Thursday, April 29, 2004

Search Engine Optimization tips

Reason's why Yahoo or DMOZ.org might refuse your web site and
what
you can do about it.

There can be a variety of reasons why Internet directories won't
accept your listing. The most important ones are:

1. You didn't submit to the right category.

Directories are very choosy. Make sure you completely follow each
directory's guidelines, for example on Yahoo, if you have a USA-based
site, make sure you submit to the appropriate regional category of
the directory.

2. Your web site has no real content.

Do not submit your web site to directories unless it has substantial
content on a particular subject. This means that you should not
submit special keyword-stuffed pages you have created for the search
engines, or web pages that contain only affiliate links.

3. Your web site doesn't have a professional look.

Directories are looking for professional designed sites as every site
in the directory reflects the quality of the whole directory. Many
directory editors won't navigate a site further than the home page
when they see any indication of a poorly designed site.

Test your web site with other web browser applications than
Microsoft's Internet Explorer. At least with Netscape browsers to see
how they render your web site. Don't assume editors use Windows
computers and the latest versions of the browsers.

Keep the loading time of your home page to the minimum.

In addition, your site should be easy navigable. Directory editors
don't have time to find out how your site works.

Use a spell checker to find spelling mistakes or have a professional
proof-reading service checks your web site.

Web sites are often rejected because they contain broken links or a
broken graphic link.

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Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Search Engine Optimization Tips

7 steps to a better website

These steps help you in getting listed in the directories which have
been reviewed by editors.

Know your target audience
o If your target market is the affluent business professional
then your site should be clean, easy to navigate and read . If
your website's viewers are younger adults then a more relaxed and
informal look may be acceptable.

What's the Theme of Your Site
o Your website should have a clear theme. A viewer and editor
of directory should know exactly what your website is all about after
reading the first paragraph of the index page.

Keep It Simple
o It's been said that a user should not have to drill-down or
click more than 3 times to get to what they are looking or

Consistency
o Your site should have a consistent look, feel, and design
across all pages. It can be quite distracting and confusing to the
viewer if each page in your site has a different look or navigation
to it.

Make Payment Easy
o Make sure your payment process is clear, easy to access.
Eliminate as many steps as possible. Do not ask for more information
that is not necessary to complete the transaction.

Compatibility
o It's important that you develop your website to be as cross-
browser friendly as possible.

Content
o Each page should focus on 2 to 3 keywords and have enough
content for the spiders to get the general idea of the page.

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Twelve tips that will boost you’re ranking in google.


1.Choose an appropriate domain name, and start out by optimizing the home page.

2.Avoid frames as Frames are actually divided into multiple URL designations and are generally not spiderable by the search engines.

3.Avoid java script in pages
Spider cannot read JavaScript.
Link or text by such JavaScript will not be counted in your indexing.
So idea is to use external .js file.
Through this you can also reduce the size of the file.


4.Avoid flash no doubt flash image is great, it will impress your visitor and increase the quality of your site for sure, but this flash must still be accompanied by a healthy portion of good content as spider don’t understand the flash and will not index the links and content in flash

5.Choose keywords wisely. To find the optimal keywords for your site, use tools such as WordTracker and Overture.com (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/). Choose two or three highly targeted phrases for each page of your site. Never shoot for general keywords such as "web" or "ecommerce."

6.Write at least 200 - 250 words of visible text copy based on your chosen keywords. Use each keyword phrase numerous times within your copy for best results.

7.HTML title tags are critical because they're given a lot of weight with all of the search engines. You must put your keywords into this tag and not waste space with extra words

8.Create Meta tags and Meta Description tag that uses your keywords and also describes your site. The information in this tag often appears under your Title in the search engine results pages.

9.To boost your search engine ranking use following tags properly.
Use h1 tag to put the main keyword .
Use alt tag
Use keyword in hyperlink
Use keyword in URL like this ( a1technology.com/software- outsourcing.htm )


10.Be careful when submitting to directories such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Having directory listings are a key component to getting your site spidered and listed by Google. Making mistakes in the submission process could cost you dearly as directory listings are difficult to change later in the game. Therefore, it's important to read Yahoo's How to Suggest Your Site and How to add a site to the Open Directory before submitting.

