Seo Tips, Updates & Information Portal Blog

Daydreaming About Paid Search: How About Airtight Ad Groups?

2010-07-28T05:48:00.000-07:00

My best daydreams come on summer afternoons when the sky is full of big fluffy clouds in a deep blue sky, and there is a refreshing summer breeze to keep me cool. Next week, I plan to enjoy plenty of that when we take our family vacation at Twin Lake Villa, an idyllic, and..............Read full article

The Anatomy Of A Great Social Media Landing Page

2010-07-28T05:47:00.000-07:00

Unlike its counterpart, the social media landing page isn’t focused getting on one action from a visitor; it has to manage four different kinds of conversion. Do your social landing pages manage all four?

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Couponing Websites For Competitive Branding Campaigns

2010-07-28T05:46:00.000-07:00

Have you ever tried to use a PPC campaign to steal customers from your competitors and failed? If so, consider trying a campaign on Google’s display network in conjunction with your search campaign. It might just deliver the results you’re looking

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Yahoo Japan Switches To Google, Microsoft Calls It ‘Anti-Competitive’

2010-07-28T05:45:00.001-07:00

AllThingsD reported that the Softbank majority owned Yahoo Japan has decided to replace Yahoo Search (soon Yahoo-Bing) with Google. Yahoo owns a minority stake in Yahoo Japan and so can’t control or block the decision. According to a statement released by Yahoo it will “support” the deal as it is contractually bound to do: Yahoo! Japan announced

The Google Sewage Factory, In Action: The Chocomize Story

2010-07-28T05:44:00.001-07:00

Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt has quite famously been on record many times talking about how the web is full of garbage. It’s a cesspool out there, he’s said. Today, a short fast look at how his own company pollutes the web. Right now, one of the “trending topics” on Google is the word “chocomize,” as you

Goodbye Yellow Google AdWords Background & Hello Purple Backgrounds

2010-07-28T05:43:00.000-07:00

Google has begun rolling out a new background color for the AdWords listings on Google’s search results. The new color is a pale purple, as opposed to the current pale yellow. Google has been testing the pale purple since May of this year and last week we have seen it ramp up in....

SEO Professionals - Professional SEO Delhi India

2009-12-10T01:10:00.000-08:00

What is SEO Professional
Professional SEO can help your new site get ranked quickly. If you have an existing site, using a professional SEO service can help you increase your rankings in Google and the rest of the search engines. Through proper SEO, you can get more targeted visitors to your website, and eventually, more leads and more customers. A well SEO optimized website can definitely be a great asset and boost to your bottom line.

Hire SEO Professional Services
It is very important for a website owner to choose the right SEO professional to work with. Since SEO is a relatively new field in online marketing, it can be really difficult to tell which company is known to be the best in the field and with the various SEO companies around, one must be careful because working with the wrong one can mean disaster for your marketing campaign.

You have to closely consider some things before hire an SEO professional so that you get the services that you want. Firstly, you have to take a close look at the SEO professional’s website. Do a thorough review and analysis of the website with regards to content, SEO methodology, and design, and if you feel that they have done a good job, then it is likely that they are really experts in their field. Check for their search engine rankings and ask for the keywords they use to have their site ranked. If they have made their own website successful, it is just so that they will make yours as successful as theirs.

More importantly, you can check out the track record of the SEO professional by getting reviews and feedback from clients of the particular professional. Make sure you ask them regarding the SEO satisfaction they got when they worked with that particular professional and how long they have worked with him.

If you are somewhat convinced of the ability of the SEO professional to work on your campaign, you can ask him to submit an SEO proposal. Check in detail what the proposal contains and the strategies they use to gain a higher search engine ranking. Make sure that the strategies are indeed legitimate and will not violate any search engine regulations.

Another tip to choose the right SEO professional is to ask a guarantee of rankings from major search engines and they guarantee that you will get the number 1 spot in Google and Yahoo, it is time for you to move on to the next one. Why? Because it is a fact that no one can guarantee rankings since search engine algorithms change from time to time.

Lastly, a good SEO professional will provide you with reports from time to time regarding how your online marketing campaign is going so that you are updated with how things are.

These are the basic steps for Hire the right SEO professional. Hopefully, when you follow these steps, it will lead you to the right person who will bring better business to your website.

Our SEO Services

If you have Question related to SEO services u can also contact our SEO Guru, we have 10 year of Experience in same field and we have strong knowledge of latest Google Algorithm.

contact me

2009-12-09T02:40:00.001-08:00

Sunil Gupta
SEO Executive at LeXolution IT Services Pvt. Ltd.
Delhi India

affordable seo service

On Page Optimization Guide Techniques Factors Tips Tricks

2009-12-05T04:56:00.000-08:00

On Page Optimization

If you're in SEO, you probably hear this question a lot. Sadly, there's no cut and dry answer, but there are sets of best practices we can draw from and sharpen to help get close. In this blog post, I'm going to share our top recommendations for achieving on-page, keyword-targeting "perfection," or, at least, close to it. Some of these are backed by data points, correlation studies and extensive testing while others are simply gut-feelings based on experience. As with all things SEO, we recommend constant testing and refinement, though this knowledge can help you kick-start the process.

HTML Head Tags

Title - the most important of on-page keyword elements, the page title should preferably employ the keyword term/phrase as the first word(s). In our correlation data studies, the following graph emerged:

Clearly, using the keyword term/phrase as the very first words in the page title has the highest correlation with high rankings, and subsequent positions correlate nearly flawlessly to lower rankings.

Meta Description - although not used for "rankings" by any of the major engines, the meta description is an important place to use the target term/phrase due to the "bolding" that occurs in the visual snippet of the search results. Usage has also been shown to help boost click-through rate, thus increasing the traffic derived from any ranking position.

Meta Keywords - Yahoo! is unique among the search engines in recording and utilizing the meta keyword tag for discovery, though not technically for rankings. However, with Microsoft's Bing set to take over Yahoo! Search, the last remaining reason to employ the tag is now gone. That, combined with the danger of using keywords there for competitive research means that at SEOmoz, we never recommend employing the tag.

Meta Robots - although not necessary, this tag should be sure NOT to contain any directives that could potentially disallow access by the engines.

Rel="Canonical" - the larger and more complex a site (and the larger/more complex the organization working on it), the more we advise employing the canonical URL tag to prevent any potential duplicates or unintentional, appended URL strings from creating a problem for the engines and splitting up potential link juice.

Other Meta Tags - meta tags like those offered by the DCMI or FGDC seem compelling, but currently provide no benefit for SEO with the major engines and thus, add unnecessary complexity and download time.

URL for On Page Optimization

Length - Shorter URLs appear to perform better in the search results and are more likely to be copied/pasted by other sites, shared and linked-to.

Keyword Location - The closer the targeted keyword(s) are to the domain name, the better. Thus, site.com/keyword outperforms site.com/folder/subfolder/keyword and is the most recommended method of optimization (though this is certainly not a massive rankings benefit)

Subdomains vs. Pages - As we've talked about previously on the blog, despite the slight URL benefit that subdomains keyword usage has over subfolders or pages, the engines' link popularity assignment algorithms tilt the balance in favor of subfolders/pages rather than subdomains.

Word Separators - Hyphens are still the king of keyword separators in URLs, and despite promises that underscores will be given equal credit, the inconsistency with other methods make the hyphen a clear choice.

Body Tags for On page Optimization

Number of Keyword Repetitions - It's impossible to pinpoint the exact, optimal number of times to employ a keyword term/phrase on the page, but this simple rule has served us well for a long time - "2-3X on short pages, 4-6X on longer ones and never more than makes sense in the context of the copy." The added benefit of another instance of a term is so miniscule that it seems unwise to ever be aggressive with this metric.

Keyword Density - A complete myth as an algorithmic component, keyword density nonetheless pervades even very sharp SEO minds. While it's true that more usage of a keyword term/phrase can potentially improve targeting/ranking, there's no doubt that keyword density has never been the formula by which this relevance was measured.

Keyword Usage Variations - Long suspected to influence search engine rankings (though never studied in a depth of detail that's convincing to me), the theory that varied keyword usage throughout a page can help with content optimization and optimization nevertheless is worth a small amount of effort. We recommend employing at least one or two variations of a term and potentially splitting up keyword phrases and using them in body copy as well or instead.

H1 Headline - The H1 tag has long been thought to have great importance in on-page optimization. Recent correlation data from our studies, however, has shown that it has a very low correlation with high rankings (close to zero, in fact). While this is compelling evidence, correlation is not causation and for semantic and SEO reasons, we still advise proper use of the H1 tag as the headline of the page and, preferrably, employment of the targeted keyword term/phrase.

