Posts tagged "inbound"

Free SEO Course – Suggestions?

I’ve recently started my first website and am keen on learning about SEO, but don’t know where to start. I’ve looked on various forum and websites, but they are all rather complex (and make many assumptions).

Can anyone recommend a good free SEO course that can outline the basics and get me started?

Hi,

Seomoz is a good resource, as is search engine land.

Basically SEO is about attaining a ranking in the search engines. One of the ways (emphasis on the ONE), is to generate one way inbound links, which I detail below:

Try to steer clear of back link exchange sites and reciprocal links. These will just take up your time and don’t offer a great deal of value unless you can get a reciprocal link from a high page rank authority site that is.

What you are looking for is one way links, that’s links from one site pointing to your own site. Think of a link as a vote, the more votes you generate the better your chances of rising up the search engines results. It’s not all about the number of links though, generating quality, relevant links is key.

Moving on from this, try to generate this type of link from a site with at least a page rank of two. You can easily tell the page rank of a site by downloading the page rank tool bar, available on most search engines.

Methods:

Try researching your competitors. Use Link diagnosis or Yahoo site explorer. Tyr to generate links from sites pointing to your competitors sites.

Blog posts. Find relevant blogs, read the posts and comments and join in the conversation by adding something interesting, leave your thoughts, offer help, and leave a link pointing to your site with your key words as the anchor text.

Article submission: Write articles on your subject, post to article directories – leaving your link in the resource box.

Free directory submission. Generate a list of free web directories; submit your site for a free link.

Dmoz: Although not as powerful as it once was, submit your site to the open directory project.

Forums. Can be time consuming as you really need to become ‘part of the community’ before being able to generate a link, but well worth the effort.

These are just a few of the ‘free’ methods. Keep doing your research and remember it takes time and consistent effort.

Happy link hunting!

What are other resources to learn seo techniques?

I heard about seo job can make money online. I really want to join in that field. I’m spending time reading seo articles from seofreetools.org to learn necessary techniques in my free time. I find it interesting in learning more. Is there any of you knows another source or know any tip to teach me how to do and earn from seo? I’m eager to doing this job. Thanks!!!

One of the best ways to SEO a site and get some decent inbound links coming in (which is a pillar of a good SEO program) is to use a method called article marketing. Basically you write articles around your niche and then submit them to article sites, then other sites who like the article re syndicate the content onto their own site.

This means you not only get the links from the article site but also any site who chooses to have their content on your own site. One of the best ways to get going is to read this: http://www.squidoo.com/article-marketing-making-your-articles-better and then experiment.

Linking Techniques for Better SEO

Most search engines, with Google being the most prominent, rely heavily on a site’s popularity with other sites to determine the page ranking that they assign to any given page. While sites that contain no inbound or outbound links can in fact have a decent page rank with Google, the rank will most likely remain very low and the pages will not do very well in the search results without a good linking strategy and keyword density. All pages should have at least one relevant inbound link from a site that has already obtained a page rank to be properly indexed by most of the major search engines.

As an example, before beginning any research into search engine optimization, this researcher designed a sight for a local community foundation. This site is not optimized whatsoever, contains no outbound or inbound links, but has a huge wealth of content. Based solely on the amount of content and the relevancy, the site is currently holding a Google page rank of between 2 and 3 and has around 25 to 35 pages indexed depending on the search engine. These results took nearly 6 months to achieve and had this researcher known about proper SEO techniques during the design phase, he most likely could have shortened that time frame considerably using the strategies researched in this report. After doing the research for this report, this researcher has all intentions of optimizing it with a good linking strategy and improved keyword density to see how the page rank changes.

The key to a good linking strategy is to provide good quality links that users of your site would be interested in following and that are relevant to your site. Subscribing to linking services is a good way of achieving this as long as it is done properly. Some less than honorable companies advertising SEO services on the web are doing nothing more than adding hundreds or thousands of links to a site in order to raise page rank, and while this might cause a temporary raise in page rank, eventually the search engines compile all of these links and realize most are irrelevant which causes a site to be greatly penalized. As quoted from Google’s webmaster tools website “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or Page Rank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links”.