11.Don't expect quick results.

12.It's best not to make changes to your optimization. It often takes the engines at least that long to add your optimized pages to their databases. Submit it, and then forget about it for a while!

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Monday, April 26, 2004

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Optimizing keywords for search engines


• Here's how to get started with selecting the most search
engine friendly keywords and phrases that can help visitors find your
site.

• Brainstorm

o Sat down with your co-workers and discussed the needs of your
target audience.
o Compile an initial list of 5-10 search phrases that you feel
best represent your company and which you believe people would type
into a search engine when trying to find you

• Expand your keyword list

o List of 5-10 search phrases will generally not bring the
amount of search engine traffic needed to make your website
successful.
o At this point you need to turn to the search engines
themselves and research which search phrases are actually being typed
into Google, Yahoo, Msn use following sites to do that.
1. Overture.
2. Adwords in google.
3. Wordtrackers
o All these sites provide you an idea of the number of searches
per month for each phrase across their network.
o Although WordTraker is paid starting at just $7 a day but it
still provides some free results.

• Take into account the following things.
o How many other websites/web pages would you be competing
against?
o What is the page rank of the sites holding these keywords?
o What is the traffic rank of the site holding these keywords?
o Keyword positions in the competitors page (by using intitle,
inurl , inanchor )
o Is the search phrase relevant to your website and the page
that you are optimizing?
o Is there a page within your website that would be
particularly suitable for targeting the selected search phrase?

• Once you have asked yourself the above questions, narrow down
your list to the main search phrases that you wish to target. You
should not try and target every selected search term on your index
page.

• Your index (home) page is the most important page of your
website and likely to have the best positioning on the search
engines, therefore choose 2-3 search phrases to target here and
ensure that they are all closely related.

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Sunday, April 25, 2004

Search Engine Optimization tips:

Site should me theme oriented.

• Theme can be many things, such as a color scheme or subject
matter, but in Google's terms, a theme is the subject matter - the
topic.

• Like many top search engines, Google likes themes to the
extent that they influence a page's rankings.

• People often wonder why their PR6 page can't beat a PR4 or
PR5 page in the rankings for a particular search term. There are a
number of reasons for it and one of them is the theme of the sites or
pages.


Look at the example of jewelry website


• A jewelry website's pages are about jewelry of various kinds,
therefore the site's theme is jewelry.

• Each page might be about a different kind of jewelry.

• The theme of a page about bracelets is bracelets and the
theme of a page about necklaces is necklaces, but the overall theme
of the site is jewelry.


Now look at this



• If some site comes up with necklaces as theme it would have a
good chance of beating the jewelry site in the rankings especially in
the area of necklaces. It would depend on a number of factors, of
course, but the theme is one important factor.


Another example is webworkshop.net

• Webworkshop.net is a good example. The site talk about only
relating to pagerank and has page rank of 6, the site contains only
25+ pages, and Google has indexed all 25 and all have good page rank
also i.e. 5.


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Monday, April 19, 2004

How to do proper directory submission

Submission Steps

1.Go To the Directory To Which you want to submit and type your important keywords and see where the similar site to yours are placed in which category

2.See the style of the descriptions of other websites in your chosen category so that you can tailor your submission to suit the individual category editor.

3.Understand submission guidelines to ensure you understand how the categories are defined and what the directory is looking for in successful submissions.

4.Now that you have all the information needed to make a submission. Details such as address, phone number and email etc may be necessary.

5.Do a trial submission with false data to assess what information is required during the process.

Check Your Website Properly Before Submitting To the Directories

1.Directory editors are generally looking for certain things in a site to be considered for inclusion. Ensure that the following areas have been considered before submission.

2.'Under Construction' or broken kinks on the site will result in rejection. Always check the site is working correctly.