H2/H3/H4/Hx - Even lower in importance than the H1, our recommendation is to apply only if required. These tags appears to carry little to no SEO value.

Alt Attribute - Surprisingly, the alt attribute, long thought to carry little SEO weight, was shown to have quite a robust correlation with high rankings in our studies. Thus, we strongly advise the use of a graphic image/photo/illustration on important keyword-targeted pages with the term/phrase employed in the alt attribute of the img tag.

Image Filename - Since image traffic can be a substantive source of visits and image filenames appear to be valuable for this as well as natural web search, we suggest using the keyword term/phrase as the name of the image file employed on the page.

Bold/Strong - Using a keyword in bold/strong appears to carry a very, very tiny amount of SEO weight, and thus it's suggested as a best practice to use the targeted term/phrase at least once in bold, though a very minor one.

Italtic/Emphasized - Surprisingly, italic/emphasized text appears to have a similar to slightly higher correlation with high rankings than bold/strong and thus, we suggest its use on the targeted keyword term/phrase in the text.

Internal Link Anchors - No testing has yet found that internal anchors are picked up/counted by the engines.

HTML Comments - As above, it appears the engines ignore text in comments.

Internal Links & Location in Site Architecture
Click-Depth - Our general recommendation is that the more competitive and challenging a keyword term/phrase is to rank for, the higher it should be in a site's internal architecture (and thus, the fewer clicks from the home page it should take to reach that URL).

Number/Percentage of Internal Links - More linked-to pages tend to higher rankings and thus, for competitive terms, it may help to link to these pages from a greater number/percentage of pages on a site.

Links in Content vs. Permanent Navigation - It appears that Google and the other engines are doing more to recognize location on the page as an element of link consideration. Thus, employing links to pages in the Wikipedia-style (in the body content of a piece) rather than in permanent navigation may potentially provide some benefit. Don't forget, however, that Google only counts the first link to a page that they see in the HTML

Link Location in Sidebars & Footers - Recent patent applications, search papers and experience from inside SEOmoz and many practitioners externally suggests that Google may be strongly discounting links placed in the footer, and, to a lesser degree, in the sidebar(s) of pages. Thus, if you're employing a link in permanent navigation, it may pay to use the top navigation (above the content) for SEO purposes.

Page Architecture
Keyword Location - We advise that important keywords should, preferably, be featured in the first few words (50-100, but hopefully even sooner) of a page's text content. The engines do appear to have some preference for pages that employ keywords sooner, rather than later, in the text.

Content Structure - Some practitioners swear by the use of particular content formats (introduction, body, examples, conclusion OR the journalistic style of narrative, data, conclusion, parable) for SEO, but we haven't seen any formal data suggesting these are valuable for higher rankings and thus feel that whatever works best for the content and the visitors is likely ideal.

Why Don't We Always Obey These Rules?
That answer is relatively easy. The truth is that in the process of producing great web content, we sometimes forget, sometimes ignore and sometimes intentionally disobey the best practices laid out above. On-page optimization, while certainly important, is only one piece of a larger rankings puzzle:

(FYI - The new ranking factors survey data is set to release very, very soon)

It most certainly pays to get the on-page, keyword-targeting pieces right, but on-page SEO, in my opinion, follows the 80/20 rule very closely. If you get the top 20% of the most important pieces (titles, URLs, internal links) from the list above right, you'll get 80% (maybe more) of the value possible in the on-page equation.

Best Practices for Ranking #1

Curiously, though perhaps not entirely surprisingly to experienced SEOs, the truth is that on-page optimization doesn't necessarily rank first in the quest for top rankings. In fact, a list that walks through the process of actually getting that first position would look something more like:

1. Accessibility - content engines can't see or access cannot even be indexed; thus crawl-ability is foremost on this list.

2. Content - you need to have compelling, high quality material that not only attracts interest, but compels visitors to share the information. Virality of content is possibly the most important/valuable factor in the ranking equation because it will produce the highest link conversion rate (the ratio of those who visit to those who link after viewing).

3. Basic On-Page Elements - getting the keyword targeting right in the most important elements (titles, URLs, internal links) provides a big boost in the potential ability of a page to perform well.

4. User Experience - the usability, user interface and overall experience provided by a website strongly influences the links and citations it earns as well as the conversion rate and browse rate of the traffic that visits.

5. Marketing - I like to say that "great content is no substitute for great marketing." A terrific marketing machine or powerful campaign has the power to attract far more links than content may "deserve," and though this might seem unfair, it's a principle on which all of capitalism has functioned for the last few hundred years. Spreading the word is often just as important (or more so) than being right, being honest or being valuable (just look at the political spectrum).

6. Advanced/Thorough On-Page Optimization - applying all of the above with careful attention to detail certainly isn't useless, but it is, for better or worse, at the bottom of this list for a reason; in our experience, it doesn't add as much value as the other techniques described.

Author

Google Analytics - SEO Tool

2009-11-02T05:52:00.000-08:00

Introduction

Google Analytics is one of the best tools out there for analyzing traffic on your website. With a little bit of setup, it will give you an enormous amount of information about who is coming to your site, what they're looking for, and how they're getting there. In fact, it has so much information that it can be overwhelming!

Don't let it scare you away. With just a little training, you too will be able to use Google Analytics like a pro.

Step 1: Set Up Your Account
In order to use Google Analytics, you'll need to set up an account with them. This will provide you with a unique identifier to add to your site. You can only access information about your own site; you can't access information for other sites unless the site owner explicitly grants you access. The only people with access to your information will be people you grant access to.

1. Go to Google Analytics.
2. If you do not have a Google account, click Sign Up Now, to the left of the sign-in box. This will take you to a page where you can sign up for a Google account.
3. If you have a Google account, use your email address and password to sign in.
4. Click the Sign Up button to continue.
5. In the next window, provide Google with the URL of the site you wish to analyze.
6. Give the site an account name that is easy to remember. If you will be tracking multiple sites, this is especially important.
7. Select the country your site is based in, or the country it is serving. Then select the appropriate time zone.

*If your site is based in India but all your users are in the U.S., you may want to select a U.S. time zone to figure out when in their day most choose to use your site - or you may want to set it to your city's time zone to see when you need the most workers on staff.
8. Click Continue.
9. In the next window, provide your contact information.
10. Click Continue.
11. In the next window, read the Google Analytics terms of service. If you agree with them, click the Yes box.
12. Click Create New Account.
13. Google will provide you with a block of code. Copy this - you'll need to insert it into your web site.

Step 2: Insert Google Analytics JavaScript Into Your Pages

You must insert the code into every page you want tracked. If you have a technical person who takes care of your pages, have them add the code for you.
Inserting Google Analytics code for most sites

* To insert the Google Analytics code, you need to get into the guts of your page - the HTML.
* If you are using a service like WordPress, you'll need to open the footer.php file to place this code.

1. Find the </body> tag at the very bottom, just above the </html> page.
2. Do you see the code urchinTracker(), utmLinker(), utmSetTrans(), or utmLinkPost() above the </body> tag? If so, you must paste the Google Analytics Javascript above that code. If not, paste it immediately above the </body> tag.
3. If you have templates, insert the code into them as well.
4. Once you have uploaded the pages back to your site, you can begin tracking information!

Step 3: Get an Overview of Your Site Performance

* The moment you set up your account and insert Google's JavaScript into your pages, Google Analytics has great charts that will give you an overview of your site's performance, if you know how to read them.

1. Log in to Google Analytics.
2. In the center of the page is a section titled Website Profiles. Click on the View Reports link to the right of the name of the site you're interested in. This will bring you to the Dashboard.
3. At the top of the page is a chart that gives a visual representation of your site traffic over the past month.
   * This chart will only give you data from the time you inserted the tracking code into your pages.
   * If you want to change the span of time the chart displays, click on the dates in the upper right-hand corner. Click on dates in the calendar that is revealed or manually type in dates to view a different span of time.
   * To compare traffic over two different time periods, select one date range you want to use, click Compare to Past, and select the range you wish to compare it against.
   * Just below the dates is a menu that says Visits. Click on it to change the graph to pageviews (how many times the pages on your site have been viewed), pages per visit (how many pages on your site users visited on average), average time on site (how long each user spent on your site), bounce rate (what percentage of users left after visiting only one page), or percentage of new visits (how many visitors had never been to your site before).
4. Immediately beneath that chart, you'll see a header that says Site Usage, with six small charts underneath. Under Site Usage, you'll find quick information on various site traffic statistics for the time period shown in the main chart. Each one has an individual chart.
#

    * Visits tells you how many visits there were to your page. A visit is defined as a page view when that user has viewed no other page on your site in the past half hour.
    * Pageviews tells how many times the pages on your site have been viewed.
    * Pages/visit tells how many pages, on average, users view when they come to your site.
    * Bounce Rate tells what percentage of users left after viewing only one page on your site.
    * Avg. Time on Site shows how long each user spent on your site.
    * New Visits shows what percentage of your users have not visited your site before.

