Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks

Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks
By Junaid Ashraf Mianoor


Search Engine Optimization, popularly known as SEO these days, is the process of improving your website so that it achieves a higher ranking in a search engine search result.  It is one of the most practical and effective marketing strategies now. Knowing the tips and tricks of this aspect of internet technology can help you and your business succeed. The following are some useful tips.



Place navigational links in all web pages. You should allow a search engine to locate all your pages. Search engines look for html link tags. Therefore you should refrain from placing flash or JavaScript navigation links or images on your site.



Provide relevant content. Put as many appropriate and relevant contents as you can in order to have a higher chance at ranking better. People who search for products on a website do price comparisons and research first. So therefore you should include features and contents that will attract the searcher. Once the searcher is impressed, he/she will stick to your website and eventually buy your product.



Place keywords in your text. To improve your web site, you should employ keywords that are related to your field in all your text contents. This will enable search engine spiders to detect them thus giving your website a good chance at ranking higher. However you must not place excessive keywords. Doing so will just be a waste. What's important therefore is consistency and balance in using keywords.



Employ related words and phrases in Meta tags, titles, and headers. This will result in an extensive and consistent range of keywords in your website. More than any other aspect in your website, search engines give a lot of weight on page titles, text, and header meta tags.



Maintain a consistent order or sequence of your keywords. Shifting to another order or sequence of a term or phrase may affect the consistency and balance of your website and may lower your rank in a search engine.


Employ keywords in your file names. Always remember that this is a vital key also in achieving a higher rank in the search results. Use underscore between keywords. This will have a better chance of being detected by search engines. The keywords should best describe the contents of your webpage.
Use keywords in your links. In placing links in your website, use keywords that best describe the webpage link. This will enable the advanced search engines to detect the content of the link.



Submit your website to relevant and widely used sources. Yahoo.com, Zeal.com, and DMOZ.org are some of the most popular manually edited internet directories and are frequently used by widely known search engines such as AltaVista, LookSmart, Google, and Yahoo. Remember also to follow the submission rules of these internet directories to avoid being rejected.



Search engine optimization is the new trend in sales and marketing these days. Following the tricks and tips mentioned will make your website a top business or product site. Gone are the days when we had to spend big amounts on marketing and promoting our products.


Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com Search Engine Optimization Tips and Tricks

Local Search Engine Optimization Tips to Know Your Competition

Local Search Engine Optimization Tips to Know Your Competition
By Eric G.




There are several markets that are becoming found online more frequently, in all areas of the country. This is something that is unique in each locale. Search engine optimization becomes a matter of knowing how to tell how much competition is in your market. Here are some tips on how to do basic research on the competition for your online industry.



Choose your primary keywords. The research to determine this should always be the first step in search engine optimization. You may include the name of your city as part of your keyword phrase, especially if you intend to attract people looking for your business within the city.


Check the number of results. This is a basic technique, but by looking through the number of listings that show up in the search engine results, you can know how many competitors you have online quite quickly. Type in your primary keyword phrases into the main search engines (at least into Google and Yahoo). Look and see how many total results show up. Now to find the number of true competitors you have, take this same keyword phrase and surround it in double quotes. Doing this will show only pages that have that exact keyword phrase present.


Check the number of qualified results. Now you already have a good idea how many people are competing for your keyword phrase (or phrases). However, in many cases the keywords are not placed prominently on the web pages that show in the results. Your main competition is in people who know at least some basic search engine optimization. To find these competitors, you will want to search in Google using a specialized option: "allintitle". Simply type in "allintitle" (without the quotes) followed by a colon, and then type in your keyword phrase. This will produce only results that have all the keywords inside the title tag, which is one of the primary elements of solid search engine optimization.


Now you should have a good idea of what level of competition you will be facing when doing your local search engine optimization. Considering the fact that this year, nationally 74.1% of the population is estimated to use the internet (according to Nielsen ratings) -- making sure you are properly targeting your market online as well as offline is important for improving local business.



Article Source:  Local Search Engine Optimization Tips to Know Your Competition

Affordable Internet Marketing - Search Engine Optimization Tips

Affordable Internet Marketing - Search Engine Optimization Tips
By Kathy McGraw

If you're an internet marketing newbie, search engine optimization may seem like a big convoluted mess to you and you may be thinking that there is no way that you can understand it at all. Nothing could be farther from the truth and, in fact, search engine optimization is an extremely affordable internet marketing solution. This article will explain why.



