What is SEO and do I need it
SEO is the process of driving more quality traffic (“visitors”) to your web site from a search engine via the organic (“natural”) listings.
Organic search results are returned free of charge by a search engine and as such you are not charged every time someone clicks on a link to your website.
The process of SEO has to consider how search engine algorithms work, how “bots” crawl your website and what keywords people would key in to find your site or what products or services you sell.

How does SEO work
We have just demonstrated the process of SEO to you, How? We hear you ask, well you are probably reading this page or came to this website because you found us listed on a search engine like Google, Windows Live, or Yahoo, there you go that’s what SEO is all about, you type in a search phrase or keyword, a list of website are shown in the results, you click on a website you think can answer your question or provide you with a product or service your looking for, you visit the website and bang job done, that’s what SEO is all about.
Now if your in business can you afford not to have your website listed on the first page of the major search engines, well probably not because the chances are your competitors are already there and are no doubt “raking it in” with all those visitors that come to their website, after all if your not listed then how would these people find you.

Google SEO tips
There are over 200 factors (some listed below if you fancy a bit of DIY SEO) which Google can use to determine where your page should list in the search engine results (SERPs).
How may of these factors are used when scoring your website or web page is based on your competition and your website theme along with how complex your website is.
Here is a list of some of those factors based on our research and knowledge within the industry and we would like to stress that this is from our knowledge.
The SEO rules listed below are not listed by any relevance as at the end of the day that exercise is down to you along with your type of website and competition.
Please note that when we refer to the word keyword it can mean either one word or multiple words that are always together when users search the internet for a particular product or service, i.e. “SEO” is a keyword as is “SEO Company”.

Domain name factors

Main keyword in domain name
This helps and can add points but it’s not as important as it used to be.

Top level domain name extensions
(TLD)What sort of domain extension you have can get you points without doing anything.


.gov gets very high status
.info can get high status depending on topic
.edu gets very high status
.org can get high status.

What you need to do is have a TLD that is based in your country or the country you are aiming at, i.e. co.uk for UK companies or for people searching in the UK.

Internet users also look at the extensions of a domain in the search results and many will click on links that they think are in their own country.
Try to avoid domains like .uk.com, as these are hard for your customers to remember and seem not to rank well for searches based on the country your aiming for.

Age of domain
Old websites do well, older websites are more trusted if they stay within the same topics or themes.
New websites are not so trusted and can end up in the Google sandbox, it can take up to 6 months to get out of the sandbox if you have a good website.
In some cases we have seen it take up to 1 year to get out of the sandbox, this can depend on your type of website and theme.

URL factors

Main keyword in URL
This is a must and scores big points, use hyphens or underscores to separate words.

However Google can see the separate words even if they are all joined up.
Not to many words as that can be classed as spam, (max 5) with a max of 3 hyphens or underscores and use one or the other, not both.

URL length
Keep this to a minimal but try to use your main keyword or even what someone might key in as a search term, i.e. “Google_SEO.asp”.
Caution should be used as if it’s to long you could raise a flag for spam.
Less than 50 characters is a better idea.

Meta tag factors

Description Meta tag
Still in use and is often displayed as the search result text.

Must show theme with a max of 200 characters and no special characters.

The description must be unique to each page.

Keywords Meta tag
Apparently not used by Google, but we still use it as "G" are not the only search engine out there, could be used if the bot has problems working out what your real keyword are, Max 10 keywords words and every world must be on your page.

Robots Meta tag
Only needed if you want to stop your page being indexed

OR

If you don’t want the description from the open directory project to be used then use the robots tag with NOODP

Author Meta tag
Have seen this used by other search engines, so pop it in with the name of the author of the web page.

Copyright Meta tag
Have seen it used by other search engines, use it for any copyright info and normally you just put the company name or domain name in.

Web page content factorS

Main keyword in the title tag
This is a must and scores massive points, use | to separate keywords
First or second word using the main keyword is best
Title tag 5 to 60 characters max, also max 3 special characters, unique for each page.

Latent Semantic Indexing
This is one of the biggest factors when writing content for your web page.
Latent Semantic Indexing is really synonyms, but based on user browsing habits rather then synonyms from a dictionary.
A lot of time can be taken up writing content that includes other related words to the main keywords of your web page.
i.e. people who search for “labels” also looked at sites that provide “stickers”
Therefore Google will relate the word stickers to labels meaning that if you have a web page with both words on then you are more related than a page with only one of the words.
Extra caution should be used with this, it’s easy to over do and end up being marked down for spamming.

Keyword density in body text
Aim between 10% to 30% of total words in you total content.
Some keywords are sensitive to the total amount, other keywords are sensitive based on topic or theme so % threshold varies.
Individual keyword density in body
2% to 10% Max depending on the total amount of text or content on your page

Keywords inside H1, H2, H3 tags
These must be used correctly, Not to many, but does depend on theme and topic.
H1 at the top of page using main keyword followed by H2 but only if needed then H3 if required.

Keyword font size
This must be used correctly based on your page layout as putting in large text inside normal size text can make the website look messy and put your visitors off.
Idea is to use in headings where you have already used H1, H2 and H3 tags.

