Showing posts with label Search Engin Result Check. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engin Result Check. Show all posts

Meta Tags

Sunday, March 4, 2012

There used to be a time when the contents of a pages Meta Tags was very important, it was around about the same time the Berlin Wall was still standing!! Today meta tags hold little value to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

What Are Meta Tags?

Way, way back when that wall was still upright search engine algorithms were so dumb they couldn’t work out what a page was about just from the content. So some bright spark had the ingenious idea to create a set of tags (meta tags) that inferred information about a pages content to the search engines.
Great idea, except there was nothing to stop a webmaster stuffing or spamming their Meta Tags with irrelevant, but very high traffic keywords and keyword phrases. Which of course they did with enthusiasm, you would find adult sites using words like Disney and Pokemon in their Keywords Meta Tag for the traffic!!
Today the vast majority of meta tags are worthless and those that are still considered by search engines aren’t worth that much. For example Google confers no benefit from any meta tags, so if you expect a high Google ranking from perfectly optimised keywords in your meta tags, don’t hold your breath.

Which Meta Tags Should You Use?

For Google adding the Description Meta Tag won’t result in a boost in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), but the description might be used for the description for your SERP listings in Google. So though you won’t get a ranking boost, if your write an interesting Description Meta Tag and Google uses it (not guaranteed), you might get a higher click through rate compared to a random snippet of text from your pages. All other meta tags (including the Keywords Meta Tag) are either completely ignored or won’t result in a SERPs boost.
Yahoo says they use the Keyword Meta Tag when it ranks a page. So it makes sense to add one for Yahoo and any other minor search engines that still use. Also there are directories and other websites that automatically take this information to create a listing to your site. Don’t fret over it though, add the main phrase for that page to the Keywords Meta Tag and user friendly description of the page to the Description Meta Tag and forget about it.

Example Meta Tags

Below you will find an example set of meta tags. This is for a page you want fully indexed in all search engines.

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>
<HTML><HEAD>
<TITLE>SEO Tutorial – Meta Tags Optimization</TITLE>
<meta name=”description” content=”Create the perfect meta tags for high search engine placement.”>
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Meta Tags Optimization”>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1″>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”../seo-gold.css” media=”all”>
</HEAD>
<body>

The DOCTYPE-

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>
Is the DOCTYPE, it’s not a meta tag and it’s not essential you add this to a page for good search engine placement, but if you want a page to validate in a HTML validator (i.e. http://validator.w3.org/) you’ll need to add the right one.

The TITLE-

<TITLE>SEO Tutorial – Meta Tags Optimization</TITLE>
Again this isn’t a meta tag, but it’s sometimes referred to as a meta tag by those who don’t fully understand meta tags. The title element is very, very important to a pages optimisation, which is why we have an entire page dedicated to Title Optimization. The title should include the most important phrase for that page and possibly one or two highly relevant keywords to create related phrases. The one above helps several important phrases including Meta Tags Optimization, Meta Tags, Meta Tags Tutorial, SEO Tutorial, SEO Meta Tags etc…. Don’t go over the top with adding lots of keywords, keep it short and sweet so each word gets a reasonable boost and don’t forget potential visitors (they have to read it).

The DESCRIPTION META TAG-

<meta name=”description” content=”Create the perfect meta tags for high search engine placement.”>
As covered earlier in Google the contents of the description meta tag will not have an impact on the pages search engine rankings, but may be used as the description in the search results. So be descriptive, think about what a potential visitor might click on not keyword stuffing.

The KEYWORDS META TAG-

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Meta Tags Optimization”>
Of no value to Google and probably little value to other major search engines. Easiest way to fill this meta tag is by pasting the same contents as the TITLE minus anything you added for visitors to read. In the example above we removed “SEO Tutorial – ” because that is there for visitors who read the TITLE element as part of a search engine listing.

The Character Set and links external files-

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1″>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”../seo-gold.css” media=”all”>
Not meta tags and will have no impact on a pages search engine placement, the Character set is used by browsers so the right set of characters are used to display your page. Don’t add one and the browser will use its default (it will guess), this might mean your page doesn’t look right to a visitor. External style sheets (CSS files) and external javascript (JS files) are referenced here. Again no impact on SEO, but if you can push some javascript or markup off your page you should. It saves bandwidth and means your pages load faster.

Robots Meta Tag

There are dozens of other meta tags, but hardly any of them are any use to us for improving search engine ranking. The most important one you may need sometime is the Robots Meta Tag which looks like this-
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”>
It can be used to prevent (but not encourage) search engine spiders access to individual web pages. We pasted the above piece of code from a page from a Lingerie Shop. The page is part of the shopping basket and we don’t want visitors to enter the site via these pages (the site wouldn’t work correctly). By including the above search engine spiders won’t index or follow links from this page. Be aware that bad spiders ~(ones that harvest email addresses etc… won’t adhere to this tag, so don’t expect to much from it). The robots meta tag can be mimicked via a robots.txt file which we’ll deal with on another SEO Tutorial page.
Here’s what you can put in the robots meta tag-
<meta name=”robots” content=”index,follow”> Index the page and follow all links from it. If this is what you want don’t use the robot meta tag at all since by default search engine spiders do this anyway.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,follow”> Don’t index (cache) this page, but do follow the links. Some webmasters who are using black hat SEO techniques use this to try to hide their shady techniques (i.e. cloaking)!
<meta name=”robots” content=”index,nofollow”> Index this page, but don’t follow the links.
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex,nofollow”> Don’t index the page and don’t follow the links. Use this on pages you don’t want the search engines to have anything to do with.
In conclusion meta tags are not important to good SERPs, so don’t waste too much time on them.
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

SEO

The Anchor Text Optimization SEO Tutorial article was rewritten in Febuary 2012 to reflect any changes in Google (not a great deal has changed regarding anchor text).
Anchor text is the visible text of a hyperlink, for example the text link below links to our home page (http://www.seo-gold.com/) with the anchor text SEO Gold-
SEO Gold
The HTML code for which is-
<a href=”http://www.seo-gold.com/”>SEO Gold</a>
The red text SEO Gold is the anchor text for this hyperlink (or text link as it is sometimes called).

Anchor Text Importance in Search Engine Optimization

Google (and to a lesser degree other search engines) heavily weight it’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) towards the anchor text of links to a page. This can be demonstrated by looking at extreme examples where a pages high ranking can ONLY be attributed to anchor text and no other SEO factors. Googlebombs are probably the easiest examples to find and understand how anchor text effects SERPs.


Miserable Failure GoogleBomb


The miserable failure Googlebomb of late 2003 aimed at the biography page of George W Bush (www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) clearly shows the power of anchor text. The US Presidents biography page which fell victim to the Miserable Failure Googlebomb (and a few other Googlebombs) does not include the words Miserable or Failure anywhere within the code, yet two years on is still at number 1 for the Miserable Failure SERP at Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
Its consistent search engine placement at number one for this phrase can only be attributed to the anchor text of links to the page (lots of bloggers linking using the anchor text Miserable Failure).
Googlebombs take advantage of the combined effectiveness of anchor text from thousands of links.
A similar phenomenon is occurring with the Computer and Computers SERPs in Google. As of January 2005 a search in Google for the word Computer ranks www.dell.com as a top 10 result and a search for Computers ranks www.compaq.com as a top 10 result. Looking at the code of these two pages reveal neither use the word Computer or Computers respectively (at least not in a format Google understands).
Update: Although the principal that anchor text is very important to Google is still as true today (January 2010) as it was when this SEO tutorial was written, Google has made changes to it’s search algorithm to prevent Googlebombs.

How Effective is Anchor Text?

Since 371 million pages are reported for the Computer SERP and 150 million pages for the Computers SERP and these SERPs are highly commercial and competitive (fierce competition) the reason these two site rank highly for those SERPs is due to the power of anchor text. With hundreds of thousands of pages linking to these two home pages with many using the anchor text Computer/Computers it’s enough to rank highly with no on page optimization!! Imagine where they would be with a little on site optimization!
We have found through both experimentation and real sites that anchor text is almost always the deciding factor for very hard SERPs. A site can do OK with good on site optimization, but poor use of anchor text/few links. A site can do quite well with good use of anchor text/links, but poor on site optimization. When you have a highly optimized site (lots of keyword rich content) and good use of anchor text from reasonable PageRank (PR) pages there tends to be very good SERPs.
Update Febuary 2012: The Computer SERP has changed, Dell now uses the Computer keyword within the content (maybe they read this tutorial :-) ), Gateway Computers entry which is in the top 20 for the SERP lacks the keyword Computer/Computers on the page. Gateway is ranked high (top 20 for this keyword is high) because of anchor text.

