The Basics of SEO - Some FAQs

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will help people understand the basics, and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain.

Q: Why are search engines important to me?

A: 85% of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than search is email. 79.2% of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42% of users click on the no.1 result. For the under-40 age-group, the Internet will become the most used media in the next 2-3 years.

Q: How do search engines decide on their rankings?

A: IMPORTANT: You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines.
Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out “spiders” or “robots” which “crawl” (analyze) your site and “index” (record) its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engine’s search results.

Q: Can't I just pay for a high ranking?

A: No. The biggest concern for search engine companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic (and thus more advertising revenue). In other words, their results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for a good search engine; irrelevant results makes for a short-lived search engine.

Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search:

„X Natural/Organic ¡V The “real” search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.
„X Paid ¡V Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsored Links”, and normally take up a smaller portion of the window.

Q: How do I get a high ranking?

A: There are four main steps:
Step 1 - Use the right words on your website
Step 2 - Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours
Step 3 - Use the right words in those links
Step 4 - Have lots of content on your site & add more regularly

Q: What is search engine optimization (SEO)?

A: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art of creating a website which is search engine-friendly. This means:
„X using the right words in your copy
„X using the right words in your HTML code
„X structuring your site properly
„X designing your site properly

For more information on these 4 elements, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Many people use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a high ranking, 'Link Popularity'.

Q: What is link popularity?

A: Think of the search engines as a big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes (links) a candidate (website) has, the more important it is, and the higher it’s ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have, and how you can get more.
Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if it’s important enough for a lot of other sites to link to, it’s important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking, the more links you have to your site from other sites, the better your ranking.

Q: Are some links better than others?

A: Yes! The ideal kind of links are those that:
„X come from relevant sites (sites which use the same keywords);
„X come from important sites (have a high ranking);
„X include your keyword as part of the visible link text;
„X include varying link text (not the same link text each time); and
„X come from a page that links to few other sites.

When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most or all of these conditions, it says, “Hey, this site must be credible and important, because others in the same industry are pointing to it.”

Q: How do I get lots of links back to my site?

A: There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious (like auto-generation software, and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites) and I won’t be discussing them here. Others, like those discussed below, are legitimate.
„X Add your site to DMOZ & Yahoo Directories (and other free directories)
„X Check where your competitors¡¦ links are coming from
„X Article PR - Write and submit articles for Internet publication
„X Swap links
„X Partner websites
„X Pay for links

For more information on these methods, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Q: What do you think is the best way to get lots of links?

A: Article PR. Write helpful articles and let other webmasters publish them for free in exchange for a link in the byline. With article PR, you don't have to pay for the link, you determine the content of the page containing the link, you determine the link text, and the link is more or less permanent. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times, and each time is another link back to your site!
For more information, read divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm or visit ArticlePR.com.

Q: How do I write a good article PR piece?

A: See divinewrite.com/seoarticles.htm.

Q: How do I get a high ranking using free reprint content?

A: See divinewrite.com/Top_Ranking_Free.htm.

Q: How long does it take to get a high search engine ranking?

A: A long time! It’s impossible to say how much time you’ll need to spend generating links, but you can be sure it’ll be a while no matter which method of link generation you use. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then, you’ll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task, otherwise your ranking will drop.

Q: What is the Google Sandbox, and is it real?

A: The Google Sandbox theory suggest that whenever Google detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What is the Google Dampening Link Filter, and is it real?

A: The Google Dampening Link Filter theory suggests that if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory, but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence.

Q: What SEO companies should I be wary of?

A: Be wary of SEO companies that promise or guarantee results in a given timeframe, especially if they won't expand on their methods for generating links back to your site.

Q: What tools can you recommend?

A: There are many very useful tools to help with your SEO. The following are just selection. All tools are free unless otherwise indicated.
„X Backlink checker - http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/
„X Backlinks by IP address - http://www.webuildpages.com/cclass/index.php
„X Link Popularity Tool - http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
„X Number of links required to rank - http://www.iblcheck.com/
„X Google Alert - http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en
„X Google Sitemaps - http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps
„X Google Sitemap Generator - http://johannesmueller.com/gs/
„X Google Toolbar - http://toolbar.google.com/
„X Indexed Pages - http://www.webuildpages.com/cache/cachetoolpublic.pl
„X Keyword Analysis (Nichebot) - http://www.nichebot.com/
„X Keyword Analysis (Overture) - http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
„X Keyword Analysis (WordTracker - Paid) - http://www.wordtracker.com/
„X Keyword Difficulty - http://www.seomoz.org/tools/keyword-difficulty-tool.php
„X Keyword Identifier - http://www.googlerankings.com/ultimate_seo_tool.php
„X Keyword Density Measurement (Simple) - http://www.live-keyword-analysis.com/
„X Keyword Density Measurement (Complex) - http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php
„X Plagiarized Copy Search - http://www.copyscape.com/
„X Traffic Rank - http://www.alexa.com/
„X Search Engine Rank - http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/
„X SEO Report - http://www.urltrends.com/
„X Top 10 sites for a keyword by no of backlinks and age - http://www.webuildpages.com/seo-tools/whoischeck-bykeys.pl
„X Top 10 sites for a keyword - http://www.webuildpages.com/cool-seo-tool/
„X Spider Simulator - http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/

Q: I'm confused about all the terms used in SEO, can you help?