Keyword font weight
This is a must and is a good idea around the beginning of a sentence where you keywords are highlighted by using bold or strong, Google treats bold and strong as almost the same thing so you should use either based on what looks best for your web page.
Italic can also be used and scores points if used in the correct way, normally used when quoting what someone has said or a slogan of some sort.

Keyword proximity
It’s best to place your main keywords at or around the beginning of a page, usually best when within the first 20 words.

Keyword prominence
This would be a mixture of keyword proximity, keyword font weight and keyword font size.

Keyword stemming
Used to try and match words that might be keyed in during a search.
i.e. Google, Google’s, Googled etc

Page freshness
Google loves fresh pages, ones that are updated over time, have new content added.
This must be done very carefully as some pages should never really change and some pages should only have small changes done every now and then.
Home page should not really change unless you have a new service to offer, have a small news section on it, or have things like special offers displayed, otherwise this could cost you in your listing or a loss of some of your main keywords.
Other pages like About Us, Contact Us, Terms and conditions should also only be updated for good reason.
Info pages, product pages, news pages, special offer pages etc, should always be updated on a regular basis.
Depending on the page in question, updates should be once a week or once a month otherwise Google may have trouble keeping up with you and will cause visitors to “bounce” which is a bad thing.
Frequent updates will lead to frequent spidering which in turn leads to a newer search engine cache.

Content changes
As above but there should be a ratio between new pages and old pages.
The same can be said for updated pages, how much new content to old content.
The % ratio varies depending on page size and website size along with the theme of the website or sub directory.
Between 10% to 30% a month is a good idea but again it’s based on what the page does.
Content changesAs above but there should be a ratio between new pages and old pages.
The same can be said for updated pages, how much new content to old content.
The % ratio varies depending on page size and website size along with the theme of the website or sub directory.
Between 10% to 30% a month is a good idea but again it’s based on what the page does.

1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you

2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site

3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.

4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).

5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic, providing you can justify it. Everyone will get annoyed and link to you saying your wrong

6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers - quote your website as the source.

7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature

8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors

9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page

10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)

11. Write articles and submit them to article directories

12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)

13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)

14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site

15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site

16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site

17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.

18. Submit a blog to a blog directory

19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories

20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don’t spam)

21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for

22. Buy links to your site

23. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site

24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI

25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website

26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites – this little push could start a viral chain reaction!

27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook

28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush

29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)

30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)

31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories – use the viles-silencer list

32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate – maybe asking them all an opinion on something.

33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche – 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured – watch them link back to say what there position was.

34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche

35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates

36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.

37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.

38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them

39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages

40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website

41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site

42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche

43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.

44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once – find them and do it.

45. Purchase advertising in other people’s mailing lists and newsletters

46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews

47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site’s niche.

48. Conduct a survey and publish the results – make sure you let people know about it.

49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site – lots of new content and lots of new traffic.

50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site – then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it – pay the winner a decent amount.

51. Make sure you have a memorable domain name that is short and catchy.

52. Use a well-searched for keyword within your domain name to help rank for that keyword.

53. If you sell a product ask someone else who sells a product to list your product with theirs, and you’ll do the same for them – split commissions on sales.

54. When you write a new article on your site – link to as many blogs as possible – they will likely see your site in their pingbacks, website stats, or Technorati. They will visit your site and possibly subscribe to it and link back at a later date.

55. Get your RSS feed syndicated to different sites like Zimbio and hubpages and Topix.

56. If your site is popular and has quality unique content then apply to get listed in Google’s News search.

57. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google (not great but might help)

58. Use your robots.txt file to stop Google indexing certain directories and pages on your blog (such as archives) to avoid duplicate content issues).

59. Create a couple of small 10 page sites related to your main site. Offer links on these smaller sites in return for links to your main site (this is triangular reciprocal linking).

60. Get yourself known as an expert and get featured in offline magazines, TV and radio stations.

61. Use an auto-translator service to translate your site into other languages – put it in a subdirectory and watch foreign traffic come in.

62. Make posts about sex (don’t have to post anything rude) – and watch the porn surfers find their way to your site through Google.

63. Post about celebrities current events if it relates to your niche – there’s always a lot of people looking up celebrity stuff.

64. Write good headlines/titles – good titles get more clicks.

65. Get some stickers with your domain name on. Go out and stick them on strangers and say “My Website Yeah, Check it out.”

What is your secret to get our site from PR0 to PR5 within less than 6 months? Any secret?

I think u can follow this tip, i hope this help all webmaster get pr 5 fast

- Get links by submitting into directories

- Write good content so people link to you

- Write articles with your site link and put in article directories

- Put your link in signature forums and start posting in forums

- Post in blogs with your site in a non spammy way

- Get some relevant link partners

When building incoming links to your site, it is important to remember that not all links are created equal. And the Google pagerank of the site linking to you is far from the only factor.

It is a well-known fact, for example, that links coming from blogs are especially helpful in improving your rankings. What most people don’t know is why exactly that is the case.

One must realize that one of the most powerful types of link exchanges known to man is a site-wide sidebar exchange between two blogs, also known as a blogroll exchange. Such an arrangement, in effect, creates the potential for each party to receive hundreds (or even thousands) of relevant backlinks. This is due to the fact that each and every page of Site A links to the homepage of Site B, and vice versa. As you can see, an exchange like this between two very large sites can be of great benefit to both of them.