How to use Anchor Text Effectively?

Anchor text usage should reflect the content (ideally the main SERP) the link is linking to and ideally help the page it is linked from as well (the latter isn’t always possible). This means if you can link highly related pages (related SERPs) together they will tend to do much better in their respective SERPs. Most pages on the SEO Gold site would benefit from the addition of the word SEO and so adding a link from every page of the site using anchor text “SEO Other Keyword(s)” is a good idea.
Every page of the SEO Gold site links to the SEO Tutorial index page via the main menu on the right using anchor text SEO Tutorial for example.
The Professional SEO Consultant Services page main SERP is clearly Professional SEO Consultant Services. By adding the SEO Tutorial page link on the left menu we’ve given the SEO tutorial page a boost from the anchor text of the link to it AND as importantly added the word SEO to the Professional SEO Consultant Services page as well. We’ve found anchor text gives the page it is on a larger boost than the same text as just body text. So if you can add a related link (like the SEO Tutorial link) from a related page (like the SEO Services page) you should. The converse of this is you should avoid linking to pages that aren’t relevant to the content as well, though that’s not always possible.
There are a lot of SERPs related to the SEO Tutorial SERP etc…, for example SEO Company, SEO Firm, SEO Consultant … so more often we can add links from pages of this site with the anchor text SEO Tutorial etc… more likely we are to pick up these SERPs. The same is true for the anchor text of other links using the word SEO (i.e. Professional SEO Consultant Services). You will notice the word Optimization is used a lot as anchor text as well for the same reason.
Quick SEO Tip – note above how we have linked out important phrases like Professional SEO Consultant Services and SEO Tutorial to their respective pages including a link to this page – anchor text.

Anchor Text and the Real World

The anchor text can’t always be perfect since there are other considerations including space available, making links descriptive etc… The left menu of the SEO Gold site used to have enough space for 24 characters before it wraps to the next line (changed the design, no longer an issue). Since it looks less professional having wrapped links on the main menu with that design we limited our anchor text to no more than 24 characters on the menu.
Along the top menu (of the old design) we had a Home Page link, the anchor text Home is very poor text to use for a link since it confers no benefit to the page (we don’t want to rank high for any searches related to the word Home), but we want our visitors to easily navigate the site and a Home link is the easiest way to get back to the home page. A compromise is to use anchor text SEO Gold Home. The new design works better and we have a link in the top header with anchor text “Professional Search Engine Optimization Services”.

Alt Attribute Text of Image Links

The alt text of image links is the equivalent to the anchor text of text links in SEO terms. This means when a link to a page is part of an image you should add relevant alt text to the alt attribute (looks like this alt=”keywords here”). Occasionally you’ll find a situation where you just can’t use relevant keywords as anchor text, when this happens image links can solve the problem.
For example we could use a Home image link in place of the SEO Gold Home text link on the top menu below (old design) the logo with an alt attribute with keyword rich text. However, in this case we have at least two other links per page to the home page using keyword rich anchor text (the keyword rich copyright link at the bottom) and an alt attribute (the top banner image that says SEO Gold, Search engine Optimization Services is also a image link to the home page with a keyword rich alt attribute, hover over it to see). So two out of three links using highly keyword rich text should be more than enough.
If you have a menu like situation where it’s not possible to use good keyword rich anchor text consider using an image link with keyword rich alt text. Take a screen shot of a page showing the menu you’d like better anchor text for. In an image editing program like Paintshop Pro cut out each word associate with the menu, this will give you a bunch of small images that when viewed look like text, there’s an example below that we used on an SEO clients site recently-
Alt Text, looks much better than using a keyword rich text link for a home link
Hover over the word Home above and you’ll see the keyword rich alt attribute in some browsers. The above is just an example, don’t keyword stuff your alt attributes with keywords, especially in a situation like this (a menu link).
The code for this image link is-
<a href=""><img src="alt-text.gif" width="80" height="18" border="0" alt="Alt Text, looks much better than using a keyword rich text link for a home link"></a>
As a side note until 2005 the alt text of non linked images (so a standard image on a web page that doesn’t link to anything) was ignored by Google, didn’t matter what you put in your non linked alt text for Google rankings. However, in 2005 Google unexpectedly started to use all alt text as part of the ranking algorithm. So you should take this into account when creating images, give them relevant alt text.

Alt Attribute Text Test of Non-Linked Images

A quick test to determine if Google is still counting the alt text as part of the SERPs do this search in Google (the text below is NOT on this page as text, the text below is an image with alt text only)-
Welcome to SEO Gold's Search Engine Optimization Company VALID TEST
With the speech marks (this is an exact search). As long as Google uses alt text you should find this page listed since we’ve added the above piece of unique text to a non linked images alt attribute above.
Google Search for the above test
Update: Febuary 2012, this SEO test is still valid, have added the words VALID TEST to the alt text, so when you do the above Google search there’s a good chance the words VALID TEST will be right after the alt text within the Google description for this page (as long as this page shows in Google, alt text of an image link is counted as a ranking factor by Google).

Title Attribute Text Test of Text Links

This is what a title attribute within a text link looks like at code level:
<a href="http://www.seo-gold.com/" title="This Is Text Within a Title Attribute">SEO Gold</a>
You can also test the title attribute as well, the title attribute is the code title=”keywords” sometimes used with text links. Currently Google ignores the contents of this attribute, so no SEO reason to use them with text links.
If this ever changes a search for “Contact SEO Gold for a Detailed Search Engine Optimization Quote” with the speech marks will find multiple pages of this site, since the SEO Consultant link on the right menu (near the top) includes a title attribute using this exact text. If only this page (the one you are reading now) is listed when performing a search you can be confident Google still ignores the title attribute since we’ve used that exact text above within the normal content for this page ONLY (so there should be just one listing for this site: Google indexed this page under different URLs, but it’s still only this page listed from this domain). Any other domains listed are scraping this content and cane be ignored.
Google Search for the above test
Update Febuary 2012: From the comments I see a few readers are a little confused about this title attribute test. On the menu of this site is a text link that points to http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-consultant with a title attribute (which is basically a tool tip, in some browsers hovering over the link shows the text). This link is on every single page of the site, if Google ever counts the keywords within the title attribute we should see loads of pages from this site listed for this search: currently only this page is indexed from this site.
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

SEO

The Anchor Text Optimization SEO Tutorial article was rewritten in Febuary 2012 to reflect any changes in Google (not a great deal has changed regarding anchor text).
Anchor text is the visible text of a hyperlink, for example the text link below links to our home page (http://www.seo-gold.com/) with the anchor text SEO Gold-
SEO Gold
The HTML code for which is-
<a href=”http://www.seo-gold.com/”>SEO Gold</a>
The red text SEO Gold is the anchor text for this hyperlink (or text link as it is sometimes called).

Anchor Text Importance in Search Engine Optimization

Google (and to a lesser degree other search engines) heavily weight it’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) towards the anchor text of links to a page. This can be demonstrated by looking at extreme examples where a pages high ranking can ONLY be attributed to anchor text and no other SEO factors. Googlebombs are probably the easiest examples to find and understand how anchor text effects SERPs.


Miserable Failure GoogleBomb


The miserable failure Googlebomb of late 2003 aimed at the biography page of George W Bush (www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html) clearly shows the power of anchor text. The US Presidents biography page which fell victim to the Miserable Failure Googlebomb (and a few other Googlebombs) does not include the words Miserable or Failure anywhere within the code, yet two years on is still at number 1 for the Miserable Failure SERP at Google, Yahoo and other search engines.
Its consistent search engine placement at number one for this phrase can only be attributed to the anchor text of links to the page (lots of bloggers linking using the anchor text Miserable Failure).
Googlebombs take advantage of the combined effectiveness of anchor text from thousands of links.
A similar phenomenon is occurring with the Computer and Computers SERPs in Google. As of January 2005 a search in Google for the word Computer ranks www.dell.com as a top 10 result and a search for Computers ranks www.compaq.com as a top 10 result. Looking at the code of these two pages reveal neither use the word Computer or Computers respectively (at least not in a format Google understands).
Update: Although the principal that anchor text is very important to Google is still as true today (January 2010) as it was when this SEO tutorial was written, Google has made changes to it’s search algorithm to prevent Googlebombs.

How Effective is Anchor Text?

