ecomZera Blog

1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know there's a good chance they'll link to you

2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site

3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.

4. Leave comments on other people's blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).

5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic, providing you can justify it. Everyone will get annoyed and link to you saying your wrong

6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers - quote your website as the source.

7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature

8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage, no point losing visitors

9. Have an opt-in form trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page

10. Review a product or company if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)

11. Write articles and submit them to article directories

12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)

13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)

14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site

15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site

16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site

17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.

18. Submit a blog to a blog directory

19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories

20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don't spam)

21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for

22. Buy links to your site

23. Buy reviews about your site on other people's site

24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI

25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website

26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites, this little push could start a viral chain reaction!

27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook

28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush

29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)

30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)

31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories, use the viles-silencer list

32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate, maybe asking them all an opinion on something.

33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured watch them link back to say what there position was.

34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche

35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates

36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.

37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.

38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them

39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages

40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website

41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site

42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche

43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.

44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once, find them and do it.

45. Purchase advertising in other people's mailing lists and newsletters

46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews

47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site's niche.

48. Conduct a survey and publish the results, make sure you let people know about it.

49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site, lots of new content and lots of new traffic.

50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site, then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it, pay the winner a decent amount.

51. Make sure you have a memorable domain name that is short and catchy.

52. Use a well-searched for keyword within your domain name to help rank for that keyword.

53. If you sell a product ask someone else who sells a product to list your product with theirs, and you'll do the same for them, split commissions on sales.

54. When you write a new article on your site, link to as many blogs as possible, they will likely see your site in their pingbacks, website stats, or Technorati. They will visit your site and possibly subscribe to it and link back at a later date.

55. Get your RSS feed syndicated to different sites like Zimbio and hubpages and Topix.

56. If your site is popular and has quality unique content then apply to get listed in Google's News search.

57. Create a sitemap and submit it to Google (not great but might help)

58. Use your robots.txt file to stop Google indexing certain directories and pages on your blog (such as archives) to avoid duplicate content issues).

59. Create a couple of small 10 page sites related to your main site. Offer links on these smaller sites in return for links to your main site (this is triangular reciprocal linking).

60. Get yourself known as an expert and get featured in offline magazines, TV and radio stations.

61. Use an auto-translator service to translate your site into other languages, put it in a subdirectory and watch foreign traffic come in.

62. Make posts about sex (don't have to post anything rude), and watch the porn surfers find their way to your site through Google.

63. Post about celebrities current events if it relates to your niche, there's always a lot of people looking up celebrity stuff.

64. Write good headlines/titles, good titles get more clicks.

65. Get some stickers with your domain name on. Go out and stick them on strangers and say, My Website Yeah, Check it out.

66. Reference your unique articles in the correct section of wikipedia - using the the special reference tag.

Today, every SEO blogger talks about SMM (social media marketing) what is it? The internet itself is a social environment; it was years before when you simply make a website and put information over there. Today, the internet becomes a place where people come and exchange their ideas thoughts, especially after the evolution of web 2.0

In short, the social media will be the future of internet, not only for the home users but also for those who are in the field of SEO. The evolution of social media has completely changed the SEO techniques and link building methods.

Link Building

After search engine algorithm, the second thing that is continuously evolving is off-page optimization (link building), before couple of years ago reciprocal linking had been performed by webmaster, then three way linking, then one way linking, then paid linking and now social media linking. The search engine algorithm continuously gives credit to those links that are coming from social media network websites like Digg, Stumble upon etc.

Google is the leader of creating social media environment, the social websites, blogs; platforms like youtube, myspace, facebook get lots of importance in webmaster eyes. Now the search engines algorithm gives more important to those links that come from social media websites. The best way to increase your links with SERP is to use combination of different social websites, like directory submission, bookmarking, local listening, article submission, and SMM.

The one of the most effective link building campaign is through blogging, write a blog related to your website and submitted it to other blogs with a powerful back link. Do mail to the bloggers and ask them to give reviews about your website and publish this post on their blogs. This will definitely increase your link popularity and you will get high PR back links and boost your search engine ranking.

Another benefit of getting links through blogging and content is that, when people read the blog post or content, they will come to your site for more information. The paid linking and other methods of linking will place your links on those pages that are not often visited by the people. Such links only give you listening not ranking and traffic.

So when people come to your site after reading blog on other websites, they will visit your website and if they will like your website; they will promote your websites on other blogs by placing your link in comments.

Nowadays, the social media marketing is only the way to get trusted back links and to boost your website in search engines.

Source: PromotionWorld

Any kind of search engine score of your site which helps you to increase your page rank or the search engine ranking of your keywords will entirely depend on the on-page optimization of your site. Mainly it is viewed that the on-page factors of your index page determines the rankings of your keywords.

We can say that an off-page factor includes the maximum part of SEO Optimization work but the results of off-page optimization reflect through on-page. Thus this is quite assumable that a rock solid off-page optimization with a poor on-page optimization will not very fruitful for any website.

People have an idea that on-page optimization is very easy and it can be done within an hour. But let us remind you friend, search engine algorithms are really very cruel and it is improving day by day. Thus it is very crucial for your website to do the best on-page optimization for receiving ultimate ranking.

For organic and natural search engine ranking on-page methodologies are extremely important and these techniques are used to define your website business or we can say to describe the motive of your website business in front of all search engines.

15 unforgettable priceless tips regarding on-page optimization

1. URL Naming: If possible try to place your prime targeted keyword as your domain name. This will help you to advertise your business at the first impression.

