What is SEO? [Search Engine Optimization]

Posted on Jul 31 2012 - 6:15am by maddyacca

Introduction To SEO

When you type something in the search engine you get a results page that lists webpages possibly containing what you searched for. You and most users tend to look up the pages that appear on the top of these results as they are thought to be more accurate. The real reason however lies in the ingenuity of a marketing technique we call Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is the key that assists your webpage up the ladder of rankings better than other sites. In short it directs a lot of traffic to your website when anything related to your content is searched for.

This article specifically dedicated to SEO technique will definitely answer your queries regarding its function and how it works for search engines used extensively.

How it works?  

The obvious distinction here needs to be made more obvious that being: the one searching is human whereas the one doing the search is not near a human. Both have their own ways of looking for content. Search engines are purely text-dependent which translates into the fact of not judging a webpage by its better looks or soothing sounds. No hard feelings, in fact no feelings at all. As their ability allows, search engines scan through the web and look at websites through some of their text mainly. When they have an idea of the content, they either pick the page or leave it if not suited. This is not the only feat they perform to produce results but a list of activities likecrawling, indexing, processing, calculating relevancy, and retrieving are performed to get the final result listing.

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Crawling is the act of looking at the web content or seeing the entire content on the search made. Different engines have different names for the software that performs this task like Crawler, Spider or for Google a Googlebot. These bots go from page to page and index all the data they have gone through. Since the numbers of pages on Web are in an enormous amount of more than 20 billion, these bots might not be able to search a webpage everyday to see if the site has been updated with more content. This may leave a site unsearched for even a month or so.

To avoid such situations you first need to find out what these bots (Spiders) can view on your website. As they are not humans so they won’t see flashy stuff like images, movies, JavaScript etc. But if you have loaded your webpage with such things then they might be entirely invisible to these spiders and not be indexed or processed further. To check you might as well run theSpider Simulator.

The next step after crawling is indexing in which the page is stored in a huge database after it is assigned to keywords that best indicate the subject of the content as per the search engine. From this record the particular page can be picked later against the keywords it is assigned. Imagine the time and energy a human will have to spend to scan all that amount of data – A matter of minutes for a search engine. Being merely software it might not hit the right page but optimizing by you can help both the engine to be accurate and you:  You can achieve higher ranking.

When a user types in for a search, the search engine immediately initiates the processing. A comparison of the search text with the indexed data is done. Resultantly, millions of pages contain that search string but it is further shortlisted as the engine then calculates the relevancy of every page it processes with the search made.

You might need to change your track if you think all search engines use the same algorithm to compute the relevancy of the content. In fact, there are many with different weighting for features like links, metatags, keywords etc. That is the reason why you get different results on different engines for same search words. Major engines like Yahoo!, Google, Bing also have a tradition of regularly changing these algorithms and in the race of getting higher rankings you must keep up to them by keeping up to your SEO campaign.

Retrieving comes at the end. As the name suggests, it is merely a listing of the results in the browser you are using. The sequence from top to bottom is usually from higher to lower relevancy.

Different Engines do differ!

The underlying phenomenon is the same. There are just little differences in the principles that end up as major variations in the relevancy of a webpage. The level of importance given to each factor varies. Buzz from the SEO community has it that Bing algorithms were made as exact opposites of Google. You can imagine the dissimilarity in results.  If your target is more than one search engine then you are in for a very cautious optimization.

Varying importance to factors means something like for Bing on-page keywords are the most important whereas Google

has its eyes for links. Another example is the age of the domain, for Google the older the better concept works but Yahoo! has no such tradition. This also means your site might take more time to be finally suitable for Google than Yahoo!  Keep a look out for these little details and you will be on your way up the rankings.

10 Best SEO Techniques For 2013

Posted on Dec 25 2012 - 12:22pm by maddy acca

For every search we make, there are a number of results that are listed on the results page. Some websites are listed above others but what determines the sequence? Search Engines have a complex system called ‘algorithms’ that evaluate each site and its contents on basis of a number of different variables. Google has more than 250 of these variables. Search Engine Optimisersmake use of these variables to put their sites higher on SERP’s.