Since 371 million pages are reported for the Computer SERP and 150 million pages for the Computers SERP and these SERPs are highly commercial and competitive (fierce competition) the reason these two site rank highly for those SERPs is due to the power of anchor text. With hundreds of thousands of pages linking to these two home pages with many using the anchor text Computer/Computers it’s enough to rank highly with no on page optimization!! Imagine where they would be with a little on site optimization!
We have found through both experimentation and real sites that anchor text is almost always the deciding factor for very hard SERPs. A site can do OK with good on site optimization, but poor use of anchor text/few links. A site can do quite well with good use of anchor text/links, but poor on site optimization. When you have a highly optimized site (lots of keyword rich content) and good use of anchor text from reasonable PageRank (PR) pages there tends to be very good SERPs.
Update Febuary 2012: The Computer SERP has changed, Dell now uses the Computer keyword within the content (maybe they read this tutorial :-) ), Gateway Computers entry which is in the top 20 for the SERP lacks the keyword Computer/Computers on the page. Gateway is ranked high (top 20 for this keyword is high) because of anchor text.

How to use Anchor Text Effectively?

Anchor text usage should reflect the content (ideally the main SERP) the link is linking to and ideally help the page it is linked from as well (the latter isn’t always possible). This means if you can link highly related pages (related SERPs) together they will tend to do much better in their respective SERPs. Most pages on the SEO Gold site would benefit from the addition of the word SEO and so adding a link from every page of the site using anchor text “SEO Other Keyword(s)” is a good idea.
Every page of the SEO Gold site links to the SEO Tutorial index page via the main menu on the right using anchor text SEO Tutorial for example.
The Professional SEO Consultant Services page main SERP is clearly Professional SEO Consultant Services. By adding the SEO Tutorial page link on the left menu we’ve given the SEO tutorial page a boost from the anchor text of the link to it AND as importantly added the word SEO to the Professional SEO Consultant Services page as well. We’ve found anchor text gives the page it is on a larger boost than the same text as just body text. So if you can add a related link (like the SEO Tutorial link) from a related page (like the SEO Services page) you should. The converse of this is you should avoid linking to pages that aren’t relevant to the content as well, though that’s not always possible.
There are a lot of SERPs related to the SEO Tutorial SERP etc…, for example SEO Company, SEO Firm, SEO Consultant … so more often we can add links from pages of this site with the anchor text SEO Tutorial etc… more likely we are to pick up these SERPs. The same is true for the anchor text of other links using the word SEO (i.e. Professional SEO Consultant Services). You will notice the word Optimization is used a lot as anchor text as well for the same reason.
Quick SEO Tip – note above how we have linked out important phrases like Professional SEO Consultant Services and SEO Tutorial to their respective pages including a link to this page – anchor text.

Anchor Text and the Real World

The anchor text can’t always be perfect since there are other considerations including space available, making links descriptive etc… The left menu of the SEO Gold site used to have enough space for 24 characters before it wraps to the next line (changed the design, no longer an issue). Since it looks less professional having wrapped links on the main menu with that design we limited our anchor text to no more than 24 characters on the menu.
Along the top menu (of the old design) we had a Home Page link, the anchor text Home is very poor text to use for a link since it confers no benefit to the page (we don’t want to rank high for any searches related to the word Home), but we want our visitors to easily navigate the site and a Home link is the easiest way to get back to the home page. A compromise is to use anchor text SEO Gold Home. The new design works better and we have a link in the top header with anchor text “Professional Search Engine Optimization Services”.

Alt Attribute Text of Image Links

The alt text of image links is the equivalent to the anchor text of text links in SEO terms. This means when a link to a page is part of an image you should add relevant alt text to the alt attribute (looks like this alt=”keywords here”). Occasionally you’ll find a situation where you just can’t use relevant keywords as anchor text, when this happens image links can solve the problem.
For example we could use a Home image link in place of the SEO Gold Home text link on the top menu below (old design) the logo with an alt attribute with keyword rich text. However, in this case we have at least two other links per page to the home page using keyword rich anchor text (the keyword rich copyright link at the bottom) and an alt attribute (the top banner image that says SEO Gold, Search engine Optimization Services is also a image link to the home page with a keyword rich alt attribute, hover over it to see). So two out of three links using highly keyword rich text should be more than enough.
If you have a menu like situation where it’s not possible to use good keyword rich anchor text consider using an image link with keyword rich alt text. Take a screen shot of a page showing the menu you’d like better anchor text for. In an image editing program like Paintshop Pro cut out each word associate with the menu, this will give you a bunch of small images that when viewed look like text, there’s an example below that we used on an SEO clients site recently-
Alt Text, looks much better than using a keyword rich text link for a home link
Hover over the word Home above and you’ll see the keyword rich alt attribute in some browsers. The above is just an example, don’t keyword stuff your alt attributes with keywords, especially in a situation like this (a menu link).
The code for this image link is-
<a href=""><img src="alt-text.gif" width="80" height="18" border="0" alt="Alt Text, looks much better than using a keyword rich text link for a home link"></a>
As a side note until 2005 the alt text of non linked images (so a standard image on a web page that doesn’t link to anything) was ignored by Google, didn’t matter what you put in your non linked alt text for Google rankings. However, in 2005 Google unexpectedly started to use all alt text as part of the ranking algorithm. So you should take this into account when creating images, give them relevant alt text.

Alt Attribute Text Test of Non-Linked Images

A quick test to determine if Google is still counting the alt text as part of the SERPs do this search in Google (the text below is NOT on this page as text, the text below is an image with alt text only)-
Welcome to SEO Gold's Search Engine Optimization Company VALID TEST
With the speech marks (this is an exact search). As long as Google uses alt text you should find this page listed since we’ve added the above piece of unique text to a non linked images alt attribute above.
Google Search for the above test
Update: Febuary 2012, this SEO test is still valid, have added the words VALID TEST to the alt text, so when you do the above Google search there’s a good chance the words VALID TEST will be right after the alt text within the Google description for this page (as long as this page shows in Google, alt text of an image link is counted as a ranking factor by Google).

Title Attribute Text Test of Text Links

This is what a title attribute within a text link looks like at code level:
<a href="http://www.seo-gold.com/" title="This Is Text Within a Title Attribute">SEO Gold</a>
You can also test the title attribute as well, the title attribute is the code title=”keywords” sometimes used with text links. Currently Google ignores the contents of this attribute, so no SEO reason to use them with text links.
If this ever changes a search for “Contact SEO Gold for a Detailed Search Engine Optimization Quote” with the speech marks will find multiple pages of this site, since the SEO Consultant link on the right menu (near the top) includes a title attribute using this exact text. If only this page (the one you are reading now) is listed when performing a search you can be confident Google still ignores the title attribute since we’ve used that exact text above within the normal content for this page ONLY (so there should be just one listing for this site: Google indexed this page under different URLs, but it’s still only this page listed from this domain). Any other domains listed are scraping this content and cane be ignored.
Google Search for the above test
Update Febuary 2012: From the comments I see a few readers are a little confused about this title attribute test. On the menu of this site is a text link that points to http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-consultant with a title attribute (which is basically a tool tip, in some browsers hovering over the link shows the text). This link is on every single page of the site, if Google ever counts the keywords within the title attribute we should see loads of pages from this site listed for this search: currently only this page is indexed from this site.
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