Search engine optimization has two parts. The first part is all about content: if your site is constantly updated with fresh and useful content, Google (or MSN, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) will pick it up. The second part involves making it easier for thesearch engines to find your site through simple coding and website design.



The first part will take some time to develop as you need to create the content and keep updating your site to keep it relevant to users. The second part you can do at any time and this will help users find your content more easily via Google, etc.



So how do you make it easier for search engines to find you? You optimize your site's content by using relevant keywords in strategic places where the crawlers (robots, or bits of code that are sent out regularly by the search engines looking for content) are known to look. Those places are your site's meta tags, your site's title, and your site's heading.

Meta tags: When search engines crawl a site, they will often read the meta tags first. Meta tags are located in the head of an html document and inserting relevant keywords here help search engine crawlers find your site much more easily.



Title: Your website's title is another place that the crawlers will check. Having your best keywords as part of the title of your site is another way to ensure that you get found. This helps the human looking at the search results catch your site within the listings as well. For example, let's say you have a site about grooming cocker spaniels. It would make sense for your title to be something like "Tips For Grooming Cocker Spaniels." This not only tells the search engine crawler, "hey, here's a page about grooming cocker spaniels," it will tell that searcher looking for information about grooming cocker spaniels that this is a site with the information they're looking for.

Headings: Again crawlers scan through your site looking for relevant words in order to return results to hungry websurfers. Having keywords in your headings helps in this regard. This is another area that will help with the human quotient as well.



I'd like to insert a word of caution here: there is a tactic known as "keyword stuffing" that is used by unscrupulous webmasters, and you should definitely not do this if you want to remain indexed by the search engines. Keyword stuffing involves using the same keywords all over your site, over and over again, as well as using keywords that are irrelevant to the subject matter of your site, but popular among searchers. You don't want to do this because, 1: repeating the same keywords over and over again makes your site content read very poorly and people will just click off without bothering to read such garbage, and 2: the search engines have built-in checks to see how relevant the keywords you are using are to your site content. If you are using keywords that are completely unrelated, your site will be removed from the listings.




Search engine optimization is not some mystical, mysterious endeavor that only the most savvy of webmasters are privy to. Search engine optimization is an easy task that almost anyone with a little knowledge on the basics can do to improve his standing in the search engines, and is an extremely affordable internet marketing strategy, since it costs you nothing to implement.


Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com Affordable Internet Marketing - Search Engine Optimization Tips

Search Engine Optimization Certification Considerations

By Christopher J Enders

Search engine optimization certification confirms that search
engine optimization providers have actually received industry
training in regard to search engine optimization strategies.

Some search engine optimization providers display a certification
seal on their websites while others will simply state that they
have been certified in search engine optimization.

While certification may be preferred due to the level of difficulty and the expertise required to effectively optimize a website for the search engines, certification doesn't necessarily make one provider better than the next.

Skill comes with experience and a successful search engine optimization provider should be able to give you references including the names and contact information of satisfied customers and information about their keywords and website ranking so you can see for yourself whether or not the specialist is truly capable of results-producing search engine optimization.


The search engine optimization industry is not regulated and doesn't have set professional standards like some professional industries do.

Thus, search engine optimization certification that is provided by one company for $50 may be compared to professional search engine optimization certification programs that charge closer to $3,000.

Some certification issuers provide one to three day seminars, some provide internet based training, some provide coaching services, and some actually provide very little training at all.


For that reason, I don't place a lot of weight on certification when evaluating search engine optimization providers unless I can confirm not only the certification, but also the credentials and certification standards of the company who issued the certification.

There are several organizations that seem to be working toward standardizing search engine optimization certification.

Perhaps some day the search engine certification will be as valuable as Microsoft certifications, but at this point in time,
with a lack of industry standards and designated certification requirements, it really just isn't.

Now that is not to say that a certified search engine optimization provider isn't experienced or isn't capable of
achieving good search engine rankings.

Some very well may be.  One thing that a valid certification does verify is that the provider has completed some type of search engine optimization training and has apparently met someone's standards in order to receive the certification.

In that light, you may view certified providers as more desirable than non-certified providers as a matter of personal preference.


My personal preference is to see a proven track record in regard to achieving desirable search engine rankings.

I place experience and results a lot higher on the priority list than search engine optimization certification.

Whether you choose a certified search engine optimization specialist or not is a matter of choice.  I do not make a recommendation one way or the other.

Rather, I emphasize the need to find a search engine optimization specialist who has a solid record for achieving results through their search engine optimization efforts.