There are also several other factors that effect the outcome of a good linking strategy. Link age, link depth, links per page, and location of links are all factors that help Google to determine the popularity of your site. By having inbound links that have been pointing to your site for a long time, Google sees your site as a source that other sites consider valuable enough to keep linking to you. All of your outbound links should be located on the page that you are optimizing for. For example, don’t include outbound links for web hosting related sites on pages that are being optimized for the keyword “Domains.” Although it is acceptable to design a links page containing all of your outbound links, the preferred method for using outbound links is to keep them all on the page being optimized. Using this method, the spiders will see this page as the most important part of the site and will not see the links page as just another attempt to gain popularity. Finally, try to keep the number of identical links to a minimum on each page. Google will penalize a page that has several identical outbound links on the same page.

For more SEO tips please visit Help My Page Rank

Michael Sweet
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/linking-techniques-for-better-seo-94149.html

Why Internet Marketing Needs SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) should be considered a critical element of any Internet marketing strategy. This is important because there is so much which can be gained from SEO in terms of Internet marketing and advertising. Failure to optimize your website for search engines can result in a considerable loss in terms of free advertising which is essentially gained from ranking well with search engines. This article will provide insight into what SEO is and will explain why Internet marketing requires at least some degree of SEO.

SEO optimization is a strategy in which a website is designed to obtain favorable search engine rankings from popular search engines. This may be achieved in a variety of different ways and optimal SEO strategies combine a variety of different strategies to complete one well orchestrated SEO campaign. There are several elements to consider when attempting to optimize your website for search engines. This may include keyword density, prominence, META tags, titles and inbound links. Keyword density is one of the most common SEO strategies and essentially involves using relevant keywords often in the content of a website to demonstrate the relevance of these keywords to the website. This is important because search engines are likely to reward websites with optimal keyword densities with favorable search engine rankings in an effort to provide Internet users with the most relevant websites for particular search terms.

The prominence of keywords should also be considered. This includes how close the keywords are placed to the beginning of the website. The common mistake with this strategy is to believe the first opportunity to incorporate keywords is in the first line of visible text on the webpage. This is not true because search engines crawl the code of a website as opposed to the visible content on the website. This means there are multiple opportunities to incorporate relevant keywords long before the actual visible content on the website. This might include the code for the title as well as the META tags. Business owners who realize the potential for incorporating keyword into the code gain an advantage over competitors who only incorporate keywords into the content on their website.

Another area of concern which is very important for those who are interested in SEO is inbound links. Inbound links are essentially links which reside on other websites and direct traffic to your website. These links are considered important because many search engines place a value on inbound links because they are essentially an example of one website recommending another website. However, when obtaining inbound links it is important to do so from other websites which rank well with search engines because many search engines consider the rank of the original website when determining the value of the inbound link.

Now that we have briefly explained some of the main concept of SEO, we will illustrate why it is important to optimize your website in the first place. SEO is so important because most Internet users highly value the results of search engines and are likely to only visit to ranking websites when they search for a particular keyword. Internet users trust search engines to serve the most relevant content first and are therefore not likely to visit websites which do not fall on the first or second page of search results. This means websites which rank well essentially are receiving a great deal of free advertising from search engines that place their website in a key position. Website owners who do not invest time into optimizing their websites miss out on a great deal of potential web traffic.

http://evytaar.com
and
http://blogs-tutorial.com

Andri R
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/why-internet-marketing-needs-seo-719772.html

SEO Link Exchange

SEO involves link exchange, which link popularity strategies applied by webmasters, developers and various other web owners will employ links to promote their web sites to the major search engines.

Link popularity is important in Internet marketing. Link building is handled in accord to collecting quality, relevant links from other web owners. Webmasters will commonly insert important contact facts in the body of databases to store emails and linking pages. This is an action commonly acted upon, since the webmasters will go back later if the owners do not respond to their emails. Webmasters will write emails to other web owners requesting permission to link to their home page. Some web owners permit one-way link exchange, while others back link, or except inbound, outbound links and so on. In some instances, PR2-3-4, 5, etc is part of the link exchange business.

Websites calling for permission to insert links on their page must have relevant links or services to reach link popularity. Links of relevancy must have quality. This quality is necessary to meet Google standards or other major search engines to enlist at the top ranks. Ranking is important. This strategy helps webmasters build traffic to their website.

