Saturday, December 29, 2007

Search Engines Vs. Basic Meta Tags

Meta Tags serves as Official Documentation of web site. There was time when Meta Tags were given special attention, weight-age as part of Web site Optimization.. but nowadays trend has been completely changed.

On one side of Internet Marketing; Spammers keep on implementing Black hat SEO tricks to play with major search engines while on other hand Google guys keep on refining their Algorithm to give complete Fight back to beat these Spammers.

So this is all about Search Engines and Spammers & in between comes real SEO guys those work hard according to Google guidelines and optimize websites for stable longer length. Any ways come to point I was talking about Meta Tags.

Nowadays most of the Major Search Engines do not give any special attention or preference to them. They no-longer have significant effect on website's SERPs or Rankings, there are hundreds of other activities that plays vital role while doing On page Optimization like: Titles, Proper use of H tags, Website Navigation Architecture, Bold,Italic Fonts, Font Size and so on..

WHY SEARCH ENGINES DO NOT CARE ABOUT META TAGS?

This question is quite interesting and most of people who are new to SEO or have less knowledge they are surprised when they come to know that SEs don't bother about Meta Tags any more.

Meta Keyword: This tag is meant for putting your unique keywords related to content of your web page. Or they just give fair idea about the whole content of your web page, and search engines can have idea: "what this particular page is all about".

BUT what most of people start doing, they started using this tag tag as a source of their web page promotion in unethical way .


Most of spammers use to stuff this Tag with most competitive keywords for their web-site without regard to available content on web page Without regard to length of this Tag.

Some keep on stuffing same keywords with multiple repetitions to Meta Keyword Tag so that they will cheat search engine spiders and will rank well for those keywords.

By the time Google detected all these kind unethical promotional activities so nowadays they started neglecting Meta Keyword Tag. So this Tag can be neglected.

Meta Description:
This Tag gives abstract of Web page so that visitors cn have fair view : what this page is all about. This tag still has some importance as most of search engines use content available in this tag as Snippet and same is mostly displayed on SERPs.

BUT again most of people stuff this tag with their competitive keywords that doesn't even make any sense, without considering or bothering about recommended length of this Tag and tries to cheat search engines.


If you have unique and quality content on your site then you can even ignore this tag because search engines will pick automatically most relevant content from your web page that matches the Query entered by users. So this tag can also be neglected.

Meta Title: This tag acts as Identity for web-page, gives clue about the whole discussion of page or purpose of web page. Google displays Title Attribute of page as title in SERPs, please remember here I'm talking about Title Attribute of Web Page and not Meta Title Tag.

If you have prepared well defined and appropriate Page Title attribute then there is no need to put this Meta title tag on you web site.

Mostly people keep Meta title Tag and Title attribute of web page exactly same, and they should be. Search Engine gives preference to Title Attribute but not to Meta Title Tag of web page..so again this tag can also be neglected.

So if you are going to start On page Optimization for any site i would recommend do not waste your time on preparing these Meta Tags instead work hard on refining your Industry keywords, Build Powerful, unique Quality Content and utilize your time on improving rest of On page factors for your web site that will give you worth results than these Meta Tags.


Thanks
SEO & Internet Marketing Specialist

Thursday, December 27, 2007

Placing Appropriate Files on Root Directory...

Here we will cover files that are required to uploaded at Root Directory of web site and how these are helpful in SEO. We will discuss Robots.txt, URLlist.txt, info.txt and sitemap.XML.

Sitemap
Site-map acts an abstract part of your web site just like index of book. It contains all the websites pages URLs and can exist in different format like: XML, Text or HTML site-map.
Each has its own purpose some are meant for search engines and other are meant for human visitors.
Like XML and Text site-maps are best suited for Google and Yahoo search engines for better indexing of your web site.
HTML Site-maps are created in perfect attractive way so that any visitor can find out any web page on your site easily, these graphical site-maps contains all the pages of your site or you can say entire navigation of your whole website is placed here Human friendly format for visitors ease to navigate throughout website.
  1. Sitemap.xml:- An xml sitemap has following basic information:
URL
Location: www.Domain.com
Priority: 0 to 1.0
Date: 2007-10-05T16:16:09+00:00
Change Frequency: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly

We can create them manually or one can use various on line tools available to generate them. Once you have done with xml sitemap file upload it at root directory of web site.
Perfect sitemaps helps to acieve fast indexing of your web site.

2. URLlist:- This text file includes all the urls available in particular website in text format. Sometimes also reffered as textual site-map of web site. Yahoo gives special intention to this text site-map deep indexing your web site.
You can create it manually by inserting one URL per line in text file or take help of online free tools. Again upload this file urllist.txt on Root directory of site.