# The Visitors Overview graph shows how many visitors have come to your site.

    * This number is usually lower than the Visits statistic, sometimes a lot lower, because some visitors may visit your site over and over again.
    * Click on View Report to view more detailed information about your visitors.

# "Map Overlay" displays what countries your visitors are coming from.

    * The darker the green, the more visitors come from that country.
    * Click View Report to get in-depth information on where your visitors come from.

# Traffic Sources Overview shows which percentage of users are getting to your site by typing your URL directly into their browser, and via search engines, referring sites, and other avenues such as emailed links.

    * Click on View Report to get breakdowns of exactly what places your users are coming from, and what keywords they're looking for.

# Content Overview specifies the top five most viewed pages over the time period you're looking at.

    * Click on the name of any page to get extremely detailed information about where the people viewing that page came from, how long they spent on the page, how many of them were new to the page, and a lot more.
    * Click on View Report to get access to information about the performance of all pages on the site.

Step 4: See How Your Site Is Performing Daily and Hourly

    * If you want to find out whether your site has peaks during certain times of day or on certain days of the week, Google Analytics can tell you.

1. In the menu to the left, click on the word Visitors.
2. To the left beneath the main chart, you'll see a number of different statistical breakouts.
3. Click on any of the words to get a bar-chart breakout of the daily performance for that aspect of site traffic measurement.
4. If you want to learn hour-by-hour trends, click on the word Hourly above the bar chart to see an hour by hour graph for the time period at hand.
5. To compare two different time periods, click on the dates above the line graph. Select the first set of dates you want to work with, check the Compare to Past box, click on the second set of dates, and click the Apply Range button.

Step 5: See Where Your Traffic Comes From

    * Are you getting most of your traffic from search engines? Is there a blog that links to your pages and generates a bunch of traffic? Here's how to find out.

1. In the lower right-hand corner of the Dashboard you'll find your site's top 5 most-accessed pages. Click on any of these.
2. Below the chart on the right hand side, you will see a heading labeled Landing Page Optimization. Click on the link beneath it labeled Entrance Sources.
3. Beneath the chart, you'll see a table. This table lists all the places your users came from to visit your site.
   * In the first column to the right of the source name is the number of pageviews your page received from that source.
   * The next column tells how many of those were unique pageviews - someone coming to your page who had not been to that page before in the time frame you're reviewing.
   * Time on Page tells you how much time, on average, users from that particular source spent on the page in question.
   * Bounce Rate shows how many people from that specific source left your site after looking at that page, without viewing another page.
   * % Exit shows how many people from that specific source went to another site from that page. (This number may be lower than the Bounce Rate number; if they close the window or shut down their browser, it is not considered exiting.)
   * When you set up certain financial measurements in the Goals section, Google will crunch the numbers to show you how much return you're getting with the $ Index column.
4. If you want to get information on other pages, under the Content menu on the right, click on the Content by Title menu item. You can now go through all of your content to learn information on every page!
5. Return to the main dashboard by clicking on the word Dashboard in the upper-left corner.

Google webmaster tools - Using

2009-11-02T05:17:00.000-08:00

Web site owners and marketers have always craved more information with regards to how Google sees their site. Google Webmaster Tools address these and other needs as they provide support for those looking to diagnose errors, improve a site’s visibility and declare preferences on how to handle web site listings.

Of course, before you can begin using Webmaster Tools, you will need to have an active Google Account. Once you have an account, you can get started by accessing:
https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/

Verification
Before you can get too far, you need to tell Google what sites you want to have controls over. Just enter the URL as prompted, and you’ll soon see that you need to verify your control of a site. You can choose to upload a blank HTML file, or, paste a META tag in your home page’s HEAD. Either way, it’s a quick way for Google to ensure that you have access to the domains before you can view any information.

The Overview
With your web site verified, you can now access a web site’s profile. To do so, you’ll want to click on the Manage: http://www.yourdomain.com link in the Webmaster Tools Dashboard. You will then be directed to the “Overview” screen. This screen contains high level details of the most important information on your site as well as links to specific Webmaster Tools.

For the sake of clarity, we’ll work with the menu on the left, starting at the top and working our way down…

Diagnostics
The Diagnostic tools are here to tell you about any errors that Google has encountered on its normal or on its mobile crawling sessions. In other words, if GoogleBot came through your site and found some 404 errors, pages that were excluded in a robots.txt, or other faults… this is where you will find out.

The mobile and standard reports provide the same types of information. That is a breakdown of the following errors:

    * HTTP errors
    * Not found
    * URLs not followed
    * URLs restricted by robots.txt
    * URLs timed out
    * Unreachable URLs

Obviously, you’ll want Google to encounter as few errors as possible. Therefore, you should check these reports often to make sure that no problems exist and that all new content is being spidered.

Statistics
The statistical tools are the gold mine for site marketers. Here, you’ll gain access to a number of reports, each of which I’ll highlight below…

Top Search Queries
The top search queries report shows you how people are getting to your site from a Google Search. Once accessed, you’ll see tables that represent which search queries most often returned pages from your site, and which of them were clicked. One cool thing that many overlook here, is that Google will show you where in the SERPs your site was listed for particular search terms. It’s not always exact, but it does tend to accurate within a position or two.

What Googlebot Sees
This is a great way to learn how others link to you and how those links are considered alongside your on page content. Three sections exist on this report… phrases used in external links to your site (anchor text), keywords in your site’s content, and in inbound links, and finally the actual content on your site ordered by density.

Crawl Stats
The crawl stats report is less about actual crawling stats, and more about PageRank values. Google breaks your site down and shows you how your site’s PageRank is distributed on a range of Low, Medium, High – and “not yet assigned”. While this information is helpful, it’s often discouraging as most pages in most sites will always be seen as low on the PageRank scale.

The best part of this one tool is the bottom table that shows what specific page on your site carries the most PageRank. It’s updated monthly, and could be used to measure how successful singular link building campaigns are.

Index Stats
The index stats are nothing more than a shortcut to advanced Google queries on your site using operators. Shortcut links are provided on the following operators…

    * site:
    * link:
    * cache:
    * info:
    * related:

Subscriber Stats
Since much of the world now involved RSS feeds, readers and content syndication – Google makes stats on your feed subscriptions easy to find – assuming of course that you use their feed management systems.

This isn’t a bad tool, but it is new to the Toolbox and could certainly benefit from some updates. If you’re not already using an RSS feed manager though, it’s an excellent option.

Links
Google is all about the links from page to page and domain to domain. The link reports here in Webmaster Tools are limited, but do provide you with ways to measure internal and external link popularity. This becomes handy if you’re trying to force increased exposure on new areas of your site, or, you’re looking for a way to stay on top of your link popularity over time.

Google Sitemaps
Google Sitemaps are what the entire Webmaster Tools were initially built around. Here you can upload and manage XML based sitemap files that catalog all of the pages on your site. Using these XML files, Google can then access all of the pages you’d like for them to.

Sitemaps have been around for a while now and are a much deeper issue that this article can do justice on. If you’re interested in reading more, I’d first refer you back to an article here on Search Engine Journal from July 2005 from Stephen Brennan.
Tools

Last, but certainly not least – is the tools area of Webmaster Tools. Seems redundant, right? Sure it is – but this is where you’ll get the most from Webmaster Tools, so stay tuned!

Analyze robots.txt
If you don’t already know about robots.txt, it’s basically a protocol for Googlebot and other spiders to immediately find instructions on what they can and cannot have access to on your site. If you don’t want spiders indexing your images, just disallow them. If you’d prefer not to have certain areas of your site indexed and available for the searching public – go ahead and restrict access.

Here though, you can check to make sure your robots.txt file is not only up to date, but also valid in terms of how it is written. Many times, a simple change on a robots.txt file will force Google and other engines to drop dozens or even hundreds of pages at a time. With that in mind, use this tool whenever you make changes to your robots.txt files!

Manage site verification
Remember the first step involving the META tags or blank HTML files? Well, here you can go back and alter how your site is verified – and even protect your site. Say for example your SEO provider enrolls you in Webmaster Tools, and then you pull the plug on their services. If not for this area of Webmaster Tools, your information would remain available to them forever.

Instead, Google’s actually watching your back and reporting if others aside from yourself have access.