A: See divinewrite.com/seo_glossary.htm.

Q: What is keyword analysis?

A: The first thing you need to do when you begin chasing a good search engine ranking is decide which words you want to rank well for. This is called performing a keyword analysis. Keyword analysis involves a bit of research and a good knowledge of your business and the benefits you offer your customers.
For more information, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Q: Do I need to submit my site to the search engines?

A: Theoretically, no. But I wouldn't risk not doing it - especially as it's free. As soon as you register your domain name, submit it to Google! Even if you haven’t built your site, or thought about your content, submit your domain name to Google. In fact, even if you haven’t fully articulated your business plan and marketing plan, submit your domain name to Google.

For more information, download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from divinewrite.com/seosecrets.htm.

Q: Should I submit my site to the search engines more than once?

A: No need. Although some of the search engines allow you to do this, there's really no need.

Q: What are directories and should I submit my site to them?

A: Directories are websites (or web pages) which simply list lots of website and give a quick description of the website. Some are free and some require you to pay for a listing. Free directories are useful because you get a free link. However, the links aren't worth that much. Paid directories can be good if they're relevant, but they can cost a lot in the long term, so choose wisely.

One essential directories for any website is the DMOZ Open Directory Project.

About the author:
* Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He owns article submission service Article PR and copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.
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SEO's Relationship With Website Architecture

Search engine optimization for today's search engine robots requires that sites be well-designed and easy-to-navigate. To a great degree, organic search engine optimization is simply an extension of best practices in web page design. SEO's relationship with web design is a natural one. By making sites simple and easily accessible, you are providing the easiest path for the search engine robots to index your site, at the same time that you are creating the optimum experience for your human visitors.

This approach ties well into the notion of long-term search engine marketing success. Rather than trying to "psych out" the ever-changing search engine algorithms, build pages that have good text and good links. No matter what the search engines are looking for this month or next, they will always reward good content and simple navigation.

Search Engine Robots
Search engine robots are automated programs that go out on the World Wide Web and visit web pages. They read the text on a page and click through links in order to travel from page to page. What this really means is that they "read" or collect information from the source code of each page. Depending on the search engine, the robots typically pick up the title and meta description. The robots then go on to the body text of the page in the source code. They also pay attention to certain tags such as headings and alt text. Search engine robots have capabilities like first-generation browsers at best: no scripting, no frames, no Flash. When designing, think simple.

Search Engine Friendly Design
Creating search engine friendly design is relatively easy. Cut out all the bells and whistles and stick to simple architecture. Search engine robots "understand" text on the page and hyperlinks, especially text links. The relationship of SEO and web design makes sense when you start with good design techniques for your visitor. The easier the navigation and the more text on the page, the better it is not only for the visitor but also for the search engine robots.

Obstacles For Indexing Web Pages
Search engine robots cannot "choose" from drop down lists, click a submit button, or follow JavaScript links like a human visitor. In addition, the extra code necessary to script your pages or create those lists can trip-up the search engine robots while they index your web page. The long JavaScript in your source code means the search engine robots must go through all this code to finally reach the text that will appear on your page. Offload your JavaScript and CSS code for quicker access to your source code by the search engine robots, and faster loading time for your online visitors. Some search engine robots have difficulty with dynamically-generated pages, especially those with URLs that contain long querystrings. Some search engines, such as Google, index a portion of dynamically generated pages, but not all search engines do. Frames cause problems with indexing and are generally best left out of design for optimum indexing. Web pages built entirely in Flash can present another set of problems for indexing.

Depth Of Directories
Search engine robots may have difficulty reaching deeper pages in a website. Aim to keep your most important pages no more than one or two "clicks" away from your home page. Keep your pages closer to the root instead of in deeply-nested subdirectories. In this way you will be assured the optimum indexing of your web pages. Just as your website visitor may become lost and frustrated in too many clicks away from your homepage, the robots may also give up after multiple clicks away from the root of your site.

Solutions And Helpful Techniques
If there are so many problems with indexing, how will you ever make it work?
The use of static pages is the easiest way to ensure you will be indexed by the search engine robots. If you must use dynamically-generated pages, there are techniques you can use to improve the chances of their being indexed. Use your web server's rewrite capabilities to create simple URLs from complex ones. Use fixed landing pages including real content, which in turn will list the links to your dynamic pages. If you must use querystrings in your page addresses, make them as short as possible, and avoid the use of "session id" values.

