Posts filed under 'SEO Center'
January 2nd, 2010
With the help of MSN, recently I’ve been reminiscing about the Google of old.
Remember those days? When you could take a good quality site, add a few
keywords, get a few incoming links and bada-bing, bada-boom, it’d be #1 on
Google? Remember the old days, pre-Florida, pre-sandbox? The days when we, as
search engine optimization specialists, didn’t feel like a private schoolgirl smoking
in the bathroom? When we didn’t feel like the iron fist would come crashing down at
any moment? Yes, those were the good old days. And MSN has finally brought them
back, though on a much smaller scale.
Google hit it right on the nose back then. Search results were almost never
irrelevant - venturing to the second page of results was an event that drew gasps.
There was never, ever any reason to leave Google and search for the same query on
another search engine. Satisfied users the world over, it was the search engine of
choice almost everywhere searches were conducted. I myself never strayed from
Google, I was loyal and I was rewarded for my loyalty with consistently relevant
results.
But has Google taken their quest for perfection a few steps too far? Case in point:
http://www.jimmylerner.com - this web site is the official site of an author. Search
on MSN for his name, “jimmy lerner” and his web site is the top result. Now, try the
same search on Google. The top results are pages devoted to reviewing his book,
book stores selling his book, a press release I sent out to announce his new site and
a few times I’ve even seen sites show up in the top ten that simply have a link to his
site from theirs and are completely unrelated. His site has been jumping from the
second page to the first and back again.
This begs the question, optimization or no optimization, what, exactly, is the
problem with a quality, informative web site reaching number one for a search query
that is probably conducted specifically to find that exact site? Has the focus and aim
of Google changed from offering relevancy to satisfied searchers to simply impeding
the progress of SEOs? Is Google’s main concern now, to stop individuals from
helping a site reach number one? It can seem that way, can’t it? And I can only say
one thing about it. Bad move, Google.
I’ve heard a few people say that it’s just a transition period. That all web sites are in
the same boat, everyone’s waiting to see the fruits of their optimization labour.
Perhaps this is true, and perhaps over the next little while we will see changes at
Google that make our jaws drop, impressed at the level of perfection we never
thought possible. But I think maybe Google needs to re-focus their energies. Take
the focus back to the user, not the SEOs. Get back to the near-impeccable relevancy
level before I start using MSN to learn about all my favorite authors.
Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone
Designs, a search engine optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. She has
been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start
several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney’s articles are
available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/
Continue Reading December 3rd, 2009
How to find a good web hosting company
February 16th, 2009
The main goal of search engine optimisation Melbourne is to generate traffic and increase the number of unique visits and clicks to be able to rank high on search engines. The most appropriate keyword or phrase is needed to illustrate what your web site is all about. When you enter a certain keyword that is related to your web site content, you will initially see your competitor’s pages come up on the first page of search engines like Yahoo and Google. Your main goal is to surpass that and be on that spot. To do this you basically need to have enough background on techniques and strategies applied to search engine optimisation.
Although adding Meta tags and submitting your site to many directories may work, it is not enough to put you first on search pages. Your initial action should be to create web content that is relevant and interesting to the readers. By doing so, many users will know that you are not only trying to sell a product but also interested in informing the general public of topics related to your product. Besides, the main point in search engine optimisation is to use keyword-rich articles to increase the number of clicks.
January 19th, 2009
There is a lot of competition to get good spots in the search engines. Proper
html syntax and a clean code will help toward better positoning.
With website design mostly done with wysiwig editors now, there seems to be a
lot of reliance on these tools without realising that they are far less than
perfect.
Software like frontpage tend to produce a fairly complicated html code and we
as users just assume that because it is software generated there won’t be any
problems with it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Wysiwig software is very often unable
to properly integrate additional code e.g. affiliates links, adsense code,
shopping cart codes etc.
The more complicated the page, the higher the chance of there being a
problem with html.