Another much smaller scale type of blog link is a simple reference from another post. These usually aren’t part of a reciprocal agreement, and might at first glance, appear to be quite minor. In truth, however, these links carry a lot of weight, due to their high level of relevance.

I mean, think about it for a minute. Most bloggers won’t link to another post unless it’s clearly related to what they’re writing about. And links from highly relevant content-based pages are going to be valuable assets, regardless of pagerank, etc.

So, having read my overwhelmingly positive description of blog links, you may be anxious to get out there and acquire a few for a blog of your own. It’s important to realize, however, that in order to receive favorable results, you will need to have a good base of quality unique content.

My advice would be to continually write relevant and useful content, while submitting to RSS directories, etc. If people read your material and find it useful, some of them will likely link to it, and that’s where the fun begins.

As you publish more content and get more links, you will eventually become a trusted source within your industry. At that point, you should start contacting the owners of related sites, and politely asking for blogroll exchanges. As you amass such exchanges, you will notice your search engine ranking (and traffic) slowly but steadily move upwards, to previously unattainable levels.

Just remember the basic theory behind it though. Quality content comes first, then links will begin to form naturally. For those who have knowledge, and are willing to work to articulate it, blogs are perhaps the easiest medium to express ideas, and attain backlinks.

Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have become intelligent in the past 4-5 years. It is very difficult to game search engines nowadays by manipulating tags and keyword stuffing. For a new site it may take 6 to 9 months to achieve competitive rankings at Google. From SEO point of view, I recommend the following steps for launching a new website.


i) Registering a domain name

Pick a domain name which either has keywords associated with your product/service or your brand name. It is better to go for short domain names which are easy to remember. If your target market is global, go for a .com domain. If you are targeting a particular country or language, it is better to register a domain name in TLD of that country. For example, go for a .jp or .co.jp domain, if you are targeting Japan. I recommend you to register the domain for at least 2 years; more the better to gain the trust of search engines.


ii) Domain Hosting

Host your site with a reliable hosting company. Stay away from companies which allow hosting of pharmacy, gambling and adult sites, or have a history of serving spam. If you are targeting a particular country/language, it is advised to host your site in that country to boost your rankings in the local search engines for that country/language.


iii) Registering with Search Engines

Since search engines give important to domain aging and can track parameters like the registration date & first crawled date, you better register your site with search engines as early as possible. Even if your site is not fully ready, it is better to make a temporary one-two page site and register with the search engines at the earliest. Getting indexed in MSN may take only 3-4 days, whereas it may take 2-3 months to get indexed in Google and Yahoo. To speed up this process, you should build incoming links from authority websites. More the links a site receives, the less it is ignored by the search engines. It also reduces the Google sandboxing time for new sites. Submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Central also ensures that your site would get crawled and indexed regularly.


iv) Build trust with Search Engines

To build trust with the search engines, you should build your incoming links and content at a regular pace. Keep your content unique and relevant to your products/services. Building links from relevant websites will boost your rankings.

SEO alone can not help in making an internet based business successful. Though there are many successful internet millionaires, most web-based businesses fail. Here are some proven tips for building and growing an internet based business.


1. Target a unique niche

If you are creative enough, you can virtually sell anything on the internet. However, you should apply the basic principles of marketing before you decide what product or service you plan to sell on the web. It is better to go for niche segments which do not have many players in the field. If you go for a product for which the market is saturated, it would be difficult and expensive to rank your site high in search engines. You should be able to differentiate your product/services in such a way that the web community would get interested in your site and send you referrals too.


2. Skills and Passion

You should have special skills for the product/service you plan to sell, and have a functional business model to support your internet business. You and the people around you should have passion for the job. So, if you plan to sell used cars on the web, you need to know everything about used cars, and have the right people who can help you in fulfilling the orders. Many internet businesses fail because people do not have the passion for the products/services they sell.


3. Building Trust

Testimonials and referrals play an important role in making your website trustworthy. If you can write a blog on your site where you can show off your work and make efforts to make your business transparent, it could build a feeling of instant trust with the site visitors. Making your site useful with an array of features not available elsewhere also makes a good first impression.


4. Prevent duplication

Though it is very easy to duplicate content, if you can offer features which are difficult to duplicate, it will give you a definite competitive advantage.


5. Control Costs

To keep your internet business profitable, you need to cut costs ruthlessly. Working from home, outsourcing, part-time staff can help you control costs especially in the beginning.

By David Leonhardt


From the obvious to the "Hey-I-never-thought-of-that-great-idea-before", here are 10 of the top 52 tips on how to optimize your website for its turbo-charge rocket ride up the search engine rankings.


Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.


Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site. Here is an example of deep linking, in this case to my personal happiness workbook.


Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?


Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.


First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page. You can see this in action at the link to the home page on this web site monitoring page


Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?


Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)


Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.


Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.


Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar. See how the second navigation bar at the bottom of Last Minute Florida Villas is like a mini-site map?


There you have it: 10 of the 52 Top SEO Tips, a free tip sheet that comes with Don't Get Banned By the Search Engines:


There is a lot more to search engine optimization, and there are always more details when looking at an individual site. But these tips should help any website significantly improve its rankings.