When using Flash to dress up your pages, use a portion of Flash for an important message, but avoid building entire pages using that technology. Make sure that the search engine robots can look at all of the important text content on your pages. You want your message to get across to your human visitor as well. Give them enough information about your product to interest them in going the next step and purchasing your product.

If you must use frames, be sure to optimize the "no frames" section of your pages. Robots can't index framed pages, so they rely on the no frames text to understand what your site is about. Include JavaScript code to reload the pages as needed in the search engine results page. Got imagemaps and mouseover links? Make sure your pages include text links that duplicate those images, and always include a link back to your homepage.

Use a sitemap to present all your web pages to the search engine robots, especially your deeper pages. Make sure you have hyperlink text links on your page, and a sentence or two describing each page listed, using a few of your keyword phrases in the text.

Remember that the search engine robots "read" the text on your web page. The more that your content is on-topic and includes a reasonable amount of keyword-rich text, the more the search engine robot will "understand" what the page is about. This information is then taken back to the search engine database to eventually become part of the data you see in the search engine results.

Last of all, it is very important to test your pages for validation. Errors from programming code and malformed html can keep the search engine robots from indexing your web pages. Keep your coding clean.

Check List For Success
· Include plenty of good content in text on your web pages
· Incorporate easy to follow text navigation
· Serve up dynamically generated pages as simply as possible
· Offload JavaScript and other non-text code (style sheets, etc.) to external files
· Add a sitemap for optimum indexing of pages
· Validate your pages using the World Wide Web Consortium's validation tool, or other html validator

On Your Way To Indexed Pages
The best way to assure that your pages will be indexed is to keep them simple. This type of architecture not only helps the search engine robots, but makes it easier for your website visitors to move throughout your site. Don't forget to provide plenty of good content on your pages. The search engine robots and your visitors will reward you with return visits.
Resources

To learn more about how to work around optimization problems with JavaScript, dynamically-generated pages, Frames and Flash, read the following articles:

Optimizing Pages with JavaScript and Style Sheets for Search Engines
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimizing-pages-with-javascript.asp

Optimizing Dynamic Pages (Part I)
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimize-dynamic-pages-1.asp

Optimizing Dynamic Pages (Part II)
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimize-dynamic-pages-2.asp

Optimizing Frames for Search Engines
http://www.searchinnovation.com/optimizing-frames-for-search-engines.asp

Html validation tool
http://validator.w3.org/

Stylesheet validation tool
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

Daria Goetsch
Search Innovation Marketing
April 1, 2004

About the Author:
Daria Goetsch is the founder and Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation Marketing, a Search Engine Optimization company serving small businesses. She has specialized in Search Engine Promotion since 1998, including three years as the Search Engine Specialist for O'Reilly Media, Inc., a technical book publishing company.
Copyright © 2002-2007 Search Innovation Marketing. http://www.searchinnovation.com All Rights Reserved.
Permission to reprint this article is granted as long as all text above this line is included in its entirety. We would also appreciate your notifying us when you reprint it: please send a note to reprint@searchinnovation.com.

Importance Of Search Engines And Designing A SEO Website

The vast resource of information available on the internet today is in the form of various classes. For example, when we talk about a mosquito repellant – there are websites that market the product, websites that offer manufacturing know-how, websites that provide simple information on the topic and websites that just simply talk about mosquito repellants. The importance of information posted on a business website is always to the end of selling and making profits.

Therefore, the information which is business oriented should be displayed to the customers at all times. Now that all this is taken care of, how to make sure that a particular website is found by the visitor? There could be millions of websites dealing in the same product. This is where the concept and process of search engine optimization comes in. The need to develop or design the site to be search engine friendly takes the drivers seat here, in an effort to optimize a particular site out of the billions on the internet today.

Search engine majors like MSN, Google, Yahoo and AltaVista crawl through the internet perpetually by using programs called bots or spiders. Their function is to read the websites and file them into a category and finally index them in a huge catalog. When a visitor accesses a search engine and types in his search criterion, the search engines scan their indexes for a match and display the results, out of which the visitor can select a website to visit. Exactly how this index is made is still a puzzle that many professionals are trying to solve. However, thank god for small favors, some secrets are known.

Using these known secrets, it is possible to design a website by keeping them in mind to ensure that the website ranks highest in the search engine results. In this multi-pronged advantageous process, the higher a website is ranked, the higher is the traffic. Moreover, if the website stays there continuously, it builds credibility amongst potential customers and the traffic builds automatically.

The whole process of search engine optimization generally takes about 3 to 4 months after the design phase is over. This is the time taken by the crawlers to finalize the index after numerous visits. Submissions to search engines is another option but not necessary because, all search engines automatically crawl and find new websites on a continued basis.

The demand for search engine optimization is immense today.

About the Author:
Todd Lange
For more information on this topic please visit SEO Website.
Article Source: Free Articles Directory

SEO - General Guidelines

SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimizing and refers to a set of good practices that teach you how to improve your website so that it would be easily tracked, indexed and ranked by search engines. Getting your site indexed by Google and other major search engines will help you attract visitors and increase traffic.