It is quite surprising how many sites there are out there with html problems.
Just run a few competitors pages through the a validator and you will see.
Today’s browsers are extremely tolerant and will still display a page properly
that has all sorts of problems. But it is a different story with robots. They like it
simple and easy and will generally take the path of least resistance — almost
human, aren’t they ?
So let’s say we have two competing sites, both are suitable for the top spot and
the search engine has a tough time deciding who to put first. There is a very
high chance that the validated site with proper syntax will be the winner.
Validation of the html on your site alone will certainly not secure you a high
rating, but as with so many other things it will help and might even be the
contributing factor to get you across the line.
Also a very important point for webpages using SSI, PHP etc. It is sometimes
difficult to validate code offline as there are many small bits that are put
together by the server. So you really don’t know what you will get in the end. Be
sure you validate all of these pages and do it with an online tool.
My favorite html validator is validator.org
And a case to the point: I recently installed a datafeed code for an affiliate site.
There was one error in the product display, two tr and td tags where the
wrong way around. And as each page listed over 20 products the errors of
course accumulated…
It will only cost you a bit of your time to validate and maybe a lot of time to fix
all the problems, but believe me it’s worth it!
Go and validate!
Peter Gautschi is webmaster and owner of http://www.webtoolsbox.com, a site that offers free
tools and advice to webmasters. He specializes in helping health sites to reach
their full potential.
January 13th, 2009
Most internet marketers are aware of, and probably use, the Google Toolbar. After all, it has been the only indicator of Google’s PageRank number that has been assigned to a given web page. Whether the number is accurate, important, or even updated any more is a matter of debate on the marketing forums. But the only feature that was really worthwhile for more casual surfers, other than being able to use the Google search box directly, was the popup window blocker feature, which oddly enough, is the least favorite feature of many an internet marketer.
But for many surfers now, the Yahoo Toolbar may well be a better choice. A 3 megabyte download for computers running Windows 98 or higher and Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, the Yahoo Toolbar not only offers greater interactivity with Yahoo and My Yahoo, but now offers some benefits for your PC as well.
In addition, to the Search Yahoo box and quick access to Yahoo News, email, and bookmarks, the Yahoo Toolbar offers a Pop-Up blocker, and perhaps even more importantly for many surfers these days, Anti-Spy, to detect and remove spyware from the user’s PC. Yahoo even has an anti-spyware community that is tied in with the Anti-Spy software on the Yahoo Toolbar.
Many people prefer Google for search, feeling that it offers better results with fewer “spammy” sites while Yahoo search is going through a rebirth. However, many surfers prefer the amazing My Yahoo portal, that offers email, calendar, notes, and multiple news and information pages that you can customize just about any way you like. Since it offers such quick and easy access to My Yahoo, in addition to a Pop-Up Blocker and Anti-Spy, the Yahoo Toolbar may be worthy of a place on your browser controls. Even if it means you have to type in the name of your favorite search engine!
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.
January 2nd, 2009
I designed a website once for streaming audio, this was the key word I was to use streaming website audio, this sounds like a good key word phrase or is it!
When it got onto Google it made number one, wow I thought I should get lots of hits with this? I got a grand total of 0 hits, why do you think that was?
It’s all to do with supply and demand only around 135 people typed these key words in and the demand is around 620000 websites doing the same thing.
When you pick your key words there needs to be a good demand for those key words. You can get lots of software that will look this up for you.
Spend time looking up key words that work else like me you can have a very good website all keyed for these words and get 0 hits.
I started to think it was the design of the site, words like “FREE page ranking” would seem to be a good key phrase but the demand is 0 for this, humm this sounds a good phrase and so did 1650000 other website designers, so because I have looked up the phrase I now no not to spend hours designing a web page for this phrase.
Your website needs to be relevant to the phrase your using, If I type into Google “Website promotion” I expect to get sites for website Promotion, not a cook book!
