Google admits to “Sandbox” effect…sort of

Several respected members of the SEO community are reporting that a prominent Google engineer has more or less admitted to the existence of a "Sandbox" effect during a session at SES in San Jose, California. The unnamed engineer basically admitted that all sites are subject to a "probationary" period of sorts regardless of merit. This period can last anywhere from six months to 12 months.

The Engineer also joked that Google does not refer to this probationary period as a "sandbox". They don't really have a specific name for it but said that they are amused with the moniker and decided to nickname the company volleyball court, located in the googleplex, "The Sandbox".

According to the engineer, the purpose of this probationary “sandbox” period is to allow Google time to determine how users react to a new site and who links to it, etc. He went on to say that this effect is in now way related to Adwords or any financial considerations favoring Google.

Of course, jaded webmasters continue to insist that the so-called "sandbox" is just a way for Google to force people in to spending money on Adwords. Some are actually dismissing the Google engineer's statements altogether. Oh well, I guess some things never change.

By Hugo Guzman

Source: http://www.seoproject.com/news/google-sandbox-effect150805.shtml

How Important is ALT Text in Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimizers no longer need to use keyword phrases in the ALT text of images on their Web pages.

However, let's look at a smarter approach.

The major engines don't consider the contents of ALT text now, but that doesn't mean they won't six months from now. Always remembering the "basics" is one of the best strategies to follow.

1. Remember that the purpose of ALT text is to describe the image for the benefit of those who surf the Web with images turned off and for those who have the contents of Web pages read out loud to them. The WC3 highly recommends that Web site owners use ALT text to describe images.

2. Use your keyword phrase in one or two instances of ALT text on the page ­no more. Use moderation in everything you do in search engine optimization.

3. Don't use text that is non-relevant to the image. Don't keyword stuff. Jerry West adds, "Give the visitor information that is worthwhile, especially for the visually impaired."

4. "Consider using a description below the graphic. Based on recent test results, this is read often," states West.

If your intent is to fool the search engine into giving you a higher ranking, you are performing 'grey or black hat' strategies. Stay on the right side of the path and the engines will bless you.":)

Remember . . . ALT Text is Just One "Piece of the Pie"

Relevancy and ranking are determined by over 100 different factors. ALT text was just one piece of that pie, a sliver at that.

Don't ever focus on just one piece of the pie. Always remember the basics ­- the SEO foundation ­- and make sure it's solid.

If you know you're weak in one or two areas, you know you have to beef up on other pieces of the SEO pie.

By Robin Nobles

Source: http://www.seo-news.com/archives/2005/aug/18.html

Excessive use of images or Flash animation on a page:

If your web page has plenty of nice-looking graphics and eye-popping Flash animation and not a lot of textual content it may indeed look nice but have you ever considered what how the search engines might see it. Search engines thrive on textual content, scavenging as much text as they can but unfortunately they cannot understand images or Flash animations like we can and so will find nothing of real value on your page. Try to balance your page so that the textual content is given priority and that any images or animations are used only when needed. Also it is a good idea to attach some text to an image by using its ALT tag as search engines use this text when determining rank.

Source: http://www.geocities.com/frakilk/seo-mistakes.html

20 Ideas for creating traffic rich, search engine friendly pages

20 Ideas for High Performance Information Rich pages
Your high performance, information rich pages might be any of the following (but not limited just to these either):

1. A Questions and Answers information rich FAQ page.

2. An introductory story related to the appropriate Web site theme (something that is compelling or educational on topic).

3. Interesting and original statistics which you have discovered through your research, are in high demand by your audience.

4. An interesting interview with someone (make it exclusive and original). People love to read about other peoples experiences and or opinions and views.

5. It might be a page loaded with various product reviews with an emphasis on benefits of each in comparrison.

6. It could be a theme related feature article or story.

7. It could be a detailed tutorial loaded with valuable "How to" or "instructional" advice.

8. Your information page might even be a biography about someone's life that people are looking for detail on. Ofcourse it should relate to the topical interest of your site's theme.

9. Your pages might something with a current events or newsworthy or hard news angle. Your audience is probably looking for interesting news if you take time to study what they aresearching for.

10. Your information rich pages might want to contain detailed historical information that your audience is seeking.

11. There may be room for the use of information pages that use some humor or emotional content that is still of good value.

12. Would there be value to having a questionnaire which asks your audience a series of important questions. Remember that like real life, most Web based businesses are about building rapport and relationships.

13. You could build an index to a whole library of similarly themed topics and all though your articles would all be similarin theme, each individual information rich page would contain useful and diverse subject matter. Remember high value to your readers but all original (and no duplication in content).

14. What about an information rich page offering an entryway into a useful, interactive section like a message board perhaps detailing terms of use for the message board.

15. It might be a page containing an interesting advice column on your chosen theme. Just old fashioned "good reading" which offers your readers advice or solutions to their challenges.

16. Your information page might be a reference page loaded with interesting, inspirational or famous quotes quite popularwith all types of personalities.

17. Your pages might contain a related territorial map (yes images can be used most effectively with text)

18. It might be a sales letter but remember the emphasis is on quality content and originality. Things like detailed product reviews or content that emphasized some value added layout.

19. It could be a community related page with important localized community information. Tremendous value for Web sites that are looking for region specific traffic.

20. It could be any of the above suggestions with a seasonal angle relating to Christmas, Halloween, Easter, or something else appropriate to the Web content within your main theme.

By John Alexander

Source: http://www.internet-search-engines-faq.com/seo-articles/ideas-creating-traffic-rich-search-engine-friendly-pages.shtml

When It Comes To Search Engine Marketing - Is It Worth The Effort?

If you've been trying to sell products or services online, you've probably heard a lot about Search Engine Marketing...

The most common question is whether or not SEM is really worth the effort.

The single most important reason to pursue an effective search engine marketing campaign is that it's the lowest cost, long-term strategy available to the online marketer.

There are many other ways to market your products and services...ads in ezines, banner ads, Pay Per Click ( PPC ) - just to name a few. The problem with all of these methods is that if you stop paying - your traffic stops too.

Or you could rely on email marketing to a list...

A couple of serious drawbacks with that. First you have to have a list of names that have given you permission to email them. How do you get those names in the first place? The most common method is to offer something of value on your site in exchange for the prospects name and email address.

So now, you still need to get the prospect to your site in order for them to become a subscriber to your list.

Yes, you can buy the names - but that could get costly and your response rates will almost always be incredibly low.

And these days - with the new CanSpam Law in effect - you need some way to ensure those people really wanted to be on the list you purchased. Sadly many lists are compiled without the prospects knowledge - meaning that you'll get a high percentage of flames or nasty replies to your marketing message.

So what makes Search Engine Marketing so much more effective?

The difference - in a nutshell - your prospects find you - with all other methods of advertising - you have to find them.

Source: http://www.seoplus.com/search-engine-marketing.html

Google Goes Public

Google announced that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering by the company of 14,159,265 shares of Class A common stock.