Nobody has been able to determine what exactly Google Algorithm follows to rank pages since it is the one piece of information that keeps the content original and the only information that spammers would love to get their hands on.

Then what is it that SEO workers use to make their page rank higher and succeed in doing so? Honestly, it all comes down to a lot of experience and being aware of the working trends through these years that aid these Optimisers to aim higher for the rank. Combined with these practices comes the very useful advices from more experienced SEO specialists.

The question remains, how would a new website owner or anyone for that matter find out which out of the 250 variables work for Google to rank good on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Top 10 SEO Tips 2013

1. Analyze your website

When you are struggling to get up on a list, you always have competitors working for the same goal. The most important thing to do first is keep reviewing your website. Make sure it is better than others in all aspects within your niche:

• If your website caters to a certain type of search then you need to ask yourself if your website has complete information regarding that search query.
• Also, what is it that your website offers regarding that search term than your competitors don’t have?
• Is your website trusted enough to be termed as the most reliable website for that particular area of information. Does your website have a better content quality than others? For instance, it could have more than mere text leaden pages. Probably, some supporting videos, PDF documents, images etc.
• Analyze user friendly content on your website i.e. which parts or pages from your websites are more visited than others and why?
• If you are going deep into the user analysis then you might as well check if users areattracting more traffic and is that traffic hitting back or they don’t seem to stay around for some time. If you are aiming for customers then it is important that they are interested enough to browse around.
• All the above questions are necessary for a benefitting audit for your site. If you can’t do it on your own then no need to worry. There are sites that provide SEO Audit service.

2. Keep Your Content Clean

Ensure clarity and ease of navigation through your website. Keep cleaning your site and remove the irrelevant content:

• You must follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to ensure that Google can locate, crawl through bots and put your website on a high rank accordingly. These guidelines are the most trusted source to get near Google’s analyzing variables. These will aid in improvements though technical and quality assuring guidelines.
• To make sure your website is easily accessible; get it authorized by W3C for a clear code. Since Google is always more interested in the websites that are more conveniently usable by readers who have some sort of imparity like visual limitations or dependence upon software to read websites.
• Use HTML tags using Title Tag, Meta Description, images etc. to make sure these tags have the search keywords that you are aiming to get a higher rank on the result’s page for. BE careful of over-optimizing your page by avoiding forceful addition of keywords through hidden and stuffed links. Keep it natural and needed.

3. Write a good Title & Description

SERP shows a list of results for a search query. Each result is displayed as a Title, a summarized description and the URL it can be accessed from. One of the variables Google uses for ranking is determined by how many times a particular page is clicked. This variable is called the Click-through rate (CTR).This means even if your page is displayed on the first page and it is not clicked by the searchers, Google will end up downgrading your page to a lower rank.

Users will click your page if your Title and Description are good enough:

• For the search your page is targeting, the Title and Description should be accordingly.
• Make use of Google’s helping guides like Google’s Keyword Tool to see which keywords are being actively used.
• Consider your short description and title to be the only picture of your page that reader can see as first impression.
• Inform the users about the advantages of visiting your website.
• In short whether users will click on your website depends upon the title and description of your page displayed on results page.

4. Create a natural link profile

Google is smarter than many bloggers thought it was. The recent updates in its algorithms have identified a lot of websites that had been engaged in illegal means of link building like buyingthem or being involved in link farming. If your site is also doing one of these practices then it runs the risk of being located by Google and banned to be displayed on the results page at all.

• Ensure only those links are added to your website that are actually needed for your niche.
• Keep yourself away from buying links thinking Google can be tricked to rank your page higher.
• Make sure the links that you are getting to your page are from a variety of sources and not just one place. Get some from directories, blogs and other relevant websites.
• It is always better to get links from sites that are located in the same country as yours and the place where most of your readers are located.
• The backlinks in your content should have anchor text that goes with your content. BE careful not to keep all the anchor text the same because it seems unnatural to Google. Make some of the text slightly less matching to your niche.
• Build links to only authorized and relevant websites.
• Don’t go for an overnight link building strategy. Let the process be gradual and relevant. Otherwise, Google bots will get the impression that bulk links have been purchased.