2. Title Tag: Decorate your title tag with your utmost preferable keywords of your business in a smart and eye checking manner.

3. Meta Descriptions: Sketch your proper business announcement with simple words for catching concentration of the visitors who are searching similar kind of product or service which your website is going to deliver them. Possibly you can punch your keyword into that description but in a tricky way.

4. Crawler Notification: All kind of search engine crawler notifications like SE robots instructions, website owner and publisher declaration, website language, copywriter name etc. should go from the Meta portion of all your web page.

5. Image Optimization: Crawlers are unable to read images and the flash part of your web page but these images or flash is required to influence the visitors. Thus Optimize this images with suitable contents using Alt tags which reflects your proper business.

6. Text Links: Use text links of all of your important pages of your site and if possible then try to avoid flash links, Java script links, image links etc.

7. Keyword Density Checking: Modern SEO services told us that you should inculcate your keywords at your content and maintain the density with an ethical mode.

8. Broken Link checking: Broken links are really very harmful for any site, thus don't forget to check it first, if it exists then remove that from your site in a quick approach.

9. Static URL's: Remember that all of your important pages should have short and static URLs and dynamic pages may follow those static pages. If unwanted lengthy URLs exist at your site then replace them with short.

10. Footer: Don't forget to place links for all important pages at the footer part of your index page. This allows your visitors to jump at important pages with just a single click.

11. Robot.txt: Ensure that robot.txt is necessary at your website with apposite crawler notifications.

12. XML Site Map: Nowadays an xml feed acts as a site map which includes all pages of your site and is really indispensable from crawler point of view and should be confined as a link at the index page or at the common footer portion.

13. Canonical Issue: Nowadays optimization for Google is vastly required because maximum customers come at your site through it. Thus canonical issue should be solved first if exist.

14. Common Header and Footer: a common header text and footer text within H2 tag should be placed at each of your web pages.

15. Avoid Black Hat techniques: Achieving organic ranking and holding it for long time depends absolutely on white hat techniques and we should simply avoid all black hat strategies.

Source: PromotionWorld

Whether it's just down to people's search terms changing it's difficult to tell but over the last 12 months the searches for the term SEO have caught up with and outstripped searches for the term PPC.

Google trends provides a great suite of search analysis tools and the trend is apparent in the US, the UK, Australia and Canada and could well hint that advertising budgets are being squeezed as the economy slows and search engine optimisation methods are taking their place.

Traditional Pay Per Click is very much "You get what you pay for" and as soon as the budget is turned off the traffic stops. An SEO campaign whilst much more "slow burning" will yield longer term traffic results as sites climb the natural search listings.

United States analysis

United Kingdom analysis

Australia analysis

Canada analysys

If the trend does reflect a change in attitudes and focus it&s an interesting change on emphasis in the online marketing world.

Whether the markplace will changing in the coming months or this is a deeper trend only time will tell.

Source: Hit Search

Search engines can drive a lot of visitors (read: potential buyers) to an e-commerce site. But if you think good text is all you need to score a high search-engine ranking, you haven't looked closely at search-engine results lately.

Search results are no longer limited to blue text links. Search engines now integrate feeds from specialized areas, such as news, pictures, and video, into many search query results. New tagging technology promises to make it easier for others to find and access multimedia and other specialized content on your Web site.

It's important for your connected business to take advantage of these developments in Web technology and search engines.

Universal or Blended Search

Universal search, which blends multimedia and news content with traditional search engine results, was a hot topic at last week's Search Engine Strategies conference in Toronto.

Everyone knows that being number one in a search engine for a popular keyword, or search term, can attract thousands of clicks. But what constitutes number one in universal search these days? Is it the sponsored pay-per-click ad splashed across the top of the page, the first text link, the top news link, or an eye-catching photo or video featured in the results?

All get their share of clicks. So the savvy Web site marketer should consider ways to make all components of a site's digital assets (text, pictures, and video) rank highly.

Yahoo SearchMonkey

Masked by the distraction of Microsoft's on-again, off-again takeover bid for its parent company, Yahoo's search engine is innovating behind the scenes.

Yahoo's new, and free, SearchMonkey tools for Web developers, recently out of beta testing, open up the search engine to user-developed content. The tools offer ways of highlighting your search-engine presence with added features, such as a photo or rating.

SearchMonkey offers several ways to accomplish this. If you've got some software development skills, you could create a small program in PHP, a common Web scripting language that is supported by most Web hosts. SearchMonkey also offers some sample apps, including one that works with LinkedIn listings to add résumé data to a search listing.

Semantic Web Markup

For many small-business owners, the easiest way to improve rankings may be to mark up existing Web pages with new, more descriptive tags that Yahoo will automatically pick up when it indexes pages. The use of tags is Yahoo's take on building a smarter, so-called Semantic Web, which permits easier, even automatic sharing of all types of data. Think of it as an extension of the current Web with a layer of electronic glue that helps other sites better access the data on your pages.

If you don't rank highly for a certain keyword, using SearchMonkey won't help. But if you make your listing stand out from the crowd by enhancing it--by adding a photo, for example--you may be able to get more visitors to click on your link.

SearchMonkey now works only on Yahoo's search engine listings. However, it's such a good idea that I would be surprised if Google doesn't come out with something similar to take advantage of the Semantic Web.

Optimizing Your Digital Assets

Since universal search results go beyond straight text, how do you optimize your other digital assets, such as videos, for search engines? Some businesses have found that uploading a video clip to YouTube (now owned by Google) can pay off. You can tag each video so it can be found under relevant YouTube searches. Google includes links to some YouTube videos in its regular search results.

