You’ve just built a website and can’t wait to start popping up in the top listings of search engines. After all, you’ve paid this company even more money to create “optimized, search engine friendly pages, start building links and add lots of fresh content.” If it takes weeks and months for the search engines to notice me, do I have to wait that long to see if the money was worth it?
No! It’s true that it takes time?weeks, even months to build up your web presence, but there are ways to follow your progress. It’s important to note that if you already have an established Internet presence and wish to further optimize your site, it usually happens much faster than a site that is brand new with a brand new domain.
If you are already listed in various directories and your existing website has been up and running long enough the search engines have probably already indexed your site and those linking to it. (to see if your site is indexed with a particular engine, in the search field type “site:www.yourdomain.com”). As you modify your pages and add new content the process of moving up in search rank is much swifter than starting from a brand new, un-indexed site. ?
The ranking process has an inherent unchangeable variable of time. Sponsored search listings are one of a few ways around this hurdle to get you to the top instantly while the search spiders dig through your new site. But for the long haul, while you wait for that big chuck of cash you just paid your SEO to start returning, here are some ways to tell if he or she did you justice.
Ways to keep tabs on your progress:
Monitor Search Engine Positions
If you’re a brand new domain name the first step is to watch for yourself to be indexed. Chances are that your optimizer submitted your site to the most prominent search engines at the very least. While the search crawlers will ultimately find you on their own, there is some merit in submitting your site manually. It may take some weeks before a check of site:www.yourdomain.com reveals any activity though. Take care not to be over anxious and resubmit your site. That will only hurt your efforts.
Once you find yourself being listed by particular keywords in a search engine, monitor how your rank moves every week or so. (Frequently, the more you add fresh content, the sooner the crawlers will return to your site.) Change the preference settings in search engines to speed up your research efforts.
Google will display up to 100 results per page, MSN up to 50 in “advanced search.” This makes it much easier to find yourself if your down in the 300th position. Don’t be discouraged though! Being listed even at 300 is an accomplishment. And as you optimize you will see your listing move up in the ranks.
Visitor Tracking
The best, and easiest way to see who is reaching your site by search engine and particular keyword phrase is to implement some sort visitor tracking system. These are not complicated and can cost only a few dollars a month. Take a look at a company like www.webstat.com for example.
A small piece of code is placed on each page you want to track. When you log into the online service, you can tell the exact word and phrase someone used to reach you and from what search engine… not to mention scores of other useful data about your site traffic. This quickly gives you a snapshot of which keyword phrases are most successful and in which engines. This data is invaluable to further optimize your pages.
Are your top search engine rankings on par with the industry percentages?
Again using visitor tracking you can see if the people reaching you by Google are close to the percentage of people that use Google compared to MSN or AOL. If the industry shows that overall 25% of searchers are using MSN and 5% Lycos, your results should be similar. If they’re not, it’s a sign that some modifications might be in order.
Monitoring these processes will show you that there’s actually quite a lot of activity. And there’s nothing more exciting than watching that 300th position search climb to the first page!
As the owner and creative director of theMouseworks.ca I’ve found the best way to help people with internet marketing is to first help them understand internet marketing!
Watch for an upcoming SEO article to show you how to check your search rankings up to 1,000 results deep in Google in one step! Read more articles on the insights and secrets of website development and search engine optimization in easy, non-technical, up front English!
Written by SEO Tipster on April 16th, 2006 with no comments.
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Last Week I did a Search engine Experiment. I wanted to see if I could brand myself as the coolest guy in the universe. I created a web page that said Mike Makler is the coolest Guy in the Universe. In that Web Page I repeated that Phrase over and over. In less then 24 Hours I was Number 1 in Yahoo for the Phrase coolest Guy in the Universe in Double Quotes. A Few hours later I was no where to be found in Yahoo.
So I then created a few more web pages did a few more blog entries and not only was I back to #1 in Yahoo But I had the top 3 Spots and the 5th Spot in Yahoo as Well. Searching on the same Keyword Phrase in MSN I have the 2nd Spot and 4 total spots on the First Page.
Now if you run the exact same search in Google “coolest Guy in the Universe” don’t forget the Double Quotes Not only am I not on the First Page of the Results but I am nowhere in sight on the first 4 or 5 Pages. You will also notice that the entries on the first few pages in Google tend to be very different for The Keyword Phrase the coolest Guy in the Universe. They tend to be more Commercial oriented. RandomHouse, Amazon and the BBC all Appear in the top 5 Results. They all have Google Page Rank values of 8 or 9.