3. Robots.txt:- This text file is specially meant for Spiders and mostly includes the various areas of your website that you don't want to get crawled by the various spiders or search engines.
File consist of different commands/instruction that will instruct Spiders to crawl your website.
Like if you have done some redirect then you can put specific code here in this file to indicate spiders to crawl redirected page.
You can allow spiders to crawl your site-map through robots.txt by placing following code in file:

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

This file robots.txt is also uploaded on Root directory of site.

4. Info.txt:- This text file includes very basic information about your website. Like :
url:
site_owner:
address:
city:
state:
country:
postal_code:
phone_number:
display_email:
site_name:
Title:
site_description:

This file is also uploaded on Root directory of site.


Thanks
SEO & Internet Marketing Specialist

SEO Hats

SEO HATS
In SEO world we used to come around this term different types of SEO hats.

Firstly we must know what does Hats means?

The Hats are really just a means to force to think about the different aspects of a problem. They categorized by Coloured Hats, with the colour being symbolic for the approach/aspect of thinking about now. Think of them as the modes of attacking a problem.


So what are the six hats?

The White Hat: symbolizing facts and hard data.
The Red Hat: symbolizing emotions. Here we start making hypotheses about what's going on, but only on an emotional level.
The Black or Gray Hat: which is the color of a judge’s robe? Think negatively and critically here.
The Yellow Hat: where we talk about sunny, happy, positive things.
The Green Hat: where you let your mind roams wide and free in endless pastures looking for solutions. Here is when you relax and explicitly think about solutions, ideally using a creative idea generation technique.
The Blue Hat: your sky-high big-picture view of the problem. Think in wider way.

White Hat SEO:

All the tips that comes under Google Web master Guidelines and that I have discussed in first post about
ON and OFF page Optimization are called White Hat SEO techniques.

Black Hat SEO:

What is Black Hat SEO?

It may be defined as the techniques that are used to get higher search engine rankings in an unethical manner. So anything that the search engine forbids us from doing like doorway pages, cloaking, and hidden text is Black Hat SEO.

Blackhat SEO Techniques

Hidden Text: - Hidden text is textual content which your visitors can't see but still readable by Search Engine. It can be done by making font color as same as background color or making font color as same as background image.

Keyword Stuffing:- is a technique used to spam search engines by placing excessive or irrelevant keywords in the meta keywords tag or throughout the content of the page. Because search engines scan web pages for the words that are entered into search criteria by the user.

Landing Pages/Doorway Pages/Bridge Pages :- It may be define as the fake pages that the user will never see. Doorway pages are pages packed with keywords, and designed solely for the search engines. It is an attempt to trick search engines into indexing the site higher.

Cloaking:- It is a technique in which the content presented to the search engines is different from that present to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on IP address of the user requesting the page. When a user is defined as search engine spider, a server side script delivers a different version of web page. It is use to deceive the search engine. Actually what happens it is a CGI script which reads the IP address of the requester against the IP address of the SE spiders. If no match is found then requester is identified as “human”. The point is that highly optimized web pages are served to SE while human visitors get a different web page from the same url.

Link Farming:-
The process of exchanging reciprocal links with websites in order to increase Search Engine Rankings. This is done just to increase the number of sites that links to yours site, but it is consider as SPAM. Because Google says we have to exchange links only with the site that are having relevant theme as same as our site and a link page doesn't contain more then 50 links.

Page Hijacking:- It is the form of spamming the index of search engine. Mostly web hosts do it, when we forget to renew our domain name. It is achieved by creating a rough copy of a popular website which shows content similar to the original website to a web crawler but redirects the web surfers to the unrelated or malicious website. Link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon and buy them when they expire and replace the pages with the links to their pages.

Automated Search Engine Submission Software:- We don't have to use such softwares for the promotion purpose. They don't work efficiently and sometime they caused for banning the website. We don't have to rely on them.

Duplicate Content:- To use the same content on different pages, Google consider it as spam and if it detects large amount of duplicate content on different sub or main domains then Google can impose “Duplicate Content Penalty” which results in losing rankings. So we should put different meaningful content at our pages and on sub domains also.

Content Solely For Search Engines:- Don't publish any content that is meant for search engines only. Content rich in keyword density not useful for human beings and it is easily detected by Google and other search engines which results in penalties. Therefore we always have to write content firstly for humans and then for crawlers and robots.

Frames:- Though frames are not “Black Hat SEO” but frames should be avoided as they cause huge problem with crawlers to index the site.

Email Spamming:-
Unwanted, unsolicited email, to send the emails to number of people not directly related to SEO is called email spamming.


Hence these are the major Black Hat SEO Techniques. These techniques gives short term results and lead to the banning of site. So we should never implement such techniques.