Search engine optimization is challenging and it isn't usually easy to get good ranking in the search engines.

Some website owners opt to do their own optimization while others hire professionals.

If you hire a professional to optimize your website, it is only logical to review their credentials to ensure that they are capable of providing you with the best possible results.

It might not be possible for them to achieve top search engine ranking.  That depends on your industry and the level of competition you are up against.

However, if they employ sound search engine optimization strategies that are based on experience, they should definitely be able to boost your search engine rankings and obtain a desirable position in the search engines.

Experience and perseverance is the key to getting a good search engine ranking that will increase your traffic and revenues.


Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com] Search Engine Optimization Certification Considerations

Search Engine Optimization and Design

Search Engine Optimization and Design
By Karl Bennion

Building an attractive even beautiful is the goal of most website designers. In the process, sometimes the effectiveness of the website is diminished. We need to keep in mind that our goal is not only to have a beautiful website that will make people want to stay and look around and enjoy, but also a website that will be helpful to the engines in determining what our website is about or what it is relevant to.


Udi Manber, Google vice president overseeing search quality, in response to a question about webpage content evolving to be more search engine friendly explained,  "It's  definitely still lacking. I wish people would put more effort into thinking about how other people will find them and putting the right  keywords onto their pages." Popular Mechanics - April 16, 2008


Search engine optimization or SEO is arguably the most essential way to drive targeted traffic to your website because it leads to improved search engine placement. Optimizing the benefits of a well-designed web site will result in much more traffic coming to the website thereby generating income for the company publishing the website. With this fact in mind however, optimizing your website might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area. Good search engine optimization that leads to improved search engine placement will, on the other hand, bring you a much higher return on the investment of either time or money you put into it.


My goal in this article is to give you the basics of search engine optimization so that you can understand it and incorporate it to help you accomplish your task. This will help you to improve your relevancy and search engines rankings for the best results possible through proven search engine optimization techniques.


What are the major mistakes in design


First is is important to remember that search engines are machines and read words they don't see images or pictures. The most common mistakes form a search engine optimization standpoint are:


Making a website totally in Flash(TM)
   
   
    Images without alt tags
   
   
    Minimal or nonexistent meta title or title tag


Flash(TM) to the search engines is just like an image it is invisible although the Flash(TM) may capture the intrigue of the viewer it won't help the search engine to know what your website is about. While the text display as a part of the Flash(TM) my be rich in keywords and information it will be lost completely to the search engines and you will go unnoticed. Flash(TM) and pictures can be used to enhance a website but the site must have text in order to build relevance for the search engines.



In the same sense images are also invisible, however we can include alt tags that will give the search engines an idea of what the viewer will see. In fact the alt tags can be very helpful since the search engines will place a little more emphasis on the text in alt tags. Don't go overboard using keyword phrases in the alt tags but use some to help where appropriate.


The title tag as well discuss later is an important place to tell the search engines what your webpage is all about.


Where do we start?


Why is search engine optimization (SEO) so important? SEO is important because this will make your website relevant to your keywords during the search engine ranking process and will lead to improved search engine ranking. This is the reason why some businesses hire an SEO company to do this task.


You can get information on low cost related services anywhere on the internet. However, few are really showing you how to work out an inexpensive plan for improved search engine placement. Some companies will even use antiquated techniques that may slow the process down. Good search engine optimization should help you to start improving the search engine ranking of your website and start driving traffic to it in a matter of days or weeks with expensive processes.


Search engine optimization begins optimally on your website, as you plan and build it. If it was not done at first you are not too late, you can do it after you have it built and go back and revise it to improve the exposure to the search engines and still lead to improved search engine placement. It consists of the following elements referred to as "onsite optimization".



Keyword Research - choosing the primary and secondary keywords you will use on your website or webpage
   
   
    Implementing the keywords naturally into important elements in the website header and body.

Keyword Research and Usage

Let's start first with keyword research. Why is keyword research important? The keyword research helps us to find the keywords that connect us with our targeted audience. They are the words that we want to use on our website in a variety of ways to build relevancy on our webpage so when search engines find our website and view / crawl our pages, they will then index us for those keywords. Once that happens, then when those keywords are typed into the search engine by potential customers, the search engine will then display our site in the search results, which is how they tie us to our targeted audience.


Ideally you will use a reverse search tool that will enable you to type in words you think are keywords people would search for and which will tell you the number of times those keywords were searched for over a given period of time. Depending on the tool you are using and the databases and the search engines they have access to for their search results you will get different numbers in your reverse search results. Your search engine optimization professional will know and have access to these tools and which ones are appropriate for specific uses. These tools can significantly speed up the process of onsite optimization lead to quicker improved search engine placement.