This experiment seems to point to the fact that Google seems to stress Linking and Link Partners over Key Word Density in there search Criteria. An Alternative conclusion might be that Google is slower to index then Yahoo and MSN and Perhaps I just need to be patient. One would be more inclined to believe that 2nd conclusion if some of the other entries from Yahoo and MSN appeared in Google as opposed to those High Page Rank Ones.
Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001, When he built his first Sales organization of over 100,000 Members.
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Copyright ?2005-2006 Mike Makler
[You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.]
Written by SEO Tipster on April 16th, 2006 with no comments.
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Not many web master take the time to use a robots.txt file for their website. For search engine spiders that use the robots.txt to see what directories to search through, the robots.txt file can be very helpful in keeping the spiders indexing your actual pages and not other information, such as looking through your stats!
The robots.txt file is useful in keeping your spiders from accessing parts folders and files in your hosting directory that are totally unrelated to your actual web site content. You can choose to have the spiders kept out of areas that contain programming that search engines cannot parse properly, and to keep them out of the web stats portion of your site.
Many search engines cannot view dynamically generated content properly, mainly created by programming languages, such as PHP or ASP. If you have an online store programmed in your hosting account, and it is in a seperate directory, you would be wise to block out the spiders from this directory so it only finds relevant information.
The robots.txt file should be placed in the directory where your main files for your hosting are located. So you would be advised to create a blank text file, and save it as robots.txt, and then upload it to your web hosting to the same directory your index.htm file is located.
Here is examples of the use of the robots.txt file:
To block out a directory in a robots.txt file, such as a subdirectory for your online store called /store/ you would do the following: Disallow: /store/
Another example to block out your stats directory: Disallow: /stats/
You may also want to disallow individual files that you do not want searched by the search engines. For example you dont want search.php to be parsed by the Search Engines. To do this you type in the following on its own line:
Disallow: /search.php
Following the rules outlined and creating the robots.txt file, you will keep search engine spiders out of unwanted files and directories, and letting them go through the important files to see what your web site is all about!
Michael Kralj is owner of Emenki Web Solutions and Domains at Retail. Emenki Web Solutions are web site designers and programmers based in Hamilton, Ontario, providing businesses with an informative and strategic approach to establishing an online presence on the web.
Please visit Emenki Web Solutions & Web Design in Hamilton, Ontario on the web http://www.emenki.com
Please visit Domains at Retail - Cheap Domain Name Registration on the web: http://www.domainsatretail.com
Written by SEO Tipster on April 14th, 2006 with no comments.
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Search engine optimizers are always looking for ways to rank higher in the search engine indexes and for their pages to be categorized in these indexes properly. Keyword density has shown in the past to help a web developer achieve a web ranking in a search engine index under the proper term or phrase. This can help facilitate the proper ads being sent via Google Adsense to your web site as well as visitors coming to your web site for specific on-topic information.
Keyword density usually refers to the exact percentage that a word or phrase is used on one web page. For instance if you have a web page with 500 words and 25 words on the page are “movie”, your keyword density for “movie” on this web page is 5%. Most SEO gurus state that the proper keyword density should be around 2 to 5% of your entire web page. This keyword density should enable your web page to be indexed under the term that you have optimized your page for.
If you don’t have time or energy to count all the words, there are plenty of great keyword density tools that can look at your site and instantly give you the keyword densities for the top words used on your web page. You can also use these tools to analyze your competitors to see how well their keyword density is for a specific topic. If you want to create successful web pages on topic, make sure you look into keyword density.
Written by SEO Tipster on April 14th, 2006 with no comments.
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The SEO industry has experienced a sudden boom over the last few years, and we are in the thick of it at this exact
moment. As this focus on SEO continues to build, the thoughts and strategies have become more intricate and
involved. It is becoming ever more clear that the concept of a “basic website” is on its way out. This fact is
making website designers and site optimizers wonder whether it is still possible to achieve overnight, painless SEO
success these days, even though everybody else out there is making the same efforts?
When SEO first began, it seemed as though SEO was the magical key to the absolute best search engine ranking.
And, for a while, it really was. All that was required was a list of keywords within the meta tags of a site, and there it would be at the top of the search lists at all major search engines and directories. And then, meta tags no longer counted, and doorway pages became the “thing”.
That didn’t last, leading next to links wherever they could be found. The more, the better. When links became important, web designers and web masters hurried to have link scripts built in to their sites and have directories of relevant categories. Most recently, this has changed to text link ads - paid links.
With all of these fads, Google was struggling to keep the “legitimate” efforts separate from the “SPAM” or manipulated sites. With paid links being overused, Google had to work overtime to filter out the manipulation of ranking. This is the primary reason that there is such a delay in the addition and indexing of new sites and brand new domains, even on this state-of-the-art, enormous search engine.