SEO In Title

The TITLE element (not Title Tag as many call it, but will be using the phrase “title tag” in this SEO article for SEO reasons) of your web page (found within the HEAD) is very important, probably the most important part of a page (especially for placement in Google and Yahoo) and should ideally be SEO optimized for a small number of keywords or key phrases (preferably just the one main phrase for that page).
The exact number of keywords, keyword density** and keyword proximity is dependent on a number of SEO factors including the difficulty of the keyword phrases, the PageRank (PR) of the page, if you have control of the backlinks and anchor text to that page (so you can change the anchor text of the links) and the age of sites backlinks (older backlinks means it’s easier for that site to rank well).
** There is no SEO evidence adding a keyword two or more times to a title element will increase the SEO benefit for that keyword. For this reason it is advisable to only add a keyword once unless it makes sense from a user or keyword proximity perspective: for example for keyword proximity reasons a title like “SEO Tutorial – SEO Title Optimization” is better than “SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization” IF your main SERP is “SEO Title Optimization”.
As a general rule of thumb when it comes to the title tags less is better than more as it concentrates the SEO benefit of the title over less keywords.
Example – This web page SEO Services is optimized primarily for the phrase SEO Services and a few related SEO terms including SEO Quote, SEO Expert, SEO Consultant and various phrases including the keyword SEO.
We could have stuffed the TITLE element with all of these keyword phrases i.e. -
<TITLE>SEO Services – Consultant SEO Expert Services</TITLE>
Or even a list of phrases like this as the title tag-
<TITLE>SEO Services – Consultant SEO, SEO Expert, SEO Consultant</TITLE>
Instead we Optimized the Title as-
<TITLE>SEO Services</TITLE>
We decided to use the short title element because this concentrates SEO benefit from the title element to that single two word phrase. Since Search Engines like Google rate the contents of the title tag as important you ideally want THE most important phrase for that page on its own.
There are exceptions to this loose rule, if you have a very small web site and lots of keyword phrases you wish to target, you have little choice, but to double or even triple up your titles keywords.
Also if you have high PR pages (i.e. PR6) and are having no problems keeping the main phrase for those pages, you could experiment by adding further highly relevant search phrases to the title tag. Take care not to over do it, what you do today may not show full effect for several months. For example if you added an extra phrase and 4 weeks later your main SERPs had not dropped, so you add another phrase, you might not see the negative effects of the first change for a couple more months. You may find 3 or 4 months after the first change loosing the pages main previously stable SERP!
When making changes to a successful page err on the side of caution, SEO is a very long term process and requires a lot of patience. If you are taking a risk (like adding more phrases to a title element) give the page at least 2 months and preferably 3 before deciding if it was successful or not. If a recent change results in a major drop in SERPs seriously consider reverting to the original page, but be aware what you see today might be the result of what you did 3 months ago or could be a coincidence, the search engine may of changed it’s algorithm (check the forums for reports of big changes) or some links to your site have been removed or changed.

Visitor Needs vs. Search Engine Optimization

As with all aspects of web site design don’t forget your visitors needs, some keyword phrases aren’t descriptive enough to use alone as a title tag, what you put in the title element is the text searches will see when they see a listing for your page in a Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs). If it doesn’t appeal to your potential visitors they will not click through to your sites listing! This is precisely why the title tag of this page is SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization and not just Title Optimization. The former (SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization) tells a potential visitor this page is part of an SEO Tutorial, the latter (Title Optimization) does not.
Quick SEO Tip – note above how rather than writing “The former tells a potential visitor this page is part of a Tutorial, the latter does not.” we added the important keywords “SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization”, “SEO” and “Title Optimization”. Being long winded is a prerequisite to good SEO copywriting!
In conclusion what you put between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> element is very important so try to get it right.
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

SEO In Title

The TITLE element (not Title Tag as many call it, but will be using the phrase “title tag” in this SEO article for SEO reasons) of your web page (found within the HEAD) is very important, probably the most important part of a page (especially for placement in Google and Yahoo) and should ideally be SEO optimized for a small number of keywords or key phrases (preferably just the one main phrase for that page).
The exact number of keywords, keyword density** and keyword proximity is dependent on a number of SEO factors including the difficulty of the keyword phrases, the PageRank (PR) of the page, if you have control of the backlinks and anchor text to that page (so you can change the anchor text of the links) and the age of sites backlinks (older backlinks means it’s easier for that site to rank well).
** There is no SEO evidence adding a keyword two or more times to a title element will increase the SEO benefit for that keyword. For this reason it is advisable to only add a keyword once unless it makes sense from a user or keyword proximity perspective: for example for keyword proximity reasons a title like “SEO Tutorial – SEO Title Optimization” is better than “SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization” IF your main SERP is “SEO Title Optimization”.
As a general rule of thumb when it comes to the title tags less is better than more as it concentrates the SEO benefit of the title over less keywords.
Example – This web page SEO Services is optimized primarily for the phrase SEO Services and a few related SEO terms including SEO Quote, SEO Expert, SEO Consultant and various phrases including the keyword SEO.
We could have stuffed the TITLE element with all of these keyword phrases i.e. -
<TITLE>SEO Services – Consultant SEO Expert Services</TITLE>
Or even a list of phrases like this as the title tag-
<TITLE>SEO Services – Consultant SEO, SEO Expert, SEO Consultant</TITLE>
Instead we Optimized the Title as-
<TITLE>SEO Services</TITLE>
We decided to use the short title element because this concentrates SEO benefit from the title element to that single two word phrase. Since Search Engines like Google rate the contents of the title tag as important you ideally want THE most important phrase for that page on its own.
There are exceptions to this loose rule, if you have a very small web site and lots of keyword phrases you wish to target, you have little choice, but to double or even triple up your titles keywords.
Also if you have high PR pages (i.e. PR6) and are having no problems keeping the main phrase for those pages, you could experiment by adding further highly relevant search phrases to the title tag. Take care not to over do it, what you do today may not show full effect for several months. For example if you added an extra phrase and 4 weeks later your main SERPs had not dropped, so you add another phrase, you might not see the negative effects of the first change for a couple more months. You may find 3 or 4 months after the first change loosing the pages main previously stable SERP!
When making changes to a successful page err on the side of caution, SEO is a very long term process and requires a lot of patience. If you are taking a risk (like adding more phrases to a title element) give the page at least 2 months and preferably 3 before deciding if it was successful or not. If a recent change results in a major drop in SERPs seriously consider reverting to the original page, but be aware what you see today might be the result of what you did 3 months ago or could be a coincidence, the search engine may of changed it’s algorithm (check the forums for reports of big changes) or some links to your site have been removed or changed.

Visitor Needs vs. Search Engine Optimization

As with all aspects of web site design don’t forget your visitors needs, some keyword phrases aren’t descriptive enough to use alone as a title tag, what you put in the title element is the text searches will see when they see a listing for your page in a Search Engines Results Pages (SERPs). If it doesn’t appeal to your potential visitors they will not click through to your sites listing! This is precisely why the title tag of this page is SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization and not just Title Optimization. The former (SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization) tells a potential visitor this page is part of an SEO Tutorial, the latter (Title Optimization) does not.
Quick SEO Tip – note above how rather than writing “The former tells a potential visitor this page is part of a Tutorial, the latter does not.” we added the important keywords “SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization”, “SEO” and “Title Optimization”. Being long winded is a prerequisite to good SEO copywriting!
In conclusion what you put between the <TITLE> and </TITLE> element is very important so try to get it right.
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Optimizing a Business and Domain Name

You might think what’s the name of my business got to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? If you choose the correct business and domain name in the first place it makes the whole optimization process so much easier.
As you’ll discover later links to a web site are very important, in fact essential for high search engine positioning. The text associated with those links (called anchor text) is one of the most important SEO factors to get right when it comes to optimizing a site.

The Right Domain Name = The Right Anchor Text

The red text (SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services) below is the anchor text of a link to the home page of this site; it’s the copyright link at the base of every page-
<a href=”/”>SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services </a>
Those links are under our control and so we can create the perfect anchor text for each page. However, webmasters linking to your site will tend to do one of two things. The first is they use your business/site name for the anchor text (for this site SEO Gold is most likely) and the second is the actual URL (for this site http://www.seo-gold.com) for the anchor text. If you have picked the business name and domain name badly it won’t help your site in the search engines since links to your site will not use the right anchor text.
The right anchor text, (keyword rich anchor text) is essential to good search engine rankings.

Branding vs. Search Engine Optimization

Zeus Thrones may sound great for a company selling high quality toilet seats, but it’s not going to help potential online customers find your carefully crafted web site via the major search engines, since unless you have a large advertising budget for branding purposes your potential customers won’t know your business or your web site even exists.
If you have a site about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for example a good business name (for optimization reasons) would be Search Engine Optimization or SEO and the domain name would be search-engine-optimization.tld or seo.tld respectively (tld being com, net, co.uk etc…).
There are other considerations to take into account when choosing a business and domain name including branding and of course available domain names, so compromises have to be made. For example when we were deciding on a business and domain name for this web site we knew we couldn’t have the ideal domain names (for optimization reasons) because others already owned them. After a little keyword research at Wordtracker and checking various domains we settled on http://www.seo-gold.com and general site name SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services (or in short SEO Gold).

Why Hyphenated Domain Names?

Why www.seo-gold.com (hyphenated) and not www.seogold.com (non-hyphenated)? The current main search engine (Google) doesn’t recognize the individual words from the above non-hyphenated domain names, so they would not help future optimization plans. The hyphenated domain http://www.seo-gold.com is seen by Google as-
www seo gold com since Google treats . (dots) and – (hyphens) as a space. We say “google can parse those keywords out of the domain name”. Note a domain with a single keyword (i.e www.keyword.tld) will have the single keyword recognized since Google sees the two dots (in the example above) as spaces (sees www keyword tld). So when choosing a domain name either go with a single keyword domain (like www.seo.com if available) or have multiple (or at least one) keyword(s) separated by hyphens (like www.seo-gold.com).