SEO is an exciting and ongoing process that involves not only an initial optimized website, but also permanent maintenance and evaluating search results on a regular basis. With the ever-changing Internet technology, SEO experts sometimes have contrasting opinions on what makes a good website. However, there are some general guidelines most of them agree on.

Design & Content

• You should build your web pages for human beings and not for search engines. A clean design and a strong content will ultimately drive search engine spiders to your site.
• Make a clear hierarchy and provide text links to each page.
• Don't put to many links on a single page (maximum 100).
• You should include a site map to help users navigate easily through your website.
• Make sure you have clear TITLE tags, no HTML errors and all the links work.
• You should use text instead of images to display important elements, as search engine crawlers may not recognize a text inside an image.
• While keeping your content useful and clear, do use keywords that you know users would type to get to your page.

Technical Issues
• Most search engine crawlers see your website similar to the way a text browser sees it. Consequently, you should use a text browser, such as Lynx, to check your website. If you can't see the whole page because of JavaScript, session IDs, DHTML or Flash features, search engine spiders will probably have trouble with crawling your website.
• Check with your web host to see if the server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This header tells Google whether the website content has changed since its last visit.
• While it is advised session IDs to track visitors' path through the website, you shouldn't do this for search bots.
• The robots.txt file on your web server tells spiders which directories can be crawled and which cannot. Make sure it's updated and it doesn't somehow block search engine crawlers.

Website Promotion

• After you've built your website and put it online, try to get high PageRank sites link to it.
• Submit your website to major search engines (Google, Yahoo/Altavista, MSN) to get it indexed, along with a site map that will tell them the site structure.
• Submit your website to relevant directories, such as Yahoo and Open Directory Project.
• Get involved in community based websites, blogs and forums and build a strong reputation.

Whether you choose to implement these techniques yourself or go to a SEO expert, no one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google and other search engines. Search engines change their crawling algorithms often and competitor websites appear all the time. However, following these basic SEO guidelines will improve your chances of increasing your website traffic and is a better practice than looking for a way to cheat on search engines in order to get your pages indexed.

Copyright © 2006 Andreas Obermueller

About the Author:
Andreas Obermueller is webmaster of Hit4Biz.com - Marketing Related Information and recommends Marble Host as reliable Web Host
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

Seo For Flash Websites-is It Possible?

If there is one tool to create astonishing websites, that’s Macromedia Flash. However, it is not that easy to learn and is difficult to use. But the results are incredible: web pages that mesmerize us with special effects, including image and sound, animations that make us feel like we are in a theatre, interactive applications and so much more.

Inexperienced online entrepreneurs ask web design companies to create Flash websites. Many of these firms are indeed able to design an amazing website, but how many are able to optimize its pages for the search engines? What about the other obvious difficulties: long loading time, firewalls that block Flash, lack of usability – and the statistics that show more than 80 percents of online users prefer non-flash sites? Considering that search engines cannot read Flash, what are the chances for such a website to be indexed anyway? Ergo what’s the point in having an amazing website if it’s difficult to use and no one can find it?

A well designed Flash website is beautiful, not so difficult to browse but very difficult to optimize for the search engines because it lacks scannable content. Fortunately, difficult is not synonymous with impossible.

To get higher rankings for a Flash website you should start with META tags and linking strategies.

Write proper META tags for the opening page: title, description, keywords. Use the most important keywords in the title tag and the description. That’s all the on-page SEO you can do for a Flash site. It doesn’t sound much, does it? It is not. Because many search engines disregard these tags and look for content. While visitors can read the content of a Flash site, for the search engine spiders it’s a blank space. So the second thing to do to boost SERP for a Flash website is to build link popularity. To boost link popularity you need to link with websites that have a Page Rank 4 or higher. In time, this may bring the desired results. The importance of text links is, in this case, obvious. A text link is generally keyword rich, so search engines will know, by reading the link, what topic is treated on a website. Submit the website to directories and try to get one-way links by submitting articles and press releases.

Another method to boost SERP placements is the page re-direct. As META tag redirects are blacklisted, you might wonder what else is left. Well, Google allows redirects and using a 301-status code means that a site has been permanently moved. You could easily create a plain html page, respecting all the ethic SEO standards, and then redirect it to the Flash site. Avoid creating layers of text that should be delivered to the spiders instead of Flash. Although you do provide unique content, search engines might mistake the method for cloaking and ban your website.

That’s all the SEO you can do for an entirely Flash website when you don’t want to develop an HTML version.

Sites that are partially Flash and partially HTML have more chances to achieve high SERP placements, as they can be easily optimized.

About the Author:
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: www.highpowersites.com
Article Source: NewFREEArticles.com

Real Estate SEO: Linking Your Way to Online Visibility

When you make your real estate website more visible to search engines, you also make it more visible to your target audience. This is the whole point of real estate search engine optimization (SEO) – to help potential clients find you online.

