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Search Engine Optimization for Everyone
There are many facets to SEO and the search engines continually change their methods of indexing sites to help prevent the same sites from staying up in the ranks all the time. Here are some strategies we have personally used with our web design firm: 1. Google AdWords. This is an excellent and cost effective method of getting good search results. You set the maximum daily amount you would like to spend on your key words and phrases. Within the first month we were getting more client contacts through using AdWords. 2. Overture Keywords. This is a lot like AdWords, but we found that their system did not really allow you to set a daily limit to how much you wanted to spend and it quickly got out of hand with some of the phrases we had chosen! Still, it was pretty cost effective in the grand scheme of things. 3. Yahoo Regional Directories. Once you are able to get your site indexed by the Yahoo Regional Directories, I think you stay in there for good! We've been in there for years now and continue to get clients who found us through this directory. (And it is free to submit your site.) 4. Keywords / Description / Alt Tags / Title Tags / Page Content. All the big SEO companies rely heavily on these 5 things - all of which are contained in the code of your web pages. However, with a little research, you could do these yourself (or have it done by your web designer). A few great tools to help you with this task are: Overture Keyword Selector Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/), Google Suggestion Tool (http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en), Meta Tag Analyzer (http://www.iboost.com/tools/meta_tag_analyzer.htm), and Keyword Density Analyzer (http://www.keyworddensity.com/). The main benefit to hiring a professional SEO company is that they work for you to constantly update your keywords, etc. and submit your URL to search engines. They know exactly how many of each keyword to use, etc. And this is often a service worth paying for if optimization is a real concern in your industry. A good SEO company will also stay up on what the search engines are doing and change their tactics accordingly. They will also never use an "illegal" tactics that could get you banned from the search engine. Be wary of companies that "guarantee top 10 placement". I recommend http://www.submitsolutions.com. 5. Online Directories. Submitting your website URL to free online directories is a great avenue of promotion. One way you can find directories is to use Google or another search engine and type in "(type of your business) online directories". Some that come up may ask for a small amount to list your site. If they do, you should always contact them and ask them for more information such as how many unique visits their directories get per month to see if the price is a good value. 6. Open Directory Project. http://www.dmoz.org The ODP is one of the main sources the the Googlebot uses to find new websites. This is a human-maintained directory - meaning that when you submit your URL, an actual person reviews your submission to decide if the site is appropriate, etc. It may take some time to get your site indexed by the ODP, but once it is, you should not have to keep sending your links. 7. Blog. Having a Blog on your website is a great way to attract visitors to your site with fresh content. And the search engines love content rich blog pages. There are free services out there such as http://www.blogger.com, http://www.blog-city.com, http://www.livejournal.com and many more that allow you to sign up for a free blog. Of course the best way to blog to have the blog "software" actually installed on your site. This is something your web designer/programmer could do for you. I highly recommend sBlog (http://servous.se/) as a free php based Blog script (you will need php and a MySQL database installed with your web hosting service to run this). 8. Submit to Google and Yahoo. These two are the top dogs in the search engine world and both still accept FREE submissions. For Yahoo, you must go through the categories until you find the most appropriate one for your website. For Google, you can go to the following URL to submit your site: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl 9. Print advertising. Many companies forget that print advertising is still a very valid way to get visitors to your website. Although this can get costly, even having your URL printed on your business cards, letterheads and envelopes is considered print advertising. 10. Be the best you can be. It sounds simple, but a lot of people get so wrapped up in SEO that they neglect the quality of their website. Remember that your website reflects your business and should offer a professional, high quality appearance and useful content. No matter what your business is, your visitors will be more inclined to stick around or make a purchase if your site is easy to navigation, has useful information, and looks professional. I also highly recommend visiting Site Pro News (http://www.sitepronews.com) and signing up for their free newsletter. They have the most up to date info on SEO. Sherry Holub is the Lead Designer and Manager at Southern California design firm, JV Media Design. http://www.jvmediadesign.com
MORE RESOURCES:
SEO - Google News |