In case you are finding it difficult to analyze your link building criteria, you can always take help from tolls available online or acquire the aid of SEO professionals who are there to do the job for you. There are many experienced professionals that understand the complexities of link analyzing and building but stay aware of the sites that offer bulk links.

5.  Content plan

Previously, it wasn’t as important to have new content or be concerned with the amount users get engaged with. However, changes in algorithms have made it increasingly important to keep adding content to the site and keep tabs on the activities of users on your website since Google now takes that into consideration. In short, users should not only be visiting your site but also be interested enough to share the content.

Here are some questions you need to ask yourself:

• Do the users continue to stay on your page after clicking it?
• Do they get interested enough to share it with others?
• What is the average amount of time spent on your page by various users?
• Do they go through the entire content on your page?
• How many times is your page printed?

Google will analyze the content quality of your website on some of the above mentioned criteria. The better option is to plan ahead when it comes to content update: have a 12-months long plan to update your content according to the popular trends of the time in your niche. Add a variety of relevant stuff like blogs, articles, information updates, latest news etc.

Google Analytics gives you the service that will aid you in understanding what type of content you should have. If you are unable to get a grip of the data Google Analytics displayed, you can always ask the SEO companies to assist you with it.

6. Integrate Social Sharing

Social networking has taken over the world of internet surfing, you should make sure you are taking full advantage of this trend. Make your content easily sharable on these sites:

• The first step to link to these social networking sites is to add buttons to your blogs or services that allow the user to share the content easily.
• If majority of your readers use a selective social network then you must alos be there on that network through an interestingly engaging presence.
• The content that best describes your content or is most used by the visitors must be shared on these networks through your website’s page on that network such as Facebook, Google+ etc.
• To ad social sharing buttons to your blog you can get a lot of plugins available online such as AddThis or others.
• Professionals encourage bloggers to update or post more content every day. If your routine does not allow doing this regularly the you can use tools like Hootsuite to schedule your updates.
• Having a social media integration plan added to your content plan makes a good marketing plan to attract a target audience.

7. Marketing the content

Google bots detect the updates you make to your content but how would your readers know about the latest posts you have made? Here come your marketing strategies in. You need to inform your readers about these changes so they can read and share it on social networks. The more traffic you attract, the more natural backlinks you will receive.

• You authority on the search query you are targeting depends directly on the number of times you update the content.
• Come up with content that your readers would like to share. This will affect your ranking positively.
• Adding a resource library containing instructions, videos, images, case studies etc. would be a smart move on your part. Let your readers know about it.
• Engage in guest blogging i.e. share your content on other blogs as well.
• Add a link directing back to your blog on social networking sites. Don’t overdo it.
• The readers should be updated with the latest changes to your blog. Make an RSS for this purpose so readers can subscribe.

8. Promote the authority

Google has come up with a new variable that it gives a lot of attention to while ranking a page.AuthorRank  is the new factor that takes into consideration the individual contributors to a blog or website.

• Make an author profile of your content contributors by using author tags and attributing the specific content to specific persons depending upon their importance to your blog.
• Create a profile for the author on Google+ and link all the content posted by the author to that profile.
• Put in his Google+ profile number to the posts by the author to your page.
• Use author tags on all the other blogs as well such as guest blogging and social network sharing.
• The authority of an author consolidates with the number of posts he makes. The more, the better.
• If you can make your readers to share the author’s content more, the author Rank of that particular author will increase.

9. Create a mobi-friendly website

Reports suggest in certain areas of the world like South Africa 60% search queries are punched in through mobile devices and through social media networks on these mobile devices. With the advancements of mobile technology more users are moving towards mobile friendly websites than desktop sites and hence, their growth rate is very high comparative to desktop websites.

As per Digital Media Marketing Association of South Africa (DMMA), users had a total of 79 million page views in July 2012 through ten largest mobisites.