Branding Revisited

If branding is a consideration or you plan to tell people about your site on the phone or in person, hyphenated domains are harder to verbalize. So www.seo-gold.com would be www dot seo hyphen gold dot com which isn’t too bad, but imagine a domain with multiple hyphens, doesn’t exactly role off the tongue!! Fortunately there is a solution, register a non-hyphenated version as well and refer to it on company letterheads, traditional advertising media etc… and redirect the non-hyphenated domain to the hyphenated domain via a 301 redirect.
A word of warning regarding multiple domains. A simple 301 redirect will not be treated negatively by the search engines, but having two identical sites (called mirror sites) might. If you plan to have two or more sites about the same subject make the content different. Changing the background colour or a few images, does not make a site different, you need unique text. If you can’t create unique sites, don’t make mirror sites, you might get your main business site penalized!!
With our site we currently only advertise online so have no need for a second easier to verbalize non-hyphenated domain name, so we haven’t registered alternatives (as it happens www.seogold.com was already taken anyway). However, we do plan to add an element of branding to this site long term which is why we went with the business/domain name SEO Gold, it’s memorable (so brandable) and has at least one keyword (SEO). We could have registered a name like “SEO Search Online Company”, but this is completely unbrandable as no one will recall a generic name like that, but would be great in terms of keywords since all four words are used by searches looking for SEO Services. If branding isn’t important (say an affiliate site) a generic keyword rich domain name is advisable.
In essence with www.seo-gold.com we have created a web site that is both brandable and easier to optimize.

Anchor Text Revisited

When a web master links to SEO Gold they will tend to use the following code-
<a href=”http://www.seo-gold.com”>SEO Gold</a> (using the business name as anchor text)
or
<a href=”http://www.seo-gold.com”>http://www.seo-gold.com</a> (using the URL as anchor text)
In both cases the site benefits from the keywords Google can parse from the anchor text. The first example we have SEO Gold (one important keyword out of two words). In the second example www SEO Gold com (one important keyword out of four words, not as good, but better than nothing). So in both cases we benefit just by choosing the right business and domain name.
If we’d of gone with the words combined (www.seogold.com) version, Google wouldn’t parse out anything helpful, it would see www seogold com which is unhelpful since no one will search for seogold! Webmasters who use the business name might use Seogold as anchor text instead of the preferred SEO Gold as well!
The above also holds true for directory and filenames, so when choosing directory and filenames use hyphens like you see for the pages of this site. For example the page you are reading has the URL-
http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial/domain-name-choice/
This will be parsed to- http www seo gold com tutorial domain name choice html if a webmaster linked to this page using the entire URL! From this we have important keywords “SEO Tutorial Domain Name Choice”.
Please note underscores (_) within a filename or directory like domain_name_choice are not treated as word separators like hyphens are in domain-name-choice, so rather than parsing to “domain name choice” Google see one word “domain_name_choice”. Try the search in Google for domain_name_choice to see the problem.

The Right Domain Name helps with Search Engine Rankings

There is a direct search engine optimization benefit to using keyword rich hyphenated domain names (and directory/filenames). Google and other search engines using Googles database (AOL, Netscape etc…) will give every page of a site a fair boost for singular and hyphenated words within the domain name, even when the word isn’t used in the code. Yahoo and MSN also give a SERPs boost, but it’s much smaller than seen with Google. For example one of our consultants has a home page with their ISP. The URL is http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/
This URL parses to “http homepage ntlworld com ooar123 search engine optimization” with the last three being important keywords. The ‘words’ homepage, ntlworld and ooar123 are not keywords important to the content and so they are not used in the content of any of the pages of the site. A search for various combinations does show that even though those words are not used in the content, just being part of the URL (domain name) is enough for Google to find those pages.
Try these searches in Google-
ooar123 – 1st place
homepage ooar123 – 1st place
homepage ntlworld ooar123 – 1st place
The above searches use words only within the URL (none of those words are used in the content).
The searches below include one word that’s only within the URL and another word that is found in the content.
ooar123 seo – 1st place
ooar123 search – 1st place
ntlworld seo – 1st place
homepage seo – 6th place out of over 2,000,000 pages!
The last search shows the importance of words within the URL. A search for just homepage in Google reports over 200,000,000 (200 million) pages, that’s a lot of pages using the word homepage. Of those pages 2 million (about 1%) also use the word SEO. Our consultant’s home page is number 6 for the combination even though the word homepage is not used on the site, it’s just part of the URL.
Having a keyword within the URL will alone result in a boost for that keyword for every page of the site, so your domain name should ideally contain your most important keyword.

Indirect SEO Benefits to Domain and Business Name Choice

Search engines rely on the words in the body text and other areas of code on a page. If your site and domain name is highly related to the phrases you wish to rank highly for adding those phrases to your sites content will be so much easier. Look at the number of times the word SEO has been added to this page just through mentioning the business name SEO Gold, if our business name was “Good Traffic Rankings” for example the word SEO would not be used as much.
The main words for this site are Search Engine Optimization, SEO and Search Engine Placement etc… Since the site is called SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services just by mentioning the name of the site we’ve added five keywords to a page.
Quick SEO Tip – add a copyright notice to every page using keyword rich text. We use ours to link to the home page using keyword rich anchor text.
If you are stuck with a business/site name already, don’t despair some of the information is relevant to directory and file naming. Also the business/domain name is but one small part to high search engine placement, the majority of this SEO Tutorial will deal with pre existing sites.
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Optimizing a Business and Domain Name

You might think what’s the name of my business got to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? If you choose the correct business and domain name in the first place it makes the whole optimization process so much easier.
As you’ll discover later links to a web site are very important, in fact essential for high search engine positioning. The text associated with those links (called anchor text) is one of the most important SEO factors to get right when it comes to optimizing a site.

The Right Domain Name = The Right Anchor Text

The red text (SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services) below is the anchor text of a link to the home page of this site; it’s the copyright link at the base of every page-
<a href=”/”>SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services </a>
Those links are under our control and so we can create the perfect anchor text for each page. However, webmasters linking to your site will tend to do one of two things. The first is they use your business/site name for the anchor text (for this site SEO Gold is most likely) and the second is the actual URL (for this site http://www.seo-gold.com) for the anchor text. If you have picked the business name and domain name badly it won’t help your site in the search engines since links to your site will not use the right anchor text.
The right anchor text, (keyword rich anchor text) is essential to good search engine rankings.

Branding vs. Search Engine Optimization

Zeus Thrones may sound great for a company selling high quality toilet seats, but it’s not going to help potential online customers find your carefully crafted web site via the major search engines, since unless you have a large advertising budget for branding purposes your potential customers won’t know your business or your web site even exists.
If you have a site about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for example a good business name (for optimization reasons) would be Search Engine Optimization or SEO and the domain name would be search-engine-optimization.tld or seo.tld respectively (tld being com, net, co.uk etc…).
There are other considerations to take into account when choosing a business and domain name including branding and of course available domain names, so compromises have to be made. For example when we were deciding on a business and domain name for this web site we knew we couldn’t have the ideal domain names (for optimization reasons) because others already owned them. After a little keyword research at Wordtracker and checking various domains we settled on http://www.seo-gold.com and general site name SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services (or in short SEO Gold).

Why Hyphenated Domain Names?

Why www.seo-gold.com (hyphenated) and not www.seogold.com (non-hyphenated)? The current main search engine (Google) doesn’t recognize the individual words from the above non-hyphenated domain names, so they would not help future optimization plans. The hyphenated domain http://www.seo-gold.com is seen by Google as-
www seo gold com since Google treats . (dots) and – (hyphens) as a space. We say “google can parse those keywords out of the domain name”. Note a domain with a single keyword (i.e www.keyword.tld) will have the single keyword recognized since Google sees the two dots (in the example above) as spaces (sees www keyword tld). So when choosing a domain name either go with a single keyword domain (like www.seo.com if available) or have multiple (or at least one) keyword(s) separated by hyphens (like www.seo-gold.com).