Link building plays a major role in search engine visibility. By "link building," I mean increasing the number of websites that link to yours. Search engines, particularly Google, use link popularity to help evaluate and rank your website. Link popularity refers to the number, quality and relevance of inbound links from other websites to yours.

Okay, so links are important. But how do you go about finding them? How do you convince other websites to link to yours? Follow these seven steps to link-building success, and you'll be well on your way.

1. Start on your own website.
Link building begins on your own website. All too often, I see website owners throw up a new site and go out hunting for links before they have a website worth linking to.

Think about it for a moment. Aside from web directories and other paid listings, who would link to a bare-bones website with nothing unique, helpful or interesting to offer? I know I wouldn't. If you start a link-building campaign before your website has earned its place on the web, you're going to have a long, hard time of it.

On the other hand, if you develop the kind of website that makes others in your industry or community say, "Wow, that's really something! I know some folks who would like that," your link-building efforts will be much easier. It all starts with what you put into your website.

2. Pursue the right kinds of links.
Sure, you want a lot of links to your website. We all do. But you should always put link quality before link quantity. Jim Boykin, SEO expert and owner of WeBuildPages.com, said it best: "It's not always 'He with the most links' who wins the game … Really, very often, he with the right 10 links can beat the guy with 1,000 of the wrong links."

What makes for a quality link? Generally speaking, the most valuable links (for SEO purposes) are those that come from older, well-established sites within your topic area. For instance, a direct link from a site like Reals.com will offer more SEO benefit than a hundred links from brand new, low-ranking websites.

3. Use your imagination.
Links are everywhere. They are what make the web, well … a web. So link-building opportunities are everywhere, as well. You can gain links by syndicating press releases, publishing articles online, adding your website to directories, growing a blog, participating in forums, plus a number of other tactics. When you combine quality content or a unique website with a strong imagination, your link opportunities are limitless.

4. Alternate your link text.
To gain visibility for more of your key phrases, it's a good ideas to mix up your link text. By "link text," I'm referring to the words that make up the actual hyperlink. For instance, instead of having a thousand incoming links that use the phrase "Anytown real estate," you could rotate between "Anytown real estate" and "Anytown home buying" and "Real estate agents in Anytown" … you get the idea. This will help your website rank well for more phrases, thereby increasing the number of ways people can find you.

5. Track your progress.
Tracking your link-building progress helps you measure your long-term success. It can also be a morale booster to know your efforts are paying off. You want to see some positive results to justify your hard work, don't you? Of course you do. So keep track of your link-building progress the same way you keep track of your overall website traffic and rankings.

There are a number of online tools that can help you identify inbound links from other websites to yours. Yahoo Site Explorer is my personal favorite. You can use Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) to find out which websites link to yours. You can also export this information into a spreadsheet for further use. Nice, huh?

I check my inbound links once per month. That way, I can see my link popularity growing right before my eyes. It's a nice way to validate all the hard work I put into it!

6. Keep the big picture in mind.
Sure, links play a major role in your website's visibility. But there's a lot more to SEO than links. So if you tend to get carried away with individual tasks, like I sometimes do, you might want to create a schedule of SEO tasks. This will prevent you from spending too much time on any one task. Set aside some time for link building, article publishing, website improvement, etc.

More importantly, don't adopt "SEO tunnel vision" to the point you neglect your website's primary offering (whether that be products, services, content, or a combination of the three).

7. Enjoy aging well.
One of my favorite things about search engine optimization is how it gets easier as you go. When you put the right fundamentals in place up front, you'll be able to increase your website's visibility with less effort over time. Most search engines -- and especially Google -- place a lot of emphasis on the age of your web domain, your individual web pages, and the links coming into those web pages. Like a good wine, links get better with age!

* You may republish this article online if you retain the author's byline and the active hyperlinks below. Copyright 2006, Austin SEO Guy.

About the Author:
Brandon Cornett is the author of The Agent's Guide to Search Engine Visibility, a 130-page SEO training kit designed specifically for real estate agents. Learn more about real estate SEO by visiting: http://www.ArmingYourFarming.com/search
Article Submitted On: October 21, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Seo India: Tips & Techniques By Ravz

SEO is all about "Individualism"

According to me SEO is not only getting rank for keywords (Of course that is the primary objective) but apart from ranking your objective should be "Conversion" getting "Sales" (No matter if its personal site or clients site)

SEO Steps:

1. Understanding Business.
# What is your business all about
# How is it going to Operate.
# Target audience (Global/Local)
# Opportunity
# Competitor study operating in same business.
# "Core competence"

2. Target Keywords.
# Getting a good list of keywords. (More keywords maximum number of ppl can be targeted)
# This is something that will directly reflect your efforts (targeting wrong keyword will get all your efforts in vain)

3. WEB Designing.
# Navigation
# Page size
# looks n feel
# inter linking
# HTML Code validation*

4. Meta tags & Content
# Title
# Description
# Keywords
# Content

*This is something all seo do in their style, some do not emphasis more on 1st point (according to me which is very important) & shoot up with 3rd step then 2nd & 4th.

