by Editor | SEO, Affiliate Marketing, Content Marketing |
In today’s net-savvy world it has become common for any business to have a website which they use mostly for advertising their products and services. With the advent of search engines, it has become even easier for the customers to search for the stuff online. For a website to be successful its link should land in the first three pages which the search engine brings and the rank of the page should be high which means many visitors come to the site. This can be achieved by applying search engine optimization or popularly known as SEO. This is a marketing strategy that increases the quality and quantity of traffic flow to a particular website via search engines.
SEO not only affects the search engine results, but also image search, video search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. It determines how a search algorithm functions and searches what is popular with people. When a website link is submitted to a search engine, a spider crawls through a page to gather links that lead to other pages and stores those pages on the server of the search engine. The information collected from these pages is sent to the indexer, whose job is to extract information from those pages such as the keywords and their weights, the location of the page and other links that are stored for the spider to crawl in the future.
In the beginning, the search engine optimizer algorithms were dependant on the keywords, Meta tags, and index files provided by the Webmaster. Meta tags provided information about a particular page, but using them for indexing the pages didn’t prove to be successful as some Webmasters added irrelevant Meta tags to increase the number of hits and earn huge ad revenue. They even changed the HTML of the web pages to achieve a good rank for the page. But this was a case of abuse as it fetched irrelevant pages.
Search engines then began utilizing complex ranking algorithms, which was difficult for webmasters to manipulate so as to provide web surfers with genuine results. The rank of the web page was calculated mathematically by functions using the strength and quantity of the inbound links. The higher the rank of the page the more chances it had to be viewed by a person. Later algorithms were developed which considered various other on-page factors such as rank and off-page factors such as hyperlink. Since the webmasters couldn’t manipulate the page rank, they began exchanging, selling and buying links, which lead to link spamming and even creation of numerous sites dedicated to this purpose.
Algorithms became more complex by every passing day and top search engines kept their algorithms a secret. As the cost of SEO increased, advertisers were roped in to pay for it, which finally resulted in high-quality web pages. Although investing in SEO is very fruitful, but at the same time is risky because without any prior notice the algorithms being used are bound to change and the search engine will stop directing visitors to the page. Many consultants are available in the market that provides SEO services. They manipulate the HTML source code of the web site like menus, shopping carts and sometimes even the content of the website to draw more traffic. Search engines like Yahoo have algorithms that extract pages not according to the page rank but according to the cost per click or set fee, that is if an advertiser desires that the page containing his ad be displayed, he is expected to pay money for it. This is a point of controversy, as only the big businesses will be able to increase the number of hits of their page but not the small business who might be having a better quality page.
Google Ad Words explores ads that have words typed in the search box by the surfer. The Million Dollar Homepage started the concept of Pixel advertising, which is a graphical kind of advertising. Depending on the pixels, space is sold to the advertiser. Keyword advertising involves advertisers who buy URLs of a site and place their ads at that location. Thus SEO is a market on its own which is yielding great results for businesses on the Internet.
by Editor | SEO, Affiliate Marketing |
Many marketers get so caught up in the stampede for traffic that they spend all their time building links. They forget that one of the most vital parts of SEO is the on-page factors.
These are not complex for you to do and are something that should be fundamental when you create a new site. WordPress is an ideal platform as it typically lends itself well to search engine optimization.
The first step is for you to ensure you have set your title tag correctly. This needs to be 64 characters in length. Any longer and it will be cut off and this will look very odd in the search engine results.
The title tag needs to tell people what your site is about in such a way to entice them into your web site. It needs to include a keyword that is specific for the page the title tag is on. Every page on your website should have its own unique title tag. You should never use the same title tag on every page.
Next, are your meta keywords and meta description. These tell the search engine spiders what your site is about. They are not massively important to the search engines, as most of them will analyze your site to see what it is really about.
These are important if you are using Adsense as without these meta tags in place, you find your Adsense ads are not focused on your niche.
The meta description is important because it appears in the search engine results. It is 150 characters for you to get people to click on your link and come to your website. You need to be concise and enticing in the same sentence.
Your meta keywords and description should also be unique for each page within your site.
Any images on your site have what is known as ALT tags. These are tags which provide an alternative description for the visually impaired. These are noticed by the search engines and can get your images ranking well. Make sure you do not attach the same keyword to too many ALT tags and add the word graphic, picture, image or something similar afterwards. This will again help tell the search engines your website is relevant for those keywords.
On top of this, you can include your keyword in the header 1 (h1) tag on your page, i.e. the title in the text. This is another indicator to the search engines that your site is important for that keyword.
Using your keyword well within the text of your page and including related keywords around it will also help your site rank.
You must make sure you do not spam or keyword stuff any of your pages because it is a surefire way to get yourself dropped from the search engine results.
By performing some simple on-page SEO optimization you can gain the advantage in the search engines. Remember that not all marketers do this, and this can put you ahead of your competition, which is vital for your profitable success.
by Editor | SEO, Affiliate Marketing |
Once you have decided to populate your website with great information through content marketing, you need to make sure people are able to find the information. The best way to do this is through Search Engine Optimization. Also known as SEO, this is a way to properly optimize your website for search engines which can bring more hits to your website via your content.
SEO is mainly accomplished using keywords throughout your articles and website. Keywords are specific words picked up by search engines when people are looking for a certain term and the more you use them, the more likely you will be placed near the top of search engine results. There are ways to see how effective your keywords are through specific tools available online.
The first of these is Google keyword analysis. You can run this program on any site you have. This tool will scan your website’s content and list all of the specific keywords contained on the site. It will appear with a rating showing how competitive the particular search is at the current time. This tool is designed to help you discover what keywords on your site are the most commonly searched to find the type of services you offer.
Another tool is called Wordtracker and it does a little more in-depth searching than the Google tool; however, it’s not free. This software works through inputting either your entire site or the individual keywords you want to use. It will then scour the net and deliver the most commonly used variations of your keywords so you know what words to add to your site to increase traffic.
Using keywords based on your website’s content is the key to having SEO be truly effective in bringing more people to you. Using keywords just because they are popular, but are not related to your content won’t bring you any traffic interested in your services or products. You can also add keywords in several ways, other than simply adding them to your content. One of the best uses of keywords is within the titles and subtitles of your pages, as well as the meta-tags of your site.
One trick is called keyword bubbles. They are a collection of your keywords, all of them, in one spot. These bubbles can be placed on every page of your content. This opens up the site to more potential search hits, which will list your site higher up on the search results pages. While bubble keywords are visually appealing and will help with your search engine rankings, the most effective way to use keywords is by including them in relevant content on your page. Bubbles of keywords that don’t relate to useful content won’t keep you in the higher search engine rankings for long.
It may take a little time and effort to get the keywords in place, but once you do, the traffic to your content will increase.
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