What does this mean to SEO's, PPC manager, and webmasters (especially those who are part of the AdWords or AdSense programs)? Basically it means that more than ever Google is going to be putting profit ahead of their philosophy of "don't be evil". Google will now have an even stronger "responsibility" to their shareholders and, as with many public companies, this means profits before ethics.

We'll be watching this one closely to monitor for changes in revenue generated by webmasters as part of the AdSense program and for increasing costs for the AdWords program.

A copy of the prospectus relating to these securities may be obtained, when available, from: Morgan Stanley & Co. Incorporated, Prospectus Department, 1585 Broadway, New York, NY 10036 or Credit Suisse First Boston LLC, Prospectus Department, One Madison Avenue, New York, NY10010.

By Dave Davies

Source: http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/

Google and Yahoo! Look at Moving Into Traditional Media?

Yahoo! and Google look to be competing to aquire all or part of Trade Classified Media which owns 56 websites and 575 print titles in about 20 countries including the US, France, Spain and Russia worth nearly 1.5 billion. Reports also say that online auction firm eBay may also make an approach for the company. The competition between Google and Yahoo comes 1 week after a spat over which of the search engines indexes more pages. This rivalry between these two giants is sure to continue over the next weeks and months so stay tuned to the Beanstalk SEO News Blog to see what events unfurl.

By Tyler Huston
Source: http://www.beanstalk-inc.com/blog/

The FyberSearch SEO Golden Rule

"If you attempt to get a web page ranked in FyberSearch for a search query that is not related to the topic of the web page then you run a high risk of having that page banned."

The purpose of a search engine is to provide Internet users with the information sought after. Please create your web page with that in mind. More information regarding specific SEO tactics can be found below.

"Cloaking" is used to describe the act of showing one version of a web page to search engines and another version to general users. The web page shown to search engines is written specifically to appeal to search engines and hopefully receive higher rankings than the page shown to users.

In most cases cloaking is a fine tactic to use when optimizing for higher rankings in FyberSearch. If it is obvious that a web page is written to rank well under unrelated search queries then it runs a high risk of being banned.

You may have a web page containing mostly non-text content that FyberSpider cannot read. This does not mean the web pages is useless to users; it should receive a fair ranking in FyberSearch.

Hiding text is a SEO tactic to improve the ranking of a web page by increasing the number of times keywords are repeated. Typically search engines will rank pages in part by the number of times the search query is repeated on each web page. The web pages with a higher number of keyword repetitions usually show up higher in results.

In most cases hidden text is a fine tactic to use when optimizing for higher rankings in FyberSearch. If it is obvious that a web page is written to rank well under unrelated search queries then it runs a high risk of being banned.

It is important to remember that real people will be viewing web pages you own. If you place text on a web page that is the same color as the background (one way of implementing the hidden text SEO tactic) you risk making the web page look ugly.

Duplicate content is the act of creating multiple web pages with very similar content in hopes of receiving more visitors.

This is one very good way to get a web page banned from FyberSearch. There is really no point in doing this unless you desire to bore users and annoy search engines. Please do not create more than one page that has the same content. Any web pages containing duplicate content run a high risk of being banned from FyberSearch.

Doorway pages are web pages created specifically to rank high in search engines. They are typically not created with human visitors in mind. When optimizing for higher rankings in FyberSearch using doorway pages is not preferred. However, using it will not get you banned in most cases.

There are a few ways to use redirects to gain higher rankings for a web page. Some of these ways work only in a few search engines while others may work in many.

As specified above, if you try to get a web page listed under a search query it does not belong to you risk having the page banned.

Source: http://www.fybersearch.com/seo-rules.php

What the Search Engines Want

Good SEO writing involves compiling a search term list (keywords and keyword phrases), then writing in a manner that makes good use of the chosen search terms, both in placement and in density, to create body text that's relevant to the Web page's purpose.

Meta tags are also important, especially the title and description tags. Keyword tags are of less importance, but they still have their uses. ALT tags, too, are useful, and failing to include them can cause your Web pages to rank lower.

Search-engine spiders love written content, so having massive amounts of it can only help your cause. Having an article archive on your site is a good way to provide that content. Just remember that the SEO rules that apply to the rest of your site also apply to individual articles.

A good link strategy is an essential part of top page ranks. Avoid link farms and any Web sites that are obviously of low quality. Avoid linking to any site that can destroy your credibility or damage your reputation.

Don't use a Web site's Google page rank or Alexa rank as an excuse for linking, or not linking, to a site. The only way you can tell whether a Web site has merit, for linking purposes, is to get inside the site and check it out for yourself. Your most important criterion is lots of relevant, well-written content. It's what the search engines are looking for, and you can be absolutely certain it's what your potential link partners are looking for on your site.

Without sufficient quantities of SEO text on your Web pages, your Web site will neither attract the high-quality link partners you desire, or the high search engine page ranks that are so necessary to on-line success.

Source: http://www.perfecttext.com/SEO%20Writing.htm

SEO vs. PPC - What Are the Differences?

The question comes up often regarding the differences between search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing and which one to use. The answer depends on your specific business objectives and your budget.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization will absolutely provide the lowest-cost traffic to your site but results generally take months to show up and SEO is subject the whims of seach engine algorithm changes.

 Can be thought of an "infrastructure" investment for your site
 Involves a one-time fee and minimal monthly outlay
 Time-consuming to implement, can mean recoding entire site
 Can take months for results to kick in
 No guarantees for a specific ranking
 Targets a relatively low number of high-trafficked keyword phrases
 Has the highest conversion rate and best ROI of any online marketing method
 Highly ranked sites are perceived as being more credible
 Over the long-term is much cheaper than pay-per-click
 Produces long-lasting results - good optimization can last for a year or more

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

A pay-per-click campaign is the fastest way to drive traffic to your site and is often used to to get traffic while the results of your SEO efforts kick in. The downside of PPC marketing is that you can burn through a lot of cash in a hurry if you don't know what you are doing.

 Is a regular, recurring expense. Traffic stops when you stop paying.
 You can get visitor traffic in as little as an hour after setup
 Solution for exposure on competitive search terms where you can't get a top ranking
 Good solution for "problem" sites that use Flash or dynamic content
 Great for testing new product ideas or the effectiveness of ads quickly
 Goal it to target a large number of low-bid-cost (niche) keywords
 Perfect interim measure until your SEO results show up in the search engines
 Excellent for seasonal sales or other time-dependent promotions
 Easy to measure and track performance and effectiveness
 Very time-intensive to monitor in-house

Source: http://www.bluemoosedesign.com/article-seo-ppc.htm

SEO vs. PPC

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) are the two leading techniques in the Search Engine Marketing (SEM) toolkit. While both are powerful strategies, most SEM professionals who offer the two services agree that SEO earns substantially better ROI than PPC does. Numerous reliable studies demonstrate this as well. But that does not mean PPC is not highly useful, or even preferable for some sites and companies.