3.Lots of unique content helps but if the site is part of an affiliate network or contains too many advertising banners it is less likely to be successful.

4.Site should be quick loading with a strong design.

5.The description should be short and to the point but including as many keywords as possible.

6.The actual submission should follow the directory guidelines.

7.Bear in mind that directory editors have to review hundreds of sites each day and may reject your submission for the smallest reason.

8.Get it right first time, if you still find your site is not listed after 4-5 weeks resubmit it.

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Sunday, April 18, 2004

Search Engine Optimization tips

BASIC 5 SEO PROCESS

First step

1.Note down basic and important points about the website.

2.Website structure.
3.Downloading speed.
4.Page rank.
5.Traffic rank.
6.Present keywords in title and Meta tags.
7.Navigation structure.
8.Content placement.( Use of keywords in text )
9.Search engine friendliness.


Second step

Download all web pages (html files and images)



1.Collection of ftp information and download of all pages to your machine.
2.To make coding clear and search engine friendly
3.Remove java script from html code (Benefit of removing java script we have already discussed earlier).
4.Remove css from html code. (Benefit of removing css we have already discussed earlier).
5.Remove all dead links from the site if any.( For easy navigation of search engine )
6.Check whether site has site map or not if site map is not available make site map so that all pages can be navigated from site map easily.


Third step

Analysis of competitor's website, note down the positive and negative points



1.Competitor’s website page rank.
2.Competitor’s website traffic rank.
3.Competitor’s title tags and Meta tags.
4.Navigation structure of the site.
5.Pages of the sites.

Fourth Step

Selection of keywords



1.Selection of keywords is very crucial steps decide keywords wisely.
2.Use Overture, Wordtracker, and Google adwords for finding keywords

Fifth step

Link popularity



1.This involves proper directory submission.
2.Search engine submission.
3.Searching your competitor’s link popularity information like number of sites pointing to them and the nature of websites linking to them.
4.Relevancy of site’s linking to your competitor’s sites etc.


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Friday, April 16, 2004

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Optimizing Pages with JavaScript and Style Sheets for Search Engines

Search Engines use a number of criteria to decide what a given web page is all about. There are criteria, which can be different from Search Engine to Search Engine.

While the particulars may change over time, there are some criteria which remain constant.
1. One of these is where the keywords are located on the page.

2. Typically words that are located closer to the beginning of a page are considered more important

3. When a Search Engine sends its robot out to look at your page, you want to make sure that it finds important information near the top of the web page.

4. The page has a high keyword density.

Sometimes there are complications, even when you have a lot of keywords-rich text early in the visible portion of your search engine unable to check it if you are using style sheet and java script in your page so today will discuss how to remove this and put in external file.

Java Script Solutions

JavaScript; What is it?
JavaScript lets you create applications that runs over the Internet or Intranet using browsers such has Netscape Navigator or the Internet Explorer. Javascript was created by Brendan Eich as a scripting language extending HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). HTML provides the basic scripting language which give all Web pages its format, interactive and its dynamic nature in a web browser. JavaScript provides the advantage of executing Web pages within the browser rather than on the web server.

We can not say "Javascript" without mentioning Java. Javascript is derived from Java. What is Java? Java is an excellent full-blown Object Oriented Programming (OOP) Language from Sun Micro System Inc., it also provides interactivity and a dynamic nature to Web pages and much, much more, like multi-operating system support. But it must be compiled prior to execution. Javascript can only run within a browser. Java programs can run in a browser or as a stand alone application.

Java's vastness has a steep learning curve. Javascript uses the Document Object Model (DOM) to simplify the structure of an HTML document and diminish the learning curve. Plus, Javascript has less objects than Java. With DOM, the HTML document is represented as objects.

Why Javascript?
As your skills progress as a Web Developer from HTML, you have to know Javascript. Specially for the arena of Client-Server web based application development. Javascript saves on data processing resources by placing execution on the client-side. You have to know Javascript in order to call yourself a professional web developer. Most cool effects, pop-up windows, scrolling banners that you have seen on the Web are most likely written in JavaScript.