Set crawl rate
This area of is very informative, as it provides an overview of Googlebot’s activity on your site. Many people view this area and figure it’s useless (unless the rare option to adjust crawling speed is enabled).

I’d like to offer up some tips though to make better use of the activity graphs.

First, let’s realize that you’ll be limited to a 90 day span. Second, think back to when you’ve recently launched new content, began new link campaigns or began hosting some rich media like videos and streaming audio.

All of these events may lead to spikes in the graphs. It’s these spikes that I really want you to review actively. For example, if you’re using new resources for backlinks, you can measure how responsive Google is by seeing how those spikes correspond to your efforts. The same holds true if you’re making any efforts at all to improve link popularity of any kind.

The end goal though with these, is to get Google coming in more often, requesting more pages and interacting more with you. That will allow you to get new content indexed and ranked more quickly in the future.

Set preferred domain
Tired of seeing www.domain.com and domain.com in your search results? Or, maybe you have become worried about canonical URLs and how they may be impacted your optimization and links? Well, the set preferred domain tool is one way to help police things a bit.

Using this tool you can instruct Google to display URLs according to your preference. Now you can have all listings appear as being on www.domain.com.

Of course, if you’re not worried about this – you can also opt to have no associations set at all.

Enable enhanced image search
If you love to appear in the Google Image search results, you might be able to have some fun with this tool. It’s important to note though, that many have had a poor experience, ultimately losing out on a lot of traffic.

The core of the issue is this. Enhanced image search allows you greater control for labeling images that reside on your domain. While that sounds fun and exciting, Google’s trying to make a game of it. Literally.

Altering labels on images means that you are also using Google Image Labeler (http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/). Image Labeler is a way to help improve image relevancy, but users are encouraged to use the labeler by earning points.

What can you do with the points? Nothing yet. Maybe there’s a perk associated with it down the line, but for now – my advice would be to stay away form enhanced image search until some more information is available.

Remove URLs
For some reason I love any tools that allow me to tell Google what to do. This automated tool is available to help resolve issues on pages that no longer exist or create problems for you by being in the Google index.

A great example is how people leave their servers wide open for Googlebot to explore. Common mistakes include having your web analytics indexed (folks with Webalizer, AWStats, etc. are commonly guilty vulnerable). Using this tool, you can go in, remove them from the index – and then go back and make the necessary edits on your robots.txt files.

In short, it’s a great way to expedite the removal of information that simply has to go.

Conclusion
While the above serves as a guide to each tool in the entire Webmaster Tools line, there are certainly ways to make the most of your experience with Google.

First, make note of all the information Google will allow you to download. Then, make sure you put it in your schedule to download all information on at least a 60 day cycle. Since Google is providing information on 90 days at a time, you’ll want to have historical reports to overlap and analyze.

As you use these tools more, you’ll find a number of new ways to review the data. I’ve spent days reviewing all of the inbound links to some of my domains, and suggest you take a few hours to do the same. You’ll learn a lot more about your site than you thought was available – and in the end – information is the power you need to be successful.

Alt Tag - Image Optimization

2009-11-02T05:06:00.000-08:00

Google's implementation of Universal Search has changed the whole search landscape and settled the often debated SEO issue of whether the use of ALT
text and keywords in image file names have any effect on rankings. In two words- they do.

1. Context is extremely important. Images can rank based on what surroundsthem on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc. on the page.
Image-only sites generally only work well if it is an extremely well-known brand or product. Otherwise, you need keyword rich text.

2. URL content text is important, too. The text of your URL is looked at as partof the context surrounding the image. The domain name, directory name and
filename of the image (name it with keywords) are taken into consideration as faras relevance.

3. Use captions if possible. Take a tip from newspaper photos and placekeyword rich captions with your images. Make the text good, quality content, not
keyword spam.

4. Proper image type is crucial. Make absolutely sure your photographs are.jpg and not .gif. The .jpg format is standard for photographs whereas the .gif
format is normally used for graphic images.

5. Images can effect reputation management. Non-flattering images can reallyhurt you. Optimizing your images can help push any images you would rather the
public not see off the results pages.

6. Create a sitemap feed of images. As with web pages, the search enginescan follow a sitemap that you create of images that you want spidered.

7. Use descriptive ALT text. Search optimizers used to debate over whetherALT text had any influence on rankings. That debate is over. Optimize your
images using descriptive keyword-rich ALT text. Don't stuff the ALT attribute.Make it short and to the point. The keyword rich ALT text for your images could
be the tie-breaker over who gets the top spot, so always use it.

8. Use the word "picture" or "photo" in your ALT text. Some searchers do usethose words when they search for images.

9. Label images with your brand or URL. This will capture some home pagetraffic for you. Watermark the images or just add your URL somewhere.

10. Use high quality images. Unique images with good contrast tend to be thebest.

11. Add photos to Google Maps. Fluff up your Google Maps listing with photosand images. These can influence visitors who find you through local search, etc.

12. Post images to Flickr. Open a Flickr account and put unique photos in youraccount. Basically, each photo you put up is its own web page with a title,
description and tags. You can include a link back to your site and share thephotos with other Flickr users and social sites.

Content - SEO Friendly Content

2009-11-02T05:01:00.000-08:00

Search engines obviously place a lot emphasis on a site’s content when assessing its relevance to a particular topic. There are many ways that they evaluate the content. Many years ago, search engines figured if a word was mentioned a lot on a page or site, then that site must be relevant to that topic. However, it became far too common for people to stuff a site full of keywords; many times the wording was unnatural, and people hid text by making it color of the background, etc. Search engines realized that this did not help provide their users with truly relevant results and have since lessened the emphasis they place on keyword density. While it is important to use a target keyword on a page or site, the search engines are aiming for relevance, and density isn’t the only measure. Therefore, it is very important to use target keyword(s) found in the target audience’s natural vocabulary.

When looking at content, a small way that search engines determine the importance of a word is its characteristics on the web page. Is it linked to another page? Is it in bold? These are hints that search engines can use since it makes sense that a word that is somehow made to stand out has some importance.

A common content issue for websites is duplicate content (both on the same site and amongst many websites). There are many reasons why content may be duplicated throughout a site (like browser and printer friendly versions of the same page). Search engines feel it is important to direct their users to the most relevant and original version of the content. Further, it can confuse the engines when identical content appears on a site in more than one place. There are a few ways to deal with this situation. One is redirecting from one version of the page to the main version of the page using what site administrators refer to as a 301 redirect. The other is to use the robots.txt file, a simple text file housed in the root directory of a website’s file structure that instructs web spiders to ignore a particular web page.

It is also important to note that search engine spiders cannot read all types of content. They cannot read the text within Flash; they cannot interpret the words in an audio file; and they are unable to determine the words used within a video. However, site designers can use tags (such as <ALT> tags with images) to help the web spiders know what a piece of media is about. The Flash, audio, or video can also be surrounded by regular HTML text content that is descriptive of the content. Using <ALT> tags is only really crucial when the majority of a website’s content is unreadable to web spiders.

Create Robots.txt File - Robots Text File

2009-11-02T04:51:00.000-08:00

Creating a robots.txt file will not improve your search engine positioning, but it does provide robots with information concerning which files you will not allow to be crawled and indexed in the search engines.

When a robot crawls your site it looks for the robots.txt file. If it doesn't find one it assumes automatically that it may crawl and index the entire site. Not having a robots.txt file can also create unnecessary 404 errors in your server logs, making it more difficult to track "real" 404 errors.

What is a simple robots.txt file?

Please note: This will allow all robots to crawl and index all files.

This allows all robots to crawl all files.

User-agent: *
Disallow:

What if I don't want a particular file crawled?
Please note: Disallowing a specific file to be crawled will keep it from being indexed. The file disallowed will not show up in the search engines. HOWEVER, this is only effective for friendly robots. Robots can choose to ignore your instructions.

This allows all robots to crawl all files except the images file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/

This allows all robots to crawl all files except the images file and the stats file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /images/
Disallow: /stats/

What if I want to disallow a particular robot?
Occasionally you may find that you would like to disallow specific robots from crawling your site or limit which files they may have access to.

This denies access to Googlebot-image to any files in your domain

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

This specifically denies Googlebot-image to your images file

User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /images/

Importance of Sitemaps - Creat Site map - Google site map

2009-11-02T04:46:00.000-08:00

Importance of Sitemaps

There are many SEO tips and tricks that help in optimizing a site but one of those, the importance of which is sometimes underestimated is sitemaps. Sitemaps, as the name implies, are just a map of your site - i.e. on one single page you show the structure of your site, its sections, the links between them, etc. Sitemaps make navigating your site easier and having an updated sitemap on your site is good both for your users and for search engines. Sitemaps are an important way of communication with search engines. While in robots.txt you tell search engines which parts of your site to exclude from indexing, in your site map you tell search engines where you'd like them to go.