Uploading existing videos to YouTube is one thing. But is it necessary to invest time and money in creating new videos to have a complete presence in universal search?

The answer depends partly on what type of business your site is supporting. "A small business doesn't necessarily need to do videos," says Jill Whalen, CEO of High Rankings, a Boston-area search engine optimization (SEO) consulting firm. "There are so many things most business owners need to do to their Web sites before they get to that stage. Do the basics of SEO first."

But, she adds, "perhaps for some local businesses there are opportunities there: A 'how-to' if you're a plumber or an electrician. You could make some videos which could show up in the local listings."

The News Route

News listings are also integrated into some search results. Your business doesn't require a write-up in the New York Times to be deemed newsworthy. Issuing a news release and distributing it online may be enough to qualify for indexing as a news item, which could attract more visitor traffic.

The key lies in writing the news release for the Web, mentioning keywords related to your content, and including hot links to your site.

The Future of Universal Search

As more Internet users upgrade to broadband connections, search engines will move to include even more multimedia content in their results to appeal to these high-speed users. Consider how you can position your company's Web site to benefit from this trend.

Semantic Web technology can enhance the value of the data on your Web site, by making it more easily shared by other communities and accessed by automatic tools. While a relatively small number of sites currently take advantage of the Semantic Web's opportunities, keep in mind that this emerging technology standard is supported by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and appears poised to be the next step in the evolution of the HTML Web.

Source: PCWorld

Recent headlines have highlighted yet again that Britain is in for a rough economic period. A combination of worried head-shaking from the Bank of England and screaming sensationalist headlines have understandably caused consumers concern.

Furthermore, economic fears have provoked a wave of blog posts from the SEO sector about the best ways to buckle down and survive a slump - many of which have been filled with a strained optimism which does not quite ring true.

However, I am not worried. I know that a gloomy economic environment (dare I mention the R-word?) is actually a fantastic time for a firm to focus on online marketing. Here is a brief summary of my reasons why.

Reason Number One: Consumers still need to shop
Yes, it is more than likely that consumers will not be consuming with the free abandonment which characterised the last few years - but they still need to make purchases. From food to footballs to financial services, people still need to buy things, even if the inflation genie squeezes itself out of the bottle. Businesses must ensure they are highly visible to gain the biggest possible share of the market.

Reason Number Two: Cash-strapped consumers research purchases
When people have limited cash, they consider their purchases more carefully. They go online, they research thoroughly, they read reviews - they research. Now is the time for businesses to ensure their websites can be easily found through search engines. It is also a good time to consider online reputation management - where every potential purchase counts, a business cannot afford to have uncontested negative content regarding their product or service circulating the web.

Reason Number Three: It is a good time to outpace the competition
If a firm's competitors have outranked them online for years, now is a great time for it to exert its search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts and overtake them. If the competition has panicked and reduced its marketing budget, then a company which thinks ahead can dramatically increase its online audience and traffic. Cutting budgets is a short-term financial strategy which will impact future sales and profitability and hurt a firm even once the economy recovers.

Reason Number Four: Consumer awareness is a long-term concern
Marketing in general is about increasing consumer awareness as well as driving sales. Even when they are not in the market for a product or service, firms need to ensure people are aware of them so that, when they do finally decide to buy, their brand is first choice. A gloomy economic period will not last forever and firms need to ensure brand awareness remains strong so that they are best-placed to generate sales when spending picks up.

Reason Number Five: Firms must not be left behind
The internet is a developing marketing medium and the last thing any firm wants is to be playing catch-up once the slump stops. From SEO to email marketing and viral messages to reputation management - all online marketing develops all the time and a savvy company will want to be involved. Dated marketing can have a negative effect on a brand, meaning businesses cannot stop all promotional activity now and hope to pick it up in three months time. The internet is a fast-paced environment and dipping in and out is both costly and hard.

Source: SEOptimise

Most people who are experienced with search engine optimization would know the basic procedure on how to attain a higher Google Page Rank for a website. With most SEO strategies, one can be sure about an increase of about two or three ranks within three months or so, but it doesn't hurt to gun for more. While SEO is quite simple as long as there is intelligent effort, some SEO services cost money. That is money that could be used elsewhere, so one must look for a better alternative before spending actual money for a higher Page Rank.

Contextual link building is one the most effective SEO strategies available. While you can go on and email people about exchanging links with you, there is actually a better way to gain affiliates to your website. One of these good link building ideas that can be utilized to maximize growth is blogging.

Blog About Products and Services

Blogging can be a sort of regularly-updating advertisement for your online business. It provides news and updates on your products and services to interested parties. By blogging your day-to-day business activities, potential customers can be certain that they can get them whenever and however they can be made available. Make sure that your blog has RSS so that visitors can subscribe and get regular updates to your blog.

Integrate Your Blog with Your Main Site

If your blog is one with your main website, you can have an easier time in increasing Page Rank as it is quite easy to do so with a blog. Within the first three months, it is entirely possible to gain a Page Rank of 3, so if your main website is integrated to your blog, it can share that Page Rank. By utilizing good SEO procedures, it can be easy.

Post Relevant Content Regularly

Regular updates increase the chances of getting a higher Page Rank as Google pings your site every once in a while. This is absolutely helpful if your blog is integrated to your site, so keep the previous tip in mind. By giving visitors the appropriate information, they will be enticed to revisit your site for reference and other such purposes.