Webmasters too frequently rely on services to complete link-building strategies. Many services offer SEO specialize in link building. Often the services collect links, or else has a database filled with links of relevancy to other web sites. Link exchange workers in some instances fall short of expectations. This act can lead to downtime, or loss. Because so many SEO marketing errors has caused assorted setbacks, technology indulged in developing the lead tools that would assist webmasters in link collecting and give them effective resources, skillful qualified to get them ranked at the top search engines.

Link building is not the only SEO solution and nor is link exchange effective in all instances. If you are building an online business and need help with promotion, refer to keyword density and article content.

Martin Lukac
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/seo-link-exchange-113750.html

Search Engines, the New Walmart for Local Travel Economies?

The Information Age dawned with the internet, the reason the sun is still shinning on this age is the inception of Search Engines. We are now, all of us in their debt or held hostage for our access to information.  

Looking for information in years past meant a trip to the library, looking in card catalogues, periodical indexes, etc. The information was arranged alphabetically, giving no more or less importance to minor or major works or sources. Today, the search engines have the difficult task of trying to organize and prioritize a much larger pool of pertinent information to help the researcher. In order to do this they have had to adopt certain criteria for choosing which material or web sites to present first for a given search query. The systems and criteria are having profoundly negative impacts on small businesses. The travel industry is a good case in point as even in the remotest “inbound” locations (travel destinations) throughout the world the internet and ability to create a web site are available. The same can be said for the other side of the coin. “Outbound” services (travel agencies) with the help of the internet allow an agency for example in Japan to be able to send American tourists to Europe. There in lies the problem.

In order to be “found” easily on the internet, a company or web site must come up on the first one or two pages of search engine results for a search query. People generally don’t have the time or willingness to search much further. The search engine companies necessarily need to choose criteria for their “ranking” of results in order to be of the most service to their clients. They must also battle companies who try to manipulate the criteria in order to raise the ranking of a web site undeserving of a higher ranking. There is an entire industry devoted to doing just that. It is called “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO. There job, often costing tens of thousands of dollars is to manipulate the search engines rankings. There is a war going on between people who want to buy their way into preferred rankings and the search engines who are trying their best to deliver fair and accurate search results. The criteria and tactics of search engines have been evolving, but four basic criteria seem to be surviving.

Compelling content, traffic, links from legitimate related websites and dynamics and age of a web site.

Large international travel agencies and dot com travel sites appear at the top of search result rankings because they receive a large quantity of traffic and their large marketing budgets allow them to use “pay per click” advertisements which appear at the sides of search results to enhance the traffic still further. These companies sell travel to every corner of the globe and receive traffic for people looking to go to every corner of the globe, unlike a locally owned web site which would receive traffic only for people interested in their one particular location.

The net effect of search engines criteria for ranking websites on local travel companies, the inhabitants of travel destinations throughout the world is to bury their company’s web sites near the bottom of search results, making them basically un-findable. Not being able to draw customers directly to their business they are often forced to work for the large international agencies whose web site is available on the first couple of pages of a search result or pay dot com travel sites for the ability to be seen. If the inhabitants of a destination are working for an international travel agency they are providing their services for a huge discount to their actual world value. If they are paying a Dot Com travel site their net earnings are also discounted.

Every day another international travel agency announces “their” new tour of some precious travel destination. These agencies make money marketing destinations throughout the world, but share none of the responsibility for the impact their clients will have or for the care of the immediate environment, nor do they pay taxes on the profits they make to the government which has the responsibility for the care of that destination. It would be as if someone offered tours of your neighborhood, promoted it on the web, made money from these tours, but had no responsibility for the maintenance of your streets, nor care about the impact tour buses would have on the general quality of life in your neighborhood.

There was a time before the existence and world wide use of the internet when these travel agencies provided a valuable service to their clients. They were accountable for their client’s experience and could offer the same level of service and accountability to destinations throughout the world. This provided a sense of security for the traveler. Now, the value of that “homogenized” service is debatable. With the rise of many popular travel review websites, anyone anywhere in the world can know before they go into whose hands they are intrusting their vacation (www.cometogalapagos.com) 

Dot com travel sites are essentially new age telemarketers and present an opportunity to large international travel agencies where they can pay for a preferred location within those sites. Small local companies can not afford the fees for preferred placements within dot com travel sites which occupy many of the first results for a search engine query regarding travel and again, just as international travel agencies make money marketing destinations throughout the world, they share none of the responsibility for the impact their clients will have or for the care of the immediate environment, nor do they pay taxes on the revenues they earn marketing a specific destination to the government of that destination.

