Archive for September, 2009

The Best White Hat SEO Techniques

September 25, 2009 @ 9:12 am posted by John Brython

If you intend to be a hero or the good guy in search engine optimization, you should only use white hat tactics. There are certain limitations to the approach in the beginning, but you can be sure that your reputation stays stable for the long term. People will refer to your company more as a reliable source of products and information. You can get to your target market without having to resort to unacceptable means. Here are some useful tips.

The Use of Links

Internal linking is one of the easiest methods to help make your web site more visible to search engines. A lot of web sites use a type of script to enable fancy drop-down navigation and other complicated functions, thereby keeping search engines from crawling on the scripts easily. Your pages can become unindexed as a result.

The effects can boost the visual appearance of your web site, but you have to be concerned about staying visible too, or else there will only be a very limited number of people who can appreciate the work. You can add text links and link internally to improve spidering to your web site because of the sophisticated scripts. You can put text links at the bottom or at your homepage that links all main internal pages. Also include a site map to all internal pages.

Reciprocate

You should also start swapping links with other webmasters to have additional links leading back to your web site. The value of reciprocal linking has reduced over the past several months, but you can still expect good quality traffic by investing in the approach. When you build reciprocal links, make sure that you only place these in areas where you target market will most likely be lingering. Link to sites that are highly related to your own and sites that have good content that your target market will be interested in. It is a risk to place links in sites that have been penalized.

The Content

Content creation is highly different from doorway pages and the like. You have to make good quality and unique content that will grab the attention of your potential clients, thereby boosting value to the site and your reputation and credibility as well. The more content-rich the site is, the higher its value will be to search engines and human visitors.

You can invest in professional writers and ghost writers to update the content of your page every now and then. This is a good strategy in becoming a good resource in the industry. Having good content also means that you get to display keywords that will lead more people into the site through search engines.

You can post articles, blogs and posts in forums, blog sites and discussion boards online. People will want to read your works if these are related to their chosen topic. You can also build links back to your web site without having to reciprocate the deed.

Boosting the Site

Manipulating the content, site structure and words can improve the ranking of your web site in search engines. You should make solid meta tags and titles to boost SEO. The optimization attempt should not go far from the main message and content quality contained in the web site. Always include the potential to sell and the quality of articles to maximize exposure on search engines.

The White Hat SEO

September 24, 2009 @ 9:12 am posted by John Brython

SEO approaches are divided into two namely white hat and black hat SEO. White hatters are known to follow the stringent guidelines in driving potential visitors into web sites. They also abhor the methods used by black hatters and try to find more ways to avoid problems in searches and page rankings. White hat SEO can be very effective, even if you are not allowed to use some techniques. Here are some more details about the type.

Definition of White Hat

White hat SEO is known as the good or the hero in online marketing. It is also called “the good guy” among webmasters. The individuals who practice white hat methods are penetration testers and ethical hackers who aim to maintain the security and protection among IT systems. The ethical hackers are generally computer security experts, who ensure that information systems of different sites and companies are kept safe.

They use testing methods and other penetration practices and drills to keep black hat practitioners away. The professionals may also be called sneakers. Groups of the individuals are referred to as red teams or tiger teams. The security specialists can use different methods to perform various tests, like social engineering tactics, attempts to avoid security and gain entry to protected areas and the use of hacking equipment and tools. Defensive teams are called blue teams, while red teams are the aggressor teams.

More on SEO

In SEO or search engine optimization, both white hat and black hat have been applied widely. Black hat SEO methods include spamdexing, wherein search results are redirected to different target pages. The approach is highly against the rules and stipulations of search engines. White hat methods strictly follow the rules and guidelines given by search engines to ensure that internet users are driven to the right content and pages that rank high in the search results page. White hats lead to results that you can continue to expect over a long period of time, compared to black hats that only find short term opportunities.

The Practice

If you are still deciding whether to use black hat or white hat SEO, you have to determine the main functions and goals of your business. What are your plans for the long term? White hat SEO is ideal for businesses and companies who expect to boost their reputation and maintain credibility for the longest period of time. Black hats only wait until search engines discover their methods and eliminate these. Your manipulation tactics may be limited but you get more quality customers and visits by ensuring that your site or page has good and sound content.

You should also incorporate all other important elements when trying white hat SEO. Find out how each approach works for you then determine which ones you should heavily invest in. You can rely on other webmasters and web site owners to help you find the best white hat SEO tools and methods that will sell your product or service better.