20 Hard Core SEO Tips - The Explanations



Change is the only constant you can count on in search engine optimizatioin. Although we often say that the fundamental principles of search engine optimization don’t change, pretty much everything else does. If you want to be really, really good at this, you cannot be inflexible. You cannot afford the luxury of becoming emotionally bonded to any particular idea.


Redesign your Web site once or twice a year. Why? Because you’ll find things you broke the last time around and you’ll be able to fix them. Because you’ll finally be able to tweak the optimization for pages you have known could do better but for which you never found the time to do anything. Because you’ll have an opportunity to improve your visitor experience and make your presentation more competitive (but avoid the “Web X.0 pitfall” — don’t marry your site to any particular concept).


Add 5 pages of content to your site every week. Why? Because it gives you opportunities to expand your search visibility. Because it gives you opportunities for more free links that actually help. Because it gives you opportunities to try out new ideas. Because it increases the value of your Web site.


Change the titles on your least successful pages twice a year. Why? Because obviously those titles weren’t helping your least successful pages.


Stop using keywords in your URLs. Why? Because if you don’t know how to optimize a page without slamming keywords into the URLs, you don’t know how to optimize a Web page.


Stop using keywords in your titles. Why? Because if you don’t know how to optimize a Web page without stuffing your title, then you don’t know how to optimize a Web page. Titles and URLs are options, not requirements, in search engine optimization. Learn to understand and fully appreciate the difference between being able to do something and needing to do something.


Find 3 SEO forums that accept site review requests and write 20 reviews in each forum before you ever ask a question. Why? Because looking at someone else’s mistakes and brilliant ideas with an unemotional, critical, helpful point of view will only help improve your own self-analysis. Keep your ideas and opinions to yourself. Just share your feedback on how other people’s sites look. You’ll learn more faster by helping with your honest, gut-level reactions than by helping forum idiots attack people whose ideas they don’t agree with. You’ll also look more professional, too.


Create your own SEO book by collecting your favorite SEO forum and blog posts, newsletter articles, and tech tips in a .PDF file that you review once a month. Why? So you have all your favorite advice in one easy-to-read-and-search compendium. Don’t sell it. Just use it.


Create a new SEO book once each year, replacing the one you just created in the previous step. Why? Because after a year of using all the advice you put in the previous one you’ll have a far better idea of just how much crap and bullshit you’re getting from SEO blogs and forums. But that also means your next SEO book will be ten times better than the last.


Optimize your best peforming page for the exact mirror of your targeted keyword expression (turn an ABCD page into a DCBA page). Why? You can’t do better than to nail the number 1 position for a query, so why not aim for a second query? If you can optimize a page forwards and backwards, you should be able to handle just about anything.


Find 5 low-traffic blogs or forums that are consistently active and support them through comments, links, and referrals WITHOUT being self-promotional. Why? It teaches you just how hard it is to build a good community, and maybe you’ll appreciate what “good community” really means before you act like an ass in an SEO forum or blog and flame someone else for disagreeing with you. But there is another reason. Keep reading to see if you can find it in the explanations given below.


Write 10 blocks of ad copy (no more than 25 words each) every week. Place them on the Web where they won’t offend anyone. Why? Because you can never write too many advertisements. Your audience is always changing. Your venues are always changing. And GOOD ad copy (not the cheap, shlocky crap you see most of the time) makes GREAT meta description tags. BTW — you should write that ad copy for sites other than your own until you learn to stop using cheap, shlocky crap expressions like “Proudly announces”, “pleased to admit”, “best prices”, etc. Be informative. Be compelling. Be classy.


Write 1 full-page announcement about your Web site each week. Post it some place where it won’t offend anyone. Why? Because you should spend some time promoting your site while you learn how to become a better search optimizer. Besides, practice makes perfect.


Get a text editor like Wordpad (the fewer frills the better) and use it to code one of your Web pages from scratch. Why? Because when you’ve seen just how stupid your templated CSS code really is, you’ll begin to understand why ugly works better than pretty.


Learn how to write Who, What, Where, When, and Why in 4 paragraphs or less. Why? Because you should never write a press release that starts out with, “John Shlock Smith the Shmuck proudly announces….”


Create a 1-page listing of 20 UNKNOWN Web sites you wish you had created. Post that page on your site. Why? Because it’s an opportunity for you to create an honest, sincere resource that no one else on the Web has the ability to create. Because people are actually more interested in your opinion of OTHER people’s Web sites than your opinion of your own Web sites. Because if you haven’t found 20 sites you wish you had created that no one else has talked about in your regular Web communities, you need to spend less time with your buds and more time with the rest of the Web.


Create a forum signature that does not promote your Web site. Put it into every forum profile you have created. Why? Because it makes you look confident, professional, and less like a shlocky self-promotional shmuck who doesn’t know what forums are for. More importantly, it will teach you to write compelling content (think of those 25-word advertisements I mentioned above).


Design a 5-10 page Web site about a community project or charitable activity. Promote that site to number 1. Now repeat the process without changing or building more links for your first site. Why? Because you’ll never compete with anyone harder to beat than yourself.


Find a niche directory you have never heard of before that you feel is honestly listing unique, useful Web sites. Promote that niche directory through links and comments on your own sites until you see improvement in its Compete, Quantcast, and Alexa metrics. Why? Because you need to know what it takes to become an influencer without cheating through social media Web site spam.