Part 2- A Case Study of San Cristobal, Galapagos

Part 3- Solutions for both travelers and local governments

Rick Schleicher
http://www.articlesbase.com/exotic-locations-articles/search-engines-the-new-walmart-for-local-travel-economies-686811.html

Serious SEO Tips/Help?

For those of you who already have your website fully optimized for search engines, or those who know a lot about search engine optimization: Please help me optimize my website.

I’m not a total noob to SEO, I have my website showing up in google, and some of my keywords provide "alright" google page rankings, others dont. However my website is not fully optimized at all.

I need help, tips, tricks, and ideas on how to better optimize my site.

So far I have submitted my website to local business directories, made sure good keywords are abundant through out my site, and manually submitted my website to multiple search engines……….even so I am not getting the desired results in googles search results Etc…..

Help please Thanks,
Mike

Here’s what you can do to start SEO on your site. Remember that this is a long process and will not get you results overnight.

1) Brainstorm and choose keywords that reflect your site. Try to order them in relevancy of content.
2) When writing posts try to use the keywords in the titles. Using 1 to 5 keywords in the body text.
3) Add or optimize title tags, H1 headings, keyword tags (5-10 keywords)
4) Add or optimize Image ALT Tags and make sure any pictures on your site a relevantly titled. You can get a lot of hits through google image searches.
5) Make sure you have regularly updated content.
6) Make sure your content is unique/original/new and focused
7) Make sure you have plenty of internal links in your website.
Make your navigation easy to understand. You best content should be on the front page or not more than one or two clicks away
9) Make a site map
10) Get a fast server and try to slim down HTML, Javascript and flash to decrease loading times. Inline CSS will add to code bloat so try to use a single style sheet.

Links
1) Get quality inbound links. It is better to be linked to by fewer sites that are more popular than a million little sites with no traffic.
2) Post on forums and blogs with links back to your site.
3) Write for other people’s blogs with a link back to your site
4) Get known in your field as an expert which will get you links
5) Use social networks, facebook groups etc.

Layout
1) Is your content easy to read in layout, font and color scheme?
2) Do you have a professional and attractive looking design?

General Considerations
1) Is your site really good enough to be in the top 10 search results for specific keywords? Does your website have something that other sites in your field don’t?
2) Are you passionate about your website and committed to it for the long term?
3) Are you an authority in your field?
4) Do you write with your readers in mind?
5) What in your mind would compel readers to come back to your site again?

Hope that helps for now

SEO for Dummies

SEO is the art of making websites search engine friendly, which eventually helps websites to rank higher for certain keywords.

This is no rocket science, but it can be very complexed, given the fact that it is believed that there are numerous factors or paramters set by Search Engines within their Algorithm, that decides which websites are most relevant to keywords being searched on their search engines.

However, there are some very basic and do it yourself SEO techniques that one can apply to achieve a better ranking if not to the top.  SEO for dummies is quite achievable by doing getting the basics right of your website design, preparing your site for SEO, and then further maintaining it.

Mentioned below are a few effective techniques of SEO which are simple, understandable and effective.

To keep your site ranking high for certain keywords, you have to convince search engines that your site is most relevant to that keyword being searched.  Always remember, Contents on your site play a major role in keyword ranking, which is one of the most important parameter of SEO and thats why search engines will give your site importance. t’s not all about linking, or buying lots of inbound links. It’s more about having relevant & keyword rich contents on your site.

While writing good quality contents for your website, you need to keep a focus around the keywords you wish to optimise for search engines (for SEO). You should stay away from using words that may be similar to what you do, but are not going to be searchable. Example would be, rather than using words like ‘Flowers’ in your website if you’re a Florist you should add words like ‘Florist’ which is a keyword most likely to be searched if someone is looking for a Florist.

Do specify geographical areas that you’re targeting. So if you’re a Magician in Sydney, then focus your keywords around these words.

Make clear to search engines what you do, about your business, products & services. Don’t forget to add meta tags (this may not influence search engine ranking considerably). Make sure your page is well structured, focus around the products or services you offer. Avoid dynamic urls and focus on static urls.

Stay away from linking to bad neighbourhood (websites) and stay with the good ones. Linking to good quality websites will eventually give your website a boost to some extent.