Most search engine positions are NOT for sale. About 60% of the top search engines' screen real estate is devoted to non-paid, "organic" listings - which means 60% of your search engine visibility depends on SEO, not PPC or other paid placement. On average, about 70% of clicks from search engines come from SEO. PPC campaigns usually require nearly as much labor to set up as SEO requires, in addition to the click charges you pay after set up is complete. PPC requires ongoing management, whereas SEO, when done right, is done once and performs superbly in perpetuity. PPC prices are constantly increasing, often beyond positive ROI for your most important phrases, while SEO listings are free. Finally, PPC is increasingly beset by varieties of "click fraud."

PPC is the second most cost-effective form of web marketing, after SEO. Therefore, your first priority is to ensure that your site has optimum inclusion and rank within the non-paid, "organic" or "editorial" parts of Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOLsearch, and the other top search engines. Your second priority is to establish a winning PPC campaign that does not cannibalize your SEO.

Source: http://www.2disc.com/seo_vs_ppc.html

Organic vs PPC vs Paid Inclusion

Many search engines had to find new revenue streams as the dot com bubble burst and targeted pay per click text ads provided that stream.

Yahoo! also has a paid inclusion program which is said to ensure coverage but not to have any effect on relevancy. Listing in their paid inclusion does get your site a human review though, so it may help improve your relevancy scores some.

1. Regular organic traffic: Organic search results are the free results off to the left side of the page.

2. Pay per click ads: Pay Per Click ads are usually at the right side of the page. Some search engines also place a few at the top & bottom of pages. Typically PPC ads in most search engines (such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo!) are above or below the search results are in a colored box. AOL and Ask Jeeves do not make it as easy to distinguish their paid listings though.

3. Paid inclusion: Paid inclusion sites list in the regular organic listings but paid inclusion is said to have no effect on relevancy. They are blended into the search results and can not be easily distinguished from the other search results.

AltaVista was known to have a problem with mixing paid inclusion and organic ads for a while. Google feels paid inclusion is a conflict of interests with relevancy and has never had a paid inclusion program.

Source: http://www.search-marketing.info/organic-listings/

Web Site SEO Popularity: Web Directories

Internet users find the Web sites of numerous businesses by browsing through various directories, or by performing keyword searches within directories using terms specific to the information or services they seek.

Web directories use human editors to put Web sites into specific categories. As with an index in a book, users can browse directory category and subcategory headings to find the information they need. Directory categories are organized as a hierarchy, with broader categories at the top of the organizational structure, and more specific subcategories lower down. For example, in Yahoo!'s online directory, you will find law firm listings in the following category hierarchies:

Government > Law > (followed by law-related categories and law practice areas)Business & Economy > Shopping and Services > Law > Firms

Every Web site that you find in a directory is indexed in a relatively similar way, under major category headings, which are narrowed into subcategories.

Submitting Your Site to a Directory

Once your firm's Web site is on the Internet, you should have it listed in the major consumer Web directories, namely the Open Directory Project, Yahoo! and LookSmart.

Being listed in these Web directories is a good way to market your business online and it will help your site get indexed by search engines. It will also increase your Web site's popularity as part of your search engine optimization plan.

Source: http://seo.justia.com/web-directories.html

What is PageRank?

PageRank is the algorithm used by the Google search engine, originally formulated by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in their paper The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.

It is based on the premise, prevalent in the world of academia, that the importance of a research paper can be judged by the number of citations the paper has from other research papers. Brin and Page have simply transferred this premise to its web equivalent: the importance of a web page can be judged by the number of hyperlinks pointing to it from other web pages.

what is the algorithm?

It may look daunting to non-mathematicians, but the PageRank algorithm is in fact elegantly simple and is calculated as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

where PR(A) is the PageRank of a page A PR(T1) is the PageRank of a page T1 C(T1) is the number of outgoing links from the page T1 d is a damping factor in the range 0 <>

The PageRank of a web page is therefore calculated as a sum of the PageRanks of all pages linking to it (its incoming links), divided by the number of links on each of those pages (its outgoing links).

Source: http://www.markhorrell.com/seo/pagerank.html

Web Page Redirects: Keeping your pages indexed

Redirection - From an Old page To a New page

What are redirects, and how are they supposed to operate?

Why do web page urls change? Site owners will get new domain names, reorganize their web sites or instill a new content delivery system, which are just some of many reasons that URLs can change.

If you change your URL, people (your site visitors) or search engines will be unable to find the page when looking in the old location. If your page was indexed with high ranking then how are people going to locate it? Redirection is the current solution. With URL redirection, a site owner can automatically send requests for the page from the old location to the new one. You can think of this as email or phone number forwarding for web pages.

Meta Tag Refresh Page Redirects

Meta tag redirection is a page-based method of pointing from one place to another. In other words, it's something you put on the actual web page.

Server-Side Redirection

This is where your web server does all the work of pointing from one place to another.
When your server does a redirection (or responds to anything), it sends out a little status code about the request it's processed. You know how when you try to reach a web site that's gone, and you sometimes get a "404 Not Found" error? That's a type of status code a server sends, which in turn may trigger the appearance of that "Not Found" page.

By Alex Skorohodov
Source: http://www.kosmoscentral.com/seo-articles/web-page-redirects.html

One Way Links

One way links are far more effective than reciprocal links. One way links are where one site links to another site that does not link back to it. Getting one-way-links is near impossible but by following a couple of simple guidelines it is possible to find your site linked to from all over the Internet within a short space of time.

Ways to get one-way links

1. Create a useful, interesting web site and other sites will naturally link to it The vast majority of the thousands of links to THIS site were not requested.

2. Submit your site to major directories, such as Yahoo! and DMOZ.org, in the appropriate category.

3. Write articles and submit them to newsletters which are then archived online.

4. Hunt for sites that complement yours and ask them to publish your articles.

5. Participate in forums which allow a text link to your site in a signature.

6. Locate industry-specific directories and submit your site to them. For example, if your site is on a health topic, look for health-related directories.

7. Give away free ebooks and white papers that contain links to your site.

8. Create simple web-based free software. Tell other sites, newsletters and forums about it and ask for a link to it.

9. Create downloadable software which contains links to your site.

10. Create a blog and get it listed in blog directories.

11. Make arrangements for other sites to archive your newsletters on their sites.

12. Get your white papers published on other web sites.

13. Syndicate your material to other sites. Create a content syndication feed (RSS feed) and include a link to your site. Use PHP rather than Javascript to ensure search engines parse your headings and links.

14. Do something funny or outrageous or brilliant and people will link to your site without being asked.


Source: http://www.associateprograms.com/one-way-links.shtml

SEO Effects on Web Design

Search engines can't see the same things humans can, including graphics; images fancy menus, cool rollovers or convenient databases. They aren't yet sophisticated enough to decipher anything but straight HTML. If your website isn't pure HTML, it may be invisible to search engines.