Where to Begin?

The advice given to Alice in Wonderland was: "Start at the beginning!" Here with us at Aiki Innovations. If you don't like us. Fortunately for you, we have the Internet with quite a number of sites where the Javascript is served and documented. Please choose our Learning Javascript as a starting point.


Style sheet solutions:

Separating style from content

The main benefit in CSS, is that it manages to separate the style from the content on your web page. If you are used to using HTML, you'll have noticed, that HTML can do both style and content. With a FONT-tag, and some artistic sense, you can make a HTML page quite stylish.

What CSS does, is that it handles the style of your web page, and lets HTML do the content. Why is this good?

First of all, the stylish capabilities in HTML are quite limited. Secondly, with the use of an external style sheet, you are able to alter you entire site style, by only editing one single file!

As an example of the above, let's say you wanted to change your site from using Times New Roman to Arial. With 'old-fashioned' HTML, you would have to alter the FONT tag, on each and every page. With CSS, you would just need to alter the style sheet, and then all pages would be using Arial.

Even though trends are towards decentralization, you actually make things easier, more efficient, and save time, by centralizing your style into one single style sheet.

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Thursday, April 15, 2004

SEO tips on html & page design

1.Keep HTML as simple as possible
2.Keep the most important textual information at the top of the html
a.For users - so they don't have to scroll much.
b.For Search Engines - include keyword phrases which are in the meta tags
c.Consider using a layers based design - you can use css to position the layers with textual content at the top of the html even if they're further down the visible page
d.If keywords are also links - increases their efficacy
e.Use keywords in your h1 to h6 heading and subheading tags
f.Each page should have lots of keyword rich content for its topic and corresponding meta tags
3.Include textual hyper links to important areas of the site from the home page.
4.Call files / folders / domain (and subdomain) names something descriptive – so that it works like keywords.
5.Include a site map, linked to from the home page
6.Means the search engine will be able to index the whole site quickly and easily.
7.Put all JavaScript & CSS in separate files ( we have already discussed this )


Meta tags
1.The meta tags for title, keywords and description should be utilized to their full value, and match keywords that appear in the body the page
2.Don't use the same meta tags across the site - each page should have its own
3.Optimize your meta tag information
a.Check your site stats to see which words and phrases your users are searching for

Avoid the following things
1.Re-direct any page from the page you want to list in search engine.
2.Hidden text, use of small font size text, same color text as the background- some search engines/directories (e.g. Yahoo) will actually penalize and considered spam.


Improving the listing
1.Analyze site stats
a.Which keywords people are searching for - change meta tags and content accordingly
b.Which search engines/directories are not putting traffic to the site
c.How long users stay on site / pages - can improve listing
2..Ensure the page design is not harmful to search engines spidering your site
3.Create information rich pages
a.About things users would be interested in
b.Updated frequently - visitors return for updates
c.Link these info rich pages from site map

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Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Search Engine Optimization Tips

Tips for using proper Meta tags in your page

1. Meta tags are included in the html, between the head tag at the top of the document

2. It is crucial to get the correct information in these as this could decide whether or not your web site is listed

3. The meta tags (in the HTML of each page) for title, keywords and description should be utilized to their full value, and match keywords that appear in the body of the page

4. Some search engines (not all) use meta tags to obtain the information about your site - directories don't use them

5. Meta tags are an important aspect of search engine optimization

Step by step instructions
Planning
1. Think of a short keyword intensive phrase for the page

o Use this as the page title

o Keep to 10-20 characters or less (incl. spaces, punctuation etc.)




2. Use this phrase as the basis for a short paragraph for the description meta tag

o Do not split the phrase up in the paragraph - keep it intact

o It is beneficial to include any other keyword phrases may be relevant for the page

o Keep description meta tag to 250 characters (incl. spaces, punctuation etc.)