Branding Revisited

If branding is a consideration or you plan to tell people about your site on the phone or in person, hyphenated domains are harder to verbalize. So www.seo-gold.com would be www dot seo hyphen gold dot com which isn’t too bad, but imagine a domain with multiple hyphens, doesn’t exactly role off the tongue!! Fortunately there is a solution, register a non-hyphenated version as well and refer to it on company letterheads, traditional advertising media etc… and redirect the non-hyphenated domain to the hyphenated domain via a 301 redirect.
A word of warning regarding multiple domains. A simple 301 redirect will not be treated negatively by the search engines, but having two identical sites (called mirror sites) might. If you plan to have two or more sites about the same subject make the content different. Changing the background colour or a few images, does not make a site different, you need unique text. If you can’t create unique sites, don’t make mirror sites, you might get your main business site penalized!!
With our site we currently only advertise online so have no need for a second easier to verbalize non-hyphenated domain name, so we haven’t registered alternatives (as it happens www.seogold.com was already taken anyway). However, we do plan to add an element of branding to this site long term which is why we went with the business/domain name SEO Gold, it’s memorable (so brandable) and has at least one keyword (SEO). We could have registered a name like “SEO Search Online Company”, but this is completely unbrandable as no one will recall a generic name like that, but would be great in terms of keywords since all four words are used by searches looking for SEO Services. If branding isn’t important (say an affiliate site) a generic keyword rich domain name is advisable.
In essence with www.seo-gold.com we have created a web site that is both brandable and easier to optimize.

Anchor Text Revisited

When a web master links to SEO Gold they will tend to use the following code-
<a href=”http://www.seo-gold.com”>SEO Gold</a> (using the business name as anchor text)
or
<a href=”http://www.seo-gold.com”>http://www.seo-gold.com</a> (using the URL as anchor text)
In both cases the site benefits from the keywords Google can parse from the anchor text. The first example we have SEO Gold (one important keyword out of two words). In the second example www SEO Gold com (one important keyword out of four words, not as good, but better than nothing). So in both cases we benefit just by choosing the right business and domain name.
If we’d of gone with the words combined (www.seogold.com) version, Google wouldn’t parse out anything helpful, it would see www seogold com which is unhelpful since no one will search for seogold! Webmasters who use the business name might use Seogold as anchor text instead of the preferred SEO Gold as well!
The above also holds true for directory and filenames, so when choosing directory and filenames use hyphens like you see for the pages of this site. For example the page you are reading has the URL-
http://www.seo-gold.com/seo-tutorial/domain-name-choice/
This will be parsed to- http www seo gold com tutorial domain name choice html if a webmaster linked to this page using the entire URL! From this we have important keywords “SEO Tutorial Domain Name Choice”.
Please note underscores (_) within a filename or directory like domain_name_choice are not treated as word separators like hyphens are in domain-name-choice, so rather than parsing to “domain name choice” Google see one word “domain_name_choice”. Try the search in Google for domain_name_choice to see the problem.

The Right Domain Name helps with Search Engine Rankings

There is a direct search engine optimization benefit to using keyword rich hyphenated domain names (and directory/filenames). Google and other search engines using Googles database (AOL, Netscape etc…) will give every page of a site a fair boost for singular and hyphenated words within the domain name, even when the word isn’t used in the code. Yahoo and MSN also give a SERPs boost, but it’s much smaller than seen with Google. For example one of our consultants has a home page with their ISP. The URL is http://homepage.ntlworld.com/ooar123/search-engine-optimization/
This URL parses to “http homepage ntlworld com ooar123 search engine optimization” with the last three being important keywords. The ‘words’ homepage, ntlworld and ooar123 are not keywords important to the content and so they are not used in the content of any of the pages of the site. A search for various combinations does show that even though those words are not used in the content, just being part of the URL (domain name) is enough for Google to find those pages.
Try these searches in Google-
ooar123 – 1st place
homepage ooar123 – 1st place
homepage ntlworld ooar123 – 1st place
The above searches use words only within the URL (none of those words are used in the content).
The searches below include one word that’s only within the URL and another word that is found in the content.
ooar123 seo – 1st place
ooar123 search – 1st place
ntlworld seo – 1st place
homepage seo – 6th place out of over 2,000,000 pages!
The last search shows the importance of words within the URL. A search for just homepage in Google reports over 200,000,000 (200 million) pages, that’s a lot of pages using the word homepage. Of those pages 2 million (about 1%) also use the word SEO. Our consultant’s home page is number 6 for the combination even though the word homepage is not used on the site, it’s just part of the URL.
Having a keyword within the URL will alone result in a boost for that keyword for every page of the site, so your domain name should ideally contain your most important keyword.

Indirect SEO Benefits to Domain and Business Name Choice

Search engines rely on the words in the body text and other areas of code on a page. If your site and domain name is highly related to the phrases you wish to rank highly for adding those phrases to your sites content will be so much easier. Look at the number of times the word SEO has been added to this page just through mentioning the business name SEO Gold, if our business name was “Good Traffic Rankings” for example the word SEO would not be used as much.
The main words for this site are Search Engine Optimization, SEO and Search Engine Placement etc… Since the site is called SEO Gold Search Engine Optimization Services just by mentioning the name of the site we’ve added five keywords to a page.
Quick SEO Tip – add a copyright notice to every page using keyword rich text. We use ours to link to the home page using keyword rich anchor text.
If you are stuck with a business/site name already, don’t despair some of the information is relevant to directory and file naming. Also the business/domain name is but one small part to high search engine placement, the majority of this SEO Tutorial will deal with pre existing sites.
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Introduction

Welcome to our SEO Tutorial, here you will find answers to common and not so common search engine optimization (SEO) questions. Unlike a lot of SEO companies we do the SEO research ourselves, avoiding the guesswork and speculation so many SEO consultants rely upon!
You will not find contradictory SEO information within our tutorial like you tend to find in so many SEO forums and SEO newsgroups filled with clueless amateur SEOs.

SEO Can Equal High Traffic From Search Engines

To obtain maximum search engine rankings, it is essential to understand how your target audience is searching for information via search engines like Google. When your potential visitors and customers use search engines like Google and Yahoo to find products and online services (or just information, spit :-) ), they type a set of words or phrases, commonly called keywords or keyword phrases into the search box.
For the target audience to find your website on the search engines, your pages should contain keyword phrases that match what your target audience is actually typing into search queries (we like to state the obvious at SEO Gold).
For example if a page on your site is about an “SEO Tutorial” the phrase (SEO Tutorial) and its derivatives (i.e. Ethical SEO Tutorial, Search Engine Optimization Tutorial etc…) should be used throughout the text, anchor text of links and other important areas of the web pages code. Also individual keywords of a multiple word phrase should be used, so in the above example the words SEO and Tutorial should be used as much as possible throughout the text.

Is Your Website SEO Optimized?

The above SEO advice to use your keywords might seem like common sense, but take 30 minutes to read through your web sites important pages before continuing this SEO tutorial and ask yourself “do they shout about your product or service, are they optimized for the search engines?”
If not you’ll find this Search Engine Optimization Tutorial an essential aid to the future SEO success of your web site.
Quick SEO Tip – note above how rather than writing “If not you’ll find this Tutorial useful” we added the important phrase “Search Engine Optimization Tutorial” another derivative of SEO Tutorial. Being long winded is a prerequisite to good SEO copyrighting!

What’s Covered in our SEO Tutorial

When a search engine spider like Googlebot analyzes a web page, it determines relevancy based on the search engines algorithm, a formula that calculates how web pages are ranked in that search engines results pages (SERPs). The most important search engine (generates most traffic), Google bases it’s algorithm on at least 100 factors with both on page SEO factors; body text, page title, headers etc… and off page SEO factors; text links to the page, especially the anchor text and PageRank (PR) of text links ranking highly.
As a firm of SEO consultants we’ve analyzed and reanalyzed almost every aspect of the search engine algorithms and this SEO Tutorial will reveal the secrets of the major search engines.

Ethical and Unethical SEO Techniques

There has been a lot of discussion in the SEO community/forums about ethical and unethical SEO techniques (or whitehat and blackhat SEO). We do not consider ourselves ethical nor unethical SEO consultants and so this SEO tutorial is neither ethical or blackhat. We research ALL aspects of search engine optimization using our own domains (it would be unethical to use our clients sites for SEO tests) and have in the pursuit of SEO knowledge had more than our fair share of domains penalized/banned (most by Google). Through this free tutorial we will deal with both the recommended SEO techniques (no to low risk) and the not so recommended SEO techniques (possibly unethical to some SEO firms and high risk) detailing potential risks and rewards. It will be up to you which search engine optimization techniques you employ to your website ( would suggest whitehat SEO techniques since a banned site makes little revenue!).

On with the SEO Tutorial

Let’s start at the very beginning. You have a great idea for a business; you’ve researched the market and ideally have a business plan in place so you have a good idea what you need to do to make your business a success. Since you are reading this SEO tutorial it’s reasonable to assume your business needs a web site that you want to rank highly in the search engines (especially Google).
One of the first things you have to do is choose a domain and a business name for your web site. Even if you have your business name and domain name etc… already we advise you don’t skip the first section since there are some very important concepts and SEO techniques that we’ll be introducing.