5. Directories
# They are the boss (More the submission to directories more the chance to rank top for targeted keyword)

6. Link Building
# I am very bad at this (This is something which can do wonders for you)

I am still in process to transferring my skills & knowledge to a Brand "SEO Expert" or "SEO Specialist"

Ravz..!

About the Author:
Ravz D. is into research & analysis of online marketing. SEO India site http://expertseo.rediffblogs.com which offers Search Engine Optimization at affordable prices.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Denver Colorado’s web design

Web design, Web site design, web development are different terms that end up meaning the construction of a web site. The process of web design involves a lot of technologies that include programming, server configuration, hosting, graphic design, database technologies and a lot of marketing techniques like PPC (Pay per click), SEO (Search Engine Optimization) etc. Web design has evolved in the past few years and there are a host of companies – large and small offering many packages and services.

These companies have come up all across the globe and service global clients facilitated by the advent and spread of the internet. Denver, Colorado is no exception. The web design companies in Denver are varied and offer a lot of services from hosting to SEO. Denver web design companies offer hosting at very cheap prices and boast of very reliable and secure server infrastructure at their disposal.

Many Denver web site design companies also offer vertical integration solutions beginning from hsting, programming, design, development, maintenance and marketing solutions to customers who are looking at turnkey online business solutions. In keeping company with these web design companies, Denver internet marketing companies also offer great deals by offering Pay Per Click, Adsense and Search engine optimization services at very affordable rates and customizable solutions as per the requirement of the client.

Denver web site design companies also offer update facilities for your website. Most Denver we design programmers are updated and capable of utilizing the most modern technologies to make a web site more presentable and marketable by offering advanced graphic design and latest programming languages like PHP, MySQL and Ajax, greatly improving the performance, look and speed of your outdated web site probably made in HTML.

The strategy involved in making a web site is very simple. Take a look at the competition, isolate what works for them, analyze their SWOT and use the techniques that work along with a brand new design and structure. Denver web design companies are experts at this process and employ the cream of development professionals in the country.

If you already own a web site, you would know that the secret to a good web site is not the design and color but the amount of sales it rings in. Again the factor depends upon the marketability i.e the presence of your website and the search engine ranking it has. This is a part of SEO that involves many strategies of structure, design, keywords, links and content. All these aspects are easily taken care of by a Denver web site design company, since most of these companies have good SEO professionals on their payroll.

Branding, usability, navigation, functionality and a good GUI are just a few aspects of a good web site design. Check out any of the Denver web site design companies today to get the best out of your web site.

About the Author:
Nicolas
Glover media provide Denver web design for your well designed, clean and professional web sites that reflect the attitude and spirit of your company with Colorado Web Design.
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

SEO: Flash Is Evil - Five Big Reasons Not to Use Flash

Building Flash-powered websites is wrong. Storing your content in Flash movies is wrong. Implementing site navigation in Flash is wrong.

Then why are there so many Flash sites? They look pretty with all those neat vector graphics, gradients, animations and cool sound effects. Flash is the favorite toy of big designer studios and numerous amateur graphic artists alike. Flash is visually attractive, and in general attractive websites are more successful than the ugly ones (notable exceptions: craigslist.org and plentyoffish.com). But this is not the case of Flash websites. All the benefits of the nice outlook are overridden by the disadvantages in terms of SEO and usability.

Flash requires bandwidth Despite of the DSL Internet access being available almost everywhere, there are still lots of people surfing the Net via dialup or other limited bandwidth connection. Flash files, especially those using sound effects, embedded movies or bitmap images, can take a while to load.

Disabled back button Some Flash designers use meta refreshes or other tricks to disable browser's Back button. As the famous usability expert Jacob Nielsen says, "Back button is the second most important navigation element after hyperlinks". People not able to use Back button will click the third most important navigation element - that X button in the top right. Besides, if you are going to promote a Flash site via PPC, you should know that Google AdWords doesn't approve pages with disabled back button.

Flash ignores users needs

Whereas the ground rules of marketing emphasize the concentration on the users’ needs, Flash websites ignore them. Take the infamous site intros and splash screens that are as much annoying as the 45 minutes of advertising and previews in cinemas. Or another example: the sound effects - they are can be especially inappropriate and harmful when you are browsing the Net from a cubicle in a quiet office or from home in the late hours.

Problems with third-party Flash developers

Unless you do Flash yourself, you might face some serious troubles with developers. Some of them code their project to prevent them from editing, thus making you to hire them over and over again as you need to do even the smallest modifications. Aaron Wall in his SEOBook (a highly recommended SEO reading) describes a case of a Flash developer who disabled the back button and then asked $4000 from his client to re-enable it, although the problem was caused by his own incompetence.

Search engines do not like Flash And perhaps the most important: not every search engine is able to crawl and index the content of Flash movies. Even those that can often do it with errors. This is in particular the case of a website fully implemented in Flash as a single file. Search engines just wouldn't be able to direct visitors to the proper page within that file.

