SEO Articles

1.How to Write a Better Web Page Title

Titles are everywhere. Some people are defined by titles, some people loathe titles, and others like giving titles. Why do we do this? With so much information getting processed by our minds everyday, we need a way to categorize these groups of associated content in a quick referencing way.

This is the same methodology a search engine applies when it crawls a page. When you title a page, you are telling a search engine or user what the page is supposed to be about. We've all seen the one sentence summaries of television shows on the T.V. Guide. It allows for quick referencing and decision making by telling us what the show is going to be about. This is part of the reason why naming your page titles is so critical to getting your site ranked. I can't tell you how many times I have seen a site that had one of the following two titles throughout the entire site: "untitled" or "company name". While having the company name on all the pages could be a potential branding strategy, chances are, most visitors to your site don't know your brand name yet and are looking for the product or service that you're selling. You could incorporate the company name into the title, but it should be placed after the main message you want to convey about that particular page. Every page should have a unique title. While you may have a subject that needs to be explained over a few pages, you should use the page title as an index of information for the reader. Sites that sell multiple products should have a unique title for every product. If you can't make the time to make each page stand out, why would you expect that page to ever appear in a search engine?

If possible, you should try to place your keywords in the title, since this will help the search engine determine where your page should be ranked. Remember, the search engines rank each page individually, that's why it's so important to use proper naming methods.

When you determine which keywords to use, go for a 4 to 6 word title when possible. After 58 characters, the title in the search engine results page will be truncated and will not be visible to the reader. Also, the longer the title, the less weight is given to each word.

The entire time you are conjuring up titles, always keep the reader in mind first. While some phrases may rank well in the search engines, a reader may never enter that phrase and you'll lose that targeted traffic you were trying to reach. Sometimes the phrases work out well for both the user and search engine, and in those cases success is usually quick to follow.

2.How Google Indexes Your Site

First off, let's describe what we are talking about. A "bot" is a piece of software from a search engine that is built to go through every page of your site, categorize it, and place it into a database.

Google has three well known bots: The Adsense bot, the Freshbot and the DeepCrawl.

The Adsense bot, as you could probably guess, is used for publishers who have Adsense on their sites. As soon as a new page is created, the JavaScript within the Adsense code sends a message to the Adsense bot, and it will come within 15 minutes to index the page so that it can serve up the most relevant ads.

But, for this conversation we are only concerned about the DeepCrawl and the Freshbot.

The Freshbot crawls the most popular pages on your website. It doesn't matter if that is one page or thousands. Sites like Amazon.com and CNN.com have pages that are crawled every ten minutes, since Google has learned that those pages have that amount of frequent changes. A typical site should expect to have a freshbot visit every 1 to 14 days, depending on how popular those pages are. What happens to your site on a Freshbot visit is that it finds all of the deeper links in your site. It places those links into a database so that when the DeepCrawl occurs, it has a reference. Once a month, the DeepCrawl bot visits your site and goes over all the links found by the Freshbot. This is the reason why it can take up to a month for your entire site to be indexed in Google - even with the addition of a Google Sitemap.

So, be patient and keep on adding content to your site, and work on getting valuable in-bound links to your site - Google will reward you for it.

3.Using Search Engine optimisation effectively

Search Engine optimisation can change your business forever. It can mean the difference between having a website and having a successful website. A good search engine optimisation plan can bring your website some much needed life into it. A website that has used search engine optimisation properly will not only be much easier to find but it will also make your website faster as well as smarter and to top it off a lot more profitable than before. You need a search engine optimisation plan that focuses on certain keywords within your website and makes your website easier to see for the search engines. Making your site better with search engine optimisation has a huge wealth of all kinds of advantages. To start with and the most important factor is that it increases your visibility within then search engines; this then in turn makes your website more accessible to clients and relevant traffic. The term search engine optimisation is the sometimes complicated but if done right simple process of making your website search engine friendly. It does this is two ways; in a technical manner and in a content manner as well. Usually making your website more search engine friendly includes a few things that need to be done. A search engine optimisation plan would have to include the changing of your title tags and Meta tags within the website. Also the template of your website can have a factor on your search engine optimisation plan and so can the navigation. Where your titles are concerned within your website they can be very effective within your search engine optimisation plan. Your title tag only needs to have your main keyword within it. This will make it more effective within the search engines. Every page on your website can have a title tag; make them as relevant to that particular page as you can. You are trying to optimise your website and make it fit entirely within your niche. Do not be tempted to put catchy phrases or gimmicks within the title tag. Make it as clean as possible and make it relevant, doing this properly will ensure that your search engine optimisation plan is going to succeed in the long run. Moving on from the title tags and onto keywords; you have to have relevant and useful keywords for your website. Think about it logically; what would you search for in a search engine if you were looking for similar services or products? Instead of just having keywords, try using key phrases as well. This will benefit your search engine optimisation plan hugely. When you have decided on your keywords then you need to incorporate them into your text. The text on your website should be relevant to the products or the services that you are going to offer and make sure you fit plenty of keywords into the text you write. Search engine optimisation plans that are successful are more or less purely based on keywords and key phrases; this is why they are so important to get right. You should always add new information onto your website on a regular basis; not only will this help your search engine optimisation plan but it will also keep your clients and customers happy and informed of new products and services etc.