Boosting Reputation

Using white hat SEO provides you the benefit of having a solid reputation in the industry. People will start referring to your brand or company more as synonymous to quality and reliability. You get to gain your market’s trust thereby keeping your company secure for the long term.

How to Use SEO for Your Web Site

September 23, 2009 @ 9:12 am posted by John Brython

Several business owners and web site owners now understand the power of having high rankings in search engines. You get to be visible to millions of potential visitors online which can ultimately lead to increased sales and income. You can use SEO wisely to become highly successful in the industry you have chosen. Find out more about the techniques and benefits to determine the best ways to market your web site. Here are some guidelines.

How the Engines Work

SEO or search engine optimization aims to make web sites more visible, according to their relevance to any given search. Search engines contain programs referred to as spiders, which go to several web pages or URLs to identify the content of the site, as well as look for other links to scan later on. Spiders are also called web crawlers and scan the content of different web sites and pages.

These send the results of the scan back to the algorithm, which will eventually be broken down further to be analyzed. If the spiders go through a link to a new page or site, the links are stored. Other spiders over time will continue to crawl to linked-to pages. More links from other sites and pages will lead to frequent crawls and visits, thereby boosting reputation and potential sales.

Analyzing the Data

Search engines generally view a combination of more than 200 factors to identify the right pages that must rank for certain queries. Factors include information contained in the web pages or on-page factors like title heading and page content. Off-site factors may also be included. The factors include the words used to link back to you, the reputation of the page linking to you and the duration of time the link has been present. Both off-site and on-site factors determine the search engine rankings.

On Site Architecture

When you create a web site, try to aim for easy-to-understand site architecture and simplicity. Both search engines and human visitors will find it easier to locate you. You should try to organize the web site into clean sections, called siloing and theming. Good site architecture will organize the domain name according to the exact description of your chosen topic. For example, if your web site is about basketball shoes, you can use the site architecture as such: “shoes.com/basketball/” or “shoes.com/basketball/midcut/”.

Having good site architecture will provide you with many advantages like easy expansion, since the site can be divided into manageable sections, easy navigation, since the site can easily be viewed and the URL manipulated by users and easy maintenance, since the web site can be divided into sections that are easy to control.

Keyword Relevance

Always invest in good and useful keywords that pertain to your chosen topic. Users can easily find you through the title and content if you include the right keywords and secondary terms that pertain to your chosen topic. Use keyword generating tools and other online programs that will aid you in improving the web site as a whole.

There are plenty of things to understand when using keywords, like the use of plural or singular terms, order of words and head keywords. The words should appear in the vital parts of the article or content, but avoid overstuffing the site with these or you will lose credibility.

Learning SEO For Beginners

September 22, 2009 @ 9:11 am posted by John Brython

Search engine optimization (SEO) can be a daunting process to learn for any person who is unfamiliar with it. However, this process is one of the more important skills that you must learn and master if you plan on making some money on your online site or business. This seems like a tall order for a novice in the whole SEO game, but fortunately for you, there are a couple of things that you can learn about that can help you understand, and hopefully implement, the entire process to help improve your site?s ranking.

What is SEO?

The first thing that you must know before anything else is what search engine optimization (SEO) is and how it can benefit your online site.

Just in case you do not know, search engine optimization is an important skill that will allow your website or webpage to get better rankings in search engines, such as google, thereby making it easier for people to discover it. There are a lot of techniques and processes involved in SEO, which is why learning how it works first of all is the most important first step that you must take.

Basically, SEO helps online sites, or online businesses, to get a certain amount of exposure on the web by making them more visible and easier to find through the use of search engine?s indexing software, thereby making it easier to redirect traffic to your site and business, improving your chances of receiving a steady stream of market.

How is your site or page ranked?

Before your website can make full use of SEO, you must first get it indexed by search engines. How this works is that search engines find your website or webpage through the use of different indexing programs, such as crawlers or spiders that basically follows all links that lead to your site or page and downloads copies of it as it goes.

After this, your site or page will be analyzed and indexed based on some algorithms and criteria set by the search engines, thereby giving your site its ranking. This can be achieved through effective link building, which requires you to create connections to other sites that have similar contents to that of your site.

Benefits of SEO for your site

One of the more obvious benefits of SEO is that It can help improve your site?s web ranking in search engines, thereby increasing the amount of web traffic that you website can generate. Since your site is now easier to locate in the web, it is a safe bet that there will be a significant change in the amount of visits from potential customers that your site can get. Keep in mind that making your site easier to find makes a whole lot of difference for your business? survival, especially for those based online.