Write Blog Reviews of Other Related Sites

By writing positive reviews and critique of other related sites in your blog, you are giving those sites incentive to support and link your site back. This type of advertisement is a powerful method of link building that can dramatically increase your chances in attaining a higher Page Rank within the shortest amount of time possible.

Combine Blogging with Other SEO Strategies

Blogging alone can give your site more traffic and such by a certain degree, but it alone is not powerful enough. Combine it with other tested search engine optimization methods to get the best effect. Such things like link building, keyword density, meta tagging, submitting sitemaps, and so on can multiply the effect that blogging can give you. If you had integrated your main site with your blog, then it will increase your chances even more.

Source: PromotionWorld

Every search engine uses it's own, very specific algorithm to index the websites. All major search engines keep updating their search algorithms quite frequently to give their searchers the best searching experience. Your website's place in the search result pages depends on it's calculation from the algorithm it follows. These algorithms are not changing everyday but are evolving into more intelligent and accurate. Yet, the major focus is on the Meta tags of the site.

These Meta tags are not visible when someone browses your web page but the search engines read these Meta tags alone and decide the place of a web page on its search result pages. It does so by finding the relevance of the Meta tags within them and with its contents. The most important Meta tags are the title, description and keywords. The first thing a search engine looks for is to find a relevance in these meta tags by looking at the keywords used in them and secondly it looks the relevance of the keywords used in these meta tags with the contents of the page.

The Title Tag

The title is the most important Meta tag of your website. This is the first thing shown on a web page and this is visible to both your visitor and most importantly to the search engine. That's why it has to be given the utmost importance while search engine optimization is the consideration.

It is always depicted on the left top bar of in the browser window. This tag should include the most relevant keyword about your business. If the most relevant keywords are used in here, your web site will sure get a boost in a search.

Most websites use their company name in the title which in fact, is not something desirable. Because, nobody usually searches for a company name unless it is very well known or some giant multinational.

The perfect title tags should be something between 10-70 characters. It is not so that one can not put a longer title but the search engine would ignore the longer part of the title.

The Title tag should be written for the visitors (people searching for your business or services) first and the search engines second. This should be such as to motivate a click and obviously to favor the search engine indexing too.

Different title tags should be assigned to each page of your website containing its own keywords that relate to that specific page.

Description tag

The description tag should be written in such way that it speaks about the website contents in just one or two sentences.

It should be short and clear that your visitors get a close idea about your site by reading this in a short time.

The description tag should be 100 to 200 characters long. The Meta description tag also has a great role in the SEO of your page. This tag displays the information at a search engine result page (SERP) after a search is performed by a user. So, this should be such as this puts the concise summary of your page. Most search engines truncate longer Description. Remember this while writing this tag.

Same as above every page should have a different description tag in accordance with the contents it holds. This tag has quite some effect on the ranking of your site in Search Engine results. The Search Engine will read your description tag and will check if the keywords or search terms match your title tag and content of your web site. My suggestion is to take the first sentence or two of the contents from your web page and use that for the Meta description content.

Include the most relevant sentences matching with the page contents in description tag instead of stuffing the tag with more keywords. Remember that the Meta Description Tag of a web page must not look just a bunch of keywords, but should contain an informative and concise summary of your web page.

Keywords Tag

The most heavily sought technique in Search Engine Optimization process is Keyword optimization. But at the same time if keywords are too often repeated, chances are that the site gets marked out as "spam". However, if your target keyword are not included enough, its ranking will not be optimized. So, with present algorithms which are really smart and intelligent include only those relevant keywords you want to target and make sure that these are included in the contents too.

Use variations of a keyword like watch, watches, wrist watch etc. They are slightly changed keywords and yet don't render any feeling to the search engine for their being repeated in the tag.

Geographical information (name of the country, city or place) may be used in the keywords. Sometimes it plays a great role when a search is made for a location based business. Or, even brand names, model name of a product can be used in this tag. That also helps when a search is made for a specific product model or brand.

Search engines give different weights to the keywords according to their positions in HTML tags used in the content. For example if a keyword is used in this tag which is present in Heading Tag also has more weight particularly when the same is in H1 tag.

Write your Alt tags of the images and the text links being used in the page such that it includes at least one keyword from the keyword tag. But, remember the same should look just relevant with the image or the hyper link for which it has been written.

The content should have included all of your keywords. The aggregate keyword density (all the keywords used in keyword tag) should be between 20% to 30% but not less than 5% to the best optimized results. However, Density for a single keyword should not be less than 2% and higher than 6%. The best is about 5% with the major keywords and 2% with subsequent keywords.

The Meta tags should be fine tuned with the contents and a good relevance is brought about between themselves with a perfect balance between the target audience and the search engines.

These Meta tags have been used really very un-carefully by the spammers, if we commit to use them methodically with the due respect, I hope, we should be able to create ever increasing web traffic on our sites.

Source: PromotionWorld

One of the elements of site development and SEO that often gets overlooked is internal linking. When done right, you can kill two birds with one stone, and improve both search rankings and usability.

You may be familiar with the fact that when sites link to other sites, search engines pass value for the terms/phrases used in the link anchor text. (Anchor text is the highlighted text in the link.) When working on improving rankings for a site, people usually try to target links from other sites (external links) that have the desired anchor text related to terms they want to rank for. However, internal links can also be effective in helping to improve a site's rankings for targeted keyphrases.

Context is the Key

Your website's text content is filled with opportunities to potentially pass link juice to other pages of your site and to help users find their end destination. To start developing your internal linking strategy, go through your site section by section, page by page, and see where it would make sense (from a user's point of view), and insert some contextual links to other pages that you want to rank better.

