Archive for the ‘Search engine optimisation’ Category

New Page Rank Update?

September 25, 2008

Yesterday Matt Cutts, in one of his comments on his blog said that there may be a page rank update this weekend. Matt Cutts blog is a source of useful information for seo marketers.

Google’s Toolbar PR seems to be out of date, since the last update during last July. For a website to have high page rank is an element of successful seo and marketing. One factor to consider is there will be a new PR update is the links that point to your website.

What do you need from an SEO company

August 27, 2008

There are a number of SEO companies offering services for less than £100 per month, I know it sounds a great deal but there are a number of reasons why spending less will not help your website.

An SEO strategy is an important aspect of your marketing and having a quality SEO company will ensure more traffic and customers.
SEO is not a one off job and is not cannot be done with one landing page. An SEO campaign, more than £100 a month, it will include a continuous optimisation of your site.

Your SEO company should monitor the website’s performance, your selected keywords and they should be able to make recommendations for improvments.
Your SEO company should be able to provide a full report showing rankings for your keywords, keywords that driving traffic.
Further they should provide an account manager for your site to contact if you have a question or concern.

SEO is an ongoing procedure and that is the challenge for SEO managers and websites owners.

Sitemaps and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

August 2, 2008

A Sitemap is a map of your website. A site map is helpful for people wanting to navigate to a specific page within your website. Further it is helpful for spiders crawling and indexing your website.
There are two types of Sitemaps, HTML and XML. HTML Sitemaps are for your customers, to navigate their way through your website. XML sitemaps helps the search engines to crawl your site much more efficiently meaning you get the best possible rankings you can by letting the search engine see your website.
Every time you update your website, your Sitemap will be updated. The search engines will identify new content and it is a factor to influence you page rank. XML Sitemaps are supported by most of the search engines.

What you need to know about Search Engines

June 4, 2008
Search Engines, Google, Yahoo, Msn, Ask are designed to search for information through the web. There are two types of search engines: search engines and directories. The difference is on how result are searched. We can separate them in four main types, crawler-based search engines, directories, hybrid engines and paid search engines

Crawler-Based Search Engines: spiders or web crawlers, they operate through software in order to automatically identify results to our search. An example of a crawler based search engine is Google.

You should remember is that a spider cannot ready flash, so even if you create impressive graphics using flash for your customers or JavaScript spiders cannot identify the content and it will skip this part of your page. As a result your page will rank low and it will not be visible. When you write your contents you should remember that even your human visitor will be attracted from a page full of contents, a spider values the text closest to the beginning of your page and the end. On the other hand spiders can read your meta tags (meta tag description, meta tag keywords etc).

When a spider will crawl your page it will leave a record on your server. The next stage is to compress the results and store the web pages in a search engine index. All the data are stored in the search engine index in a way that makes quickly to identify if a page is relevant to a particular search and to include in the search results with the most common words and phrases on the indexed page. The search results are according to how relevant your page is to these terms, according to a number of internal and external factors.

Spider-Based Search Engines: they use directories as a source to identify new pages to crawl.

Human-Edited Directories: Human-edited directories require manual submission. After you submit your website it will be reviewed from an editor and it will prevent pages from being submitted automatically. An editor will evaluate your website according to the directory’s guidelines and the editor will decide if he/she will include your website in the list. Dmoz is one of the most important human-edited directories.

Hybrid Search Engines, they evaluate sites and scan them to identify for matches. Even Google and Yahoo a directory and crawler search engines, are also hybrid engine. A hybrid search engine like Yahoo usually will present human-edited search and Google will present crawled listings.

Meta Search Engines: MetaCrawler and DogPile are meta search engines. They will present a combination of results from search engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn and Ask.

Paid Search Engines: There are few paid search engines. There a few advertisement programs that offer pay-per-click and pay-per-performance search results. Google with Google Adwords, Yahoo and MSN they have programs for Paid Search Results.

SEO – Internal Ranking Factors

May 25, 2008

Site structure – Create a friendly and easy website for your customers and search engines.

Home page – Optimize your home page with the most important word and phrases. Your home page usually is the first page that engines will list.

Pages – Increasing the number of pages increases the visibility of the site to search engines. Adding new information to your site, search engines will identify it as a development of your website. Including news, press releases and articles.

Navigation Menu – Use a human and search engine navigation friendly site map. Add keywords in your menu links, it will provide search optimization value to your pages.

Keyword phrases – Optimize each page for one keyword phrase or try to use two or three related phrases.

Number of Keywords – Use your keywords three to four times in the page text. Use variations, phrases but try not to repeat the same keyword on every paragraph. A useful tip is your keyword or keyword phrase to be at the beginning of your text, it becomes more important for the search engines.

Contents – Try to increase the text content to 500-3000 words. Search Engines prefer a page full of contents rather a page with a few lines. Further you provide enough information to your potential customers.

Headings – Use keywords in your headings tags. Use bold or strong for your targeted keywords or phrases.

Title – Your page title will provide important information about your web site to the search engines and your customers. Using 50-80 characters you can include your targeted keyword for your page. Use your company name and a sort description about your business and your products or services.

Page Description – Even though it does not influence Google it does provide valuable information about your business. Your description should be brief, but it should include relevant keywords to your page.

Keywords Meta Tag – This Meta tag was initially used to specify keywords for pages but it is hardly ever used by search engine. Even though include keywords meta tags with relevant keywords for each page.

Links and Keywords – Use keywords for your internal or external links

Images and Descriptions – Use keywords for your alt tags, you can provide more information about your image, since search engines cannot read images.

Search Engine Optimisation 30″ Pitch

May 9, 2008

•Use Keywords in your URL, your title, – relevant keywords to your website.
•Use headings (H1, H2, H3.. ) using keywords relevant to your page contents
•Keywords in anchor texts
•Use keywords in the beginning of you text
•Use a description using keywords in your tags, will help spiders since they cannot read images
•Use anchor text
•Get links from sites similar to your business and if there are .edu and .gov sites are the most reputable
•Use metatags even if there are not useful for Google there are though for other search engines
•Create unique content for your pages avoiding to duplicate your contents
•Check your links, check if you have any broken links or 404 errors, this is a reason for search engines and directories not to index your site
•Create a search engine and human friendly sitemap. Follow Google guidelines and create an easy to navigate sitemap for your customers

Seo Quick List with actions you should avoid!!

•Avoid keyword stuffing it is a factor to get banned from search engines.
•Do not use keywords unrelated to your website
•Avoid hidden text or hidden links.
•Don’t use cloaking techniques
•Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, you will not gain higher PR or customers
•Avoid cross-linking strategy and link farms
•Do not use the same content for your pages; it is a risk for your site to get banned and a way to lose your customers!
•Try to avoid Flash or JavaScript for search engines and your customers if they do not have the technology they can view your site