Find a friend or relative who has no clue about Web sites and persuade him or her to create a Web site. You must restrain yourself and ONLY give advice on how to build and promote the site. Why? Because I’ve had to suffer through the frustration of not being able to take the computer away from someone who wants to do it their own way. Misery loves company. Besides, it teaches us to be humble and appreciate the people who at least listen half the time.


Define a metric that uses from three to five factors OTHER THAN Google PageRank, Alexa Rankings, Compete Rankings, Quantcast Rankings, and backlink counts. Use this metric to track five to ten sites you don’t control for six months. Why? Because you need a competitive advantage that you cannot possibly get from using someone’s backlink checking tool. Because you need to understand and appreciate that there is more to the Web than links. Because you need to be one step ahead of the other guy, who may very well have his own metrics in place before you even get started.



20 Hard Core SEO Tips - What They Mean




You have to keep moving forward. When you stop learning about search engine optimization the idea of getting back into the game becomes overwhelming. Worse, if you become dependent upon any one tip or technique, you hobble yourself in ways you cannot possibly imagine.


Let the idiots spend their days arguing in the SEO blogs and forums. They don’t need your help to look stupid.


You can learn from other people by watching them, helping them, promoting their sites, and putting the community ahead of yourself. They won’t always appreciate what you do. But you can knock a self-promotional shmuck out of the search results any day of the week if you know more about search engine optimization than he does.


You get to that point by doing it, not by talking about it in SEO blogs and forums.

For those of you loyal readers who wish I would just take a break from the theoretical musings, here is the type of list of SEO tips I rarely give out. You may have seen some or all of these ideas before but I’ll explain some of the benefits for each tip below.



20 Hard Core SEO Tips - The List




  1. Redesign your Web site once or twice a year.

  2. Add 5 pages of content to your site every week.

  3. Change the titles on your least successful pages twice a year.

  4. Stop using keywords in your URLs.

  5. Stop using keywords in your titles.

  6. Find 3 SEO forums that accept site review requests and write 20 reviews in each forum before you ever ask a question.

  7. Create your own SEO book by collecting your favorite SEO forum and blog posts, newsletter articles, and tech tips in a .PDF file that you review once a month.

  8. Create a new SEO book once each year, replacing the one you just created in the previous step.

  9. Optimize your best peforming page for the exact mirror of your targeted keyword expression (turn an ABCD page into a DCBA page).

  10. Find 5 low-traffic blogs or forums that are consistently active and support them through comments, links, and referrals WITHOUT being self-promotional.

  11. Write 10 blocks of ad copy (no more than 25 words each) every week. Place them on the Web where they won’t offend anyone.

  12. Write 1 full-page announcement about your Web site each week. Post it some place where it won’t offend anyone.

  13. Get a text editor like Wordpad (the fewer frills the better) and use it to code one of your Web pages from scratch.

  14. Learn how to write Who, What, Where, When, and Why in 4 paragraphs or less.

  15. Create a 1-page listing of 20 UNKNOWN Web sites you wish you had created. Post that page on your site.

  16. Create a forum signature that does not promote your Web site. Put it into every forum profile you have created.

  17. Design a 5-10 page Web site about a community project or charitable activity. Promote that site to number 1. Now repeat the process without changing or building more links for your first site.

  18. Find a niche directory you have never heard of before that you feel is honestly listing unique, useful Web sites. Promote that niche directory through links and comments on your own sites until you see improvement in its Compete, Quantcast, and Alexa metrics.

  19. Find a friend or relative who has no clue about Web sites and persuade him or her to create a Web site. You must restrain yourself and ONLY give advice on how to build and promote the site.

  20. Define a metric that uses from three to five factors OTHER THAN Google PageRank, Alexa Rankings, Compete Rankings, Quantcast Rankings, and backlink counts. Use this metric to track five to ten sites you don’t control for six months.

It’s the dream of every blogger to get a lot of traffic, but something first time bloggers often don’t realize is that just publishing a few posts will not get them regular readers. I am no expert in getting traffic, but I have been working on a few things which has increased my traffic a lot.
When I first started this blog I used to get only about 10-20 visitors a day. After the first few months, I started getting traffic from Google and other search engines and my unique visitors increased to about 100 a day. Now for the past few weeks I have been getting about 550 visitors a day.


The sudden increase in traffic I had from about 100-500 visitors was mainly because my recent posts were linked back from many sites. So yes, linking can get you traffic depending on which sites link to you. Links can be thought of as the currency of blogs.
I received a lot of emails (even while writing this) from bloggers asking how they can get more traffic, I hope this helps…


Blog Design
A good design won’t bring you traffic but it will get your visitors to stay longer. No one will stay on your blog too long if the layout or navigation annoys them. So the first thing to do is to select a good theme for your blog and then design your own header. The goal is to have a unique blog that stands out from all other blogs (making your visitors want to come back again and again).
Often bloggers select a theme and forget about the design. The problem here is that your blog will look similar to hundreds of blogs that use the same theme.
Your design should allow your visitors to access the main pages of your blog and to contact you easily. Your blog should have an about page and an author photo. The more a reader knows about you, the more they trust your content. You can find more info on this on my recent post - Common Weblogging Mistakes.