Sitemaps are not a novelty. They have always been part of best Web design practices but with the adoption of sitemaps by search engines, now they become even more important. However, it is necessary to make a clarification that if you are interested in sitemaps mainly from a SEO point of view, you can't go on with the conventional sitemap only (though currently Yahoo! and MSN still keep to the standard html format). For instance, Google Sitemaps uses a special (XML) format that is different from the ordinary html sitemap for human visitors.

One might ask why two sitemaps are necessary. The answer is obvious - one is for humans, the other is for spiders (for now mainly Googlebot but it is reasonable to expect that other crawlers will join the club shortly). In that relation it is necessary to clarify that having two sitemaps is not regarded as duplicate content. In 'Introduction to Sitemaps', Google explicitly states that using a sitemap will never lead to penalty for your site.
Why Use a Sitemap

Using sitemaps has many benefits, not only easier navigation and better visibility by search engines. Sitemaps offer the opportunity to inform search engines immediately about any changes on your site. Of course, you cannot expect that search engines will rush right away to index your changed pages but certainly the changes will be indexed faster, compared to when you don't have a sitemap.

Also, when you have a sitemap and submit it to the search engines, you rely less on external links that will bring search engines to your site. Sitemaps can even help with messy internal links - for instance if you by accident have broken internal links or orphaned pages that cannot be reached in other way (though there is no doubt that it is much better to fix your errors than rely on a sitemap).

If your site is new, or if you have a significant number of new (or recently updated pages), then using a sitemap can be vital to your success. Although you can still go without a sitemap, it is likely that soon sitemaps will become the standard way of submitting a site to search engines. Though it is certain that spiders will continue to index the Web and sitemaps will not make the standard crawling procedures obsolete, it is logical to say that the importance of sitemaps will continue to increase.

Sitemaps also help in classifying your site content, though search engines are by no means obliged to classify a page as belonging to a particular category or as matching a particular keyword only because you have told them so.

Having in mind that the sitemap programs of major search engines (and especially Google) are still in beta, using a sitemap might not generate huge advantages right away but as search engines improve their sitemap indexing algorithms, it is expected that more and more sites will be indexed fast via sitemaps.
Generating and Submitting the Sitemap

The steps you need to perform in order to have a sitemap for your site are simple. First, you need to generate it, then you upload it to your site, and finally you notify Google about it.

Depending on your technical skills, there are two ways to generate a sitemap - to download and install a sitemap generator or to use an online sitemap generation tool. The first is more difficult but you have more control over the output. You can download the Google sitemap generator from here. After you download the package, follow the installation and configuration instructions in it. This generator is a Python script, so your Web server must have Python 2.2 or later installed, in order to run it.

The second way to generate a sitemap is easier. There are many free online tools that can do the job for you. For instance, have a look at this collection of Third-party Sitemap tools. Although Google says explicitly that it has neither tested, nor verified them, this list will be useful because it includes links to online generators, downloadable sitemap generators, sitemap plugins for popular content-management systems, etc., so you will be able to find exactly what you need.

After you have created the sitemap, you need to upload it to your site (if it is not already there) and notify Google about its existence. Notifying Google includes adding the site to your Google Sitemaps account, so if you do not have an account with Google, it is high time to open one. Another detail that is useful to know in advance is that in order to add the sitemap to your account, you need to verify that you are the legitimate owner of the site.

Currently Yahoo! and MSN do not support sitemaps, or at least not in the XML format, used by Google. Yahoo! allows webmasters to submit “a text file with a list of URLs” (which can actually be a stripped-down version of a site map), while MSN does not offer even that but there are rumors that it is indexing sitemaps when they are available onsite. Most likely this situation will change in the near future and both Yahoo! and MSN will catch with Google because user-submitted site maps are just a too powerful SEO tool and cannot be ignored.

Search Engine History - How Search Engines Operate

2009-10-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

Internet is a spectrum of ideas and information. Searching the net for the right webpage can be a cumbersome task. Search engines explore the Internet on the basis of the keywords or a combination of words that are present in different websites. These search engines maintain an index of words that help them easily locate a website. Search engines have become an integral part of an Internet user.

The earlier versions of search engines indexed only a few thousands of pages. With the advent in technology, the search engines have become more compatible with Web pages to such an extent that they can list any site by using different permutation and combination of words. It can even respond to millions of queries in a day.
How does a Search Engine Work?

Internet search engines search the databases by means of a list of words or a combination of words they have stored/cached over a period of time. The search engines have a computer program called spider that indexes the list of words found in different websites. This program further travels through the links connected with different sites and index another set of words.

Only those sites that are being harvested by the search engine are opened. The spider searches a copy of the site, and when the user clicks on links, the actual site opens. The spiders are programmed to omit articles that appear in a page and detect terms that appear in titles, subtitles and meta tags.
Timeline of Search Engine Evolution

The first search engine, called Archie, was developed by a University student named Alan Emtage. He created the program to search file names from the Internet. In 1993, another program called Aliweb was launched. It was a manually constructed web directory that had several limitations. In the same year, JumpStation was developed by using spider technology. It allowed the users to search keywords in the titles and headers of Web pages.

As the numbers of Web pages increased, the search also became slow and this search engine stopped functioning in 1994. JumpStation, however, can be considered as the first modern search engine. In the same year, WebCrawler was launched. It had better features than JumpStation and searched the entire contents of a Webpage. This search engine was later sold to Excite.

The next one was Lycos that added a few more features to the conventional search engine, such as proximity to matching and listing in the order of relevancy. In 1996, the first meta search engine MetaCrawler was developed. This tool was capable of searching on other search engines and compiling the results. In the following year,

David Filo and JerryYang, two Stanford University students, launched the famous Yahoo. Around this time, Altavista was gaining popularity. It used the spider technology and indexed and responded to millions of pages per day.

Towards the end of 1997, another search engine named Google was launched. The entry of Google marked a major milestone in the history of search engines. Google uses a “page ranking” system on the basis of number of links to a particular site.

At present, Google is a very popular search engine with a huge list of websites in their index. It is so popular that it lead to origin of the term“Googling,” which means to search for information using Google. Bing is a search engine developed by Microsoft, which categorizes searches allowing for improved image and video searches along with preview searches.
Some Popular Search Engines

Following are some of the popular search engines: Baidu (Chinese), Bing (formerly MSN Search and Live Search), Cuil, Duck Duck Go, Sogou (Chinese), Sohu (Chinese), Yandex (Russian), Rediff.com, and Guruji.com.
Future of Search Engines

At present, most of the search engines work on tha basis of the exact matches of the keywords entered for search. This can be confusing as a single word can have different meanings. In future, search engines will be developed on the basis of concept-based searching and natural language queries, and this phase of evolution in search engines has been keenly awaited by users around the world.

How Search Engines Operate

Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information.

1.Crawling the Web
Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders" that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion.

2.Indexing Documents
Once a page has been crawled, it's contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index". This index needs to be tightly managed, so that requests which must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second.

3.Processing Queries
When a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for car and driver magazine at Google returns 8.25 million results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes ("car and driver magazine") returns only 166 thousand results. In the first system, commonly called "Findall" mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms "car" "driver" and "magazine" (they ignore the term "and" because it's not useful to narrowing the results), while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase "car and driver magazine" were returned. Other advanced operators (Google has a list of 11) can change which results a search engine will consider a match for a given query.

4.Ranking ResultsOnce
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.

Introduction SEO - Lear Search engine Optimization from Professionals

2009-10-30T06:10:00.000-07:00

WHAT IS SEO?

Search engine optimisation is all about making your website visible in the right context. When web users search on Google or Yahoo and other search engines for key terms that are included on your website, you want them to find your website easily.
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the term given to the methods you can use to make this happen, and to optimise the ranking your website gets in search engine results.

WHY IS SEO IMPORTANT?

A considerable proportion of website traffic (up to 80 per cent) is directed from search engines. The more established your site is, the more likely it is that users will come directly to your website, as returning visitors.
Search engines are an important tool in building traffic to your site from occasional or lapsed users – as well as new ones. These visitors may not know your website URL, or may not even know about your organisation – so will most likely find your website through a search engine.
Therefore, increasing the presence of your website on search engines is key to driving traffic and visitors to your site.

Meat Tags - Importants of Meta tages in SEO

2009-10-28T06:26:00.001-07:00

META Tags Tips - Metadata Elements

META Tags or what are officially referred to as Metadata Elements, are found within the <head></head> section of your web pages. META Tags are still relevant with some indexing search engines. You should utilize your META Tags in accordance with the W3C - World Wide Web Consortium Metadata Specifications and those of the search engines you are targeting.