What is Flash really good for? Banners and ads - it provides far more useful features then the traditional gif animation. Online games - remember the 'Yeti Sports'? Flash technology - the Flash videos - for video blogs.

But as a website engine - Flash is evil!

Originally published at Five Big Reasons Not to Use Flash

About The Author:
Oleg Ishenko, SEOResearcher.com Get more useful info on search engine optimization at our SEO Guide
Article Submitted On: October 21, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

SEO Deadly Sins - Mistakes That Hurt Web Page Ranking

The following are a list of mistakes can ensure that your site maintains a low ranking with the search engines. Avoid at all costs.

* Specifying no title for your page *

I cannot stress how important the title of a web page is. Failing to specify a descriptive, keyword optimized title will do untold damage to your ranking with the search engines. It is the equivalent to owning a shop and boarding up its windows. Ideally each page on your site should have a unique, content-specific title.

* 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.

* Complicated menu systems *

Search engines spiders that crawl through our pages are a relatively primitive bunch. They find in hard to navigate complicated menu systems implemented for example in JavaScript or as a Java applet. Just because it is easy for a human to navigate through the site never assume it will be as easy for a search engine spider. A menu system using simple textual links will be easier for a spider to understand and it will be able to successfully navigate your site. A lot of the time complicated menu systems can be replicated using textual links and CSS.

If you must use a complicated menu system be sure to provide a site map that is clearly accessible from the homepage of your site and contains only textual links to your pages. This ensures that even if the spider cannot understand your menu system that it will be able to find the pages on your site.

About the Author:
Frank Kilkelly is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert and Webmaster at http://www.seo-ireland.com/, a complete search engine optimization resource. The highlight of the site is an SEO forum ( http://www.seo-ireland.com/forum ) for discussion of the latest techniques and tips to improve the ranking of your web site.
Article Source: www.iSnare.com

Flash and Search Engine Optimisation Best Practise

The world of search engines has evolved over the recent months and still we can’t be 100% sure about flash design. It is still hard to get flash web sites spidered and ranked how we would like using the traditional search engine optimisation techniques. The main problem is that the search engines can’t index the content in the flash code so they have no way of ranking the website accordingly. The reason for this is that they see the flash as a graphic and cannot always read what is inside it. Your online flash designer should consider the following:

Flash pages and movies

The benefits of flash are:

• Great special effects
• Easy for designers to create impressive animations using images and sound
• Interactive applications which are easy to use for visitors
• Flash works across platforms and browsers
• Flash has excellent accuracy for web designers

The main disadvantages of flash design are:

• Initially there is a massive learning curve involved
• It can have long load time (which is not so much an issue as in the past due to popularity in broadband continuously improving)
• Some firewalls block flash
• Some stats show that more people would prefer not to use flash (although if everyone had used well designed and developed flash as well as running it on broadband I feel this stat would be different)

When it comes to search engine optimising a flash designed web site you are limited to the following:

• Meta tags – keyword, description, title and research
• Link building – link exchanges, directory submissions, article submissions and press releases

It is best to consider your keywords and see how competitive the market is. If it is not too competitive then you many rank a full flash web site on your chosen keywords but the more competitive the phase the nearer to impossible it gets, although the search engines are improving and may soon be able to read the flash content.

Consider your options?

Consider using flash design for different movies on multiple html pages to give you more pages for visitors to come into your site. This will make it easier for the search engines to pick up content and internal links. This will also give you more pages to concentrate different keywords on helping you to rank in more areas. The downside to doing this is that for every page you create the visitor has to re-download a sometimes large flash file.

The alternative is to give your visitors the option of viewing a flash or html version so the search engines can read the html version and you can still impress your visitors with the flash version.

To help the search engines index you it is worth considering a half way house and imbedding flash into your html. This gives you a search engine optimised site plus enhanced menus and usability. Obviously you have to consider your internal linking strategy along side this option and try to make navigation which the search engines can read so they can search through your site. Use the flash in places to impress the user but do not hide away your content from the search engines. If you use flash as part of your navigation make sure you add additional text links to allow the search engines to crawl your web site.

Conclusion

If you want to pursue the full flash option then ensure you research your keywords and make your meta data clear and concise for the search engines. Ensure you have an html home page which is keyword optimised with plenty of readable content for the search engines. Offer a text version of your site that search engines can crawl and put all your efforts into your link building strategy.

About the Author:
Jon Harrison
infaweb provides a range flash design, development, search engine optimisation and internet marketing services. For assistance please visit http://www.infaweb.com/
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

Search Engine Optimization - Advice and Tactic

Unique content is King. Search engines love new, unique and updated content. If you produce new content at a rate of just one reasonably sized page per day and tied in with the other advice throughout the site, I can almost guarantee you will get good listings. Remember though, write for the visitors but cater for the search engines. If your field of expertise fits into a niche in the market, all the better for you but you must get unique content all you will fall behind.