Quality Content
Your blog should have good content inorder to keep your visitors coming back. By good content I mean well written posts that are unique and useful at the same time. Writing original content is definitely the key.


Do not copy-paste contents directly from other blogs to your blog. Re-blogging is a bad thing and will kill your traffic. The solution here is to write that content in your own words adding your own unique ideas to it. And don’t forget to link to the original post.
The more engaged you are with your content, the more interesting it will be.


Get Links
The more links you have the more traffic you get. Like I said before links are the currency of blogs. So how do you go about getting links to your blog?
Well written posts are often linked back by many sites. You are lucky if you get linked by heavily trafficked sites.


Another way is to get links from other bloggers. Link to their blogs and ask them politely to do the same for you. Also visit the ‘links’ section of a blog (if they have one) and check for a link exchange form. If there is, submit your blog after linking to theirs.
You may also take part in other link exchanging programs.


Join Conversations
Most of my first visitors came to my blog because I left a comment on theirs. When you comment on a blog leave your blog address. Often people like to know who is reading their blog and will come visiting you.Readers of that blog will also pay a visit to your blog.But do not comment just for the sake of it. Make genuine comments that relate with the post. In the process you will not only get visitors to your blog but might also make friends.


Take part in Blog Top Sites
Submitting your blog to Blog Top Sites like topblogsites.net, blogtopsites.com and top100bloggers.com is another way to get more traffic. These networks make your blog easier to find and search for as well. After you sign up for an account on their website, you just need to copy a bit of code and paste it somewhere on your blog.
You can also take part in blog traffic exchange communities like BlogExplosion and BlogClicker.
To join these blog traffic exchange communities - visit the site, sign up, confirm your account, add your blog to the member directory and then start visiting other member’s blogs.
Basically, you need to earn ‘credits’ in order to get blog traffic exposure. These credits are often gained by visiting other member’s blogs. When you have enough credits, your blog becomes eligible for promotion. Usually, a link or graphic to your blog will be shown on the main site or in fellow member’s blogs. This is how other people find your blog.
Of course, the more members there are in the community, the more potential visitors. So, if you are part of a blog traffic community, it’s good to promote the communities you belong to as well. Besides, when you promote the community through a referral system, you get more credits too.


Tag Technorati
Technorati is one of the best traffic providers for bloggers. People find your blogs easily when people search by technorati tags. Technorati will rank your blog based on the number of links from other websites.The higher your rank the easier your blog is to find when people search for things.
If you do not have a Technorati account, signup here. After you have setup the main settings, such as your profile, you need to claim your blog.
Make good use of Technorati tags by tagging every keyword in each of your posts. If you use WordPress, I recommend Ultimate Tag Warrior (UTW) which makes tagging Technorati a lot easier.
By tagging your post effectively you will get a lot of quality traffic to your blog.

Follow these simple rules for search engine optimization and your blog will rank much higher in Search Engines.


Use your primary keyword in your blog domain
The first thing to do is to ensure that your blogs URL contains the primary keyword you want to optimize for. Using the targeted keyword in subdomains also helps.

For example, if you want to start a HTML tutorial site then the primary keyword you want your URL to contain is html. So choose a URL like www.htmlhelp.com.

You can also use the keyword in http://webmaster-vn.com

Use your primary keyphrase in the title of your posts
If your primary key phrase is html help make sure that the word html and help appear in your blog headers such as H1 and H2 tags as well as the title of each of your posts.

Use your secondary keywords in the body of your post
If you want to get listed for secondary keywords use them infrequently in the body of your post. The theory is that the more times a keyword appears within a Webpage, the more relevant the page is likely to be for someone searching those keywords.

But do not overdo this by repeating the same keywords over and over again. Google bots can find out if a keyword is too frequent on a page and might just remove your site from their index.

Use your keywords in the anchor text of links
Use your primary and secondary keywords in the anchor text of links when linking to other blog posts or to other pages of your blog. Keyword in links have more importance than simple text.

Make sure search engines can spider your blog easily
Make sure your navigation bar is present on all pages of your blog. Your previous posts or atleast the popular ones should be linked to all pages so they get spidered easily.

Get backlinks from other blogs
You need as many links as possible to link back to your posts or blog because it will help you build pagerank and get your blog to rank higher in search engines. The more links you have the higher your blog is ranked in Technorati helping your blog to be found easily.

So how do you get backlinks?

The first thing to do to get high-quality links is to submit your blog and RSS feed to blog search engines and directories.
Start by submitting your blog to all the directories listed on this page:

http://freesitetemplates.info/directories/list-free-directory-update-per-day-submit-here-t146.html

http://mm99.info

Link exchanging with other similarly-themed blogs will help you to form richly interlinked networks or communities.
If you find an interesting article on another blog, link to it generously. The trackback will become a link back to your blog.
Lastly posting legitimate comments in response to posts on other blogs will help you get backlinks. Regularly post legitimate comments in similarly-themed blogs with high traffic to get many backlinks.

Update your blog frequently
Update your blog frequently using all the rules mentioned above and your blog will surely get top rankings in a short time.

Stick with your blog
Once you start posting on your blog, stick with the same domain or you could end up losing a lot of your traffic and regular readers.

