing of search suggestions as queries are entered and a list of related searches (called "Explorer pane") based on semantic technology from Powerset that Microsoft purchased in 2008. As of January 2010[update] Bing is the third largest search engine on the web by query volume, at 3.16%, after its competitor Google at 85.35% and Yahoo at 6.15%, according to Net Applications.

Ask

Ask.com (or Ask Jeeves in the United Kingdom) is a search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original search engine software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine.

Ask Jeeves initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as being the "natural language" search engine that let you search by asking questions and responded with what seemed to be the right answer to everything. In 2001, Ask acquired Teoma's unique index and search relevancy technology. Teoma was based upon the clustering concept of subject-specific popularity.

Today, Ask depends on crawler-based technology to provide results to its users. These results come from the Teoma algorithm, now known as ExpertRank.

AOL Search

AOL Inc., formerly known as America Online is an American global Internet services and media company. AOL is best known for its online software suite, also called AOL, that allowed millions of customers around the world to access the world's largest "walled garden" online community and eventually reach out to the internet as a whole.

AOL Search provides users with editorial listings that come Google's crawler-based index. Indeed, the same search on Google and AOL Search will come up with very similar matches.The "internal" version of AOL Search provides links to content only available within the AOL online service. In this way, you can search AOL and the entire web at the same time. The "external" version lacks these links. Why wouldn't you use AOL Search? If you like Google, many of Google's features such as "cached" pages are not offered by AOL Search.

HotBot

HotBot is one of the early Internet search engines and was launched in May 1996 as a service of Wired Magazine. It was launched using a "new links" strategy of marketing, claiming to update its search database more often than its competitors. It also offered free webpage hosting, but only for a short time, and it was taken down without any notice to its users. It was one of the first search engines to offer the ability to search within search results.

HotBot provides easy access to the web's three major crawler-based search engines: Yahoo, Google and Teoma. Unlike a meta search engine, it cannot blend the results from all of these crawlers together. Nevertheless, it's a fast, easy way to get different web search "opinions" in one place.

AllTheWeb

AlltheWeb is an Internet search engine (Powered by Yahoo) that made its debut in mid-1999. You may find AllTheWeb a lighter, more customizable and pleasant "pure search" experience than you get at Yahoo itself. The focus is on web search, but news, picture, video, MP3 and FTP search are also offered.

AlltheWeb had a few advantages over Google, such as a fresher database, more advanced search features, search clustering and a completely customizable look.

A Helpful Guide - How Search Engines Work

2010-02-19T00:06:00.000-08:00

You know how important it is to score high in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Page). But your site isn't featuring on the first three pages, and you don't understand why? It could be that you're confusing the web crawlers trying to index it. How can you find out?

In order to achieve a useful level of website optimization, it is essential to understand how search engines operate and how they arrive at their results.

Search engines work in a number of different ways that directly relate to search engine optimization:

1. Crawling the Web

Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders" or "crawlers" that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Spiders only can follow links from one page to another and from one site to another. That is the primary reason why links to your site (inbound links) are so important. Links to your website from other websites will give the search engine spiders more "food" to chew on.

Spiders find Web pages by following links from other Web pages, but you can also submit your Web pages directly to a search engine or directory and request a visit by their spider. It can be useful to submit your URL straight to the various search engines; but spider-based engines will usually pick up your site regardless of whether or not you've submitted it to a search engine.

2. Indexing Documents

Once pages & Web addresses have been crawled or collected, sent to the search engine's indexing software. The indexing software extracts information from the documents, storing it in database. The kind of information indexed depends on particular search engine. Some index every word in a document; others index the document title only.

3. Processing Queries

When you perform a search by entering keywords, Search engines match queries against an index that they create and assembles a web page that lists the results as hypertext links. The index consists of the words in each document, plus pointers to their locations within the documents. This is called an inverted file.

4. Ranking Results

Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Certain types of navigation may hinder or entirely prevent search engines from reaching your website's content:

Speed Bumps & Walls

Complex links and deep site structures with little unique content may serve as "bumps". Data that cannot be accessed by spiderable links qualify as "walls".

Possible "Speed Bumps" for SE Spiders:

* URLs with 2+ dynamic parameters; i.e. http://www.url.com/page.php?id=4&CK=34rr&User=%Tom% (spiders may be reluctant to crawl complex URLs like this because they often result in errors with non-human visitors).

* Pages with more than 100 unique links to other pages on the site (spiders may not follow each one).

* Pages buried more than 3 clicks/links from the home page of a website (unless there are many other external links pointing to the site, spiders will often ignore deep pages).