It is good to keep in mind during the development stage of your website, the following truths:

1. Search engines are looking for relevant content: When someone goes to the search engine to find something, they are use key words or a key phrase to label the info they are seeking. It makes sense then that our web pages be created to reflect more content and keyword rich text reflecting our website's main purpose.

2. Search engines cannot read graphics: If your web page is full of graphics or Flash designs, it is unreadable to search engine crawlers. A Flash intro or a large graphic intro page seriously impedes the search engine crawler's ability to maneuver into your website and read your website's content. Simple, text based websites are far more likely to attract web robots.

3. Search Engines Cannot Read JavaScript: JavaScript is a nice element to add to your website, however be aware that JavaScript is invisible to search engines. Linking to certain interactive elements, as opposed to embedding them on the page is helpful to keep your web code clean and cozy for search engines.

4. Search Engines need clear navigation systems: The cool and hip options available for navigating a website are not as friendly to search engines as necessary. What is needed today is clear, easy to follow text link navigation system to help the search engines read all we have to say.

5. Search Engines have little time to index your site: Once they make it to your site, the search engines have very little time to read all you have to offer. That's why it is important to optimize your site as much as possible, making it easy for the crawlers to maneuver. Clean, validated code is ideal, as are small, fast loading, optimized graphics.

Source: http://www.the-marketing-shop.com/seo-web-design.htm

Steps of Website Optimization

1. Keyword Analysis (Overture/WordTracker):
We generally use WordTracker for finding the Search Count of the Keyword. Find INTITLE and INURL for the keyword.

2. Content of Website:
Before optimize the website we should like to get a good deal of new content down in order to insure that we know exactly.

3. Site Structure:
We have to create a site that is easily spidered by the search engines and also attractive for visitors. We must "think like a spider". A search engine spider reads our web page like we would read a book. It starts at the top left, reads across, and then moves down.
Priority must be given then, to what we place near the top of our page.

4. Optimization:
A spider places importance on what it reads highest on the page and so beginning with a sentence that includes our targeted phrase only makes sense. The term "keyword density" refers to the percentage of our content that is made up of our targeted keywords. Add keywords, Description and Title in every webpage of the website.

5. Internal Linking:
There are two main ways to insure that our site gets well spidered. The first is to place text links on the bottom of homepage to the main internal pages. The second is to create a sitemap to all our internal pages and link to it from the homepage. Do not use links in pictures and we should use important keywords in the links.

6. Human Testing:
Find out how it reads to someone who has no invested interest in the site and correct any issues they may bring up.

7. Submissions To search Engines and Directories: Submission of website to Google, Yahoo, MSN search engines. Submission of website in directories manually.

8. Link Building:
Link Popularity is one of the most important features of any search engine optimization process and it is the "Off-Page" Optimization of our website. We search the internet for relevant high ranking category websites and get linked within them.

Two Types of links services:

a. One way links
b. Reciprocal links

Source:
www.evolt.org/article/10_Steps_To_Higher_Search_Engine_Positioning/20/60390/

Reciprocal Link Development Procedure

A growing number of search engines use link popularity in their ranking algorithms. Google uses it as its most important factor in ranking sites. HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi, and others also use link popularity in their formulas. Eventually every major engine will use link popularity, so developing and maintaining it are essential to your search engine placement. Link popularity can do a lot for your site. Not only will many search engines rank you higher, but links from other sites will also drive more traffic to you. Link popularity is much more than a measure of how many links point to a site. Search engines use far more sophisticated formulas to gauge how popular sites are. In general, however, link popularity is measured by the following factors:

1. Number of Links - The more, the better. Although lots of irrelevant links are less effective than a few relevant ones, they're better than nothing. Inktomi, a company that provides search results to engines like HotBot, still values the number of links more than nothing else.

2. Link text - The text used to describe a link can also affect your rankings. These links all point to the same URL but use different text: Yourwebsite.com Your Keywords Click here Search engines' spiders figure that any words other sites use to describe your site are particularly relevant. So, if lots of sites linking to you use keywords in their link text, search engines will boost your ranking for those keywords.

Source: http://www.softzsolutions.com/seo/linkbuilding/

The importance of robots.txt

When a search engine crawler comes to your site, it will look for a special file on your site. That file is called robots.txt and it tells the search engine spider, which Web pages of your site should be indexed and which Web pages should be ignored.

The robots.txt file is a simple text file (no HTML), that must be placed in your root directory, for example:

http://www.yourwebsite.com/robots.txt

As mentioned above, the robots.txt file is a simple text file. Open a simple text editor to create it. The content of a robots.txt file consists of so-called "records".

A record contains the information for a special search engine. Each record consists of two fields: the user agent line and one or more Disallow lines. Here's an example:

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /cgi-bin

This robots.txt file would allow the "googlebot", which is the search engine spider of Google, to retrieve every page from your site except for files from the "cgi-bin" directory. All files in the "cgi-bin" directory will beignored by googlebot.

The Disallow command works like a wildcard. If you enter

User-agent: googlebot
Disallow: /support

both "/support.html" and "/support/index.html" as well as all other files in the "support" directory would not be indexed by search engines.

If you leave the Disallow line blank, you're telling the search engine that all files may be indexed. In any case, you must enter a Disallow line for every User-agent record.

If you want to give all search engine spiders the same rights, use the following robots.txt content:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin

Source: http://www.businessseek.biz/article-directory/article-59.html

Next-Gen TV to Follow 'Net Search Model

As they do battle to dominate the future of TV, cable and phone companies are looking to Google and Yahoo for help navigating the myriad shows that will be available via next-generation TV, reports Reuters (via paidcontent). Viewers in the near future will likely search for programs as they would on the web, executives in both industries said at the Reuters Telecommunications, Cable and Satellite Summit this week. Search becomes more important as pay television offers services such as video on demand and digital video recorders (DVR) fill up with more programs.

"If you're going to bring internet-like capabilities to television, eventually search is going to be as critical to the TV as it is to the PC," Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast said at the summit. Roberts said the company has held early discussions on how Google can improve Comcast's web portal and suggested those talks could have broad implications for cable TV.

Comcast has also begun testing voice navigation; SBC is figuring out its own search functions, possibly with Yahoo; Verizon too is on board: "You will get to the point where people will essentially Google what they want," according to Verizon president Lawrence Babbio.

Source: http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2005/08/12/nextgen_tv_to_follow_net_search_model/index.php

Jeeves Still Wants Google Relationship

Ask Jeeves may have just launched its own paid search ad program, but it does not want to sever ties with Google, Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz is quoted by DM News as saying earlier this week. "We love the Google relationship. I can see it lasting forever," he said. But he added that the focus is on "developing our relationship with advertisers. We need to understand conversion and deal directly with the advertiser." In the future, Berkowitz hopes to use other IAC properties iWon, with its broad consumer platform, Excite and other brands to grow Ask Jeeves.