Also stick with the topic you selected for your blog. If it’s about pets don’t suddenly switch to another topic such as Gadget’s because you will loose traffic.

Spider:
A spider is a robotic program that downloads web pages and looks at the code of the page. The spider doesn't have any visual components at all, if you right click on most web pages and go to view source that is what the spider can see.

Crawler:
While the spider is downloading pages, it is the crawler's job to strip apart the page and look for links. It is the crawler's job to look at the links and then decide where the spider should go next determined on the links or a pre-defined list of URL's.

Indexer:
It is the indexers job to analyse different aspects of a web page. It looks at Entities such as, titles, headings, links, text, constructs, bold, italic, and other style portions of a page that are ripped apart and analysed.

Database:
The database is where all the results and pages are stored, considering that there are an estimated 10 billion web pages on the Internet this can take a huge amount of storage space, which will be increasing indefinitely.

Search Engine Results Page:
The results page is where the clever stuff takes place; this is where the engine decides which page matches the query that was entered in the search box of their home page.

3/29/2008

Teen VietNam



Like Google and Yahoo, MSN also launched webmaster centre to submit xml sitemap. A hotmail id is must to verify the ownership by a website owner. MSN also introduced Help section in the webmaster centre which contains forum, faq and blog where a webmaster can find useful information and MSN search, its products and other important topics.
MSN webmaster center can be found here : http://webmaster.live.com/

Introduction to SEO
It is practice of optimizing website to increase traffic. Optimization of a webpage is not very difficult but not very task if no any knowledge of search engine algorithm to display the result. Better if we spend some times and read the guidelines of search engine. These are the activities included in search engine optimization :


Directory Submission
Link Exchange
Meta Tags Optimization
Image Optimization
Article Distribution
New Experiment in robots.txt

We already heard about robots.txt and also use it. This file is current in experiment by Google. So carefully check your robots.txt. User-agent and Disallow are the main command used in robots.txt file. One mistake might say google to go away. If you want not allow to google-bot to crawl more than one directory then you must write it in this way :

User-agent: *
Disallow: /old-pictures/
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /old-index/
Disallow : /personal/

If you use disallow command in this way Disallow: /old-pictures/ /cgi-bin/ /old-index//personal/" then it will not work. Use separate disallow for each directory.
Also check your robots.txt after uploading. Google provides robots.txt validator to check robots in the sitemap area. Just login and check your robots.txt file from here https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/robots.



Some Best Web-Directories :
Directory submission is very important to increase backlinks and traffic. Always choose some good directories to submit your website for inclusion. Submitting website in the directories not updated regularly is the wasting of time. Here you will find some best webdirectories where you can submit website for inclusion. Before submitting website, please read the guidelines. Some directories allow you to submit online top-domain. Follow the guidelines and submit your website, definately editor will approve your website :

http://www.my-india.net/ (For Indian websites only)
http://explore.oneindia.in/ (For Indian websites only)
http://www.cyber-find.net
http://www.samsdirectory.com/
http://www.bigsurf.info/
http://www.abacho.co.uk/
http://www.kcindex.com/
http://www.uc33.com/
http://www.gainweb.org/
http://www.sirpac.org/
http://www.mozdex.com/
http://www.cookienest.com/
http://www.1stw.com/
http://www.xakami.com/
http://www.a2adir.info
http://www.info-listings.com/
http://killersites.com/
http://www.topseos.com/
http://www.directoryvault.com/
http://www.123webmaster.com/
http://www.irealweb.com
Free Articles Directories
www.ezinearticles.com
www.1articleworld.com
www.A1articles.com

Google and Yahoo , the most popular search engines uses almost same algorithm to display search result. Micorosoft search
engine uses different algorithm to display search result. To optimize for MSN search engine, note the following points :

1) Regularly update your website using fresh content.
2) Check the tags used in the webpages. The tag should properly enclosed.
3) Check all the links added on the pages. All links properly work.
4) Avoid keyword stuffing. Also donot include irrelevant keyword to target the page.
5) Alt tag must be relevant name to the image and no keyword stuffing in alt.
6) No hidden links or text. Links or text should visible to users.
7) Donot purchase links from link farms. Directory submission or article distribution are beneficial to increase links.
8) If possible include 1-2 lines text at the top of all the important pages. Add relevent keyword phrases.
9) Use links of some internal pages in the bottom of the page related to the page. These links will work as keyword for the
page and help to increase keyword density of the page.
10) Include the text in title and description used in heading tag.
11) Choose relevant name for the pages. If the page contains the information on rates of hotels then file name should be
"hotels-rate.html" not "sample.html" or "5674.html".

You cannot impress MSN to collect lots of inbound links. You must have fresh and unique content including target keyword
inside the content.

Read the MSN guidelines here :
http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx?t=SEARCH_WEBMASTER_REF_GuidelinesforOptimizingSite.htm

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. Do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is plenty.


Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.


Become a foreigner. Canada and the UK have many directories for websites of companies based in those countries. Can you get a business address in one of those countries?


Newsletters. Offer articles to ezine publishers that archive their ezines. The links stay live often for many years in their archives.


First come, first served. If you must have image links in your navigation bar, include also text links. However, make sure the text links show up first in the source code, because search engine robots will follow the first link they find to any particular page. They won't follow additional links to the same page.