One tool you can use for manual research is   rel=nofollow http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html Keyword Discovery's Free Search Term Suggestion Tool. It will limit your results to 100 keywords for any given search. Another manual search tool is   rel=nofollow http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword SEOBook.com's Suggestion tool. Both of these manual reverse search tools will allow you to find the keywords that people type into the search engines and how many times they were searched for. Remember keywords are how we connect with our targeted audience.


How Do I Use My Keywords  Once we have identified the keywords, next we need to know where and how to use them for improved search engine placement. The first and arguably the most important place to use our keywords would be the title tag for your website. The title tag appears in the header of the page and is the first opportunity we have to tell the search engine what our page is about.


The title tag should be 60 - 80 characters in length and use one or two of the most important and/or relevant keywords for that page and possibly your website domain name, especially if your domain name includes keywords in it. The title tag information appears in the blue header bar at the top of the window and is also used as the title of your listing when your website is displayed in the natural or organic search results.


The meta description should be about 2 - 3 sentences or up to about 200 characters that describe for the customer and the search engine what the webpage is about. In the natural or organic search engine results, this description will be the first choice for the text the search engine displays beneath the title. This description does not appear on the website page when the website is displayed for the visitor but is readable by the search engine and used in the search results primarily.


A third meta tag is the keywords meta tag which is also not displayed to the visitor of the website. The keywords meta tag is a hold over from early methods of search engine optimization, but because it was abused by website developers, it is seldom use by search engines. We still use the keywords meta tag, but most search engines ignore it due to those previous abuses. Some search engines may still evaluate it and you never know when search engines may start to use it again. The Keywords meta tag is simply a list of up to 12 keyword phrases separated by commas.

 The example below exclude the angle brackets due to this article being written in HTML but the angle brackets are the less than and greater than signs.


Your keywords used in the title, description and keywords tags now need to be used on the page to validate to the search engine that your page is actually about what you told the search engine that your page is relevant to. If the search engine doesn't see any of the keywords on your page, then it can only assume that your page is not relevant to the words you used in the title, description and keywords tags in the header area of the web site.


Now that we know that we need text on the page how can we use that text to help emphasize the relevancy of the keywords on the page? Mechanisms such as header tags for headings using keywords will give more emphasis to keywords. Hyperlinks where the anchor text is a keyword phrase will add relevance to the keyword phrase and since the anchor text and the associated hyperlink reference are indexed by the search engines, using a keyword phrase as the anchor text both on the website and in offsite marketing will increase your ranking for that keyword phrase.

Bolding and italics also draw some attention to the keywords for the search engine. Each page needs to have enough text on it to allow that page to demonstrate the relevance of the keywords it displays in the header of the page to the search engine, if true search engine optimization is to be achieved.


Lets take a look at some of the other tags mentioned in the previous paragraph. Header tags alert the search engine to more important text on the page, much like the headline on the page of newspaper does to the reader. A header tag is a tag that contain a "H" and a number between 1 and 7. The lower the number the larger the text and the more important it is to the search engine. H1 tags can be formatted using font tags to control the size or .css files to control the formatting.


Hyperlinks consist of at least two components. The first component is the link destination represented by the term "href" referring to the hyperlink reference and the anchor text located between the beginning and ending anchor tags. An anchor tag is an "a" in angle brackets and ending with "/a" in angle brackets. The beginning tag also include the destination reference. Remember that you you could use a keyword phrase in place of the word home to designate your home page. That keyword phrase would be a link and would help to build relevance for your website for that keyword phrase.


As we use these structures in combination in a natural way we then are able to help the search engine to know what our page is about and also create a page that is functional for the user.


To optimize your website well for the search engines you should use unique meta tags on each page on your website. The keywords should be used in:


The title tag - big three
   
   
    Meta description
   
   
    Meta keywords
   
   
    Header tag - big three
   
   
    Opening paragraph - about 4% density
   
   
    Alt tags on all images and using keywords on about 3 images per page
   
   
    Link / anchor text or hyperlinks - big three
   
   
    Body of the page - about 4% density (visible text)
   
   
   
    Closing paragraph - about 4% density


They should be used in such a way as to feel natural on the page. If the page feels awkward, then look for ways to reword the information on the page and make sure you are not forcing the keywords in too many times. This in combination with other activities to build your page rank are the best ways to get your page listed on page one of the search engines.