Meanwhile, CNET reports now that it's part of Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, Ask Jeeves is getting thinner, cutting back on sponsored results that bloated its site and increasing more relevant links, according to Berkowitz.

Based on English author P.G. Wodehouse's valet character, Jeeves has lost his butler suit and some of his girth on his website, the name of which could be shortened to just Ask. Ask Jeeves, Usually ranked fourth behind Google, Yahoo, and MSN, will invest heavily in marketing, building up its brand and new product development, Berkowitz said.

Source: http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2005/08/12/jeeves_still_wants_google_relationship/index.php?rss1

Why People Write SEO Articles

Search engine optimization techniques change significantly over time. Many SEO experts write about the changing field of search engine optimization in article format because articles:

• Work well to teach people about SEO;


• Help build trust with prospective clients;


• Introduce your work to a new group of people;


• Help build link popularity.

Two notes of caution with SEO articles:

• SEO articles can and do become dated. If you are reading something old make sure that that data is still correct today.


• Frequently it is easy to take the concept of the article too far to where it hurts other aspects of your site or business. For example a person may tell you to use keyword rich text and you may end up writing your site more for a robot than person.

Source: http://www.honestseo.com/seo-article-sites.html

Yahoo extends publishing network to the "little people"

In an effort to compete with Google's "Adsense" publisher network, Yahoo has extended the reach of its own publisher network. They will no allow small to medium sized websites access to their publisher network by allowing them to engage in content match advertising for the mega-search portal. Yahoo officially announced this offering earlier today.

Up until now, small web publishers could not gain access to Yahoo's content match advertising. The traffic threshold was simply too high. Now that the threshold has been lowered, it will be interesting to see which of the two advertisers will offer a relatively higher effective CPM. Chances are that it will depend on the subject/theme of the content.

Yahoo says that the system will be linked into the same advertising network, content and applications used by the existing large accounts. However, the self-serve nature of the service means that keywords and landing pages won't be checked by hand. For now, this service is only available in the US.

Source: http://www.seoproject.com/news/yahoo-publisher-network030805.shtml

Search engine optimization getting visitors to your website

Search Engine Optimization is a coined term which means to construct or edit websites so they rank highly in search engines. That is, making them match as optimumly as possible the search engines' ranking formulas in order to rank well enough to get visitors to your website.

The need for search engine optimization arose because — as many website owners have discovered — simply having a website does not guarantee that people can find it. Of course, you can pay to get visitors to your website, but search engine optimization does not necessarily involve such ongoing advertising costs.

SEO can reduce your advertising costs
One of the benefits of SEO is that it can enable your website to attract visitors without paying for search engine advertising fees. In most cases, you can reach a very wide audience simply through optimizing your website. Even if you conduct paid Internet marketing campaigns (ads, banners, paid listings), adding search engine optimization to your advertising arsenal is a good two-pronged approach to increased visitor traffic and sales.

Unfortunately, incorrect and/or outdated information about SEO abounds on the Web alongside often incomprehensible insider jargon — and websites "optimized" using risky techniques can be penalized or even outright banned by search engines. This, of course, poses a large problem for website owners.

Source: http://dianev.com/consultation/seo-consultation.html

Outsourcing SEO To Specialized Search Engine Optimization Companies

According to a recent study in the U.S., only about 20% of businesses outsource SEO to specialized SEO companies. The other 80% either do not know that there is such a thing as search engine optimization or they believe that they have the skills to do it in-house. Perhaps that is why so many companies are hard to find on the search engines.

The problem is that your in-house expert probably does not know enough. Search engine optimization used to be fairly easy, but today the search engine industry is

 extremely complex
 extremely competitive and it
 changes daily

Your in-house expert could make mistakes like using "free for all" pages or resubmitting your site too often. He could end up getting your site dropped from the search engines. If he uses practices such as cloaking, he could get your site permanently banned from the search engines. This costs you money in lost sales. Nine out of ten times you'll do better if you outsource. One of the drawbacks of outsourcing search engine optimization is that the expense is a recurring one. Having your site optimized every time it changes significantly can become expensive. Whether or not it's worth it will depend on your site and sales copy. If your site consistently converts visitors into customers, you can afford to spend money on acquisition.

Source: http://www.softzsolutions.com/seo/smallbusiness

The Next Generation

There is no denying that these search engines( Google, Yahoo, MSN ) are among the most popular websites. They mark the daily entry point into the Web experience. Search engines are trying to offer more and to be more useful. Whether it is Google’s personalized or local or universal search or Yahoo's geotargeting, they are continuing to evolve. We are seeing the sophistication of the spiders ( crawlers ) in finding and indexing sites. The increase in user-friendly searching techniques and interface, the expansion of databases and the improved relevancy of results from the database are just a few indications. As the Web continues to grow rapidly, the need for better and smarter search engines only increases. As a result they are moving more towards semantics. Understanding users mind and supplying the appropriate results, they understand the meaning of the query whether the search is for commercial purpose or information purpose and serve results accordingly.There has been various theories put forward on this topic. For example, future of search will allow users to search by, matching via topic and synonym. This is something pretty advanced and will take a lot of effort to achieve.

Next generation search engines will make use of methods that will make semantic-based searches, personalized searches, peer-to-peer searches,etc. highly possible. Some like Google with their advanced capabilities will produce excellent fine-grained topic and genre classifications and synonyms automatically. Google is the fastest going search engine now and their ability to grow with cheap softwares makes anything possible.

Web search has a number of properties:-

1. Most queries are very short: typical queries range between one and five or six words, with a median length of two words.

2. Search engine queries use a very large vocabulary. Even a vocabulary of 100,000 words covers only about 80% of the query traffic.

To tackle this search engines use different diagonal methodologies to over come this problem. The successful ones will be those that are able to solve this problem. In the future, search will be done by voice recognition where we just have to mention the words and the search engines will fetch the necessary information for us.

Source: http://www.searchenginegenie.com

The SEO Industry

The concept of search engines began to take shape soon after the first true search facility, Archie, was created by a university student (Alan Emtage) in 1990. A few years later, in 1994 the first search engines as we know them were created, two of them, Yahoo and Lycos remain major properties today.

The Early DaysIt was around that time that a few companies began experimenting with the concept of search engine optimization (sometimes called search engine marketing), with the early emphasis being primarily on the submission process. It was not long before the first automated submission software packages were released, (soon after this the concept of spam reared its head as webmasters began to swamp search results pages by over-submission and other unacceptable practices).

An Uneasy PartnershipAs the search engines revised and enhanced their ranking algorithms, web site optimisers discovered new techniques to respond to these strategies, resulting in the development of a "cat and mouse" relationship between the search engines and the SEO industry. The search engines ultimately noted that SEO as an industry was here to stay, and that in order to maintain useful indexes, they would need to accept the industry, (if not exactly embrace it), today many search engines even allow proven ethical SEO companies to become partner sites.