3. There is not much point putting keywords in the description meta tag if they are not included in the actual body content anywhere



4. Think of any other possible keyword/keyword phrases which are relevant to the page

o Use the keywords from the title and description for the keywords meta tag



Title
The title tag is becoming increasingly important to listings.

1. It should be descriptive, but short (about 50 characters)

2. Include keywords

3. Build it around a target phrase for the page

4. It needs to make sense as a sentence, but try to limit the use of irrelevant words (a, the, etc.)

5. Try to make it specific to your web site

Description

1. The description meta tag is what the user sees when the search engine displays the site in a list among all other similar sites .

2. This should be informative and not too long (there are recommended limits - around 250 characters) as only a set number of characters will be displayed

3. Should include keyword phrases

4. Ideally keywords which are repeated in the title and body content of the page

5. Put your most important keywords at the beginning of the description

6. Don’t use too many stop words (a, on, the, etc)- search engines don’t index them- wastes your description



Keywords
1. The keywords (Meta name="keywords" content="keyword, keyword, keyword")

2. These are the possible keywords a user may submit when searching for information

3. It is worth putting in variations, acronyms (e.g. software outsourcing ,offshore software, India software outsourcing ) and in some cases you can also use spelling mistakes of words

4. Use plural over singular

5. Adds characters and separates words which may be searched for together

6. Don’t repeat keywords (SEs don’t like repetition)

7. Don't repeat a keyword more then 3 times

8. Good to try variations of the same word (e.g. software outsource, software outsourcing, outsourcing software)

9. Match with important keywords in the body content of the page


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Search Engine Optimization Tips

Tips for using proper Meta tags in your page

1. Meta tags are included in the html, between the head tag at the top of the document

2. It is crucial to get the correct information in these as this could decide whether or not your web site is listed

3. The meta tags (in the HTML of each page) for title, keywords and description should be utilized to their full value, and match keywords that appear in the body of the page

4. Some search engines (not all) use meta tags to obtain the information about your site - directories don't use them

5. Meta tags are an important aspect of search engine optimization

Step by step instructions
Planning

1. Think of a short keyword intensive phrase for the page

o Use this as the page title

o Keep to 10-20 characters or less (incl. spaces, punctuation etc.)




2. Use this phrase as the basis for a short paragraph for the description meta tag

o Do not split the phrase up in the paragraph - keep it intact

o It is beneficial to include any other keyword phrases may be relevant for the page

o Keep description meta tag to 250 characters (incl. spaces, punctuation etc.)


3. There is not much point putting keywords in the description meta tag if they are not included in the actual body content anywhere



4. Think of any other possible keyword/keyword phrases which are relevant to the page

o Use the keywords from the title and description for the keywords meta tag



Title
The title tag is becoming increasingly important to listings.

1. It should be descriptive, but short (about 50 characters)

2. Include keywords

3. Build it around a target phrase for the page

4. It needs to make sense as a sentence, but try to limit the use of irrelevant words (a, the, etc.)

5. Try to make it specific to your web site

Description

1. The description meta tag is what the user sees when the search engine displays the site in a list among all other similar sites .

2. This should be informative and not too long (there are recommended limits - around 250 characters) as only a set number of characters will be displayed

3. Should include keyword phrases

4. Ideally keywords which are repeated in the title and body content of the page

5. Put your most important keywords at the beginning of the description

6. Don’t use too many stop words (a, on, the, etc)- search engines don’t index them- wastes your description



Keywords
1. The keywords (Meta name="keywords" content="keyword, keyword, keyword")

2. These are the possible keywords a user may submit when searching for information

3. It is worth putting in variations, acronyms (e.g. software outsourcing ,offshore software, India software outsourcing ) and in some cases you can also use spelling mistakes of words

4. Use plural over singular

5. Adds characters and separates words which may be searched for together

6. Don’t repeat keywords (SEs don’t like repetition)

7. Don't repeat a keyword more then 3 times

8. Good to try variations of the same word (e.g. software outsource, software outsourcing, outsourcing software)

9. Match with important keywords in the body content of the page


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