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Blogging, Spamming, and Blog Spam Email marketing once proved to be immensely effective, but the greedy and idiotic polluted the well by spamming the planet with everything from weight-loss products to sexual enhancement drugs and beyond. Because of the stench, filters and laws have been created to attempt to fix the problem, but still the Internet is polluted with more and more junk each day. How to Increase Alexa Ranking of Your Website Alexa toolbar also useful to Browse expired websites database. Many times when we visit any website we got error message that website is not available. New Site and Sandbox: How to Get Rid of It You have put lot of sweat in making your site. Now you want it to engender revenues and only source of traffic is search engines. Ten Steps To A Well Optimized Website - Step 5: Internal Linking Welcome to part five in this search engine positioning series. Last week we discussed the importance of content optimization. The Simple Formula To Search Engines Search engines are one of the best tools to bring targeted traffic to your business. Millions of people are always using them every day to search for information that's suitable to them. Yahoo Listing Still Worth It? In October 2002, the Yahoo! portal changed the way it delivers search results. In the past, the most prominent results were exclusively culled from websites listed in the Yahoo directory itself. How To Weather Google Algorithm Changes If you spend much time reading the various webmaster forums, you're no doubt well aware of the grief that many webmasters experience after seeing a Google algorithm change send their web pages sinking like a stone in the search results. But there are always other webmasters who do well with the changes, and many whose rankings are pretty much unaffected. The Power of Search Engine Friendly URLs I recently invested quite some time into generating search engine friendly URLs for several of my websites to increase my ranking and to have more pages indexed. I can highly recommend to look into this if your own website does not have se-friendly URLs. The Google Sandbox Explained Introduction The Google Sandbox is a metaphorical term to explain why most new websites have very poor rankings in Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Very few people know for sure if the 'sandbox' actually exists, but it seems to be a filter added to the Google algorithms sometime around March 2004. Guide to Getting Linked Getting links from other websites pointing to your site can sometimes seem very hard and time consuming. There are several ways to get people interested in your site, you've just got to be creative with it and think more in terms of putting yourself in the other webmaster's shoes- figure out what the advantages are for them to be linked to you!One thing that you often hear is that to attain a high Page Rank thru Google, (which, let's face it, is the Big Daddy of Search Engines) that you have to link to other high PR sites. The Truth About Search Engines: Playing A Game You Cant Win If you go strictly by the numbers, Yahoo, MSN and Google are the "Big 3" of search engines and directories. Between them, they index millions and millions of pages in their directories. Supply & Demand - Stop Attacking Good SEO Companies! As I read the latest news online about what Google has done to many webmasters all over the world, I am left discussed towards some of the comments people are making against SEO Companies.Please don't be quick to blame seo companies. Getting To Know Google Having greatly benefited from my relationship with Google in the past several years, I am dedicating this article to the search engine superstar.I have to be brutally honest and relay that our friendship hasn't always been rosy. The Search Engine Optimization Game Is Getting Tricky For more than 4 years now I have been modifying my work from home based web sites trying to optimize for the major search engines, Especially Goggle. Today with much disappointment I have come to the realization that search engine traffic alone will not make me rich. The Search Engine Showdown If you're anything like me, you have a favourite search engine and you're loyal to it. You never use any others (which made this research difficult for yours truly), insist yours is the be-all and end-all and you even go so far as to deny any shortcomings it may have. Search Engine Indexing - 3 Strategies Guaranteed to Skyrocket Your Success In order to design a website that performs well with the search engines, it is very important to give the search engines what they want. You'll want to find out what search engines index and what they do not in order to have your pages returned as a result. Search Engines from a Webmaster Perspective By now, virtually every webmaster has heard or read that the major search engines are responsible for 80% or more of the traffic received by most web sites and that most searchers never look beyond the first 20 - 50 search results. Not surprisingly, an entire industry devoted to search engine ranking and search engine optimization (SEO) has sprung up to capitalize on these well known facts. Is This A "DMOZ Killer" In The Making? Is building a Human-Edited Fully "Democratic" Search Directory Possible?The independent creators of the non-profit "BuildtheHive" (www.BuildtheHive. Page Rank - A Quick Overview for Beginners Page Rank (PR) is a specific value for a website page given by Google. It is Google's measure of the importance of a certain site page. Are You Losing The Battle For Search Engine Traffic? Search engine traffic should be a priority for any online business and some level of optimization is apart of every effective marketing strategy.On the plus side, search engine traffic is the cream of the crop.
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