Optimizing Flash Sites

If there is a really hot potato that divides SEO experts and Web designers, this is Flash. Undoubtedly a great technology to include sounds and picture on a Web site, Flash movies are a real nightmare for SEO experts. The reason is pretty prosaic – search engines cannot index (or at least not easily) the contents inside a Flash file and unless you feed them with the text inside a Flash movie, you can simply count this text lost for boosting your rankings. Of course, there are workarounds but until search engines start indexing Flash movies as if they were plain text, these workarounds are just a clumsy way to optimize Flash sites, although certainly they are better than nothing.
What (Not) to Use Flash For?
Despite the fact that Flash movies are not spider favorites, there are cases when a Flash movie is worth the SEO efforts. But as a general rule, keep Flash movies at a minimum. In this case less is definitely better and search engines are not the only reason. First, Flash movies, especially banners and other kinds of advertisement, distract users and they generally tend to skip them. Second, Flash movies are fat. They consume a lot of bandwidth, and although dialup days are over for the majority of users, a 1 Mbit connection or better is still not the standard one. Basically, designers should keep to the statement that Flash is good for enhancing a story, but not for telling it – i.e. you have some text with the main points of the story (and the keywords that you optimize for) and then you have the Flash movie to add further detail or just a visual representation of the story. In that connection, the greatest SEO sin is to have the whole site made in Flash! This is is simply unforgivable and do not even dream of high rankings! Another "No" is to use Flash for navigation. This applies not only to the starting page, where once it was fashionable to splash a gorgeous Flash movie but external links as well. Although it is a more common mistake to use images and/or javascript for navigation, Flash banners and movies must not be used to lead users from one page to another. Text links are the only SEO approved way to build site navigation.

The Role of Link Baiting in SEO

Link baiting is an important component of SEO and can spell the difference in the effectiveness of an SEO strategy. While some people consider it a somewhat underhanded practice, it is simply a more creative method of building links.
Link baiting drives SEO results as this is a speedy and easy method of building links. It gets your website the attention it needs as more and more people learn about what you have to offer. If your link bait is clever enough, people will continue referring your links to others – and this is really akin to having other people do your work for you at no cost! Of course, an increase in traffic volume may potentially lead to higher profits.
For link baiting to contribute considerably to your SEO strategy, remember that your website must have a strong backbone and that backbone comes in the form of superior quality content.

Optimizing for MSN

SEO experts often forget that there are three major search engines. While there is no doubt that Google is the number one with the most searches and Yahoo! manages to get about a quarter of the market, MSN has not retired yet. It holds about 10-15 percent of the searches (according to some sources even less – about 5%) but it has a loyal audience that can't be reached through the other two major search engines, so if you plan a professional SEO campaign, you can't afford to skip MSN. In a sense getting high rankings in MSN is similar to getting high rankings for less popular keywords – because competition is not that tough you might be able to get enough visitors from MSN only in comparison to the case when you have optimized for a more popular search engine. Although optimizing for MSN is different from optimizing for Google and Yahoo!, there are still common rules that will help you to rank high in any search engine. As a rule, if you rank well in Google, chances are that you will rank well in Yahoo! (if you are interested in the tips and tricks for optimizing for Yahoo!, you want to have a look at the Optimizing for Yahoo! Article) and MSN as well. The opposite is not true, however. If you rank well in MSN, there is no guarantee that you'll do the same in Google. So, when you optimize for MSN, keep an eye on your Google ranking as well. It's no good to top MSN and be nowhere in Google (the opposite is more acceptable, if you need to make the choice). But why is this so? The answer is simple - the MSN algorithm is different and that is why, even if the same pages were indexed, the search results will vary. The MSN Algorithm As already mentioned, it is the different MSN algorithm that leads to such drastic results in ranking. Otherwise, MSN, like all search engines, first spiders the pages on the Web, then indexes them in its database and after that applies the algorithm to generate the pages with the search results. So, the first step in optimizing for MSN is the same as for the other search engines – to have a spiderable site. (Have a look at Search Engine Spider Simulator to see how spiders see your site). If your site is not spiderable, then you don't have even a hypothetical chance to top the search results. There is quite a lot of speculation about the MSN algorithm. Looking at the search results MSN delivers, it is obvious that its search algorithm is not as sophisticated as Google's, or even Yahoo!'s and many SEO experts agree that the MSN search algorithm is years behind its competitors. So, what can you do in this case? Optimize as you did for Google a couple of years ago? You are not far from the truth, though actually is is not that simple. One of the most important differences is that MSN still relies heavily on metatags, as explained below. None of the other major search engines uses metatags that heavily anymore. It is obvious that metatags give SEO experts a great opportunity for manipulating search results. Maybe metatags are the main reason for the inaccurate search results that MSN often produces. The second most important difference between MSN and the other major search engines is their approach to keywords. Well, for MSN keywords are very, very important, too, but unlike Google, for MSN onpage factors are dominating, while offpage factors (like backlinks for example), are still of minor importance. Well, it is a safe bet that the importance of backlinks will be changed in the future but for now they are not a primary factor for high rankings. Keywords, Keywords, Keywords It is hardly surprising that keywords are the most important item for MSN. What is surprising is that MSN relies too much on them. It is very easy to fool MSN – just artificially inflate your keyword density, put a couple of keywords in file names (and even better – in domain names) and around the top of the page and you are almost done for MSN. But if you do the above-mentioned black hat practices, your joy of topping MSN will not last long because, unless you provide separate pages that are optimized for Google, your stuffed pages might pretty well get you banned from Google. If you decide to have separate pages for Google and MSN, first, it it hardly worth the trouble, and second, the risk of duplicate content penalty can't be ignored. So, what is the catch? The catch is that if you try to polish your site for MSN and stuff it with keywords, this might get you into trouble with Google, which certainly is worse than not ranking well in MSN. But if you optimize wisely, it is more likely than not that you will rank decently in Google and perform well in Yahoo! and MSN as well. Metatags Having meaningful metatags never hurts but with MSN this is even more important because its algorithm still uses them as a primary factor in calculating search results. Having well-written (not stuffed) metatags will help you with MSN and some other minor search engines, while at the same time well-written metatags will not get you banned from Google. The Description metatag is very important: MSNBot reads its content and based on that (in addition to keywords found on page) judges how to classify your site. So if you leave this tag empty (i.e. CONTENT=""), you have missed a vital chance to be noticed by MSN. There is no evidence that MSN uses the other metatags in its algorithm that is why leaving the Description metatag empty is even more unforgivable.