The following is a partial list of metadata elements that may be used in the overall site structuring, organization, and search engine marketing strategy.

We've provided HTML Comments (look for this ) in the source code to help you understand the metadata elements referenced in this series of topics.

1. TITLE Element - Page Titles

Every html document must have a TITLE Element in the head section. Some refer to the <title> element as a meta tag (title tag) when it is not.

<title>META Tags Tips - Metadata Elements</title>

To see an example of where the title element is placed in the html, view the source code of this web page. Look at the very top of the page right after the opening <head> tag.

2. META Description Tag

Some search engines will index the META Description Tag found in the <head></head> section of your web pages. These indexing search engines may present the content of your meta description tag as the result of a search query.

<meta name="description" content="META Tags or what are officially referred to as Metadata Elements are found within the <head></head> section of your web pages. The following is a partial list of metadata elements that may be used in the overall site structuring, organization, and search engine marketing strategy.">

3. META Keywords Tag

The META Keywords Tag is where you list keywords and keyword phrases that you've targeted for that specific page. There have been numerous discussions at various search engine marketing forums surrounding the use of the keywords tag and its effectiveness. The overall consensus is that the tag has little to no relevance with the major search engines today.

<meta name="keywords" content="META Tags, Tips, Metadata Elements, META Description Tag, META Keywords Tag, Language Tag, Link Relationship Tag, Title Element">

4. META Language Tag

In HTML elements, the language attribute or META Language Tag specifies the natural language. This document is mostly concerned with how to specify the primary language(s) (there could be more than one) and the base language (there is only one) in HTML documents.

<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="en">

5. META Link Relationship Tag

It is helpful for search results to reference the beginning of the collection of documents in addition to the page hit by the search. You may help search engines by using the link element with rel="start" along with the title attribute. The META Link Relationship tag is part of the metadata that appears within the <head></head> section of your web pages.

<link rel="start" href="/meta-tags/" title="META Tags Tips - Metadata Elements">

6. META Robots Tag

The Robots META Tag is meant to provide users who cannot upload or control the/robots.txt file at their websites, with a last chance to keep their content out of search engine indexes and services.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow">

* META Robots Tag for Googlebot

Googlebot obeys the noindex, nofollow, and noarchive META Robots Tags. If you place these tags in the head of your HTML/XHTML document, you can cause Google to not index, not follow, and/or not archive particular documents on your site.

<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex, nofollow, noarchive">

* META Robots Tag for MSNBot

MSNBot obeys the noindex and nofollow Robots META Tag. Placing these tags in the heading of your HTML document prevents MSNBot from indexing or following specific documents.

<meta name="msnbot" content="noindex, nofollow">

7. META Revisit-After Tag

The revisit-after META tag is not supported by any major search engines, it never was supported and probably never will be. It was developed for, and supported by, Vancouver Webpages and their local search engine searchBC.

<meta name="revisit-after" content="7 days">

8. META Tags Abuse and Misuse - Metadata Structuring and Standards

This is a search engine marketing article published by our System Admin (Edward Lewis) that discusses the use of HTML Comments Tags and proprietary metadata elements.

9. META Tag Myths - The Mythical META Tag

2009 Article discussing the perpetuating myths surrounding the use of the META Description Tag and META Keywords Tag.

10. DC Dublin Core META Tags - DCMI Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

The Dublin Core metadata element set is a standard for cross domain information resource description.

<meta name="DC.title" lang="en" content="DC Dublin Core META Tags - DCMI Dublin Core Metadata Initiative">

11. HTML Comments Tag

HTML comments are not metadata but, are typically found in the <head></head> section of web pages. HTML comments can be utilized anywhere within your documents HTML structure.



There has been a myth that has perpetuated over the years where keywords and keyword phrases listed inside HTML comments tags would add a boost to the overall relevancy of the page. This is not true based on numerous tests we've performed during the years 2002 through 2009.

Google SandBox - Sandbox How It Works

2009-10-28T06:22:00.001-07:00

Google SandBox - An Introduction

The Google SandBox is a metaphorical term coined by SEOs and Webmasters, not associated with Google, to explain why most new Websites have very poor rankings in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). The existence of Google SandBox has not yet been clearly proved but there seem to have some changes to Google's Algorithm sometime around March 2004 that denies top ranking for newly launched web sites. Of course, there are exceptions and many Web pages have made it to the top of the SERP in spite of the sandbox, but the sandbox seems to be an inevitable page rank dampening concept.

In November 2003, Google implemented what was popularly known as the "Florida Filter", a filter added to the Google Algorithm to reduce spam. The "Florida Filter" proved to be a disaster as it wiped out many small online shops but didn't fight spam producers as much as it was expected to. Spammers and link farms generate zillions of websites and millions of links every day adversely affecting the SERP rankings of certain legitimate sites. Thus Google might have decided to keep away new sites from getting good ranks till they proved themselves.
How It Works?

It seems of late Google has been withholding high ranking ability of newly launched websites for 2-4 months. The penalty is applicable to new sites only and doesn't affect domains that are 4 or more months old and have good backlinks. The sandbox effect also doesn't affect new pages on long standing websites.

After the newly launched websites prove their worthiness by developing good back links and spend some time on the web they are given a weight and eventually the sandbox effect goes away.
Are You in the SandBox?

Google's spiders may pickup your site through an inbound link or you may have submitted your site to Google but almost all newly launched websites successfully get into the sandbox. Although there are some exceptions mostly all new sites are relegated to the sandbox for sometime.

But How do you know if your site is in the SandBox?

    * If the page is in the SandBox, Google doesn't give the page a pagerank
    * A "link:www.yourwebsite.com" or "site:www.yourwebsite.com" search on Google doesn't return any results. i.e Google doesn't show signs of any other websites linking to yours nor displays pages related to yours.
    * No pages other than your HomePage are listed. Sometimes even the homepage isn't listed.

How Long Does This SandBox Effect Continue?
Although no accurate information is available in this regard, it is generally believed to last for 3-4 months.
What to Do When You Are Struck in the SandBox?

SandBox can really be a boon instead of a bane if you know how to utilize the period of dormancy to optimize your site for better ranking when it comes out of the slumber. Use this time to

    * Write good content: Content is the king. A better content will attract more visitors to your site.
    * Optimize your web pages: This could be tricky as there would be no way you can measure the effect of your optimizations. But it is worth it, for when you are listed, all this optimization will pay off.
    * Build Links: Inbound links go a long way in improving your page rank on SERP and your Google Pagerank. Therefore, start building links.
    * Optimize for MSN and Yahoo: These two search engines are growing fast and can definitely bring quality traffic to your site if you concentrate on optimizing for them. MSN and Yahoo don't have a sandbox, so it's worth a try.

How to Get Out of the SandBox?

All though the effectiveness of these methods is not guaranteed, some people claim they work.

Method One: Join Google Adwords or Adsense Programs. Google seems to have different spiders for adsense / adwords and general site crawling but it is widely believed that subscribing to the adsense/adwords programs gets your pages spidered in minutes even by its search related spiders.

Method Two:The most widely used, this method involves purchasing an old domain for its longevity and back links.

But beware Google is known to change their algorithm quite often and the rules for sandbox may change too.
Conclusion

From the various discussions that have been going around the SEO world, it is quite evident that your newly launched Web page might not show up well on the SERP rankings in Google because of Google's dampening filter, the Google SandBox. Sandbox is inevitable and has to be lived with. Thus, it is the duty of the Webmaster or the site owner to plan the site launch date in such a way that there is minimum damage. During the sandbox period of a site, there is a great opportunity to improve incoming links, apply for directory listings, improve content, and so on. Please note that if all these are properly done, when you come out of the Google SandBox, you can get listed in the SERP with a good rank.

With some planning and by properly utilizing the tips mentioned in this article, you can utilize the dormancy of your Web page during the sandbox period to burst into the top rankings of the SERP pages when you come out of the dormancy.

PageRank - Google PR SERP Important of PR - From professionals

2009-10-28T06:20:00.000-07:00

What is Google Page Rank?

If you're involved in SEO, or have the Google Toolbar installed in your browser, chances are you'll have come across Google page rank.

Google Page Rank basically a score for your website out of 10 based upon how important Google think you're page is in the whole scheme of interweb searchery.

By important, Google means how many people link to your page, the more pages there are, the more relevant your page must be. But that's not quite it, it's no good having thousands of links to your page if they're not important pages themselves, so in turn, it is also determined by the quality of the pages that link to you.

Google themselves say the importance is made up of over 500 million variables and 2 billion terms, whilst Wikipedia have a "simplified" algorithm that in my opinion is anything but, mind you, maths was never my forte.