A Billion Dollar Industry
Today online spending reaches into the $billions, in fact Forrester Research estimates that this year, worldwide e-commerce spending will reach $6.8 trillion. Bearing this in mind and that upwards of 85% of Internet users make use of search engines to locate products or services, optimising your website for prominent search engine placement has become a fundamental component of any online business plan. Some of the top corporations in the USA, including the Ford Motor Company, Sharp Electronics and Xerox have active search engine optimisation programs in place and have reported increases of hundreds of percent in online sales as a result.

When you consider that only the top 30 search results will ever generate serious traffic. It won't help a company or its product to rank anywhere below position 30 (or below the third page of search matches). If your Web site is not found in the top 10 to 30 search results in the major search engines and directories, it might just as well not be there at all.


Source: http://www.searchmaestros.com/industry.html

Benefits of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) brings your website to achieve top ranking in search engines (Google/Yahoo/MSN) SEO helps in reaching your potential client as you are found in the search engine results. Search engines are considered a trusted source of information for hundreds of millions of people.

Some of the tangible benefits of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are:-

• Top search engine ranking in Google / Yahoo / MSN
  
• Dominate your competition


• More traffic to your website


• Eliminate the need for costly PPC ( pay per click ) / ad words programmes


• Very economical / affordable / cheap option for online marketing for the long term


• Round the clock internet marketing for you products / services


• Long term solution to your web promotion


• Search engine optimization results in huge savings on advertisement expenses spent using traditional channels of marketing


• No need for any extra advertisement


• Reduced acquisition costs


• Fast, better & measurable return on investment (ROI)


• Ensures branding of your business

Source: http://www.obiztek.com/

How to Submit Your RSS Feed To Google - New Idea

Google's new "Personalized Homepage" is a terrible RSS reader IMHO. However here is how to submit your blog feed to Google so it gets picked up by all the Google readers, just like we all did back when Yahoo 1st offered the option to add your RSS feed. It only takes a second to do and who knows, lots of new readers could find your blog.

Robin Good reports: "And for those of you interested in increasing the reach and visibility of your RSS feeds, you now have a fast, easy and direct way to submit your those feeds to Google itself… While it is hard to say now how and when Google will start leveraging that RSS-based content to augment, expand and diversify its search capabilities, it is almost certain that at it will… So, to make your blog and RSS feed part of this new Google index, head off to the Google Personalized Home page facility and follow these simple instructions…" Submit Your RSS Feed To Google Now

Source: http://affiliate-blogs.5staraffiliateprograms.com/2005/08/

The art of the blog

A shared on-line journal where people can post diary entries about their personal experiences and hobbies.

Information
A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.

Blogs are alternatively called web logs or weblogs. However, "blog" seems less likely to cause confusion, as "web log" can also mean a server's log files.

But neither of those things are blogging, quite. A weblog is neither a scrapbook nor an e-mailed newsletter. A proper weblog is about something, presents current Web-based information with every post, and is readable from a single URL.

It is more than "Hey, look at me." It must include: "Hey, look what I found," with links to items of interest. And it must be easy both to write and to read.

Connect
A Weblog connects you to other people. Anybody with a Web browser can access your Weblog to read what you've written and download files you've posted. It is a way to express your Point-of-View for others to consume, digest, and respond to.

Weblogs go beyond Office
While Microsoft Office is great at documents, it doesn't help you share the documents you've created. Further, it doesn't put those documents into the context of your life as it changes day to day.

Weblogs go beyond email
While email is great for one-to-one communication, it fails at one-to-many. Additionally, email systems don't organize information for you. While you can categorize email you receive, email doesn't provide you with the context of the message.

Source: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/blog/

RSS » what's that ?

It is file format which objective is to describe the content of a website, but in a simplified and standardized manner. A bit like the classical sitemaps, but this time « transportable » and structured the same way by everybody. It is easy to generate, light and direct. The vocation of this format is to be a standard: that means that its structure has been elaborated and approved by a community of developers. Even better: several softwares are being built around this format. They are made to read, generate or modify the format. The most important thing is not that it is a standard; it is the fact that it is getting more and more used.

RSS » an abbreviation for ?
That depends on the source. RSS can stand for « Really Simple Syndication » or « Rich Site Summary ». We, at easy RSS, very much prefer the first one. It says everything: it is simple and it gives you the ability to syndicate and distribute your content.

Let's be practical, what can it be used for ?
You could, in your site: list the articles, the sports results, the weather forecasts, get the televisions programme, the job offers... The possible applications are infinite.

Why is it better than an e-mail ?
Emails have shown how limited they are for such applications. You are receiving a lot of spams. And you don't make the difference anymore between your newsletters subscriptions and the adverts. Viruses are also traveling fast thanks to emails. And you have to be honest: most of the content you are receiving does not interest you. easyRSS provides a solution by giving you a direct access to the content you are interested in. And unlike spams, you can disable your subscription to an information source in just one click.

Source: http://www.easyrss.com/easyRss?lg=en&pc=help

Keywords - hasmin

The Importance of Keywords

When we try to find something, we type in a word or several words; and click the search button. The Search Engine looks in its index for those words. The words can be
Exact phrases ,or
Has words with close proximity

Keyword should be relative to the products and services supplied by the company. Some analysis can be done like:
> Identifying the obvious keywords
> Examining competitor’s keyword tags
> Looking closely at the list provided
> Brainstorming with colleagues
> Looking at the site’s access logs
> Picking keyword combinations
> Using keyword tool

Thus, a keyword is something very important and is to be decided carefully. The most easy way is to use keyword tools which enables to discover additional terms which may be used often by the people looking for the products and services supplied by the company.

Success route - hasmin

Ways to Success

The simplest way to success is Making the site useful by:

• Creating more text links throughout the site: A simple way is to have a main
  Navigation structure and then duplicating the structure by using simple text links at the bottom of the page.
• Adding a sitemap page to the site: This page contains links to most or all of the
  pages on the web site. We may also want to link to the sitemap page from those little links at the bottom of the page.
• Making the site look cool: This is a technique of making the site pages look attractive and entertaining.
• Providing Community and Content: One more secret to success is creating a place where people could meet and chat with each other and putting on more stuff on the site’s index.
  Avoiding Frames and making it easy to move around.
  
  Following these simple points could make the site THE BEST.

Making site friendly -hasmin

Making the site Search engine friendly

For making our site the most referenced one by the search engines, we should take care of some simple facts.
The most important being site indexing which means to find out whether the site is listed in a search engine or not. This can be accomplished by typing Cache:http://domainname.com and after we click search, the search engine checks to see if it has the page in its cache. For Yahoo checking can be done by pointing the browser to dir.yahoo.com. If it’s not indexed, then it has to be done.
The next step is Picking Good Keywords. We should come up with the keywords which we want to bid on.
And last but not the least; the pages should be examined carefully. Their Format should be made the best by using Frames, Title tags and Description tags. The site should have something to give to the search engine i.e. good results.