Difference Between Black Hat and White Hat SEO

  • Black Hat SEO is meant for SE only. while white hat is meant for human visitors.
  • These techniques are hidden to human beings and white hat techniques are visible to human beings.
  • It is meant for short term results only. and this is meant for long term results.
  • These methods are unethical ways of optimizing the site and these methods are ethical ways according to SE norms.
  • these may result in getting site banned and these always brings good search engine rankings.
  • SE are enemies for Black Hat SEO & here SE's are friends for White Hat SEO techniques.


Thus always go for White Hat SEO Techniques, which makes your site search engine friendly and completes the motive of making a website.


Thanks
SEO & Internet Markeitng Specialist

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

SEO From Scratch...

SEO

Technical Definition of SEO?

Short for search engine optimization, the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user.

SERPs :- Search Results are also reffered as SERPs (Search engine Result Pages).

Classification of SEO:

  1. ON Page Optimization
  2. OFF Page Optimization


ON Page Optimization:- On Page involves the various activities that can be performed to your site itself.On-page optimization involves : (everything from top of the page to end bottom)

a. URL changes like converting dynamic Urls (which include query string like ? , & these characters can be present there ) to static HTML based urls , these static urls are also known SE friendly URLS.

b. Modify Title,try to include most Competitive Keyword in title as this the only One element that is considered very seriously by SE's. And helps in Better SERPs.

c. Prepare Appropriate Meta Tags.

The limits are as specified:
Title tag = 80 characters (including spaces)
Meta Keyword tag = 256 characters (Including spaces)
Meta Description tag = 156 characters (Including spaces)

d. Content of the Page Should be SE friendly means your targeted keywords should be present in content of your page.

e. Proper Use of h Tags..Like use H1 for main Headings , h2 for Sub heading , h3...and so on... Hierarchy should be correct as this is considered as SE friendly.

f. Avoid HTML Frames which some search engines find hard to navigate, use Style Sheets (CSS) instead.

g. Description of Image
Optimize Image alternate-text tags (ALT tags), For every image on page try to describe it properly so that visitors should understand from image itself what this is all about..and if possible utilise your keywords here by properly embedding them in ALT tags.

h. Keep pages to less than 100 kilobytes and preferably not much more than a screen full of text.

i. Avoid Javascript and Flash as maximum as possible coz SE doest like them they like on Simple HTML Format.

j. Search engines also like fresh content and will spider this more frequently. A regularly updated news page, even a blog, can provide deep links to the rest of the website.

k. You should take care of Keyword Density : the ratio of the number of occurrences of a particular keyword or phrase to the total number of words in a page.
You should not dense any Keyword to much in a page otherwise that will be considered as Spam.

l. Keep the no. of outbound links on a page not more that 50 -60 and those should related to theme of your site.

In Short ON Page Summarizes:

  • Keyword Density

  • Words in Title Tag

  • Words in the Page

  • Words in Links

  • Words in Headings

  • Words in Bold

  • Beginning Words

  • Words in URL

  • Meta Tags (some engines)

  • HTML Validation

  • Link Structure

  • "Indexability" of the page

  • and Hundreds of Other Factors


OFF Page Optimization: Involves various activities that will be performed off line that mean you do not have to perform anything on your site itself.


1. Link Building :- (Reciprocal and One Way)

Classification of Links:

A. Inbound Links:- When someone has placed a link in his site, that when clicked, points to our site is called Inbound link . That mean its coming to us from some one.

B. Outbound Links:- When we will place a link in our site, that when clicked, will point to some other site is called Outbound link.

Back links:- Back links are "the most" important thing in search engine ranking. This is for the sole reason that search engines consider each Back links as a "vote" to your site. The greater the number of votes, the higher your ranking. The number and quality of Back links if by far the most important ranking factor in Google.

Back links can be further classified into the following:

Authority Links: Link from the theme related authority site.

Directory Links: Directory links refer to the links that are obtained from directories. Directory links are also important for search engine rankings as they are more relevant and themed links.

The main directories that one should strive to get links from are Dmoz.org and Yahoo Directory. These two directories have the highest authority and links from these helps a lot to improve ones search engine rankings.

DMOZ:- Directory Mozilla is also called personnel directory of Google.

If your site gets listed in this Directory then this can really have very good serious fact on your Google SERPs.

Reciprocal Links: Reciprocal link exchange is the best strategy for any new site to gain back links. In this type of link building, you get a link from a site in return of a link from your site to theirs.

Nowadays Google Devalues these Reciprocal that is the reason you can see most of clients prefer One Way Link only.

Paid Links: Paid links or Run of Site links refer to all those links that you have bought. Such links are heavily devalued by Google and you should refrain from getting such links as they might hurt your site's trust rank and quality score.