In a nutshell, more quality links = higher page ranks. Like with many SEO techniques, Google page rank alone will not guarantee you a high ranking, but it will help, it's more than likely that pages with a lower page rank will appear above yours if they have managed to crack other areas of SEO.

Rest assured though, if you have a number of quality links to your page, it's SERP (search engine results page) ranking will improve along with it's page rank, which will do you no harm at all in the SEO world.

Realistically speaking, as a small business owner you should probably be aiming for a score of around 2 or 3 once you're site is established in the Google. High scores of 7 or above to be reserved for the big players, such as Microsoft, Apple and Google themselves (the google home page gets 10)

Google Page Rank Inbound/Backlink Implementation

The page rank of a page depends on the number and page rank metric of all pages that link to it. A page that is linked to, by many pages with high page rank receives a high rank itself. Implementing BackLinks from other high page rank sites will determine the popularity or importance of your website and result in a higher ranking in Google.

Sunil Gupta SEO Professional Delhi

2009-10-28T06:12:00.000-07:00

Sunil Gupta

Hi,

My name is Sunil Gupta. I am from New delhi working with LeXolution IT Services as a SEO Executive.

Location          : Bakkarwala Nangloi delhi - 110041
Date of Birth   : 02/03/1991
School              : N. P. Boys Se. Sec. School No. 2 Mandir marge New Delhi
Born at            : Jharua (near Nibi, Shohrat ghar Siddharth nagar) UP.

Interested in   : Website Promotion, Link building, learning Latest SEO News, watching movies and reality shows.

Home town : Jharua is a beutifull place which is situatite at near Heat Ban Ganga (Shohratgarh) at Siddharth Nagar Uttar Pradesh UP.

Sunil Gupta

Website Structure for Starting a new small business

2009-10-27T05:47:00.000-07:00

Many business owners and entrepreneurs build a website without understanding the fundamental reasons for doing so. As such, they create what I call a 'brochure' website. You may have done this already.

Well don't be upset, it's a pretty natural thing to do. For some reason we decide to follow the lead of the majority, thinking if everybody is doing it, it must be the right thing to do... WRONG!

So, going against all conventional wisdom, why do we put up a website? What is the best way to use it?

The Fundamental Reason for Being

Why do you need or want a website? The answer is LEAD GENERATION. Lead generation will lead to small business sales! How is your web site structure important when it comes to lead generation and marketing for small business?

Landing Pages

Well, in order to generate leads you will need to make offers. Offers need to be tweakable. Therefore, you need to be able to update your content easily and quickly. More importantly though you must have a specific page for your offer. These pages are called 'Landing Pages'.

Let me explain...

Lets say you have a website where you are selling weight loss products. One of your supply companies is running a marketing campaign and you think you can make more sales while the campaign is running. Would you send your visitor to the home page of your website, hoping that they find the specific information about the sales campaign? That's not going to going to be a very effective marketing campaign!

Or would you send them directly to the promotion?

You'd send them directly to it and make the offer very clear, being very specific about that offer and nothing else.

No matter what you do online, you must be able to make clear offers to visitors in order to generate leads and sales for your small business. You do that by sending them to specific pages, which we call landing pages.

Hopefully, you will be able to edit these quickly and easily, so you can tweak your offers and get the best response possible.

Search Engines Want Content

They love to suck it up! The more content you have the better! There's a saying 'Content is King!'. Its true.

The more pages you have the better. The more often you add and update content the better.

Did you know that the way your pages are linked together is very important? Your internal page linking strategy is as important as your external links strategy. I can hear you thinking 'strategy, shhhhhmategy! this is getting technical, I don't want to know about this'. That's fair enough, it is technical. And while you can put a website up and link it together any way you please, if you want a good search engine ranking, it pays to have your site built by a professional who knows about this stuff.

By the way, what you call your pages and the physical directory or folder structure of your website is petty important too! So if you've got a site that has pages named page1.html, page5.html etc, you should start thinking about keywords for your page names! That's an important strategy too.

Your small business marketing strategy must start by getting rid of the brochure mentality. You must start thinking lead generation. Everything starts with lead generation!

Stephen Tickner

A techno geek with 17 years of professional programming experience who has finally seen the light (literally kidnapped from his damp darkened programming cubicle Matrix style) and is now a marketing wizard.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) - Learn LSI, Free seo tips, LSI Information

2009-10-27T05:40:00.001-07:00

Latent semantic indexing is a way to create web content that will be indexed by search engines and is optimized for the best possible positioning in search results.

Like earlier search engine optimization techniques, latent semantic indexing is a search engine marketing solution that seeks to use search engine indexing technology to achieve a better search engine position.

The main focus of latent semantic indexing is to use a series of related words in each piece of content. These words relate to the main keywords that the page is being optimized to promote. Instead of simply repeating the keywords a specific number of times throughout the copy, the related words are used in place of the repetition.

The purpose of latent semantic indexing techniques is to create Web content that can be indexed closer to the way a human would rank the page. If a human were reading the page and ranking it against the other Web pages that use the same keywords, the repetition of the words would not be a factor in how well the page ranks. Instead, the actual information given on the page would be important. The use of related words signifies that the subject is being thoroughly covered.

LSI follows a highly intelligent pattern and searches for synonyms in keywords of different pages. It eliminates redundancy in keyword stuffing. For example if we consider the keywords in the sentence of “Jack’s dog is faithful. Jack’s dog eats meat. Jack’s dog is a Labrador”, we see that it’s stuffed with keywords like Jack and dog. Using LSI methodology, it can be rephrased as “Jack’s Labrador is faithful and eats meat”.

To reiterate, LSI not only reduces redundancy, but also reduces retrieval time and follows an efficient tree search algorithm.

History of Bing - About MSN/LIve ! Search engine

2009-10-27T05:39:00.000-07:00

Bing (search engine)

Bing (formerly Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is the current web search engine (advertised as a "decision engine") from Microsoft. Unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on May 28, 2009 at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego, Bing is a replacement for Live Search. It went fully online on June 3, 2009, with a preview version released on June 1, 2009. By August 2009, Bing had gained 9.3 percent of the United States Internet search market. However, by September, Statcounter stated that Bing's share of the US search market in September had fallen by over one percentage point to 8.51% . Comscore claimed otherwise, stating that Bing's growth had held steady in September 2009, gaining 0.1 percent of the total United States Internet Search Market representing a market share of 9.4 percent.

Notable changes include the listing of search suggestions in real time as queries are entered and a list of related searches (called "Explorer pane" on the left side of search results) based on semantic technology from Powerset, which Microsoft purchased in 2008. Bing also includes the ability to Save & Share search histories via Windows Live SkyDrive, Facebook and email.

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.[8]

MSN Search

MSN Search was a search engine by Microsoft that comprised a search engine, index, and web crawler. MSN Search first launched in the third quarter of 1998 and used search results from Inktomi. In early 1999, MSN Search launched a version which displayed listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. Since then Microsoft upgraded MSN Search to provide its own self-built search engine results, the index of which was updated weekly or even daily. The upgrade started as a beta program in November 2004 (based on several years of research), and came out of beta in February 2005. Image search was powered by a third party, Picsearch. The service also started providing its search results to other search engine portals in an effort to better compete in the market.

Windows Live Search

The first public beta of Windows Live Search was unveiled on March 8, 2006, with the final release on September 11, 2006 replacing MSN Search. The new search engine offered users the ability to search for specific types of information using search tabs that include Web, news, images, music, desktop, local, and Microsoft Encarta. Windows Live Search aimed to make its over 2.5 billion worldwide queries each month "more useful by providing consumers with improved access to information and more precise answers to their questions." A configuration menu is available to change the default search engine in Internet Explorer.

In the roll-over from MSN Search to Windows Live Search, Microsoft stopped using Picsearch as their image search provider and started performing their own image search, fueled by their own internal image search algorithms.

Live Search

On March 21, 2007, Microsoft announced that it would separate its search developments from the Windows Live services family, rebranding the service as Live Search. Live Search was integrated into the Live Search and Ad Platform headed by Satya Nadella, part of Microsoft's Platform and Systems division. As part of this change, Live Search was consolidated with Microsoft adCenter.