Powerful Keywords-Harneet

Picking Powerful Keywords

Keywords play an important roel in the web search. It is very important to select the powerful keywords for your sites. And this can be done only if the company thinks just like its customer. company has to think about all the requirements related to the product and assign the keywords acoording to it.

KEYWORD ANALYSIS

It is important to check what type of Keywords company is using for their products and can survey on the keywords of the rival company so that new keywords can be developed or searched.

Looking Closely At Your List

• Obvious Spelling Mistakes: In your list add all thos e words also which we can expect are misspelled. some time the searcher do not know the correct spelling of a particular word or while typing the word misspelling could happen.

• Synonyms: Enter as much synonyms as possible as a word have many synonyms.
• Split or Merged Words
• Singulars and Plurals
• Hyphenated Words
• Geo-Specific Terms


Apart from all this usage of Word tracker is relevant which helps in selecting the words and its synonyms.

To make the Site Useful-Harneet

The Secret but Essential Rule of Web Success

• Links :It is important to create as many links as possible in the web page.

• Cool : Cool sites seems to be more entertaining and more likely to attract repeat visitors.

• Community : The secret to a successful Web site was creating a community where people could meet and chat with each other.
• Content : Then , around 2000,people discovered that the secret was content. By putting more stuff, particularly textual information on your site, you could be more successful.
Points to Make Your site Work Well

Use of MultiMedia sholud be Limited: Use of Multimedia can ,make the website more attractive but it may cause problems for the search engines. So. it is better to use the limited multimedia software.

Use ALT Text While placing the images in a Web page, it’s a good idea to include ALT attribute text.
The ALT attribute in an IMG tag was originally intended to provide a description of an image for people using text-based browsers, or browsers that are capable of displaying images but have the image display turned off.

Use Long Link Text Long link texts can helps the searcher to understand the motive of that site and h4elps hime to reach to the correct site.

Introduction -by hasmin

Search Engines and Directories

Search engine can be referred to as a huge database containing information from individual websites through links. Search engines or indexes are the predominant type of search tools which are useful to the user for searching any kind of material online. Search Directories are known to be a categorized collection of websites i.e. which contains information about various websites.
Various known Search Engines available are:
www.google.com
www.yahoo.com
www.askjevees.com
www.altavista.com
www.aol.com

www.overtune.com
www.msn.com
www.lycos.com and many more……
The most popular out of these being www.google.com followed by www.yahoo.com Even some of these search engines feed others. These Search engines do not maintain the information on their own sites instead they just contain a link to various sites registered to them.

When somebody types a keyword and clicks the Search button then a new link is opened. This link gives way to the related site. Thus this even serves a purpose of marketing for the company. When we search a search directory, we search an index hand picked by a living human being. When we use a search engine, on the other hand, we search a database inventory gathered by software based robots that travel the net, indexing the text of the web pages they find.

Source: www.searchengineguide.com

Rules To Get Sucess On Web --by Jaipreet

The rule to get success on web is very simple that is "Make Your Site Useful and Then Tell People about it",but for this we have to make our site work well. Many of the rules of good site design just happen to match what search engines like.So here comes a few tips for good site design that will help both the site visitors and the search engines work , and those are:-

Limit The Use of Multimedia
Use Text, Not Graphics
Use ALT Text
Don’t Be Too Clever
Don’t Be Cute
Avoid Frames
Make It Easy To Move Around
Provide Different Ways to Find Things
• Table of Contents or Index Page:
• Navigation Bars.
• Navigation Text Links.
Use Long Link Text
Don’t Keep Restructuring
Spell Check and Edit

Indexed site- by HArneet

The very first job of an SEO is to check the site on which he/she is working is indexed or not.
so it is necessary to understand the term Index or Site Index.

Index

In database design, a list of keys (or keywords), each of which identifies a unique record. Indices make it faster to find specific records and to sort records by the index field -- that is, the field used to identify each record.

To check whether the site is Indexed or not

This can be done by the use of I Icon in the Google toolbar. Through this the Google will check that whether the Site is present in the Cache or not.

What if the Site is not in the list

If the site is not in the list then the possibility is that

(i) The search engines haven’t found the site yet. The solution is relatively easy,
though you won’t get it done in an hour.
(ii) The search engines, whether or not they have found your site, can’t index it.


How To Tell If The Site Is Invisible

The Search Engine is not reading the site this could be possible due to the long or complicated parameters in the URL like

http://yourdomain.com/products/index.html ? &
DID=18&amp;amp;CATID=13&ObjectGroup_ID=79

Each time someone visits this site, the server assigns a special ID number to the visitor. That means the URL is never the same, so Search Engine won’t index it. If there is a clean URL with no parameters or one parameter, the search engines should be able to get to it.


Selecting The Good Keywords

Selection of Keywords is the most important task. Some times companies use those keywords which are not of that much importance and which are common. So it is very essential to select the correct and related to the product . The keyword analysis can be done through the www.overture.com.


=> Examining your Pages

After Keyword Analysis it is important to Examine the pages of ur site.

WHAT TO EXAMINE

The very first step is to check the number of frames using a web page. Framed sites don’t do search engines much good. Search engines generally won’t index the pages that are going to be placed into the frames, though they will index the framedefinition document…. Which has keyword rich indexable content.


Here are a few quick fixes:

• Add TITLE and DESCRIPTION tags between the and tags.

• Add and tags between the and tags, and place 200 to 300 words of keyword-rich content between the tags. The NOFRAMES text is designed to be played by browsers that can’t work with frames, and search engines will read this text, although they won’t rate it as high as normal text.

• Include a number of links, in the text between the NOFRAMES tags, to other pages in your site to help the search engines find their way through.

=> Look at the Title Tags:

TITLE tags tell a browser what text to display in the browser’s title bar, and they are very important to search engines. Quite reasonably, search engines figure that the TITLE tags may indicate the page’s title – and therefore its subject.


Few problems may be there with TITLE tags.

• Many pages don’t have TITLE tags. If these tags are not there, you are not giving the search engines one of the most important pieces of information about the page’s subject matter.

. Sometimes you find the TITLE tags, but they are way down in the page. If they are too low in the page, search engines may not find them.


=>Examine The Description Tag

The DESCRIPTION Tag is important because search engines often index it and in some cases, may use the DESCRIPTION tag to provide the site description on the search results page.

ITt could be written in the following manner in the HTML page.



=>Eliminate Flash:

Flash are the animations that are used on the webpages which makes difficult the search engine to search for that web pages. so it is better to eliminate the Flash.

Also Replace the Images with the Real Text so that the Search engine can easily index your page.

More Key words should be used so that indexing could become easy for the search engine

Things to keep in mind while working with Search Engine-jaipreet

Determine whether you have any text on the page. Page content –text that the search engines can read is essential, but many web sites don’t have any page content on the front page and often very less on interior pages. Here are some problems :

• Having a flash intro on your site:- If you are having a flast at your site, its better to kill the flash pictures because it hardly serve any purpose and the site visitor may became irritated also.