The problem that many sites face, though is that legitimate quality sites are sometimes being swept away in the catch-all fishnet being used by Google to filter out the “bad guys”. Webmasters who have poured months of time, and thousands of dollars into finding the ideal keywords for their sites, and then applying them with the best possible strategy going are now finding that their efforts were more of a fad than a long term investment.
However, their efforts were likely not entirely in vain. SEO does still work. It must be remembered, though, that it is not a matter of following one fad or another, but is instead a careful balance of the elements considered to be most important by Google and the other major search engines. It also means that a high ranking website will be one that is continuously updated to maintain its value in the eyes of the great Google.
Therefore, no longer is there any need for hours upon hours of time, and thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on
attempting to fool search engines into giving you a good rank for the keyword phrases you think are most important to your site. Instead, work with an SEO specialist to find the keywords that actually have value to your site worked into your content. SEO isn’t just a matter of packing your content with the keyword you like best so that it looks like a bad form of keyword chicken pox. It is a delicate balance of keywords sprinkled at a certain ratio to the rest of your content’s text.
Furthermore, this content needs to be informative. Something that your visitors will value. This will increase your number of visitors, and, since this is one of the elements most valued by Google, this will help to increase and maintain your rank over time.
The point is that SEO can still be achieved rather painlessly and still be successful, as long as it is performed by someone who is aware of the latest important elements established by Google, and knows how to avoid getting caught in the filters. Your task, therefore, is no longer to spend a great deal of time and money on SEO, but to find someone who can assist, advise, and provide for you in a timely manner.
The results won’t happen overnight, nor will they even be seen within the first month, however will constant attention, they will be seen. Google has made it impossible to simply create a site that tops the ranks forever. But Google has not made it impossible to climb your rank and maintain a high status. Show them that you have a quality site that matters to the web users who make searches using certain words, and that these web users want to see your site, and Google will reward you with exactly what you want - the high ranking you need.
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Mark Nenadic
Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com , where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.
Written by SEO Tipster on April 14th, 2006 with no comments.
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Google, the most popular, and many say best, search engine, offers searchers many options to help them zero in on just what they’re looking for. Although these search modifier features are documented on own site, many searchers, including experienced marketers and technically savvy people, simple don’t know these features are available. But these features, along with the Google search box, are only available to human searchers, who can type in their search parameters, and perhaps some keyboard scripting programs as well. But there is a way for programmers and web site designers to access Google’s database from their own sites, in the exact way they need. This is done by using Google’s Web API (Application Program Interface).
With the API, programmers can use most any web programming language, such as PHP, ASP, Perl, .NET, and Java. Google’s Web API provides “data hooks” that allow a remote program to access certain portions of Google easily.
You must be very aware of the Google Web API Terms of Service. You must obtain a developer key that you will include in each API use, you are allowed only 1,000 automated queries per day, and perhaps most important, you may not use the Google API for commercial purposes. It is only for your personal use, and you of course may not violate any laws or copyright protection.
Google provides a developer’s kit to help you get started. Data is interchanged between Google and the application program using an XML structure, so the results from Google should be relatively easy to parse even for only moderately experienced developers. If you have problems or questions, Google offers Getting Help, Reference and FAQ links, and you will find help and discussions on any of several forums should you need more help. Just search Google - from the search box!
About The Author
Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.
Written by SEO Tipster on April 12th, 2006 with no comments.
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Ever felt intimidated at the convoluted, jargon-ridden information about Internet marketing for small businesses available on the Net? Ever been horrified by the huge fees the experts charge, putting search engine optimization beyond your own means? Ever thought: What exactly is search engine optimization anyway, and can I do it myself?
The answer is: Yes, you can! The basics of search engine optimisation in applied web marketing are simple. It’s all to do with the keyword content of your text copy, and can be summarised in seven points.
1. Register a good domain name which reflects what your site is about. Even if you are an established business, don’t register www.FredJones.com if you make widgets. Rather, you want to register something like www.BestWidgets.com because that would inspire confidence in people looking for quality widgets who would not necessarily have heard of Fred Jones the widget-maker.
2. Name your page URLs based on reasons similar to the above for your web promotion, except now you can be more specific. Search engines like to know what your page is about. Name a page after a product (BigYellowWidgets.htm) or a service or action (Buy-Widgets-by-Post.htm) on one of the sales pages.