Be sure to use the keywords/phrases (in the anchor text) that you would like the destination pages to rank for. In your links to these pages throughout the site, vary it up and don't use the exact same phrases in anchor text, or it will look artificial to both search engines and users. As you are doing this, make sure that the target keyphrases show up on the destination page in some form. Links are more effective if the terms in the link anchor text also show up on the page. One area where this is useful is to help a site rank for both plural and singular versions of a word.

The surrounding text can help too, so you may want to tweak the sentences and paragraphs around your links to improve the contextual value.

When you're finished, get some feedback from outside users to make sure it still looks natural.

Even Out the Link Strength

It's quite common for certain pages of a website to receive disproportionately more inbound links than other pages of the site. These pages tend to rank well compared to other pages of a site. Use Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Tools, or your analytics program to find which pages have the most link love and which ones have the least. You can strengthen the weaker pages by pointing some contextual links from the strong pages to the weak ones. It's usually best not to link to them from every page of the site, just from a few that have strong linkage.

Internal links don't carry as much weight as links from other sites, but they can still make a significant impact.

Usability Benefits

When done right, internal links also can help improve the usability of a site. By adding links to the content of your site that are relevant for the user, it provides another path to the destination you're trying to lead them to. Multiple paths are a good thing in site navigation. Usability studies have shown that users are more likely to click on a link in the text of a page instead of those on a navigation bar, because it feels more natural and contextual.

Examples of Effective Internal Linking

When it comes to internal linking, there are several ways to go about it. Here are some examples of internal linking using specific anchor text, with variations.

Example 1

1. A couple months ago Jennifer Laycock wrote an article about Twitter, and benefits of using it.
2. Jen wrote 5-part series on why you should be using Twitter.

In the first sentence, the internal link is passing value to the destination page for the term "Twitter". In the second sentence, it's passing value for the phrase "why you should be using Twitter". This can also pass value for included terms/phrases such as "Twitter" and "using Twitter".

Example 2

1. Stoney wrote an informative article about avoiding duplicate content.
2. Stumped by duplicate content penalties? Let Stoney enlighten you.

In the first sentence of Example 2, the internal link is passing value to the destination page for the term "duplicate content" and included terms. In the second sentence, it's passing value for the phrase "duplicate content penalties" and included terms.

These are just a few examples, but you can see there are quite a few ways to use anchor text to create useful and search engine friendly internal links.

Does This Actually Help?

Improving the internal linking structure of a website will almost always improve rankings for certain pages, and sometimes quickly. It's a perfect strategy for giving an extra boost to specific pages for specific keywords. The battle for search engine rankings is often competitive, so every bit helps. Why ignore something that can help maximize your rankings, traffic, and sales? However, even if you don't care about the search engines, at least do it for your site users to improve their online experience.

Like a sound site architecture and directory structure, product categorization can play a significant role in how both search engines and users are able to access your products. There are two important things to consider when determining how to categorize your products. 1) Is each product assigned to the most appropriate category or categories? and 2) is multiple categorization creating duplicate content? The first issue frustrates your users and the second the search engines.

Looking for examples of both of these I found exactly what I was looking for on The Home Depot website.

Improper Product Categorization Frustrates Shoppers

Below you see a screen shot of a book that I found under the Electrical category. If you look at the breadcrumb you'll see that under Electrical there is a sub-category of "Books and DVDs", which is, appropriately, where this book was found.

My first thought here was that The Home Depot needs a section devoted entirely to Books and DVDs. That will give their users access to their full library of books rather than just a few at a time, depending on what category they are in. I found a pretty large selection of books (44 titles) in the Tools and Hardware section of the site, yet the book above wasn't listed here at all. Having a dedicated books and DVDs section would save visitors a lot of time searching.

But more to the point here, this book in particular could NOT be found where I would most expect it to, in the Decking section. Granted, a deck and a patio may be completely different in technical terms, but to the layman like me, a deck is just a patio higher up off the ground.

I would think that if the above mentioned book was found in Electrical, surely it would be appropriate to link to it from Decking. But the decking page has no links to any books or DVDs that many of the other categories have.

Why not? This category links to hardware and parts for a deck, why no how-to?

The goal of categorization of your products is to ensure that any product can be found where a customer is likely to look. The great thing about the web is that products don't have to be placed in a single place, in a specific isle. Through multi-categorization, they can be found from any relevant isle (web page, category, etc.) When categorizing your products it's important to think in the terms you customers might. Don't rely on someone knowing the difference between a deck or a patio.

A similar issue can be found when looking for an electric lawn mower. I might consider it to be a power tool. (I'm a computer guy, what do I know about power tools and lawnmowers?) but it's not there. The Home Depot needs to make sure their website speaks to outdoor dunderheads like me.

Improper Product Multi-Categorization Frustrates Search Engines

Let's move on to multi-categorization, and how it can often lead to duplicate content. Our book example above is perfect. In the image above I've provided the breadcrumbs and the URL. But look here, the same product can be found in an entirely different category. That's not a bad thing, but the problem is that the URL for the product is completely different:

What Home Depot has done here is created a completely duplicated page. Lo and behold, this same book is also fond in the Concrete section of the site creating yet another duplicate page. Amplify this with just a dozen products and a dozen possible relevant categories for each, and you're looking at almost 150 duplicate pages. More products and more categories only amplifies the situation further.