One Way Links:- When Someone has listed your site and has given you back link but you have not given back link from the primary , instead you have given Back Link (BL) from some third party site or directory is called one way link. One-way links are valued highly by search engines.

The entire process is called One Way Link Building.

3 way Link OR Triangular Links:- These are also an sort of one way links with a little distinction that here you will not give (Back Link)BL from directory but from some theme relevant site. Consider this example:

Site A:- education
Site B:- education
Site C:- education

Now A and B site are your and you want to exchange link for your site A with C.
What you need is that C should place your link and in return you will give BL from B (mind it not from A)

This type of link is called 3 way link and the entire process is called 3 way link building.


2. Article Submission:- Articles are the one of the important source of obtaining One way links and they also help to make your site content relevant.
->You can write a well formatted Article related to theme of your site and you can embed your targeted keywords in this. For most competitive keywords you can perform repetition.
->You can embed Hyper links for your site inside the Article under various Heading starting with new paragraph.
->You can embed Hyper links for your competitive Keywords As Well.
Once the Article is ready you can submit it to various Article Submission Sites that are available free online. Once your article is submitted , it will take some time to get approved by moderator so keep checking after 5-7 days regularly to see when your article gets published .

3. Press Release:- A public relations announcement issued to the news media and other targeted publications for the purpose of letting the public know of company developments.
->You can Participate in press releases which is again a source of obtaining One Way links.
->Rest procedure is same as Article Submission.

4. Anchor Texts:- Anchor text is the text that is hyper linked while linking to a site.(When you ll click on Anchor text it will take to you to a site that address u will mention).
Keywords present in anchor texts are heavily valued by search engines for ranking that site against that keyword/ key phrase.
It is advised that one should use variations in their anchor texts so as to make the back links look natural to Google. If Google sees that all the back links have the same anchor text then it might devalue some links thinking them to be unnatural or paid links. Using variations in the anchor text also increases the chances for ranking for additional keywords.
So make sure that you use an anchor text which at the same time contain your targeted keyword and is compelling enough for the visitors to click on it. Remember, we build back links not only for search engine benefit, but also for traffic, so an anchor text should be keyword rich and smart.
Anchor texts should be specific to an individual page and should be relevant to the page content as well. This relevance helps to increase the trust rank and also the quality score of your linked page.

5. Classified Ads :- Classified ads are the most Popular sites that include the vast range of topics or categories listed in them and public used to post their theme relevant Ads here.
They helps to achieve huge amount of traffic towards your site.

http://www.adlandpro.com
http://www.ezilon.com
http://olx.com

These are the few examples of the Classified ads Site's. And you can Post Free of Cost here.

6. Discussion Forums:- Where Public used to come with their variety of Problems ad used to discuss here for finding appropriate help.

SEOCHAT is one of the most informative and useful site available to get vast knowledge and to achieve success.
In Discussion Forums you can put link to your site under the Signatures that will be posted(at the end of the post) each time you will participate in any discussion .
As these Forums keeps on getting new content every day by thousand of people as they submit their queries these forums keeps on crawling frequently by Search Engines so if you have placed a link to your site under your signatures that will also be get crawled each time and will help in Better SERPs.

7. Advertisement in Social Media and Big Business Portals:- Getting Advertise your business in major business and shopping portals also helps to achieve popularity.
Social Networking sites also plays the same role.

Digg.com Page Rank: 8
Digg.com is a good site for news article marketing. We can upload videos and podcasts. For working with this site we have to create an account. After creating account we will have to submit URL of our blog website along with user name password. After submitting required information we can start uploading news article, videos and pod casts. We can get good traffic for the site

Squidoo.com Page Rank: 7
Squidoo is good site for making free blog. We can publish our articles in blogs that will link to our site. We can get traffic from this site. Our websites page rank will also be affected in some positive manner as squidoo's page rank is good.

hubpages.com Page Rank: 5
Hubpages.com, a good site here you can easily publish information on a topic you love to write about. Some good topics are Business, Supports, technology, travel etc.

ning.com Page Rank: 7
Ning.com is a social networking site. From following features we can have benefits:

  • Create blog posts with photos, files, and moods.
  • Manage blog posts and moderate comments.
  • Choose the option to publish in the future.
  • Members can customize their own pages.
  • A profile question section where you write the questions.
  • A member "chatterwall" for others to leave chatters.
  • Option to add widgets to profile page.
  • Member photos and videos.
43things.com Page Rank: 7
43things.com, allow us to make Free blog to publish our own articles that link with our site.

advogato.org Page Rank: 7
The site allow us to publish articles. After having an account we can publish articles.

mallworld.net Page Rank: 5
The site allows us for publish press releases and article. Basically it is a community site; we can share our views with others.


Thanks
SEO & Internet Marketing Specialist