3. The text in the title tag is crucial in letting search engines know what each page is about. Put your important keywords in your title tags, using both the singular and plural versions (people will search for both) and make these tags different and specific for each page. For example, “Widgets and After Sales Widget Services”. Whatever you do, don’t call the home page “Index”, but treat it almost as a mini-description.
4. The other tags (at the top of the html page) between the two “HEAD” tags are not as important as the title tag, but the description tag is still used by some search engines in displaying what you would like web users to see when they scroll down a page of search results. Some search engines don’t use the description tag at all; others, like Google, sometimes use part of it together with part of the main body text surrounding prominent keywords on your page. So you may as well treat the description tag seriously; make it brief (about 25 to 30 words) and as comprehensive as possible in the short space allowed. Make sure you have your popular keywords included within your description tag. The ALT tag is used for a very short description of an image or graphic file, and is what is displayed if you allow your mouse pointer to hover above a graphic. These days it is not considered important for search engines. The COMMENT tag is never displayed on the body page, and is used by coders and designers as an instruction or reminder to themselves about what that section of html coding should be doing; in the past, some webmasters in their quest for website promotion and search engine ranking used to stuff keywords in the comments tags, but now it is generally acknowledged that the main search engines pay little or no attention to these.
5. Keyword density. Each search engine has its own preference as to how many times a keyword phrase appears on the page in order to signify the relevance of that keyword phrase (in other words, in order to help the search engine understand what the page is about). Around 5 to 8 per cent is a rough guide as to the optimal level. Don’t overdo it, otherwise it will be seen as spam or keyword-stuffing. Also use your keywords in the headings tags H1 and H2. There is an H3 tag as well, but it is doubtful whether search engines bother with that, as it is perceived as less prominent on the page, therefore less relevant to what the page is about.
6. Don’t forget good linking in your website marketing. Search engines will judge the importance of your web pages to some extent on the number and quality of incoming links from other sites. Ask other webmasters with sites on similar themes to yours for a link, in exchange for a link back. These sites should not be in competition with yours, but should be similarly themed. You may occasionally be asked by other webmasters if they can link to your site. If this is so then have a look at their site; make sure that their site is relevant, that it has at least some Page Rank, and that it just “feels” good, and has no nasty surprises like redirects or unexpected popups. You don’t want to be associated with a “bad neighborhood”!
7. Make sure that important keywords are included in the anchor text within inbound links from other sites. This is crucial to search engines when they try to figure out the relevance and importance of your pages. The inbound link from the other site should take the form of something like this (I’m using normal brackets instead of angle brackets so as not to use compromising html): (A xhref=”http://www.Yoursite.com” mce_href=”http://www.Yoursite.com”)your important keywords included here(/A). You should definitely avoid something like (A xhref=”http://www.Yoursite.com” mce_href=”http://www.Yoursite.com”)click here(/A), which tells search engines nothing except that your site is about “click here”. Be careful!
Gordon Goodfellow is an Internet marketing consultant and practitioner He lives and Works in London, UK, and has helped companies in many industry sectors with clients worldwide. His main site, http://www.applied-web-marketing.com is an introductory resource on Internet marketing for small businesses.
Written by SEO Tipster on April 12th, 2006 with no comments.
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For the uninitiated, searching for web pages can seem a slow, obscure process. Unless you have a high-speed Internet connection, web pages may seem to take days to load. And the searching itself ? you have to admit it looks weird typing in bunches of plus signs, asterisks, parenthesis, and other funny symbols and operators to find what you want.
To help you in this process and show that you are not, I’ve compiled a top five list of things you must realize when searching the web for information. No pencils will fly, no drums will roll, but you just might learn something.
5. Search Engines Have to Make Money
Before you grumble over the growing number of advertisements and sponsored links that appear in search engine results page, remember that most search engines are free. You’re not paying anything for a very costly service. Thus, these sites have to earn income somehow to stay afloat (computing power and bandwidth isn’t cheap!) So, to put it bluntly? live with it.
(Yes, I know some types of advertising are much more obtrusive than others. Popup ads, dancing animations, and other larger advertisements may make it harder to use some search engines that support these types of ads. If you don’t like it, vote with your mouse clicks and move to another search engine).
4. Sites Go Down
Worse yet, you’ve entered in your perfect search query, looked at the results page, and the first site you see no longer exists!
The Internet changes all the time. Unfortunately, search engines and directories are not able to constantly query every site on the Internet to see if they are still online. Occasionally (in other words, probably frequently) you will find links to web sites that no longer exist. It is just a part of life. Especially with the dot-com bust, many web site owners can no longer afford to host free resources. If they could not convert their traffic to paying customers, they just took their sites down
So when you find a link that is dead, don’t pump your fist in anger ? just go back to the results page and move along. Or, better yet, if you’re using a search engine that caches pages, such as Google, just look at the cached version of the now defunct pages and find the information contained therein. It’s like stepping through a time machine!