But it gets worse here for The Home Depot. They have an entirely duplicated category:

Not only are the listing of products in each category duplicate of each other, but that every product linked from these pages is also duplicated, each with their very own URLs.

With duplicate pages like this, the search engines tend to slow down the spidering of the site. That, and some product pages may not get indexed at all, either because many duplicate pages are dropped, or the search engines stop spidering duplicate categories, some of which may contain the only link to certain products. No matter how you look at it, you're leaving to the search engines to do a lot of extra work they'd rather not do. Simplifying your product categorization will ensure more products get spidered and indexed and valuable products won't be left out.

A couple of side notes I'd like to make: in the two images above, look below the orange "add to cart buttons". The text beneath is different. One it's telling you to "check your local store" on the other it tells you it's an "online only" purchase. Confusing.

Also, one of these categories shows more products than the other.

This lends back to issue number one above, with products being categorized properly, but also to the issue of duplicate categories. If the search engines decide that the category with more products is too closely duplicated with the other it might choose not to index or follow the links at all. This could leave these additional products left out completely.

Source: Search Engine Guide

Search engine spiders can be very forgiving with a lot of types duplicate content. I've found that, given enough time, the engines can learn when two websites or web pages are complete duplicates of the other. Once they figure this out then they basically understand that a link to one is a link to the other, etc. One version will ultimately be dropped from the index in favor of the other.

There are two basic problems with this. First, it takes time. Until the search engines figure out which dupes should be "merged" you're essentially splitting link flow between pages. Two inbound links split between each of the duplicate pages produces only half the power than two links both pointing to a single page. So until that merging occurs in the the search index, you're losing valuable link power.

The second problem is that you leave it to the search engines to decide which of the duplicate pages (or sites) should be dropped from the index. When you let the search engines decide, you lose essential control over your marketing plan.

The less you make the search engines think the better. It's not only OK, but it's essential to tell the search engines what to think, especially when it comes to which pages of your site should or should not be included in the index. If you have duplicate pages and don't keep the search engines from finding and indexing all of them, then you're forcing them to make the decision for you. Instead, you need to be proactive, let them know which version is the "correct" version.

One issue we've come across, especially with e-commerce sites is when products can be accessed via both secure and non-secure URLs.

This issue is typically caused by poorly implemented site navigation and linking. What happens is that the shopper adds a product to the shopping cart. At that point they enter into the secure pages. But when the shopper continues shopping, instead of proceeding to checkout, they navigate back into the site keeping the https: in the browser URL. This opens up the entire site to be indexed using secure URLs, creating duplicates of the non-secure URLs

There are a couple fixes to this. The first is to not allow your visitors to enter the secure areas of the site until they are ready to check out.

There is no reason to pass your visitors into the secure part of your site when they add products to their cart. The place to go secure is when they hit the checkout button. But--and this is important--if they enter the secure check out process but want to leave it to continue shopping, they need to be placed back into non-secure pages.

This leads us to our second fix: Use absolute URLs in all site navigation and shopping cart pages.

Quick refresher: an absolute link uses the full domain name in the link:

http://www.site.com/category/product.html

A relative link only uses the path from current location to the destination:

../product.html

When using relative links, if the shopper is already on an secure (https:) URL then they'll stay on secure URLs. When you use absolute links then you are forcing the visitor to go http: instead of https:.

When shoppers can access secure and non secure versions of the same page, then likely the search engines can as well. This creates almost a complete duplicate of your site, one secure and one non-secure version. Using absolute links will ensure that at no point can a regular page be accessed in secure mode, thus preventing the duplication.

Source: Search Engine Guide

Meta description tags get a bad rap. They are often either considered to be more valuable than they really are, or dismissed as near irrelevant. The truth is that the meta description can be useful but it's on the lower rung of importance when it comes to the on-page elements considered by the search engines. So while not a whole lot of time needs to be invested in creating workable description tags, I'll give you a few pointers on what you need to consider.

Why use a meta description tag

Each search engine gives the meta description varying degrees of weight, but overall there is not a whole lot of significance there. Where the meta description is most useful is in the SERPs. For many searches performed the meta description on the page will display just below the clickable title. This gives you a bit of branding and message control.

If you run PPC campaigns then you know the value of a good description on your ads. The meta description is really no different. Natural results are ads too! But in the natural results you get quite a bit more character space than with paid ads. This shows how valuable a good description can be, in conjunction with your title, in creating a compelling natural search ad.

How to use a meta description tag

Well, the construct of the meta description tag is fairly easy. You could probably write it in your sleep.


<meta name="description" content="Place your add description here." />


That's pretty much it. But a few things you need to know. Google will display anywhere from 145-155 characters (including spaces) and around 130 without spaces. Your mileage may very, but anything longer will get cut off. That doesn't mean your description can't be longer than that, just so long as you know anything beyond that won't be visible in the search results.

It doesn't matter where your meta description tag resides in your code, provided that it's in your <head> tag.

And, just like a good ad, it's important to use your keywords in the meta description. Don't stuff the description with keywords, but instead write a compelling sentence or two that reinforces the content of the page.

Finally, make sure all your descriptions are unique from one page to the next. Take the time to write original content, not cutting and pasting to save time. It's probably better to go without a description tag than to use duplicate tags throughout the site.

When use a meta description tag

It's not always necessary to have a meta description tag on every page of your site. In fact, there are some instances when you probably don't want to use a meta description tag.

If you have a very focused page, targeting pretty specific keyword phrases, then write a great description for the page. On the other hand, if you're writing more generalized informative content around a single core term, content that is likely to appear in results for long-tail type keywords, then you may want to leave out your meta description.

