Monday, September 20, 2010

Effective Search Engine Optimazation

 Top 10 Effective Search Engine Optimization technique

Search engine optimization is a process to improvise traffic on a website. It includes different kinds of search like image search, local search and video search etc. I have seen many organizations hiring SEO companies which pay huge money and don’t get any results. My question was, is it so difficult? I have researched a lot on this and concluded it is just a matter of being aware with a bit of research about your conceptual functionality.
I am going to list top 10 search engine optimization techniques that are so easy to implement and give superior results by making your website ready for global market.

1. Keyword Research:
This is very important section of your SEO crusade. You may have nicely designed website with powerful programming however it costs nothing without getting any visibility in search engines. Keyword research can guide you about search phrases and terms, people use to find products / services to drive traffic to your competitor’s websites. We have a lot of keyword research tools available over the web. Please find some free keyword research tools listed below:
    * Word Tracker
    * Keyword Tool External
    * Webmaster Toolkit
    * Free Keyword Tool

2. Title Tag Optimization: Search engines gives great weight-age to title tags in a website. Title of a page should ideally be SEO optimized with a small number of keywords. Try to put keywords that describe your product / services optimally in title of a page to get good results.

3. Meta Tags Optimization:
These tags basically provide structured metadata of a website to search engines. Meta tag content actually known as a weapon for top search engine positions however this is not as easy as it looks like. A lot of research is required to add content, keywords and description in Meta tags. These tags are placed in the head section of a web-page.

4. Content Optimization:
There is no surprise, that content formatting and presentation for the content are the main part of the SEO process. Implementation of Headings & Bold tags to content actually works calmly in this process. I personally recommend adding at least 5% to 10% keywords in the content to make it better.

5. Hyperlink Optimization: 
Search engines also look for keywords, linking to page that have closely related content. So we should try to include most important keywords within the hyperlink itself. Make sure that hyperlinks we use should encourage further surfing to your users for better results.

6. Image Optimization:
Image optimization for search engines can drive many visitors who search for images over the web. We can make images search engine friendly by taking care of few steps like: adding keywords in alt tags, enabling image search option at Google web master tools etc.

7. Search Engine Friendly URLs: 
Well this relates to the technical part of a web site in which web developer can play with the code to make URLs Search engine friendly. Complex URLs are often dubbed dirty URLs because they tend to be littered with punctuation and identifiers that are at best irrelevant to the search engines.

8. XML Sitemap Creation, Submission & Authentication on Google, Yahoo & MSN: 
This is an important process in which we inform search engines by submitting sitemap and make their work easy, to crawl our website URLs better. After submitting a sitemap, search engines bots get a quick access to the web pages in which they can navigate and collect information easily. Some of free sitemap creation tools are:
   * XML Sitemaps
   * Make a Sitemap

9. Robots.txt Optimization:   
This is one of the most fundamental steps while optimizing a website. By using the robots.txt file you can tell the search engines what directories and files they should include in their search results, and what directories and files to avoid. There are many tools available to write this file over the web, some of them are listed below:
    * Generate Simple Robots file
    * Robots.txt Generator

10. Social Media Optimization:   
Social media Optimization is considered as the part of SEO these days. It actually focuses on driving traffic from sources other than search engines. There are many social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace, Digg, Stumbleupon etc. in which we can submit our web pages and gets a lot of unique visitors. This also includes participation in discussion groups, commenting on other websites, blogging and posting status updates on social networking websites etc.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

3 Hidden Tips to Increase Traffic

If you’re like me, then you’ve probably heard all about article affiliate marketing, SEO, video marketing, social bookmarking, press releases, blogging, etc…
 
They are the cornerstones of Internet Affiliate Marketing. And they work. But sometimes don’t you just want to read about something new.  I know I do. In fact, every time I discover a new traffic technique, it’s like opening a shiny new present on Christmas morning.

And I’m hoping I can give you that feeling with this article, because I’m about to reveal 3 traffic methods that you may not have heard of yet.

1. Download Sites –
You can get thousands of visitors with download sites, even if you’ve never programmed a day in your life.
Here’s what I do. I take my articles and turn them into EXE files. This allows me to submit my article to hundreds of software directories, sending me hundreds of one-way links and visitors.

Now, here’s a quick tip on how you can use this technique to build your subscriber list quickly. Require people to register for your software (in this case your eBook is considered software) before they are able to read your eBook. This allows you to grow your list quickly simply by recycling your articles and turning them into EXE files.