Avoid spamming

Spamming is one way of getting traffic directed to your website, however, this type of method will only work for a short period of time, and will ultimately lead to your site?s failure.

This type of method works by literally tricking traffic to get redirected to your site through the use of some deceptive techniques, such as using irrelevant keywords and using duplicate content on other sites just to try and increase your site?s page ranking.

Initially, this can generate some traffic to your site, but it will create some problems later on for your site, making it a big possibility that you might even lose some potential customers along the way.

Learning how the entire SEO system works is your first step on managing your online business or website, especially for a beginner such as yourself. Understanding how it works can help you determine what other steps you need to take in order to fully realize and take advantage of the entire SEO process in turning your business into a complete online success.

Comparing the Black and White Hat in SEOs

September 21, 2009 @ 9:11 am posted by John Brython

Since there are so many methods available in search engine optimization or SEO, webmasters have categorized these as either white hat SEO or black hat SEO. Certain SEO tactics are not accepted by certain popular search engines, but some individuals still use these to hopefully get the traffic they need. You have to know about the controversies surrounding the approaches and determine whether you should go with either one.

Describing Both

White hat SEO is the term used to describe methods that follow the guidelines and stipulations of search engines. Black hat SEO is the term used to describe approaches that are disapproved by search engines. There is an ongoing battle between individuals who use white hat and black hat SEO. Black hat SEO may not be what you can immediately consider as negative ethically. SERPs may be manipulated by black hat practitioners, but they also say that the approaches are highly acceptable with the sole intent of boosting site rankings.

Black hatters also say that there is no good or bad in trying to achieve the same goal of making their site relevant and ranked high. The benefits can extend to the users as they seek for the most useful information. Some big search engines do allow a number of web sites to function opposite to the stated rules.

Accepted Methods

Cloaking is one of the allowed black hat methods that a lot of webmasters use. A cloaking policy may be enforced by big search engines, but still needs updating to fully become consistent. The cloaking method is accepted by the search engines, since it does improve user searches instead of provide them with just any kind of result. Cloaking cannot immediately be referred to as a negative influence, considering that it aids searchers in getting the information and web sites that they need.

Following the Rules

There are a number of methods that you should avoid if you want to rank high and get on search engines’ good side. Invisible text should be avoided. Do not place light yellow or white text against a white background. Engines can detect these and will only put you in more trouble. Avoid keyword stuffing. In the past, overstuffing articles and site content with the same keyword may help improve ranking, but search engines are smarter now and can determine if your content is natural or no longer of good quality.

What to Avoid

An automated robot visits every page in the index. The content is acquired to be analyzed at a later time. Cloaking involves giving the automated robot a different page, while assigning a completely new one to human users. Search engines greatly detest this practice. You should also stay away from doorway pages. Doorway pages are described as trying to create a page to rank high on search engines, but truly having no real good content. Orphaned pages may also be considered as doorway pages by search engines. The site or page can incur penalties by having these.

Stay away from spamming. Spam is described as useless pages having no content and is just created to rank high on search engines. You initially think that you have good and sound content upon clicking on a page, only to discover several listings and ads to other sites. This is highly related to doorway pages and should be avoided.

SEO Basics: The Do’s And Don?ts

September 20, 2009 @ 9:11 am posted by John Brython

There are a lot of people who can grasp the general idea of search engine optimization (SEO), but still have no idea on how to go about the entire process. Unfortunately, not knowing the basic do?s and don?ts in SEO will create some problems for you and your website later on, so you must learn them as soon as possible.

The basic concept of search engine optimization is that you can improve the page ranking of your site on search engines by using certain techniques and methods to help your site get indexed and ranked. By following this simple guide on what to do and what not to do, you should be able to get the desired results that you want to achieve in SEO.

Domain name importance

A good domain name, such as a dot com, can actually play a major role in your site?s page ranking, so make sure that you invest in a good domain name. People tend to trust domain names such as a dot com more over other types of domain names, and thus, they tend to look for sites that have this type of domain name. This can already give you an edge over your competition, so make sure that you do invest in a good domain name.

Keyword is key

One of the more important things that you should remember when dealing with SEO is that you must learn what keywords or tags to use for association to your website. Knowing which keyword to associate to your site will help drive the right traffic to your site, as well as make it easier for your site to get discovered by people online.