The difference here is that if you don't have a meta description tag then the engines will display a snippet of your content. That snippet will be pulled from various parts of the page that use the words used in the actual search. If your page comes up with a long tail search your meta description may not provide the right information, namely the long tail keywords used in the search.

If you omit the description you have a much higher chance that the description that appears in the SERPs will be more relevant to the searcher that used long-tail search phrases. With a more relevant description you have a higher likelihood that the visitor will click through your site.

There really is not much to creating a good description tag. The two keys are writing unique text for each description to create, and knowing when not to use a description tag at all. These two bits of knowledge, implemented effectively, will help you achieve more click-throughs to, and hopefully better conversions on, your site.

Source: Search Engine Guide

While visiting some online forums many times I have seen that some website owners and also some members who are working on their client's site often ask why a newer, smaller, or uglier site outranks their site. It's not easy to answer this question as it's hard to point out what's the reason behind it because it involves lot of things and may be many reasons behind it or just a single. But here in this article you can find some points to take into consideration when a competitor outranks you. Solving these issues could play an important role for your web site to move up and to outrank your competitor.

1.Content of your Webpages:

Content of your webpage is so important and plays an important role to get higher rankings but it may also be the reason of dropping your ranking if it is not have enough good quality, not enough useful to its users, not well optimized or your competitors have better then you. So you must check for your content again. Content should have some uniqueness with useful information to its users with interesting titles so that users bound to click and visit on your page.

Avoid using too much images to make your website attractive as search engines can not read images so use it only if they needed and always remember to add a descriptive title to your images and also add alternative text through ALT attribute to your images.

2.Relevancy:

Relevancy is another important factor for your ranking. If your competitor's site has more relevant content to the search query then sure it will outrank your site.

Suppose if the search engines, can not define your site to determine how relevant your page is to a particular search query then there's no possibility of your site to rank well for that search query. So always make sure that your content must be relevant to the theme of the particular web page with most relevant title.

3.Structure of website:

Website structure or construction of your website also affects ranking of a website. If it is not well structured or has complex structure that is not easily accessible to its users as well as search engine spiders and if your competitor's site is well structured and easy to understand navigation then it may be the reason that your competitor outranks your site as users and search engine spiders use structure of your site to learn what your site is all about.

4.Link Popularity:

Link popularity always plays a major role in ranking of a website. A website can never rank well without having some quality inbound links.

Also, only having large number of inbound links to your site not ensure that your site will outrank your competitor. Suppose if you have large number of low quality inbound links then your competitor can outrank you with just a little number of high quality inbound links. So always focus on getting quality links from some relevant sites having higher PR, links from authority sites, news sites and if you have some relevant natural or one way links that will be too good as natural links are always more important than reciprocals and search engines prefer them.

The other most important thing about link popularity is anchor text. Always add your main keywords in your anchor text that may sure help you to outrank your competitor.

Also having a little variation in anchor text and description of your site in inbound links will be better as in this way linking looks little natural.

5.Domain Age:

Domain age also is a factor behind ranking of your site. But it does not mean that an older domain always has better chance to rank well or outrank your site as an older domain with low relevancy and poorly structured site have no chance to rank well. So other factors like content, relevancy, link popularity are enough good then in this case having an older domain benefit you and you may have better chance to outrank your competitor.

6.Analyze your competitors:

Search engine ranking is always most important for a website and webmasters always want to see their site among top rankings in major search engines for their targeted keywords but it is not an easy task. If you want to rank well or outrank your competitor then first analyze your competitors and then decide what to do or whom to compete as ranking not only depends on the competitiveness of the keywords but also the size of your site. So if you have a site of approximately 20-30 pages then it will not be advisable to compete for a competitive keyword against a site has 10,000 pages.

In this way, there may be lot of reasons that a competitor outrank you but the important thing is to analyze and determine which reasons may be contributing factors and if you points out the reasons then it will be easier to you to tackle the problem and outrank your competitor and also to rank well on major search engines.

Source: PromotionWorld

How Google views your site does matter if you want to succeed online because Google has become the dominant search engine on the web. It now has over 60% of the U.S. search engine market. In other countries around the world that percentage rises to 80% or more. In addition, the Google Brand Name has solidly permeated the popular psyche and any top rankings within Google will bring much weight and prestige along with all that traffic.

If you're a webmaster, you will already know how vital Google is to the success of your site, especially if you rely upon organic keyword rankings for your traffic. This free organic traffic from Google is highly desired by webmasters because it is extremely targeted and delivers high conversion rates.

In trying to reach the highest rankings possible, I (like most webmasters) have to be constantly aware of what Google thinks of my site and content. As a webmaster and marketer I have always geared my onlíne marketing towards Google. I have spent years building my keyword rankings within Google; if you take out the fact that it has nearly driven me insane, it has mostly been a positive experience.

This experience has also shown me it is indeed important for anyone to know how Google views and rates your site or content. The more knowledge you have, the better able you will be to tackle any obstacles and challenges that will come your way.

SERPs Is The Only Opinion That Counts

And like most webmasters, I try to find out as much about Google as is humanly possible, but Google doesn't give up its secrets easily. In fact, many webmasters would argue the only true opinion Google has of your site is shown in their SERPs - if your keywords/pages are ranked in the number one spots in Google's "Search Engine Results Pages" then Google must think your site or content deserves to be there.

However, there are other ways of finding out how Google is viewing your content. Below are several Google webmaster tools and things you can do to discover just how Google views your site or pages. They will give you a better picture of what Google thinks about your site.