Page Structure. Search engine bots can sometimes get confused with poorly coded html, javascript and other web languages. If the bot has to wait too long or cannot decipher the web language then it will just abandon your site and move on to the next, even if it manages to get through the code it usually leads to poor search engine indexing of your website. You should also keep to widely used file extensions like .htm, .html, .php, .asp for your pages.

Loading Speed. The loading speed of your website should be kept to a minimum, if it takes long than 5 seconds on 256kb+ connections then you lose visitors - both real and search engine bots. There are a variety of reasons why pages can load slowly, it may either be your web server, poorly coded server side code like php or client side code like javascript which can slow or even stop your page from loading.

Visitor Navigation. This is more an aesthetic feature of your website focused at real visitors but you need to have some sort of standard navigation that is the same throughout your whole site. People can be put off and leave your website if they find it difficult to browse easily, search engine bots may also miss links if they can only be found deep within your site. Try to make as many internal links as possible available on each page.

Site Hierarchy. Site hierachy can be great for adding keyword density to your web site. An example of site hierachy working effectively would be this page, seo-advice.php. The full link contains SEO twice - www.seoassistance.com/seo-advice.php which is very beneficial in the way search engines determine your sites relevance to a particular subject. Use your domain, folders and file names to your advantage.

Avoid Blackhat SEO. Blackhat SEO is a vast topic that commands little respect from real webmasters as it means using underhand methods to gain search engine rankings, although the site is usually banned quickly. Blackhat SEO includes using link farms, search engine spamming, hidden or disguised text, fake meta tag data, using duplicate content and using doorway pages. I would recommend you stay away from tactics like this as you will end up losing out in the long run.

Targeted Linkswaps. Link swaps are great but you must make them work for you. It does little good for you when your going for top search engine positions when your link swaps are untargeted. You should choose some specific keywords for both the link text and the link title text then make sure before you link swap that the other webmaster adds those specific keywords with the link.

About the author:
Daniel Chow
Article by www.SEOAssistance.com
Search Engine Optimization Advice & Tactics, www.SEOAssistance.com
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SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website for successful, long-term results. You wouldn't consider opening a retail store in a major shopping mall without signage and you shouldn't consider having a nice looking website designed without expanding your web presence in order to be found on the internet. But unless the website is designed correctly to begin with, follow-on SEO efforts will have limited results at best. The following strategy overview is designed to bring about productive SEO results:

- Create an attractive website that is complementary to your company image and provides your targeted audience with information about you, your company and your products and/or services.

- Design a website that has a call-to-action in the form of a purchase or providing you a contact, subscription or other commitment from your visitor.

- Create a successful marketing arm for your overall business promotion and marketing campaign to promote your business, products and/or services with the many follow-on strategies that drive traffic to your website.

- Become competitive in your industry and marketplace by meeting or exceeding the industry marketing standards and attracting a qualified audience for your products and/or services based on a strong reputation.

- Generate and maintain or grow internet traffic to your website resulting in a conversion of traffic into sales of your products and/or services by evolving as your market demands.

This search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is composed of several processes in three stages: 1) Good web design, 2) Attracting attention from search engines and directories, and 3) Creating long-term popularity on the internet. However, it all starts with good web design. Website design is the foundation and beginning of a successful internet marketing strategy. It is true that there are websites on the internet that are unattractive but somehow seem to work. If there are aspects of these websites that work, imagine how well they could do if they simply followed basic design implementation tactics that resulted in a good image as well as simply pushed information out to the viewer.

These basics are essential for Tier 1 success:

- Good web design will complement and enhance the company image and offline marketing campaign products creating a corporate branding if done well.

- Easy, logical navigation that leads the viewer deeper and deeper into the web of information provided by the website will keep the visitor on your site longer and give you more time to sell your products or services.

- Attractive but quick-loading graphics that are pleasing to the eye and meaningful to the website will guide the viewer along the route you decide is important for explaining what you offer.

- Keyword usage that is search engine-friendly depends on how the keywords are utilized, the placement of the keywords, the frequency of the most important keywords and their relevance to the website.

- Website coding that is lean, clean and without errors will keep the search engines happy and your viewer seeing exactly what you intended to offer.

- Relevance of content to the theme of the site is essential. Be concise, to the point and focus on your goals. If you have multiple themes and offerings, consider multiple websites to address the different markets, then tie each website back to the others by linking.

- Changing content that changes frequently and stays fresh keeps your viewer returning and prevents the search engines from treating your website as if it were stale news. A stale site will be ranked lower by the search engines.

Content is king -- it's all about content, content, content. But how that content is presented is what makes the difference.

(c)2005 TAO Consultants, Inc. All rights reserved.

About the author:
Chesa Keane of TAO Consultants has been involved with the internet for 10 years through internet consulting, web development and search engine optimization. Go to www.computergoddess.com for a free Search Engine Optimization Checklist.
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