Six Ways of Increasing Your Google Page Rank

There are several ways you can increase Google page rank - several techniques can be used to get that highly coveted #1 spot in Google search. But first, what is page rank?

The Google page rank tells you how important a website is. It tells you how many sites are linked to another website. Page rank is denoted by the number 0 to 10 and the higher the number, the more important the site is.

The algorithm used by Google to compute the site page rank is highly confidential but we already have an idea on the different factors that they count. Some say it is the website link popularity that matters most. Others say content is also a big factor. There are others still who say that it's not simply the number of links that matters but also the relevancy of each link. For example, if your niche is "music production" and the links to your site comes from real estate site, you might not get a high page rank from Google because your links are not relevant.

Now that you understand what page rank is, let's discuss: how do you increase page rank?

There are a number of ways but here are several of them. First, you can join forums related to your niche. Make sure to put your own signature that has a link to your site. This way, every post you make is counted as a separate link and can help increase you website's link popularity. This also helps build your presence on the web - the more people who sees your site, the greater your chances are of having a regular stream of visitors.

Second, submit your site to directories. This is a good move as most of these directory submission sites are free. Third, you can also create articles and submit them to article directories. You can be a guest writer at a high traffic site and have a resource box at the end promoting your website.

Another method you can use to bring in targeted traffic is to buy text links from sites, which has a high number of visitors. This way, when people see the link embedded on an article, get curious, and clicks on the link, you get visitors redirected to your site! The more web text link you buy from a site, the greater your website link popularity will be! Sure, some of the visitors you receive might not purchase from your site, but the greater number of visitors to your site increases the chances of having a successful sale! Aside from this, once you build your authority on the web, this time it is the other sites, which will by web text link from you!

So you see, to increase page rank means you open new options for your site to earn income. It also allows you greater freedom since you can build high website link popularity from your home. If you own a site and do not have the time to do this yourself, there are Internet marketing professionals who can do it for you. No matter what you choose, only one thing remains - increase Google page rank and you increase your income.

significance of Sitemaps

There is many SEO tips and tricks that help in optimizing a site but one of those, the importance of which is sometimes underestimated is sitemaps. Sitemaps, as the name implies, are just a map of your site - on one single page you show the structure of your site, its sections, the links between them, etc. Sitemaps make navigating your site easier and having an updated sitemap on your site is good both for your users and for search engines.

Although you can still go without a sitemap, it is likely that soon sitemaps will become the standard way of submitting a site to search engines. Though it is certain that spiders will continue to index the Web and sitemaps will not make the standard crawling procedures obsolete, it is logical to say that the importance of sitemaps will continue to increase.

What is Link Popularity?

The theory goes something like this: The search engine Powers That Be have decided that if other sites are linking to your site, it must be a winner; therefore, it deserves a boost in rankings (when all else is equal). If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. People link to good sites, not bad ones.