• Embedding much of the text on your site in to images, rather than relying on
readable text:- If you have an image-heavy website, its better to get rid of that image and place a real text at that place.

• Banking on flashy visuals to hide the fact that your site is actually light on content:- we should use more and effective keywords instead of flashing images on the site as more text with keywords,are better choice because it light the actual contents.

• Using the wrong keywords in the text that you have:- Proper use and place of keywords on web site is the key issue and must be at high consideration. For this we should remember the folowing things that is:-
Use The Right Keyword In the Right Place,
Place keywords into (heading) tags.
Put keywords into bulleted lists.
Place keywords into (heading) tags.

Introduction on Search Engines and Seach Directories--by Jaipreet

What is a search engine?
A search engine uses a program (or "spider") that crawls through all the pages it comes across. All the words on all those pages are analyzed and stored. When a searcher queries the search engine, the search engine applies an algorithm to determine relevancy, searches its databases, and returns a list of those documents in which the words are found. AltaVista is a search engine.Thus, the actual words on your site -- text, title, and meta tags -- are important for getting a high ranking. If you so much as add a sentence to your site, the change will affect its search engine ranking upon respidering or reindexing.

List of top most search engines are:
Google.comAOL.com Yahoo.comMSN.com
Askjevees.com
Infospace.com
AltaVista.com
Overture.com
Netscape.com
Earthlink.com
Looksmart.com

What is a search directory?
Rather than using robots, a directory is compiled by human beings. The human "editors" review potential listings, determine what they are about, and list them in an appropriate category, along with what they believe to be an appropriate title. Open Directory Project is a directory.Changing your site will not affect your ranking in a directory, unless it is a drastic change. For instance, if you have a site about poodles, it would be in the "Poodles" category of a directory with an appropriate title and description, such as:Poodles - A site devoted to the breeding, raising, and enjoyment of poodles for fun and profit.

Top most search directories are:
Yahoo
AoL
NBCi
Handy Links
The Net One
Fat Head
Total Seek

Seacrh Engine and directories-Harneet

SEARCH ENGINE

A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.

Typically, a search engine works by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible.

Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document.

EXAMPLE: WWW.GOOGLE.COM


Spider

A program that automatically fetches Web pages. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. It's called a spider because it crawls over the Web. Another term for these programs is webcrawler.Because most Web pages contain links to other pages, a spider can start almost anywhere. As soon as it sees a link to another page, it goes off and fetches it.


SEARCH DIRECTORIES

On the World Wide Web, a directory is a subject guide, typically organized by major topics and subtopics. The best-known directory is the one at Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) and other is (www.dmoz.org)



SOME MORE IMPORTANT TERMS


Search Site:
A web site at which we can search through some kind of index, directory of websites, or
both

Search System:
An organization that possesses a combination of software, hardware and people that is
used to index or categorize websites – they build the index or directory you search
through at search site.

Search Results:
The information returned to searcher (the result of your search) when he go to a search site
and search for something.

MSN Launches Lifestyle Blogs

After advertising paying jobs for bloggers back in June, MSN has launched their “Filter” blog network covering a range of popular topics.

The blogs launched include TV Filter, Technology Filter, Lifestyle Filter, Music Filter and Sports Filter.

Generally speaking the content is of a reasonable quality although some readers will be thrown by the bland layout. Interestingly the bloggers writing the blogs don’t seem to be identified in any way, with contact emails being set to generic hotmail accounts.

Source: http://www.blogherald.com/

Why Search Engine Optimization ?

What would you do if you want to download a song or some software or want to buy a book you go to a search engine yahoo, or google or some other search engine and type in some phrases and press search. when you get the results you click on one or two (Mostly top most results).

This is what you do, then same your potential client will be doing. What if someone wants to buy a product or service that your business provides, do they gets your website link when they search. If no then you have lost a potential customer.

Source: http://www.seopakistan.com/

Microsoft, Google Vie to Offer Best Aerial Views of Earth

Seeking an edge on Google Inc. in localized online search, Microsoft Corp. previewed on Monday a layered, geo-mapping service featuring aerial photographs and satellite images that it promised for later this year. Mr. Gates's demonstration followed Google's showing last week of a coming version of its satellite-mapping and local-search product called Google Earth. The service is an updated version of the current Google Map service. Google Earth uses data about the terrain of the earth obtained from space to simulate three-dimensional images of locations.


Source: http://www.newsbundle.com/seo/

Can PDA Replace PPC?

Reaching the rest of the market

It’s just a concept, not actually available yet, but everything starts out that way. And as a concept, it is just an interesting refinement of the existing pay-per-click system, but it is a pretty useful and important one. “It” is “publisher-driven advertising,” and this new kind of PDA could be the next big thing in pay-per-click—ads that appear in the context of on-line magazines and newsletters, instead of in search windows.

The refinement that publisher-driven advertising represents is pretty straightforward: publishers select ads from a advertiser-driven database of open “bids,” based upon their knowledge of their demographic and specific content. They have incentive to select wisely because they only get revenue from click-throughs, not placement. The way things stand now, companies determine what the proper search term is to bid on, and they often make the unimaginative determination that expensive terms with lots of competition are the ones to bid on. While this is understandable, it is also simplistic and un-informed. It is, in short, a guess. With the assistance of publishers who understand their product and their market, these PDA ads should have a far greater click-through rate…a sure bet for the advertiser.

There is an old “chuckle-chuckle” adage in the world of advertising: “I know that half of my ad budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half.” Pay-per-click was supposed to eliminate this uncertainty by making click-throughs and not placement the revenue driver. It did an incomplete job, because it only reaches the part of the market actively searching. As we all know, the power of advertising is the power of suggestion. When publisher-driven ads become commonplace, we will a lot further down the road to more effective ad spending.

Source: http://refreshweb.typepad.com/

Feedster Powers AOL Personalized RSS Reader

AOL announced they had launched My AOL, a personalized homepae/portal which lets users set up their homepage to deliver the content that the user wants (like My Yahoo or Google Home Page). Part of the personalization is an RSS feed reader which is powered by Feedster, a leading RSS search engine. The Feedster powered reader is featured on the “My AOL” page for consumers who want fast access to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for updates of news and content they care about.

“By enabling consumers to create their own personal home page on AOL.com to manage all of their sources of online information in one central location, My AOL provides a convenient solution for a usually time-consuming ritual: visiting multiple Web sites and blogs multiple times each day to catch up on news,” said Kerry Parkins, Director, Audience Products, America Online. “By leveraging leading technology from Feedster, AOL is able to provide an easy and fully personalized way for people to discover new RSS feeds and create their own virtually real-time information journal.”

Feedster’s proprietary technology platform crawls the Web continuously fetching updated posts and RSS feeds. This enables delivery of a fresh index of information from millions of sources more frequently than traditional search engines. As a result, Feedster has the largest index of RSS feeds. It leads the market today with a rapidly growing searchable index of over 11 million RSS feeds and hundreds of millions of XML documents.

Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/