You must also put a thought in building a mobisite for your website:

• Avoid replicating your desktop website for creating your mobisite since users browse differently when using a mobile device. Build a mobile friendly version instead.
• Keep the information minimal and to the point. Users browse fast through mobiles and only seek the relevant piece of information.
• As much as you can, keep the page smaller and the most important content on the top so the users do not have to scroll much further down to find what they are looking for.
• For tasks that need some information from users must be kept as short and simple as possible. Users do not like to fill lengthy forms or pages to carry out the tasks they visited your website for.

10. Localize your content

Reports indicate that around 40% of the users intend to perform a locality based search query.  After typing in the search query users usually add in a postal code or geographic location to seek a local information.

For a location based business, you need to ensure that the locals of that area are the targeted traffic for your website since these people will be looking for specifics on your business for that area. Hence, you need to have a website that contains content specifically intended for that location:

• Check your location with Google Places since the first location based research is usuallyGoogle Maps results.
• To direct the results towards your website, embed Google Map for your location to your contacts page.
• Mention your full address and location information including famous buildings and street names on your contacts page.
• Add the location information in the HTML tags.
• Go for a < strong > tag for your location if you can otherwise make it bold for easy identification by Google bots and readers alike.
• Add your business in local business directories that users refer to.

Apart from these factors, there are a lot of other variables that can help your business rank high and stay on that higher rank for long. However, these are the best steps that you can utilize as you take your business to 2013, another year of successful blogging.

Best Techniques to increase your Website’s Google PageRank

Posted on Dec 16 2012 - 4:47pm by maddy acca

Search Engines place your importance according to the value of your links in their database through an algorithm that analyzes links. This is termed as PageRank.

How To Increase Google PageRank?

How Google PageRank is Calculated?

Different search engines have different algorithms to analyze your PageRank. Fundamentally, it is based upon the number and types of links linked to your site. These links can be:

• Backlinks.
• Inbound links.
• Internal links.
• External links.
• No-Follow links.
• Do-Follow links.

Google along with other major search engines have Page Ranking sites that give your page a value on a scale of 1 to 10 after analyzing your site through their algorithms. Here are 15 tips that are sure shot ways of seeing your Page Rank go up the charts.

1. High Quality Content:

The first thing to ensure is high quality content. The more your reader shares your content with other users and friends the more popular your page becomes with search engines.

2. Site Submitting:

Don’t get just any other backlink for your site. Acquire good quality backlinks that are authentic and trusted. The best way to achieve this is to share your page on various web and article directories. It is bound to aid in increasing the PageRank eventually.

Here are some directories you can look into:

• DMOZ
• Yahoo Directory
• Best Of The Web
• Ezine Articles
• Article Base
• Go Articles

3. Guest Posting:

This practice achieves two things at a time. First, you attract traffic to your page and second you get a better PageRank each time a guest makes a post that belongs to your niche. Not only this, you might also get two or more backlinks through other users posting as guests for your blog.

4. Link Exchange:

It is quite an old technique that is still highly effective. You need to get sites that already have a high PageRank to link your sites. This would again get you two benefits of the right kind of traffic and higher PageRank.

5. Keep Updating:

What Google likes best are the sites that are kept fresh i.e. they are regularly updated with new and relevant content. Thus, the more you add content on a regular basis, the more will Google bots index your site resulting in a higher page rank.

6. Commenting On Other Blogs:

Commenting is not merely a feedback you receive but also the quickest way to get backlinks for your site. As some blogging sites have plugins for comments installed like CommentLuv Plugin that adds a link to the last of each latest comment on the blog. These Do-Follow blogsmake acquiring backlinks through comments pretty straightforward.

7. Social Bookmarking:

Social networking sites are the fastest way of getting your blog recognized. Bloggers find it an opportunity never to be missed. Social Bookmarking displays your page on these sites that gets you backlinks and traffic. You may use the following sites for the purpose:

• Facebook
• Google Plus
• Squidoo
• Digg
• Hub Pages
• Stumble Upon

8. Website Accessibility:

Make sure your website isn’t unavailable or down for a longer length of time. Not only will the traffic to your page be reduced, Google also decreases your PageRank if your site continues to be down. Thus, you should always make sure your website can be accessed all the time.