Once you figured out what keywords you want to use, try to place them in key locations, such as in the content or body of the title tag, since these are the places wherein search engines will give the greatest weight in the entire optimization process. Also try to use the keywords that you have chosen in your URL?s, as well as in your HTML title tags, for these will also provide you with a boost in your page ranking.

Try to avoid using keywords that are too general, for chances are, a lot of sites would be using the same keyword, and this will definitely make it even more difficult for you to get high up in the rankings when you target general keywords, such as ?lawyer?, or ?music?.

Also make sure that you don?t overuse your chosen keyword, like using the same keyword three or four times within one sentence, for search engines are now monitoring this, and doing this can take your site out of the page rankings.

Relevant content is a must

The content of your site should be given a lot of importance, so do take the time to provide your site with relevant content in order to give your site the competitive edge to beat other sites that are also associated with your choice of keyword. Always bear in mind that there are other sites out there offering the same web content, so whoever offers the more relevant and superior content will win over the site visitor.

You will also need to take note of keywords that you use on your content?s titles and body. Since search engines tend to look into these aspects of your site, you need to focus the use of your keywords to certain parts of your content in order for you to be able to optimize your website so it would be discernable from other sites offering the same content.

Build links

Make sure that your site is not a ?dead end? by building links with other sites that have relevant content to yours. By doing this, you can actually keep the traffic going from your site, to another?s, and then back to your site. You might think that building links with other sites will redirect traffic away from your site, but It actually does the exact opposite.

Instead, it creates a lot of ways for traffic to get redirected to your site through the use of other people?s sites, thereby also helping in your site?s page ranking later on, as well as help in getting traffic to go to your site without them having to access your site directly.

Debunking Organic SEO Myths

September 19, 2009 @ 9:11 am posted by John Brython

Search engine optimization or SEO has been used widely across the internet as individuals and companies try to create and establish the right image and reputation that will entice their target market. If you want to gain long term stability in the industry, you have to understand which methods are working and which ones are just wasting your time and money. Debunk organic SEO myths and improve the way you attract your target clients.

Initial Myths

Some people say that you should submit your URLs to search engine first. This used to be true, but now, submitting these do not really lead to increased search engine rankings. Some individuals also require you to get a Google Sitemap. If your web site was created the right way or is crawler-friendly, you do not need to do such. The sitemap can be an added bonus, but you can also indulge in other tools online to help you rank better.

Another requirement which is now considered insignificant in getting better page rankings includes updating the web site frequently. Updating the web site a lot can boost the crawl rate of search engines, but your rankings will not change. If your web site provides sufficient information and is easy to navigate for human users, you do not have to keep changing it with the hopes of getting better search engine rankings.

Getting Ads and Affiliates

It is a moth that PPC ads can either hurt or improve your search engine ranking. A lot of users actually believe that running Google AdWords can affect the organic rankings or cause their standing to go down or up. PPC ads and getting more affiliates can help you stay visible to your target market through other web sites, but the approach does not immediately lead to better page results.

Banning Myths

It is a myth that your web site can be banned if you buy a lot of links. Search engines do not find anything wrong with buying advertising on web sites. Another myth involves having your web site banned for ignoring the guidelines of the search engines. Guidelines actually provide you with helpful tips on how to rank better on search engines, but you have to be careful not to use the methods that they truly despise. If you go for black hat SEO techniques, you may be penalized. Banning of sites requires a lot of negative feedback that may involve several actions during different times.

On Words and Limitations

It is a myth that words in the meta keyword tag have to be incorporated on the same page. It is true that you can improve visibility of your site by using the right meta tags and keywords in the title, but you should not try to overstuff the page with the keywords. Invest in secondary and tertiary terms instead to stay visible.

There are also no rules on which number of words is optimal for better search engine ranking. Some say that SEO copies have to be at least 250 words long. It is good to use just enough words in your content to provide sufficient information. A marketing copy that can be optimized for 3 to 5 keyphrases or keywords is ideal. Go straight to the point in your articles and pass on the message of your company with each one.

Should You Pay an Affiliate to Promote Your Product

September 18, 2009 @ 3:53 pm posted by John Brython

Many product owners wonder whether they should pay an affiliate to promote their product. While I think the answer is generally yes, there are exceptions to when you want to pay an affiliate.

You can only get so many people to come to your website on your own. Your pay per click resources are limited and you can only write so many articles and create so many back links before your time is exhausted. If you have an army of affiliates promoting your product, you simply will be able to make more sales. If your affiliates aren?t poaching off of the sales you would make yourself, paying affiliates to market your product is a no brainer.