SEO Tutorial Subjects Covered

1. Business and Domain Name Choice : You might think what’s the name of my business got to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? If you choose the correct business and domain name in the first place it makes the whole optimization process so much easier….
2. WebSite Optimization : In this section of our SEO Tutorial we’ll broadly introduce on site optimization, how to optimize your web site for better search engine rankings with good Google rankings our primary goal….
3. Title Optimization : The TITLE element of your web page (found within the HEAD) is very important, probably the most important part of a page (especially for placement in Google and Yahoo) and should ideally be optimized for a small number of keywords or phrases….
4. Meta Tags Optimization : There used to be a time when the contents of a pages Meta Tags was very important, it was around about the same time the Berlin Wall was still standing!! Today meta tags hold little value to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)….
5. Anchor Text Optimization : Google (and to a lesser degree other search engines) heavily weight it’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) towards the anchor text of links to a page. This can be demonstrated by looking at extreme examples where a pages high ranking can only be attributed to anchor text and no other SEO factors….
6. SERPs Competition : Your websites Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are determined by various SEO factors, on page content (your body text, the title element etc…), anchor text of links to your web sites pages, the search engines algorithms tweak of the day and of course the number of websites/pages competing for that search phrase. In this section of the SEO Tutorial we’ll deal with estimating the number of competitors for a SERP….
7. PageRank PR : PageRank or PR for short seems to be misunderstood by so many that this part of our SEO Tutorial we will try to explain the ins and outs of PageRank without getting too technical….
8. Google Sandbox Effect : A lot has been written about the so called Google Sandbox Effect in SEO forums over the last year or so, but not much of it is backed up by reality or facts. Find out what the sandbox really is….

Other SEO Tutorials and Resources

SEO Tutorial for WordPress : SEO advice tailored to WordPress CMS users.
SEO Consultant Services : The #1 UK source for Search Engine Optimisation Advice and SEO Consulting aimed mainly at SEO Consultants.
Google AdSense Templates and Themes : Monetize your WordPress blog with Search Engine Optimized templates including AdSense ads. WordPress can be used as a general SEO CMS, not just a blog, the SEO Gold site uses WordPress as a general CMS using the SEO/AdSense themes found at this site (a cheap/easy way to SEO a site).
SEO and Affiliate Marketing : Affiliate marketing with an SEO bias.
Hope you enjoyed our SEO Tutorial.
Author: David Law (SEO Consultant)
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
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Search Engine Optimization Tutorial Introduction

Welcome to our SEO Tutorial, here you will find answers to common and not so common search engine optimization (SEO) questions. Unlike a lot of SEO companies we do the SEO research ourselves, avoiding the guesswork and speculation so many SEO consultants rely upon!
You will not find contradictory SEO information within our tutorial like you tend to find in so many SEO forums and SEO newsgroups filled with clueless amateur SEOs.

SEO Can Equal High Traffic From Search Engines

To obtain maximum search engine rankings, it is essential to understand how your target audience is searching for information via search engines like Google. When your potential visitors and customers use search engines like Google and Yahoo to find products and online services (or just information, spit :-) ), they type a set of words or phrases, commonly called keywords or keyword phrases into the search box.
For the target audience to find your website on the search engines, your pages should contain keyword phrases that match what your target audience is actually typing into search queries (we like to state the obvious at SEO Gold).
For example if a page on your site is about an “SEO Tutorial” the phrase (SEO Tutorial) and its derivatives (i.e. Ethical SEO Tutorial, Search Engine Optimization Tutorial etc…) should be used throughout the text, anchor text of links and other important areas of the web pages code. Also individual keywords of a multiple word phrase should be used, so in the above example the words SEO and Tutorial should be used as much as possible throughout the text.

Is Your Website SEO Optimized?

The above SEO advice to use your keywords might seem like common sense, but take 30 minutes to read through your web sites important pages before continuing this SEO tutorial and ask yourself “do they shout about your product or service, are they optimized for the search engines?”
If not you’ll find this Search Engine Optimization Tutorial an essential aid to the future SEO success of your web site.
Quick SEO Tip – note above how rather than writing “If not you’ll find this Tutorial useful” we added the important phrase “Search Engine Optimization Tutorial” another derivative of SEO Tutorial. Being long winded is a prerequisite to good SEO copyrighting!

What’s Covered in our SEO Tutorial

When a search engine spider like Googlebot analyzes a web page, it determines relevancy based on the search engines algorithm, a formula that calculates how web pages are ranked in that search engines results pages (SERPs). The most important search engine (generates most traffic), Google bases it’s algorithm on at least 100 factors with both on page SEO factors; body text, page title, headers etc… and off page SEO factors; text links to the page, especially the anchor text and PageRank (PR) of text links ranking highly.
As a firm of SEO consultants we’ve analyzed and reanalyzed almost every aspect of the search engine algorithms and this SEO Tutorial will reveal the secrets of the major search engines.

Ethical and Unethical SEO Techniques

There has been a lot of discussion in the SEO community/forums about ethical and unethical SEO techniques (or whitehat and blackhat SEO). We do not consider ourselves ethical nor unethical SEO consultants and so this SEO tutorial is neither ethical or blackhat. We research ALL aspects of search engine optimization using our own domains (it would be unethical to use our clients sites for SEO tests) and have in the pursuit of SEO knowledge had more than our fair share of domains penalized/banned (most by Google). Through this free tutorial we will deal with both the recommended SEO techniques (no to low risk) and the not so recommended SEO techniques (possibly unethical to some SEO firms and high risk) detailing potential risks and rewards. It will be up to you which search engine optimization techniques you employ to your website ( would suggest whitehat SEO techniques since a banned site makes little revenue!).

On with the SEO Tutorial

Let’s start at the very beginning. You have a great idea for a business; you’ve researched the market and ideally have a business plan in place so you have a good idea what you need to do to make your business a success. Since you are reading this SEO tutorial it’s reasonable to assume your business needs a web site that you want to rank highly in the search engines (especially Google).
One of the first things you have to do is choose a domain and a business name for your web site. Even if you have your business name and domain name etc… already we advise you don’t skip the first section since there are some very important concepts and SEO techniques that we’ll be introducing.

SEO Tutorial Subjects Covered

1. Business and Domain Name Choice : You might think what’s the name of my business got to do with search engine optimization (SEO)? If you choose the correct business and domain name in the first place it makes the whole optimization process so much easier….
2. WebSite Optimization : In this section of our SEO Tutorial we’ll broadly introduce on site optimization, how to optimize your web site for better search engine rankings with good Google rankings our primary goal….
3. Title Optimization : The TITLE element of your web page (found within the HEAD) is very important, probably the most important part of a page (especially for placement in Google and Yahoo) and should ideally be optimized for a small number of keywords or phrases….
4. Meta Tags Optimization : There used to be a time when the contents of a pages Meta Tags was very important, it was around about the same time the Berlin Wall was still standing!! Today meta tags hold little value to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)….
5. Anchor Text Optimization : Google (and to a lesser degree other search engines) heavily weight it’s Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) towards the anchor text of links to a page. This can be demonstrated by looking at extreme examples where a pages high ranking can only be attributed to anchor text and no other SEO factors….
6. SERPs Competition : Your websites Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) are determined by various SEO factors, on page content (your body text, the title element etc…), anchor text of links to your web sites pages, the search engines algorithms tweak of the day and of course the number of websites/pages competing for that search phrase. In this section of the SEO Tutorial we’ll deal with estimating the number of competitors for a SERP….
7. PageRank PR : PageRank or PR for short seems to be misunderstood by so many that this part of our SEO Tutorial we will try to explain the ins and outs of PageRank without getting too technical….
8. Google Sandbox Effect : A lot has been written about the so called Google Sandbox Effect in SEO forums over the last year or so, but not much of it is backed up by reality or facts. Find out what the sandbox really is….