These strategies are what we call onsite page optimization. Each page needs to have its own unique page optimization for the content on that page. Don't make the mistake of using the same title, description and keywords meta tags for every page on your site.


Using these strategies in conjunction with the design of your website will vastly improve your search engine placement.


Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com] Search Engine Optimization and Design

Search Engine Optimization Tips - Super Easy Search Engine Optimization Tips

By Matt Canei

Search Engine Optimization is a lengthy process that requires a lot of patience and a lot of time. Once it is done properly the rewards of being on the first page of Google are unparalleled. Below is an assortment of SEO tips that will aid in raising your website or blog up the search engine ranks.


-    Make the most use of the HTML header in your web pages. Make sure the main keyword phrase that you are targeting is present in full in your title, the first entry of your keyword meta tag, and in the first part of your site's description.


-    Do proper keyword research and after doing so do not target keywords that are too competitive or the sites on the first page have authority status or high page ranks. I believe authority status is defined by PR5 sites or above.

-    Build backlinks through submissions to link directories. Also run a link query (link:URL) of the first few sites on page one for your main keyword and see what sites they have backlinks on. Get links on those same sites then get more and beat them!


-    Try to write at least 5 articles startup when you launch your site in addition with a press release, then write no less than one article a day that is completely original and unique even if it is on the same topic as prior articles try to write it from scratch. Include your site's link in the author bio as it will build both backlinks and credibility as readers become aware of your expertise.


-    Submit your website and articles to social bookmarking sites like digg.com and del.icio.us for a viral effect. This will build backlinks on these high PR social networks.


-    Make sure your content is unique and original and is not copied from elsewhere or duplicated from already written articles. If you want to use the articles you submitted to directories then rewrite 30-40% of the article so search engines pick it up as unique content. Search engines penalize for duplicate content so make it unique. Unique content is king!


-    Include your targeted keywords within your website's content, the normal rate of keyword density is 3-5% of your content is keywords you are targeting, and definitely include your primary keyword phrase. However, do not spam your content with keywords all over the place or search engines will DQ them.


Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com

10 Search Engine Optimization Tips and Secrets

10 Search Engine Optimization Tips and Secrets
By Dave Morrison

A recent research has proved that a huge number of people generally click at the top search results whenever they type in a keyword or they will simply go to another search engine for results. With that in mind each and every business is fighting its way to the top listings as they increase the chances of getting better traffic which is the main aim of search engine optimization. Getting your website listed at the top, doesn't only get you customers but will make your customers trust you as they believe that better ranked sites are the most relevant ones.


With that said, one thing you just can't overlook is the number of sites that are likely to appear each time a related keyword is clicked. To make matters worse, search engines are constantly changing the logarithms they use to rank the websites but the nice thing is that with the follow up of the top tips and secrets, you can take your website to the top list without even employing SEO companies. So, here is a list of the ten secrets and tips that will help you optimize your pages for better ranking;

1.    Keywords you use should be those that you have thoroughly researched on, don't make the mistake of using a keyword because your competitors are using them too. Do make use of such tools like wordtracker; they are great in helping you get the best keywords.



2.    Poor quality content wont keep your visitors, so make it appoint that you only add quality content to your website, make your website interesting while not running away from your keywords.


3.    While getting better ranks is important, far more important is the relevancy tom the keyword, you can get better ranked with vague keywords but that won't keep your visitors coming back.


 4.    Search engines don't need any sites to be submitted, so never get cheated by SEO firms that will promise to submit your site.


 5.    Link farms are just not the way to go, avoid them as they risk your website being banned, other sites might have gotten away with it, but what guarantee do you have that you too might do that? Tom make things worse, search engines have toughened the screening.


6.    Getting multiple backlinks is great but what counts more is the quality of those backlinks, make it a point that when you do hunt for backlinks, get only those that are closely related to your industry and are well known.


7.    Understand that you just can't be on the top list of each and every search engine; they use different logarithms to assign ranks. So, aim at least at the top one and Google is generally the gold standard, it's the first choice of your potential visitors, so rather aim being on their top list.


8.    Use text rather than images as search engines read texts only.


9.    They also can't read flash index which is why you need to go with inert HTML text.


10.    Getting to the top takes time, follow the legal terms and avoid trying to get a quick fix, you might regret it later.

The above 10 search engine optimization tips and secrets will really give you an edge in SEO and help you rank above your competition in the search engines.

Article Source: [http://EzineArticles.com