If you were selling chocolate chip cookies, each additional dozen cookies would cost you money to produce. But digital products are different. It costs you almost the same amount of money to produce one product as it does to produce a million. Therefore, why wouldn?t you want to pick up low hanging fruit by paying affiliates to promote your product?

Additionally, once you get a customer, you can sell to him or her for life. If you have structured your product line correctly, you can pay an affiliate 75 percent of the original purchase price, but continue to market to that customer for the rest of his life without paying the affiliate any additional money.

Affiliate marketers are very good at their area of specialization or they wash out quickly. Some are experts at pay per click and know how to deliver traffic to your site that converts. Others put in the time to write articles that pre-sell customers on your product before they ever land on your page. Video marketing, forum marketing, and classified ads are other specialities of affiliate marketers.

So, are there times when it doesn?t make sense to pay affiliate marketers? Yes, there are.

If you are only going to sell 100 of an item and you have 1,000 responsive people on your personal email list, you will probably not want to pay affiliates. When you can sell out the subscription yourself, there is no need to split the proceeds.

Another time when you may want to consider not using affiliates is when you want to control how the product is marketed. When you open the product up to affiliate marketers, you lose control of the advertising process. Marketers could spam safe lists or classified sites and give your product a bad name.

Most product owners, however, find that the benefits outweigh the down sides of paying affiliates.

Clickbank is the most popular way to set up an affiliate program for digital products. PayDotCom tried to give Clickbank a run for its money, but hasn?t taken off as well as the promoters hoped. You can also set up a script to run an affiliate program. The $7 script and Rapid Action Profits are two scripts which let you pay affiliates.

How To Be An SEO Content Writer

@ 9:11 am posted by John Brython

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best online strategies and skill that you can learn and employ to get better page ranking in search engines for your site. However, there are some things that you just need help with, such as the type of content you should write about in your page in order to get good, relevant content for users.

Creating content relevant to your site for SEO requires a different set of skills, and demands you to perform a few tasks other than just simply writing and posting articles. Here are a couple of things that you should learn if you intend to become an SEO content writer.

Learn the SEO process

The first thing that you should learn if you want to become a SEO content writer is how the entire SEO process works in order to be able to create articles that have relevant content to what users are looking for, as well as create articles that will help funnel and direct market to the site or page that you are working on.

Search engines focuses on text and not images, so the written content of your page will receive the most amount of checking and analysis from search engine crawlers, and if deemed passable, will then get indexed in their database. This is why you need to make sure that your content is relevant and good in order to get a good chance of getting better results with search engines.

Use keywords properly

SEO content writers should learn how to use keywords and phrases in getting their content across to the different users searching for those that are relevant to their search. Keywords play a vital role in any SEO content since this will help determine whether your created article for that particular keyword or phrase has any relevance to what users are searching for.

You need to be able to take into account the keywords or phrases that users will be using in search engines to find the relevant content that they are looking for so that you can incorporate it into the articles that you will be creating and posting on your site or page. You need to know where to place these keywords or phrases in the article, such as in the title tags and body of the articles, in order to help search engines find your content so it can get indexed in their database.

Aside from this, as a SEO content writer, you should try to avoid overusing keywords wherein you try to flood your articles with the keyword or phrase associated with it. This can only lead search engines to believe that the content that you are creating as spam.

Write quality content

The quality of your articles will also play a major and important role on how your site or page will do in the entire SEO process. Keep in mind that if you cannot offer users relevant content to their searches, they will most likely find it somewhere else, and all of your work in getting them to your site would have been in vain.

Being a SEO content writer limits you to certain rules when writing your articles. In order to avoid certain mistakes and errors, you need to follow certain guidelines that will help improve your site?s page ranking in search engines. One example of this is the use of keywords in your articles. The excessive use of such will result in getting your content tagged as spam.

You also need to not only write quality and relevant content for users, but you must also offer fresh and new content from time to time in order to be able to offer more content for your users. This can actually also help get your site recommended by other sites, thereby improving your chances of getting more traffic directed to your site.

Also, your articles should be original and engrossing for the user at the same time. Writing an article that users have read on some other site will not get you good points from them.

Research is key

In order for you to be able to write technically about a particular topic in a way that it can actually generate good SEO results, you need to learn how to do research on them. This will help you create content that is relevant and informative for users.

The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords 2010

September 17, 2009 @ 6:39 pm posted by John Brython

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This is the perfect solution for folks who are frustrated trying to understand and beat the AdWords™ system. You can put the answer into their hands with this outstanding toolkit.

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