This is why Google do what they do, they spider your web pages and the key words are taken, these are from bits like the page title area, tags, links, hyper links and even the text that comes up when you hover over a picture.
Google also look to see the number of good links that point to your website, think about putting your url in your signature in any forum you have joined.
Key words need to be common and there needs to be a demand have a look at Nichefinder or some other software that will look up this information, it will save you months of time and work.
By Brian Hart
http://www.gettothetop.info
December 30th, 2008
If you are wondering which is the best way or even how you reach number one or the top ten in the search engines, then this is the article for you.
In my opinion it is not rocket science. As long as you have a well designed and optimised website the most important thing you need is backward links and lots of them. These links should have different link texts which even though different will always include your keyword. For example if the keyword is stuttering the link text could be, stuttering therapy, stuttering information, stuttering treatment, stuttering help or stuttering advice.
There are two types of backward link, reciprocal and non reciprocal (one way links). A lot of people make the fatal error of obtaining many reciprocal links but hardly any or even none, one way links. This is not a good idea and you may even be penalised by the search engines for this.
Reciprocal links
It is very natural for a website to have many reciprocal links as long as they also have lots of one way links. To obtain any link can be difficult and time consuming and I personally recommend a program like linkmetro to help you to obtain these links.
One way links
Where possible it is of far greater benefit to obtain a one way link. Some people choose to purchase a link on a high ranking page of a website as it can be difficult to persuade a webmaster to include your link for no reason or benefit to them. If you have more than one website you could however offer them a three way link exchange.
For me the best way of obtaining one way links is by writing articles like the one you are reading. People are able to use these articles on their websites thus creating a one way link. You also obtain a link from the websites you submit the article to such as:
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.searchwarp.com
Stephen Hill
December 28th, 2008
Search engine listing delays have come to be called the Google Sandbox
effect are actually true in practice at each of four top tier
search engines in one form or another. MSN, it seems has the
shortest indexing delay at 30 days. This article is the
second in a series following the spiders through a brand new
web site beginning on May 11, 2005 when the site was first
made live on that day under a newly purchased domain name.
First Case Study Article
Previously we looked at the first 35 days and detailed the
crawling behavior of Googlebot, Teoma, MSNbot and Slurp as
they traversed the pages of this new site. We discovered the
each robot spider displays distinctly different behavior in
crawling frequency and similarly differing indexing patterns.
For reference, there are about 15 to 20 new pages added to
the site daily, which are each linked from the home page for
a day. Site structure is non-traditional with no categories
and a linking structure tied to author pages listing their
articles as well as a “related articles” index varied by
linking to relevant pages containing similar content.
So let’s review where we are with each spider crawling and
look at pages crawled and compare pages indexed by engine.
The AskJeeves spider, Teoma has crawled most of the pages on
the site, yet indexes no pages 60 days later at this writing.
This is clearly a site aging delay that’s modeled on Google’s
Sandbox behavior. Although the Teoma spider from Ask.com has
crawled more pages on this site than any other engine over a
60 day period and appears to be tired of crawling as they’ve
not returned since July 13 - their first break in 60 days.
In the first two days, Googlebot gobbled up 250 pages and
didn’t return until 60 days later, but has not indexed even
a single page in 60 days since they made that initial crawl.
But Googlebot is showing a renewed interest in crawling the
site since this crawling case study article was published
on several high traffic sites. Now Googlebot is looking at a
few pages each day. So far no more than about 20 pages at a
decidedly lackluster pace, a true “Crawl” that will keep it
occupied for years if continued that slowly.
MSNbot crawled timidly for the first 45 days, looking over
30 to 50 pages daily, but not until they found a robots.txt
file, which we’d neglected to post to the site for a week and
then bobbled the ball as we changed site structure, then
failed to implement robots.txt in new subdomains until day
25 - and THEN MSNbot didn’t return until day 30. If little
else were discovered about initial crawls and indexing, we
have seen that MSNbot relies heavily on that robots.txt file
and proper implementation of that file will speed crawling.