Other SEO Tutorials and Resources

SEO Tutorial for WordPress : SEO advice tailored to WordPress CMS users.
SEO Consultant Services : The #1 UK source for Search Engine Optimisation Advice and SEO Consulting aimed mainly at SEO Consultants.
Google AdSense Templates and Themes : Monetize your WordPress blog with Search Engine Optimized templates including AdSense ads. WordPress can be used as a general SEO CMS, not just a blog, the SEO Gold site uses WordPress as a general CMS using the SEO/AdSense themes found at this site (a cheap/easy way to SEO a site).
SEO and Affiliate Marketing : Affiliate marketing with an SEO bias.
Hope you enjoyed our SEO Tutorial.
Author: David Law (SEO Consultant)
Posted by Unknown at Sunday, March 04, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Search Engine Optimization SEO Tutorial -- WebBizIdeas

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Search Engine Optimization SEO Tutorial -- WebBizIdeas

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SEO in urdu 3/Many

Saturday, March 3, 2012

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SEO in urdu 3/Many

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SEO Interview Questions - SEO Tips

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SEO Interview Questions - SEO Tips

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Online Marketing

Friday, March 2, 2012


Online Marketing

With its ability to meet the demands of a dynamic business environment as well as foster an online presence and identity, online marketing is an essential tool. What’s more, it is very affordable and efficient. Professional support is at the fingertips of business owners so they manage most tasks by themselves.
Internet is used as a special tool by most companies to advertise their products. These business have seen that online marketing is more viable compared to traditional marketing media like television and print. If you want to know why Internet marketing is necessary, you can invest in an online marketing book that summarizes the importance, benefits and possible strategies. The following reasons may also give you an idea:
It appears to have the capacity to withstand the challenging demands of current business scenario
Business is not what it used to be, all businessmen know this. The conventional marketing techniques like word of mouth, TV advertising ,print advertising etc are becoming outdated now. Clever entrepreneurs know the Internet marketing potential and the way it can help businesses grow regardless of the market’s nature. Even in the most competative environments, a ground up, whole team buy in internet marketing plan can meet your needs.
This will help solidify your online profile
In this current time people use the Internet a lot and a large amount of possible clients are able to go online. This is why it’s extremely important for the success of your business for you to make yourself known across the Internet. Once a business becomes visible and identifiable, on the Internet, it has an increased ability to sparks consumers’ interest in the products or services that it offers
Posted by Unknown at Friday, March 02, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Online Marketing


Online Marketing

With its ability to meet the demands of a dynamic business environment as well as foster an online presence and identity, online marketing is an essential tool. What’s more, it is very affordable and efficient. Professional support is at the fingertips of business owners so they manage most tasks by themselves.
Internet is used as a special tool by most companies to advertise their products. These business have seen that online marketing is more viable compared to traditional marketing media like television and print. If you want to know why Internet marketing is necessary, you can invest in an online marketing book that summarizes the importance, benefits and possible strategies. The following reasons may also give you an idea:
It appears to have the capacity to withstand the challenging demands of current business scenario
Business is not what it used to be, all businessmen know this. The conventional marketing techniques like word of mouth, TV advertising ,print advertising etc are becoming outdated now. Clever entrepreneurs know the Internet marketing potential and the way it can help businesses grow regardless of the market’s nature. Even in the most competative environments, a ground up, whole team buy in internet marketing plan can meet your needs.
This will help solidify your online profile
In this current time people use the Internet a lot and a large amount of possible clients are able to go online. This is why it’s extremely important for the success of your business for you to make yourself known across the Internet. Once a business becomes visible and identifiable, on the Internet, it has an increased ability to sparks consumers’ interest in the products or services that it offers
Posted by Unknown at Friday, March 02, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Start to finish and more

Start to finish and more

Fort Collins Web Design Image


                                        Best in Fort Collins Web Design

At the present age of E-Commerce a business cannot strive without a Website. A website is the face of the said corporation/business house or small business to the world. In fact I do not need to go in explicit details of the positive aspects of having a website, everybody knows it, and you too know it…That is why you are here reading this piece. 
The moment you decide that you need a website or more aptly a Website solution you are competing against the teeming millions who share the same niche with you. So if you want your site to be a hit, it should stand apart from the crowd in a better way.
There are some standards and some factors that should be explicitly followed to make your website a worthwhile visit so that the “lead” returns again. SEO Gurus knows that what it needs and what needs to be done to make this happen. Because you understand that you will never hire a un-reliable mason or designer or home décor to build your shop or office, this works in the same way. You should understand this that a cheap solution is not always the best solution.
SEO Gurus knows that we have to create a free flowing web 2.0 UI with more visitor engagement to really get ahead of the competition and generate leads. We also follow the best coding policies at par and in compliance with the W3C standards and our coding standards are hundred percent Search Engine friendly. We not only create Search Engine friendly Website solutions, we create a Business Solution for you, a full blown e-commerce solution, which is not only visitor engaging, but converting too. We design the UIs such that it is lucid, easy to follow and so that the visitors don’t have to “grope” to find what they need.Contact SEO Gurus for the Best in Fort Collins Web Design
Posted by Unknown at Friday, March 02, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Start to finish and more

Start to finish and more

Fort Collins Web Design Image


                                        Best in Fort Collins Web Design

At the present age of E-Commerce a business cannot strive without a Website. A website is the face of the said corporation/business house or small business to the world. In fact I do not need to go in explicit details of the positive aspects of having a website, everybody knows it, and you too know it…That is why you are here reading this piece. 
The moment you decide that you need a website or more aptly a Website solution you are competing against the teeming millions who share the same niche with you. So if you want your site to be a hit, it should stand apart from the crowd in a better way.
There are some standards and some factors that should be explicitly followed to make your website a worthwhile visit so that the “lead” returns again. SEO Gurus knows that what it needs and what needs to be done to make this happen. Because you understand that you will never hire a un-reliable mason or designer or home décor to build your shop or office, this works in the same way. You should understand this that a cheap solution is not always the best solution.
SEO Gurus knows that we have to create a free flowing web 2.0 UI with more visitor engagement to really get ahead of the competition and generate leads. We also follow the best coding policies at par and in compliance with the W3C standards and our coding standards are hundred percent Search Engine friendly. We not only create Search Engine friendly Website solutions, we create a Business Solution for you, a full blown e-commerce solution, which is not only visitor engaging, but converting too. We design the UIs such that it is lucid, easy to follow and so that the visitors don’t have to “grope” to find what they need.Contact SEO Gurus for the Best in Fort Collins Web Design
Posted by Unknown at Friday, March 02, 2012 0 comments
Labels: ,

Search Engine Optimization Research And Analysis Package


Take control of your own Search Engine Optimization!


Looking to get ahead of your competition but don’t have the money to hire and expensive SEO Firm to manage everything? SEO Gurus offers this exlusive research package that will provide you with the information needed to get ahead of the competition on your own! With 2012 now here, Search Engine Optimization has yet again changed drarastically in how rankings are Considered. Google has released a new algorithm that will weed out a lot of the Grey/Black hat strategies that many SEO firms are using to keep companies at the top. Google is after the value that is presented from within and outside your website. Having a “real” community surrounding your website/brand is critical but may be daunting to take on. Here at SEO Gurus we offer a full SEO Research Package on your competition to give you an inside view on what techniques are betting you out in ranks with the Top search Engines. We not only provide with the information regarding your competition but build a plan that you can execute on your own  with ease to compete and win! Our SEO Package takes our research team 1 week of in depth analysis to complete.

Search Engine Optimization Package includes:

- We provide you with Keyword analysis research surrounding your market, along with full traffic analysis on each keyword and where your website stands with domain age, page rank, Google Index Count, Referring Domains – Domain (Historical), Referring Domains – Domain (Fresh), Referring Domains – Page (Historical), Referring Domains – Page (Fresh), Page Backlinks (Historical), Page Backlinks (Fresh), Domain Backlinks (Historical), Domain Backlinks (Fresh), Page .edu/.gov Backlinks (Historical),DMOZ Directory, Yahoo Directory
- Your top 5-10 competitors and how they ranked, domain age, page rank, Google Index Count, Referring Domains – Domain (Historical), Referring Domains – Domain (Fresh), Referring Domains – Page (Historical), Referring Domains – Page (Fresh), Page Backlinks (Historical), Page Backlinks (Fresh), Domain Backlinks (Historical), Domain Backlinks (Fresh), Page .edu/.gov Backlinks (Historical),DMOZ Directory, Yahoo Directory
- A 4-5 page report explaining the results of the Keyword and Competition Analysis and factors you should consider to get ahead
Fort Collins SEO vs Pay Per Click PPC diagram for Search Engine Optimization
 – Current Backlink Analysis
-The proper Strategy you should take for building links surrounding your site.
Front Range Keyword Research Anlaysis Diagram diagram for Search Engine Optimization

 - A customized SEO Success Blue print for both off page Search Engine Optimization  within your market ( The outside community around your site and what you can do to improve it)
- A custom report overview on your on page SEO progress to date. The will be an in depth description on your current situation and how to fix/improve it.
- Current Rankings Report within your top keywords
Posted by Unknown at Friday, March 02, 2012 0 comments
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