Design websites that are legible to search engines, or where search engine spiders can read through your contents. In the recent past, contents like Flash based websites or images could not be legible by search engine spiders. If for some reason you have to use a Flash site for a presentation, that’s ok, as long as you also have a parallel text-based web pages on similar contents for spiders to read and understand what your products or services are about. Having said that, it is believed that Google has made inroads in indexing dynamic contents like PDF (portable document format) and Flash files. Adobe has been working along with search engines to make its Flash file format searchable.

Keep Blogging, as Blogs are yet another way to give search engines more information and your visitors can communicate with you through blogs, or it keeps visitors updated. This eventually gives boost to your website

Focus on humans reading your website, and not only search engine optimisation (SEO), as you may forget that the website is mainly designed for humans and not only for search engines. Nonetheless, keep a balance to please both, humans & search engines. In essence, if you’re aware of how to design your website for search engines, then the users will get a be able to find it. Your focus on writing the contents and maintaining the information flow on the site should be planned efficiently for humans, which will also give search engines a good understanding about your site.

A big No No. Do not stuff your site with too many or unneccsary Keywords, as this can be detrimental to your site being banned by search engines. Even adding too many internal links with certain keywords may be unethical & alarming to search engines. Search Engines are smart enough in picking up repetitive keywords or unnecessary internal linking.

Buying inbound links may work for some sites, but not recommended, unless if you’re exchanging links from quality or content-related websites.

Tomas
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/seo-for-dummies-734771.html

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TUTORIAL ABOUT COMMENT TAGS BY ARDAN MICHAEL BLUM

http://www.referencement-mots-cles.com/

Video: Presents my view that Google DOES read comment tags and that good tags will help greatly your general on-page SEO. Information presented in this video presents ideas which are a little-GREY HAT and is NOT intended for anything but your enjoyment.

AGAIN: WHITE HAT SEO SHOULD ALWAYS BE USED – knowing tricks is great for your private fun but NOT for clients! You may also contact me via my site blumadvisory.com for further tips.

Make sure to read EVERYTHING which Vanessa Fox writes and to understand clearly that in SEO 4 main rules are the key to your success: 1) The volume of ORIGINAL work on your site (add at least one new page per week). 2) Obviously the PR of inbound Anchor Text links. 3) The Age of your site and 4) the LOVE you place in your work. Google somehow can feel this

Duration : 0:4:43

Read more…

SEO for Beginners

About one year ago I started a new business. 11 months ago I started a website for the business. As far as the web was concerned, I was invisible. As a licensed attorney, I am used to doing research. Search Engine Optimization came to my attention. It was completely new to me.

I hired an SEO expert and terminated their services about 30% into the contract because I was doing all the work, writing the text for the site, and it seemed like they had little else to offer. I interviewed a second SEO expert and paid for one hour’s time. This was quite valuable. Now I had a plan for increasing my site’s popularity on the web.

I interviewed five more SEO experts, rejected four and one rejected me because my budget was too small to justify their services. Nevertheless, their representative generously gave me about one hour of their time and access to a “white paper” on SEO techniques. Now I understood what needed to be accomplished: 1) add more quality content to my site and 2) create significant and relevant inbound links to my site. It’s working!

I have added my URL to sites for free and as a paid submission. I am publishing an articles on the web entitled. One is called “Financial Myths vs. Financial Facts” that explores and evaluates funding options for businesses that sell products or services to other businesses. In the last month I have published seven new articles. I am working with several organizations to advance SEO for all our members- a Rotary Club, an Attorney’s Bar Association, and a local Board of Realtors.

There is much more I need to accomplish and learn. For several keywords, I have achieved page 4 on Google and Page 2 on Yahoo. The key to success is research and hard work. If you go to Yahoo and type-in: link:www.abccompany.com you can see who your competitors link to, both inbound and reciprocal links. This is valuable competitive information you can use to increase your visibility on the web. There is no substitute for investigating your competitors.

I am confident that no one is more interested in my success than me. I do not expect to have tens of thousands of pages on my website, or hundreds of thousands of inbound links. But I sincerely believe that high web page ranking can be achieved by a lot of hard work and research on your competitors. And if you cannot afford the services of a SEO expert, you can do it yourself.

Copyright © 2007 Gregg Financial Services

www.greggfinancialservices.com

Gregg Elberg
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/seo-for-beginners-108085.html