* Pages requiring a "Session ID" or Cookie to enable navigation (spiders may not be able to retain these elements as a browser user can).

* Pages that are split into "frames" can hinder crawling and cause confusion about which pages to rank in the results.

Possible "Walls" for SE Spiders:

* Pages accessible only via a select form and submit button.

* Pages requiring a drop down menu (HTML attribute) to access them.

* Documents accessible only via a search box.

* Documents blocked purposefully (via a robots meta tag or robots.txt file - see more on these here).

* Pages requiring a login.

* Pages that re-direct before showing content (search engines call this cloaking or bait-and-switch and may actually ban sites that use this tactic.

The key to ensuring that a site's contents are fully crawlable is to provide direct, HTML links to to each page you want the search engine spiders to index. Remember that if a page cannot be accessed from the home page (where most spiders are likely to start their crawl) it is likely that it will not be indexed by the search engines. A sitemap can be of tremendous help for this purpose.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO Basics for Beginners

2010-02-18T01:30:00.000-08:00

SEO Basics are the simplest and most common principles of Search Engine Optimization. In this article find out how to do basic SEO, code search engine friendly pages and how to do a basic promotion of your site.

What is SEO & why it is important?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art and science of publishing and marketing information that ranks well for valuable keywords in search engines like Google, Yahoo! Search, and Microsoft Live Search.

SEO, or search engine optimization is important for any website. Essentially, SEO helps to make sure that your website will be found on the Internet. The most important reason for doing SEO for your website is to reach your target audience. Having a beautiful glossy website is of no use if nobody is visiting it. SEO increases the number of visitors to your website which in turn brings profit to your business.

Search engine optimization consists of the following main steps:

Choosing the Right Keywords

Choosing the right keywords and phrases for your website is an important part of the process of search engine optimization and making your site more visible to search engines and searchers alike. You may think you know what your ideal customer is typing into Google to find your company, but how do you know for sure? Even the slightest variation - such as making a word plural - can cause dramatic differences in search results. The best way select a right keyword is to imagine what 'exact' phrase the author/webmaster might have used to describe your required information.

We need to be more specific, which means:

   1. Targeting a more suitable market that is looking for a content editing solution
   2. Competing with fewer websites targeting the same keywords
   3. Optimizing for keywords that people actually use when performing searches

Targeting a suitable market will depend on your website, as well as the products and services you offer. Try to be specific with your keywords, and remember that people no longer use single keyword search phrases - the average search phrase contains 3-5 related words.

Google AdWords: Keyword Tool & Overture search suggestion tool are great tools that help you choose relevant and popular terms related to your selected key-term.

Your URL and Title Tag

The most important factors in search engines ranking are your domain name and title tag. For example, a domain name such as: www.web-development-india.com will generally get ranked higher than www.companyname.com, assuming that they had identical keywords and page content.

Your title tag is equally as important as your domain name. Using keywords in your title tag can improve your Google ranking significantly. Trying to achieve a balance of professionalism with keyword density in the title tag however is sometimes a little more difficult.

Keywords in title tag shows search results as your page title, so this is one of the most important things and it shouldn’t be long 5-6 words max, and use keyword at the beginning.

Heading Tags and Keyword Density

Header tags are used in millions of websites across the internet, and have become a standard for good design. Header tags are an alternative method to highlighting key pieces of information throughout a webpage. Header tags come in a variety of sizes from a H1 to a H6, which reflect the sizes of the header tags.

These tags should contain your specific keywords along with any other descriptive text relevant to the content of the page. Search engines regard Head tags as valuable pointers to what a web page is all about. The Google ranking algorithm dictates that if you're using a tag, then the text in between this tag must be more important than the content on the rest of the page. So try to include your most important keyword phrases in heading tags on your page if you can.

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. Sprinkling keywords throughout your page content can also improve your sites keyword density. Keyword density simply means the ratio of optimized keywords to the rest of the content on your page. It is usually expressed as a percentage, and should be between 7% and 10% for each page on your site.

Unique Content

Writing search engine friendly content helps your potential customers find you through a search engine. Most search engines use software “spiders” to comb the Web for the most relevant sites, and one way they determine a site’s value is by its written content. The spiders are searching the content for keywords or the words that people type in to the search engines that relate to a particular topic. The good news is that spiders, like your site visitors, are attracted to short, easy-to-understand text that is relevant to what you are selling.

Website Links

Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

Having links from similar sites is very, very useful. It indicates that the competition is voting for you and you are popular within your topical community.