3. Your Web Browser Will Crash
On a related note, not only do web sites go down ? but so may your web browser. Sometimes it will be due to visiting a multimedia-intensive web site. Sometimes it will seem to happen for no reason. But it will happen, and when it does, don’t go blaming yourself saying that you did something wrong.
Web browsers, like just about any other type of computer software program available on the market, are not infallible. They can and usually do contain bugs. These may predictably rear their ugly heads when visiting sites containing a lot of multimedia and advanced interactive elements, or they may appear completely at random.
If your web browser crashes, do what I do. Just restart it. Don’t say you did something wrong. Don’t think that you must be so bad with computers that you crashed the Internet. Just restart your browser, and if you have to restart your computer to do so, then do it as well. Most likely the crash is not your fault.
2. The Internet Can Be Slow
No matter how fast your on-ramp to the Internet may be, there will be times where it seems to take forever to load a web page. This is just the nature of the beast.
As the Internet is a loosely connected network, if certain connections go down, computers may not always be able to route information via other networks. Thus access speed will suffer and your web browser will start to crawl. If this seems to be happening often, step away from the computer, go outside and take a nice, long walk (unless it’s 30 degrees below). You can run your search another time when the speed is back to normal.
And the #1 thing you must realize when searching?
1. The Best Result Just May Be On Page 10
Most people only look through the first page of search engine or directory results, usually the top ten listings. Others may visit the second page, but relatively very few people venture to the higher numbered pages.
This is a shame ? sometimes the best results to a search engine query are not in the first ten listings as they may only contain links to commercially driven sites or sites run by web owners who know how to manipulate listings. In some cases web sites containing perfectly good information may not be listed in the top 10, 20, 50, or even top 100 results.
Obviously searching through the many pages and pages of resulting sites will take extra time, especially if you do not have a high-speed connection to the Internet. But, this time spent may well be worth it if you find some gems in the rough! So if you have the time, speed, and patience, browse through the deeper results pages. You never know what you may find!
And that’s it ? my top five list of things you must realize when searching. This covers slow access time, results not on page 1, browser bugs, web sites popping up and down and changing management, and the need for sites to make money, causing advertisements to become more obtrusive. Gosh, that just makes you want to go out and search right now, doesn’t it? .
About The Author
This article was written by Andrew Malek, Internet Search Guru and author of Find Stuff On the Net, an e-book that can show even beginning computer users how to navigate the Internet without fear. Gain confidence using your web browser. Master search engines. And more! For further information and free snippets of the book, visit http://www.findstuffonthenet.com/
webmaster@envprogramming.com
Written by SEO Tipster on April 12th, 2006 with no comments.
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If you are looking to maximizing your web income, look to links to help you drive traffic. Links are an enormous resource when trying to rank higher in the search rankings and drive traffic to your web site. Many web masters that strive for a first page result listing use link advertising on other related web sites.
There are two main types of links; reciprocal links and one way back links. Both links can help you increase your visibility, but one way back links usually are more prized for increasing your page rank.
Reciprocal links are links that are swapped between two web masters. Many people join link exchanges and agree to exchange links and post them on each other sites. While they are valuable, they are not as highly valued as one way back links by the major search engines.
One way back links are very difficult to get posted, mainly due to the fact that it usually is in no ones interest to post a web sites link unless it benefits the web site in some way. Many people usually pay for a posted one way link or have to give something away so a web master will post their link. Beside paying for a back link, people can decide to create articles and allow other sites to post them as long as their link is included.
So you should have a link strategy to maximizing your web site’s potential. Besides placing articles, we can also add our website links into directories like Dmoz, Yahoo Directory or 3rd Party directory providers.
Recommended Links
GoArticles.com
Findarticles.com
Articlesfactory.com
Directory of Experience
Real Estate Dir
One Dollar Directory
Written by SEO Tipster on April 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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Ever wanted to check what is your website’s live PageRank? Here is a site where you can check not 1 but 73 data centers for your website’s pageranks. This is a good tool for one to gauge their site’s ranking from time to time.
About Live PageRank
The Live PageRank calculator gives you the current PageRank value in the Google index, not just the snapshot that is displayed in the toolbar. Google updates its internal PageRank value continuously as the web changes and their index is updated. Only once every third month or so this value is exported to be displayed in the Google Toolbar.
Take a look at mine - MySeoTips.com PageRank
Written by SEO Tipster on April 11th, 2006 with no comments.
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