9. Using Commonly Searched Keywords:

Content is searched over the internet using keywords instead of whole lengthy sentences. To make your website to be visited more, you need to use the main keywords that are searched for the content you have on your site. This will in turn result in higher PageRank.

10. Website Advertising:

Another way to make your website popular with users is to create an advertisement or a bannerand use it on various websites to achieve backlinks as well.

11. Create Multiple Pages:

Make as many pages as you can without making the information repetitive. This will make theinternal linking more strong.

12. Participate In Forums:

Forums are Google’s most favorite esp. if they are regularly updated and your blog has backlinks straight from these forums. You know what to do.

13. Using Signatures:

You can use your signatures by putting links to them and eventually add these signatures anywhere you want like in the forum or emails. Be careful not to over use these, since you can beblocked for spamming.

14. When Google Update PageRank?

Page Ranking is not a one-time practice by Google rather it is done every three to four times a year. On average Google updates your page after every three months.

15. Never Use Illegal Techniques:

Stay away from any sort of illegal means, small or big, to increase the PageRank or traffic on your blog. Google is smart enough to detect these means and if your site is detected then Google will immediately ban it. Stick to the fair means and you are bound to get your Ranks high.

7 Best SEO Techniques For Beginners

Posted on Nov 14 2012 - 2:15pm by maddy acca

It is always a challenge to start a new business for the owners regardless of what services they are going to offer or what they are trying to market. Generally, marketing via internet is the last thing that industrialists or businessmen would want to do in order to promote their businesses. Moreover, one usually comes across badly managed and organized SEO (Search Engine Optimization) campaigns that are implemented in small businesses. SEO agencies have the capacity to help you in dealing with your SEO campaign properly, it can be a good and helpful idea, if you seek their assistance in formulating your online marketing strategy. Anyways business owners should also keep the following mentioned things in their minds and these will be helpful for them in making their SEO campaigns.

Your Visitors

In any kind of SEO campaign, it becomes very important to know that what part of audience you are addressing. Hence, it becomes immensely important that you know whom you are going to address before you focus on the online marketing or product launch. There are chances that people are likely to use different keyword for your product when they are using SEO. So hereby the selection of the right keyword becomes immensely important, this will help you increase the traffic on your product marketing and is a very important factor in SEO campaign.

Selection of Keywords

The keyword that you choose for SEO campaign might not be the same that user might type in while looking for the type of product that you are trying to market, so it becomes always very important to look for the right keywords and also keep in mind the idea of keeping more than one word. A properly conducted research process before you finalize the keywords related to your products always helps.

Page connectivity for your website

A well designed website allows the user to move from one link to another very easily, so the idea of interlinking your website that allows all the relevant pages to get connected, proves to be very helpful in SEO campaigns. This will increase traffic even to least visited sections of your site and will also help your site have good domain authority and relatively better position on the search engine results.

Dynamic keywords

Once if you have chosen the right keyword that attracts desirable amount of traffic to your site,  you should not stop looking for your keywords. Search trends vary from time to time and one simply cannot be sure of the fact that one keyword will do it all for your SEO campaign from beginning until the very end. Therefore, you should always look up for other keywords that can help you increase traffic to the site.

Using social media

On longer terms the traffic on your website can be increased if you use social media as an aid in order to market your site. As more and more people will come across your site and product services on these social sites, the traffic will immensely increase and this will surely play a vital role in your SEO campaign. Facebook and Google+ are cool sites for such purposes.

Build your business through upcoming networks

Along with the launching of your business on popular and hit networks, it also becomes important to make your presence felt on upcoming social networks so that you do not have to face tough competition. This is a very helpful idea that helps you expand your business a lot.

Content is King

Focusing on domain authority and website traffic does not do it all, you would also find it important to create original content on your page. There are few SEO companies that specifically focus on attracting potential clients to your page, but at the same time, it is also important to maintain visitors on your page with the aid of original content. Feasible ideas are that you can include weekly blogs or community activities that can immensely help you in keeping the audience engaged on your site.