Checking Your Content/Keywords In Google

One handy tool that will show you what Google thinks your pages consist of is located here:

    https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Just type in your URL and tick off website content and you will get a listing of the major keywords Google has for your content. If your targeted keyword or keywords are not listed, then you have to do some re-writing.

Checking Your Backlinks In Google

If you want to find out how many backlinks your site has in Google, just open up Google Search and type in:

    link:yourURL

and it will show you the number of backlinks you have.

Since Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, many webmasters also use Yahoo! to find a more exact number of links your site has on the web.

Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL

Now whether Google is using or considering all these backlinks is the big question? Finding the exact number of backlinks you have in Google has always been a problem because Google is not giving you the exact number or at least this is the general opinion of most SEO experts.

Another way I monitor my links in Google is to place quotation marks around my site name or my name "bizwaremagic" or "titus hoskins" and do a search in Google. This gives me the pages containing references to me or my site. This is usually 50,000 to 100,000 pages, I have also noticed my online income usually correlates as this number goes up or down.

Checking Your Indexed Pages In Google

Obviously, it is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.

Just type into Google Search:

    site:yourURL

A little while back, having your pages indexed in Google's Supplemental Index caused webmasters much stress as it seemed Google was judging these pages as "second class" pages. Since then, Google no longer uses the Supplementary Label in grading pages but that doesn't mean a supplementary index doesn't exist; just that Google has promised to crawl and consider these pages as well in any search query.

Checking Your Google Cache

You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.

Just type into Google Search:

    cache:yourURL

Checking Your PageRank Within Google

Another tricky issue is PageRank. This is supposed to be the heart of Google's ranking system created by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; each link is considered a "vote" for your page and the higher the number of "votes" you have, the higher the PR your page receives. However, again Google is using "smoke and mirrors" to conceal your true PageRank mainly to cut out abuse and manipulation of their results. Some experts say PageRank still counts, other say it doesn't.

You can check your Google PageRank here:

    http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker

Many SEO clients are focused on receiving ranking reports for their keywords as a major deliverable associated with a properly managed SEO campaign.

But ranking reports don't mean nearly as much as they once did. Search engine rankings change regularly, are different on various data centers, and won't generate traffic to the Web site, much less generate leads and sales, especially if a site ranks well for keywords that aren't often searched.

So, I preach to my prospects and clients that they should be focused on analytics and measurement of SEO much like they would (try to) measure any form of marketing effort. Is the SEO program generating qualified traffic to the site? Is the SEO effort generating phone calls (yes, you can track this)? Is the SEO effort delivering a solid ROI (for what I'm spending on these efforts, either in internal resources or outsourcing)?

Now, that's not to say that a firm you've outsourced your SEO efforts to shouldn't be delivering reports. They absolutely should. But, let's try to focus on things that actually matter. These include things like solid keyword research, a competitive analysis, a site structure analysis and analytics reports that "mean something" (making sure that analytics programs are set up properly and tracking what matters).

Today, I'll touch upon one of the most overlooked aspects of a successful SEO effort: the competitive analysis.

Determine Who Your Competitors Are

Many CMOs are quick to list off a number of competitors (those that they think of as competitors in the traditional sense). In the SEO landscape, we lean towards those "keyword competitors" -- Web sites that are ranking for keywords we'd like our client to be found for.

A good example of this would be a client from my former life who sold "signs" (banners, billboards, etc.). One of their main keywords was (is) "signs." At the time, the movie "Signs," starring Mel Gibson, was released. Obviously, the movie isn't a direct competitor for this keyword, but a page devoted to this movie ranks number one in Google for "signs," and the movie still has several mentions in Google's top 10.

How to Compete for Various Keywords

Once you've determined the keyword competitors, you need to determine the factors that might be in play to help these Web sites to rank, while yours may not.

It's possible to get carried away with this type of analysis, as there are over 100 factors in play to determine why a Web site might rank, and the factors (and the weight of the factors) will fluctuate in the search engine's algorithms.

With that said, there are some pretty consistent things that you can look for to better compete for various keywords:

• Age of Domain: Many people getting into business on the Web for the first time don't know this simple rule. Buying an aged domain saves you a great amount of time. While you're at it, buy a domain that already has links pointing to it (links from within your chosen industry, ideally). When you look at the Web sites that are ranking for your selected keywords, you'll most likely see a trend that those listed on the first page of the search results are many years old. This could be because it took that long to generate enough quality links/content, but an aged domain is certainly one of the most important factors that goes into getting a Web site to rank.
• Pages Indexed: This is what I refer to as the "Wikipedia effect." Wikipedia is an extremely deep Web site, with only one page relevant to your search. Why does it keep showing up when you're searching? Because the search engines have determined that the Web site -- as a whole -- is an "authority" site. That is, it's deep with quality content (there are a number of other reasons why this Web site ranks, but the depth of the Web site is certainly key among those reasons). Wikipedia has more than 380 million pages indexed in Yahoo.
• Linking: Through an easy "site:www.sitename.com" search on Yahoo, you can see the pages indexed and links indexed for any Web site that you're analyzing. Click on the "Inlinks" link and use the drop down to select "except from this domain," so that you aren't counting those internal links in your analysis.

By following these three simple steps, you'll gain a greater insight into what it takes to rank for the keywords you're interested in ranking for, and help you better understand the steps/tactics that you'll need to employ to compete with those that are showing up in the SERPs.

Source: SearchEngineWatch