MSNbot is now crawling with enthusiasm at anywhere between
200 to 800 pages daily. As a matter of fact, we had to use
a “crawl-delay” command in the robots.txt file after MSNbot
began hitting 6 pages per second last week. The MSN index now
shows 4905 pages 60 days into this experiment. Cached pages
change weekly. MSNbot has apparently found that it likes how
we changed the page structure to include a new feature which
links to questions from several other article pages.
Slurp gets strangely inactive then alternately hyperactive
for periods of time. The Yahoo crawler will look at 40 pages
one day and then 4000 the next, then simply look at the home
page for a few days and then jump back in for 3000 pages the
next day and back to only reviewing robots.txt for two days.
Consistency is not a curse suffered by Slurp. Yahoo now shows
6 pages in their index, one an errors page and another is a
“index/of” page as we have not posted a home page to several
subdomains. But Slurp has crawled easily 15,000 pages to date.
Lessons learned in the first 60 days on a new site follow:
1) Google crawls 250 pages on first discovery of links to site.
Then they don’t return until they find more links and crawl
slowly. Google has failed to index new domain for 60 days.
2) Yahoo looks for errors pages and once they find bad links
will crawl them ceaselessly until you tell them to stop it.
Then won’t crawl at all for weeks until crawling heavily
one day and lightly the next in random fashion.
3) MSNbot requires robots.txt files and once they decide they
like your site, may crawl too fast, requiring “crawl-delay”
instructions in that robots.txt file. Implement immediately.
4) Bad bots can strain resources and hit too many pages too
quickly until you tell them to stay out. We banned 3 bots
outright after they slammed our servers for a day or two.
Noted “aipbot” crawled first then “BecomeBot” came along
and then “Pbot” from Picsearch.com crawled heavily looking
for image files we don’t have. Bad bots, stay out. Best to
implement robots.txt exclusions for all but top engines if
their crawlers strain your server resources. We considered
excluding the Chinese search engine named Baidu.com when
they began crawling heavily early on. We don’t expect much
traffic from China, but why exclude one billion people?
Especially since Google is rumored to be considering a
possible purchase of Baidu.com as entry to Chinese market.
The bottom line is that we’ve discovered all engines seem to
delay indexing of new domain names for at least thirty days.
Google so far has delayed indexing THIS new domain for 60
days since first crawling it. AskJeeves has crawled thousands
of pages, while indexing none of them. MSN indexes faster than
all engines but requires robots.txt file. Yahoo’s Slurp crawls
on again off again for 60 days, but indexes only six of total
15,000 or more pages crawled to date.
We seem to have settled that there is a clear indexing delay,
but whether this site specifically is “Sandboxed” and whether
delays apply universally is less clear. Many webmasters claim
that they have been indexed fully within 30 days of first
posting a new domain. We’d love to see others track spiders
through new sites following launch to document their results
publicly so that indexing and crawling behavior are proven.
© Copyright July 18, 2005 Mike Banks Valentine
Mike Banks Valentine is a search engine optimization specialist
who operates WebSite101 eCommerce
Tutorial and will continue reports of
case study chronicling search indexing of Publish101 Article Resource
Click to Contact Mike
Valentine
December 22nd, 2008
Am I alone as I survey that vast wilderness outside,
Sat at home every day fettered by my own foolish pride,
I may believe I can conceive stunning cunning plans,
Yet I perceive the web I weave is lacking vital strands,
It may transpire my destiny is to conquer virtual space,
But I must wire the best of me to another spidery face,
For although knowing everything about business and site,
To grow means throwing other experts in to get it right,
So even this experienced spider who spins webs so fine,
Needs for bliss a guider to show the whole world online,
His creation, born bred and reared , now standing serene,
Will evoke elation and be revered if it can only be seen,
There’s no point in Picasso no mike in Michelangelo,
If the joints a no go and the sound man doesn’t show,
So that treasure you’re concealing from total global view,
Measures up and has meaning with others helping you,
We all have inborn talent and also inborn failings,
So often scorn a balance, chained to our own railings,
And our world misses a website that deserved to be a star,
But not unfurled in all its might, merely cowering from afar,
Why not take your Van Dyke, or Rembrandt seen by few,
And let us make it see the light, exposed to global view,
Don’t hide them in shadows behind barriers of your mind,
Where pride and jealous arrows make them hard to find,
Instead turn to experts just as good as you would like to be,
Who you’ll learn to trust, and who will set your website free.