A series of reorganisations and consolidations of Microsoft's search offerings were made under the Live Search branding. On May 23, 2008, Microsoft announced the discontinuation of Live Search Books and Live Search Academic and integrated all academic and book search results into regular search, and as a result this also included the closure of Live Search Books Publisher Program. Soon after, Windows Live Expo was discontinued on July 31, 2008. Live Search Macros, a service which allowed users to create their own custom search engines or use macros created by other users, was also discontinued shortly after. On May 15, 2009, Live Product Upload, a service which allowed merchants to upload products information onto Live Search Products, was discontinued. The final reorganisation came as Live Search QnA was rebranded as MSN QnA on February 18, 2009, however, it was subsequently discontinued on May 21, 2009.[11]

Microsoft recognised that there would be a brand issue as long as the word "Live" remained in the name.[12] As an effort to create a new identity for Microsoft's search services, Live Search was officially replaced by Bing on June 3, 2009.

Yahoo! search deal

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing. "Through this agreement with Yahoo!, we will create more innovation in search, better value for advertisers, and real consumer choice in a market currently dominated by a single company," said Mr Ballmer. "I believe it establishes the foundation for a new era of internet innovation and development" Carol Bartz, Yahoo! chief executive. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing" branding.

Information from Wiki

History of Yahoo! - About yahoo search engine

2009-10-27T05:35:00.000-07:00

In January 1994, Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo created a website named "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web". Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web was a directory of other web sites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages.

In April 1994, "Jerry's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!". "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" is a backronym for this name, but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the word's general definition, as in Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth."

By the end of 1994, Yahoo! had already received one million hits. Yang and Filo realized their website had massive business potential, and on 2 March 1995, Yahoo! was incorporated. On 12 April 1996, Yahoo! had its initial public offering, raising $33.8 million dollars, by selling 2.6 million shares at $13 each.

"Yahoo" had already been trademarked for barbecue sauce, knives (by EBSCO Industries) and human propelled watercraft (by Old Town Canoe Co.). Therefore, in order to get the trademark, Yang and Filo added the exclamation mark to the name. However, the exclamation mark is often incorrectly omitted when referring to Yahoo!

Growth (1997-1999)

Like many search engines and web directories, Yahoo! diversified into a Web portal. In the late 1990s, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos, Excite and other Web portals were growing rapidly. Web portal providers rushed to acquire companies to expand their range of services, in the hope of increasing the time a user stays at the portal.

On 8 March 1997, Yahoo! acquired online communications company Four11. Four11's webmail service, Rocketmail, became Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! also acquired ClassicGames.com and turned it into Yahoo! Games. Yahoo! then acquired direct marketing company Yoyodyne Entertainment, Inc. on 12 October 1998. On 28 January 1999, Yahoo! acquired web hosting provider GeoCities. Another company Yahoo! acquired was eGroups, which became Yahoo! Groups after the acquisition on 28 June 2000. Yahoo! also launched Yahoo! Messenger on 21 July 1999.

When acquiring companies, Yahoo! often changed the relevant terms of service. For example, they claimed intellectual property rights for content on their servers, unlike the companies they acquired. As a result, many of the acquisitions were controversial and unpopular with users of the existing services.

Dot-com bubble (2000-2001)

On 3 January 2000, at the height of the Dot-com boom, Yahoo! stocks closed at an all-time high of $118.75 a share. 16 days later, shares in Yahoo! Japan became the first stocks in Japanese history to trade at over ¥100,000,000, reaching a price of 101.4 million yen ($962,140 at that time).

On 7 February 2000, yahoo.com was brought to a halt for a few hours as it was the victim of a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). On the next day, its shares rose about $16, or 4.5 percent as the failure was blamed on hackers rather than on an internal glitch, unlike a fault with eBay earlier that year.

During the dot-com boom, the cable news station CNBC also reported that Yahoo! and eBay were discussing a 50/50 merger. Although the merger never materialised the two companies decided to form a marketing/advertising alliance six years later in 2006.

On 26 June 2000, Yahoo! and Google signed an agreement which would make Google power searches made on yahoo.com.

Post dot-com bubble (2002-2005)

Yahoo! was one of the few surviving companies after the dot-com bubble burst. Nevertheless, on September 26, 2001, Yahoo! stocks closed at an all-time low of $8.11.

Yahoo! formed partnerships with telecommunications and Internet providers to create content-rich broadband services to compete with AOL. On 3 June 2002, SBC and Yahoo! launched a national co-branded dial service. In July 2003, BT Openworld announced an alliance with Yahoo! On 23 August 2005, Yahoo! and Verizon launched an integrated DSL service.

In late 2002, Yahoo! began to bolster its search services by acquiring other search engines. In December 2002, Yahoo! acquired Inktomi, and in July 2003, it acquired Overture Services, Inc. and its subsidiaries AltaVista and AlltheWeb. On February 18, 2004, Yahoo! dropped Google-powered results and returned to using its own technology to provide search results.

Google then released Gmail, its webmail service offering 1 GB of storage, on 1 April 2004. Yahoo! responded by upgrading the storage of all free Yahoo! Mail accounts from 4 MB to 100 MB, and all Yahoo! Mail Plus accounts to 2 GB. On 9 July 2004, Yahoo! acquired e-mail provider Oddpost to add an Ajax interface to Yahoo! Mail Beta. Google also released Google Talk, a Voice over IP and instant messaging service, on 24 August 2005. On 13 October 2005, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced that Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger would become interoperable.

Yahoo! continued acquiring companies to expand its range of services, particularly Web 2.0 services. Yahoo! Launch became Yahoo! Music on 9 February 2005. On 20 March 2005, Yahoo! purchased photo sharing service Flickr. On 29 March 2005, the company launched its blogging and social networking service Yahoo! 360°. In June 2005, Yahoo! acquired blo.gs, a service based on RSS feed aggregation. Yahoo! then bought online social event calendar Upcoming.org on 4 October 2005. Yahoo! acquired social bookmark site del.icio.us on 9 December 2005 and then playlist sharing community webjay on 9 January 2006.

The future (2006-)

Yahoo! Next is an incubation ground for future Yahoo! technologies currently in their beta testing phase, similar to Google Labs. It contains forums for Yahoo! users to give feedback to assist in the development of these future Yahoo! technologies.

In early 2006, Yahoo! offered users the chance to beta test a new version of the Yahoo! homepage. However, it currently only supports Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. Users of other browsers, such as Opera, have criticised Yahoo! for this move. Yahoo! says they intend to support additional browsers in the future.

In February 2008, Microsoft Corporation made an unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo! for US$44.6 billion. Yahoo! subsequently formally rejected the bid, claiming that it "substantially undervalues" Yahoo! and was not in the interest of its shareholders.

Information from Wiki

Google - History of Google - About Google Search Engine

2009-10-19T05:10:00.000-07:00

Google is now the most dominant search tool on the web, setting the standards that others try to follow and better, as yet unsuccessfully. It was founded in 1998 - relatively late compared to many of the popular search engines - by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were graduate students from Stanford University.

Page and Brin had been working together on a search engine they called "BackRub" since early 1996, but with the encouragement of Yahoo! co-founder David Filo, they decided to start a company in 1998 and went looking for investors to back them. Google, Inc. was established on September 7, 1998. The founders hired Craig Silverstein - who was later to become Director of Technology - as their first employee, and started the business in a friend's garage.

Google was still in an alpha stage, with an index of just 25 million pages, but it was handling 10,000 search queries every day. The search engine and the company grew quickly through word of mouth, initially with regular web users coming across the tool and finding the results to their liking.

Usage spread rapidly through press coverage, awards and recommendations, whilst Google's effectiveness and relevance, its speed and reliability, plus clean visual effects and 'quirky' nature all contributed to a rapid increase in the number of new advocates.

Google took a major step forward in 2000 when it replaced Inktomi as the provider of supplementary search results on Yahoo. Following this it won further successes and provided search data to Yahoo as its primary results, as well as to AOL, Netscape, Freeserve and BBCi in the UK. This gave Google exceptional coverage of web searches and established its reputation as one of the most reliable and accurate search tools, making it the clear market leader.

Despite losing the Yahoo relationship in 2004, Google continued to increase its coverage of the web search market and developed numerous regional versions of its search tool, both in English and other languages, so that its global dominance grew. In the UK, Google now accounts for over 70% of web searches that are made.

Google has also been actively developing a range of search options, including an image search, news search, shopping search (Froogle) and local search options. In addition, following Google's IPO in early 2005 it has set itself on a course for Internet domination and to challenge the position of Microsoft as the leading provider of computer services. There has been a series of announcements of new products, including the email service Gmail, the impressive Google Earth product, Google Talk to compete in the growing VoIP market, Google Base and Google Book Search, which is part of its ambitious project to make the content of thousands of books searchable online

Google has become synonymous with search and has entered the dictionary as a verb - 'to google' something. The expansion and integration of all Google's different services is making it a dominant player in the online market, but to many websites, Google is also the ultimate ranking target that will make a significant difference between the volumes of traffic received from prospective customer ssearching the web.