Multiple domains. If you have several topics that could each support their own website, it might be worth having multiple domains. Why? First, search engines usually list only one page per domain for any given search, and you might warrant two. Second, directories usually accept only home pages, so you can get more directory listings this way. Why not a site dedicated to gumbo pudding pops?


Article exchanges. You've heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only much more useful. You publish someone else's article on the history of pudding pops with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten pudding pop flavors in Viet Nam, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links. (More on high quality links in other tips.)


Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.


Not anchor text. Don't overdo the anchor text. You don't want all your inbound links looking the same, because that looks like automation - something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, "Gumbo Pudding Pop" occasionally, "Get gumbo pudding pops" as well, "Gumbo-flavored pudding pops" some other times, etc.


Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It's called the navigation bar.

Alexa ranking is one of the major ranking system provided by amazon.com. It only measured the amount of visitors if user visited a website with alexa toolbar installed.

Here is the definition of Alexa Traffic Rank provided by Alexa :

"The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach). As a first step, Alexa computes the reach and number of page views for
all sites on the Web on a daily basis."

It is also important for the webmasters, advertisers and ad networks to increase the alexa ranking. It will help to a ad network or advertiser to get good rate for advertising a banner or text-link and also increase the bargaining power.

Some useful tips to increase your Alexa Rank :

1) Encourage your friends and others like blog readers, webmasters and visitors to use alexa toolbar. Add link to the page of alexa that explains about alexa ranking and dowload instructions.
2) Install alexa toolbar and make your website as default home page for all browsers in your office and on your pc. It will be useful if work on dynamic IP addresses.
3) Write about Alexa and its importance in your blog or article section in your website.
4) Write on very important topic like domain or SEO related to webmasters.
5) Post your article to social book marking websites.
6) Join community forum and be the part of webmaster topic and add your website in your signature.
7) Use digg, myspace and stumbleupon to increase more traffic to your website. Content should be attractive

Site map is the page contains all the URL of a website that helps robots to crawl all the pages. Google or other search engines cannot visit all the pages if the website contains many pages. So to inform crawler about all the pages, xml sitemap is useful.

This file inform crawler when the pages was last modified, and how it is important by priority. There are many free tools available where you can create sitemap in xml format. One of the most popular is http://www.xml-sitemaps.com. Further you can validate it using xml validator.

Some hosting companies provide this utilitiy to create xml sitemap. Must check this utility in web control panel and create sitemap. Upload the xml file in the root folder. Its path should be http://www.mywebsite.com/sitemapfilename.xml. Also add one line in the robots.txt. MSN will crawl site map directly from here :

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.mywebsite.com/sitemapfilename.xml
Disallow: /abc/ (abc is the directory name that will not crawl by search engine.)

You can submit your site in yahoo from here http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. Yahoo provides further instructions how to include sitemap and other help. It will tell you to add html file that contains authentication key inside the file. Follow the instruction, upload the file and it will be verified within 24 hrs. You must have yahoo id to add site map. Same time include xml sitemap by clicking on the managing button.

For google, go to here http://www.google.com/webmasters/. Login and verify your ownership first. Read the further instruction and then add the xml sitemap file.

Exchanging links with link farms and adding a web site to FFA link farm is very dangerous. Google and other top search engines dislike these farms. It is only design to increase page rank by exchanging links. Not a difficult task to identify the link farms. It could be a website with lots of links of the other websites. FFA link farm allow anyone to add link. Link exchange is not the solution to increase the page rank. If you exchange link with similar sites then useful else it is the wasting of time and even money only if purchase the link.

The aim of link farm is to increase page rank using link exchange program. Try to find the quality pages suitable for link exchange. Here is few important points must see before link exchange. The resource pages of Link farm are different and after reading these points, you will easily identify who will be the link farm :

a) Find websites having similar business for link exchange. It will beneficial to improve page rank.

b) Watch resource page of the website carefully. If it contains few links not more than 20 or 30 of similar websites then it might be helpful.

c) Do not participate in link exchange program having lots of links in a single page.

d) The website contains only the link of the other websites may be a link firm if it contains no any useful information for the visitors.

e) The website that contains services, product information and other related information will be the best choice for link exchange.

f) Just delete the automated email that offers to trade link. Link farms creates pages automatically using software for link exchange. Personally send email to the webmaster for link exchange.

Creating sitemap for Yahoo is very easy and it supports only .txt file under urllist.txt. You can directly submit it here https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit. You can also authenticate your personal blog here. You must have yahoo id to submit your site map and authenticate your ownership later.

Step-by-step creation of urllist.txt :

1. Click on start > Run > Type notepad.
2. Paste all the url of your website want to be indexed in Yahoo.
3. Upload it at the root of your site directory.
4. Open the page https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/.
5. Add your web site or blog in "MY Site" and then click on "Add My Site" button.
6. Enter your user id and password and then click on login (Register for new yahoo id if you have no id on yahoo).
7. Click on Authenticate for your ownership.
8. To verify, Yahoo will suggest you to create a .html file and put string inside the file.
9. Upload this file in the root of your site directory and then click on Ready to Authenticate.
10. In the case of blog, use add Meta tag option. Add the meta tag in the head in your blog and then authenticate.

If you want more related help then visit this page http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/siteexplorer/.