John Fowler trained as a Mathematican and has worked in the IT industry for over 30 years, much of the time in sales related functions. He now spends his time between being a partner in SEO Gurus and as a sales and management trainer for ICT companies. John can be contacted via http://www.seogurus.co.uk
December 6th, 2008
Introduction
Why does a FLASH intro need SEO?
Flash, the great SE killer, is basically nonspiderable, although there are reports
of the opposite. In this way, the intro creates a solid, non-permeable barrier
between the website and the external world. One way around is to place the intro into a frame and connect the other pages via links from the [noframes] tag.
The SE will follow such links, but will not place much weight on the anchor
text or any keywords within the [noframes] tag. In this way,
the index page is practically lost for most SEO purposes.
A tremendous waste, if you consider that, from the SEO viewpoint,
the index is the most valuable page of your entire website.
For example, it is significantly easier to obtain external links pointing to the index page.
Using frames is definitely a very bad option.
The very best action is to talk the website owner into removing the FLASH intro at all.
Even offering a small discount is worth the expenses. But unfortunately, most business ownners are completely fascinated by the idea of their logo bouncing around the screen, changing colors and doing other rather annoying things.
This is where the real SEO comes into the play.
Just to make things clear. I sort of like FLASH. I agree that it is
a killer tool for webdesign - if used properly. But I do not think that
an intro is a proper usage for this technology.
Planning
Traditionally, cloaking is based on simple principles.
- Identify the visitor on the basis of the user agent or (better) its IP address.
-
Serve different content to SE and human.
Here we will use somehow different and as I believe, more gentle principles:
-
Find if the client accept FLASH (Google does not).
- Serve the same page to both types of clients. The only difference: the FLASH accepting clients will get the real content of the page overlayed by the FLASH layer. Pressing the STOP button will remove the flash layer, revealing the actual content of the page.
Implementation
You will find a working example at our
webdesign site. There you will also find the links for downloading the source code of index.php, flash intro and switch.php.
index.php
This is the page containing the FLASH intro. The FLASH object is contained within a [div]
tag with a high Z index and will therefore overlay the actual text placed into the underlying [div] tag.
Flash intro itself
The only requirement is that the STOP button points to the page switch.php
switch.php
After the STOP button is pressed the script in switch.php is executed. The script will register a session variable intro ensuring that the intro will not be played again. Calling the script again through the play intro link will reverse the situation.
Problems
- The example above uses sessions for preserving the state information. Sessions are usually stored in cookies. Thus clients with disabled cookies will not be able to escape from the FLASH movie. A simple remedy is to store the state in both a session and _GET variable. You may also consider propagating the session in the url, by setting session.use_trans_sid=1 in the php.ini file. This problem will not affect the SE. They will not be served with the FLASH. Even if they are, they will see the real page content and will not press the STOP button to start the session.
-
A minority of FLASH enabled clients will not admit the ability to interpret FLASH in the content of $_SERVER[”HTTP_ACCEPT”] variable and will not see the intro. Not a real tragedy.
In fact you may decide to serve the FLASH uniformly, to all type of clients. The SE will see the real content immediatelly, the human users after clicking the
STOP button.
Vaclav Mach is owner of the
Scisoft webdesign
- a website visibility and accessibility oriented company.
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