You can turn your articles into EXE files using some free software called WebsiteZipPacker. This software will allow you to turn an HTML page into a solid executable file (.exe) with an integrated HTML browser.

Quick Tip: This is an excellent way to get hundreds of one-way  backlinks by using those PLR articles you have laying around. Since you’re converting the articles into software, you don’t have to worry about duplicate content. Just one of your plr articles can now generate you 100′s of one-way backlinks by converting it into software and submitting it to all the different software directories.
Here’s a list of some of the top download sites you can submit to…
Download.com                         Tucows.com
Versiontracker.com                   Jumbo.com
freedownloadcenter.com           regnow.com
regsoft.com                              5star-shareware.com
shareit.com                              topshareware.com
passtheshareware.com             sharewarejunkies.com
softpedia.com                          shareware.com
Plus, Google loves these authority sites, especially Download.com. I’ve found many of my software titles ranking on the front page of Google with this high-authority download sites.

2. Get your articles into Google News. 
Google News has become very popular in the past couple years and can send you a ton of traffic. To get your article into Google news, all you have to do is get published on one of the many sites that is syndicated by Google News.
 
3. Webwire.com. 
I have saved the best for last…
Webwire.com is a hidden gem that I have been using to rank on the front page of Google within 24 hours.
Here’s a quick overview of how I am able to capture front page rankings…

First, I title my press release with the keyword phrase that I want to rank for. I have found that keyword phrases with a competition of less than 30,000 (in quotes) in Google rank really well.

I then make sure to include the phrase and variations in the first and last paragraph. Sprinkle it in but don’t go hog wild.

This simple formula has landed me multiple front page rankings and thousands of visitors.

SEO Your Site in Less Than an Hour

A. Visit the home page, www.domain.com.
   1. Does it redirect to some other URL? If so, that’s bad.
   2. Review the Page Title. Does it use relevant, primary keywords? Is it formatted correctly?
   3. Review site navigation:
          * Format — text or image? image map? JavaScript? drop-downs? Text is best.
          * Page URLs — look at URL structure, path names, file names. How long are URLs?
How far away from the root are they? Are they separated by dashes or underscores?
          * Are keywords used approapriately in text links or image alt tags?
   4. Review home page content:
          * Adequate and appropriate amount of text?
          * Appropriate keyword usage?
          * Is there a sitemap?
          * Do a “command-A” to find any hidden text.
          * Check PageRank via SearchStatus plugin for Firefox
   5. View source code:
          * Check meta description (length, keyword usage, relevance).
          * Check meta keywords (relevance, stuffing).
          * Look for anything unusual/spammy (keywords in noscript, H1s in javascript, etc.).
          * If javascript or drop-down navigation, make sure it’s crawlable.
          * Sometimes cut-and-paste code into Dreamweaver to get better look at code-to-page relationship.
B. Analyze robots.txt file. See what’s being blocked and what’s not. Make sure it’s written correctly.
C. Check for www and non-www domains — i.e., canonicalization issues. Only one should resolve; the other should redirect.
D. Look at the sitemap (if one exists).
   1. Check keyword usage in anchor text.
   2. How many links?
   3. Are all important (category, sub-category, etc.) pages listed?

E. Visit two category/1st-level pages.
Repeat A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5 – this will be quicker since many objects (header, footer, menus) will be the same. In particular, look for unique page text, unique meta tags, correct use of H1s, H2s to structure content.
Check for appropriate PageRank flow. Also look at how they link back to home page. Is index.html or default.php appended on link? Shouldn’t be.
F. Visit two product/2nd-level pages.
Same steps as E.
Also, if the site sells common products, find 2-3 other sites selling same exact items and compare product pages. Are all sites using the same product descriptions? Unique content is best.
G. Do a site:domain.com search in all 3 main engines.
Compare pages indexed between the three. Is pages indexed unusually high or low based on what you saw in the site map and site navigation? This may help identify crawlability issues. Is one engine showing substantially more or less pages than the others? Double-check robots.txt file if needed.
H. Do site:domain.com *** -jdkhfdj search in Google to see supplemental pages.
All sites will have some pages in the supplemental index. Compare this number with overall number of pages indexed. A very high percentage of pages in the supplemental index = not good.
(Note: The above is no longer a way to view supplemental results in Google, and Google has said it no longer distinguishes between a main set of results and a supplemental set.)

…..END…..

Questions for you:
- What other flaws do you find with this?
- What other steps do you take when doing a quick SEO analysis?