Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tips. Show all posts

Monday

SEO Tips: Correct Your HTML Meta Tag !

We look at a lot of sites on a daily basis. There are a lot of common problems I see on sites. Some people may have tags set-up improperly or use tags that have no real purpose.



We have compiled a list of the 5 top do-it-yourself SEO errors. It's safe to say that many do-it-yourselfers may have at least one of these errors on their sites. These should help you omit these often costly mistakes and pull you up in the ranks.

  • Keyword tag – A keyword tag is for keywords, but not for any keywords. You can't just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related to. The tags should reflect keywords only on that particular page; not the entire site and not every keyword you think your site might be searched on. Also, you should have no more then 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, don't write: Broadway tickets, circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets and so on. Do use Broadway, circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so on.
  • Abstract tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these to stuff keywords. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can view. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site.
  • Description Tag – The whole point behind this tag is to describe what the "page" is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 – 25 and not exceed 250 characters including space. I see many website owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is entirely too lengthy. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine.
  • Title tag – This, to me, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine reads. It tells the search engine what the" page" is about. Don't put your web address here. Do not add your company name in the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters.
  • Content- If you notice, I have been commenting on relevancy to the "page", not your overall site. Each page has it's own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keyword tags. All of these keywords should be the same. Add them to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized.

Why do sites fall short? Simple, content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You type in a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a few other factors into account. So, if your site doesn't have these terms, how will you be found? You won't. Over do it with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes reading everything about SEO can be bad.




Trying too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoiling the soup. In the end they can do more bad than good. These are very basic rules that should be followed by all. In, doubt? Always consult or hire an SEO professional.

Sunday

Some Tips for Web Page Headers

Are you a current business owner who has asked the question, "How do I get my website on the first page of Google and the major search engines?" Most business owners don't know that traditional media ad spending is down across the board. Television advertising, radio, newspaper and magazines are down an average of approximately 13% in 2009.

Implementing relative meta-tags in your website makes sure that it will increase effectiveness of your search engine optimization campaign. On which you are investing lots of time and money. You can pick up any of your webpage and click on 'View' button at the top of the browser screen and select 'Page Source' it will show title tag at the top of the page.

Does your website have an actual contact form? There are a lot of websites that have just a mailto web link for users to contact the company. The problem with this is that you are reliant on the user having their own mail client installed and you cannot specify what information you want to collect. If you have a proper contact form on your contact us page you can specify what information you want to collect e.g. name, phone number, email address, website etc.

On-page optimization is the process of structuring or changing the elements on your webpage so that it can be found by search engines for specific keyword(s). The on-page elements or factors that you need to change in order to improve your website's positions in search engines include title Tag, header tags, page content, alt tag, meta description tag and meta keywords tag.

It allows anyone from any experience level, from a complete beginner with no website technical skills to those who are familiar with website building. For the users who already know how to build sites using all kinds of coding and language and scripts, this will make it much easier for them too. You can start producing websites that look as professional as the big name companies and you can do it by yourself and do it fast.

If you were working with a company that creates designer flip-flops that are embellished with crystals, symbols, jewelry and other decorative items. When you first start their keyword project, the first two keywords that the company will give you is: flip-flops and sandals. You can easily find that there is great search volume and much lighter competition around more specific search terms such as: embellished flip flops, crystal flip-slops, rhinestone flip-flops, decorated flip-flops etc.

Depending on how your templates are created, you can save Huge amounts of time by allowing the template or web editing software to perform repetitive tasks vs. you making them all on your own. A couple of examples might be your website's header, footer or common menu system. Let' say if each page of your website includes these common items, then you could save great time by having all of the pages call a "single file" that simply contains all of the requisite information for each respective section.

A favicon is basically an image that distinguishes a website/company from others. What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you see image of the latter G with red,green, blue and yellow colors?... Google of course! You see how easy it is to advertise and embed your brand in people's mind. That's the power of favicon. Simply put, a favicon for your blog or website, is another way to make "you brand" (your website/blog), easily recognizable.

Designing Your Site to Be Search Engine Friendly. Creating a site that is search engine friendly should be an objective of every company that wants to do business on the Internet. Search engines are the most common way for Internet surfers to search for something on the Net. In fact, 85 percent of all people who use the Internet use search engines as their primary way to look for information. By using keywords relating to your company in appropriate places on your site, you can improve how search engines rank you.


Monday

Text Importance Of SEO

When you're approaching the design of your site, it's apparent that technology is king. Web designers will tell you that selecting the right platform to build your site can make a huge difference to its look and usability. As a consequence, many sites are built using highly complex technologies, filled with all sorts of bells and whistles.



Then the site is considered from a search engine optimization perspective. Under this new gaze, not only are the bells and whistles too much noise, but the technology platform the site is based upon is sometimes a liability. What site owners usually come to realize is that they would have been better off working from the basics, focusing on the best they could do with HTML and text.

When it comes to search engine optimization, it is clear that text rules. This is because of the way the search engines trawl the web. Search engine crawlers have become increasingly sophisticated over the years, but their bias is still toward the format they began with, namely text. If you can fit all of your content into text within plain, text-based code, there's a higher chance that the search engines will understand your site, making indexing a little easier.

A solely text-based site is not entirely attractive to your human users, and there must be some balance. At the same time, your SEO work will be cut in half if your site has nice, handy chunks of text to work with.


If your site is built entirely out of Flash, don't despair. SEO companies are able to work around Flash and other not-so-SEO-friendly technologies, and Google is constantly trying to improve the algorithm's relationship with web design technology. It is important, however, to be aware that the task isn't going to be easy.

Saturday

Reduce the HTTP Requests Can Speed Up Your Site

When a user is opening your website every object on the page (e.g. images or scripts) will require a round trip to the server. Those HTTP requests will delay the response time of your site, and if you are loading dozens of objects this delay can add up to several seconds.

The first step to reduce the delay from HTTP requests is to reduce the number of objects on your website. Get rid of unnecessary images, headers, styling features and the like. If possible you can also combine 2 or more adjacent images into a single one.

Secondly make sure that your requests for external files or scripts are combined in a single location. For example instead of using three CSS files to create the layout of your page:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/body.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/side.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/footer.css" />

You should use a single one with all the styling information:

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/style.css" />


Use the Height and Width tags for Speed Up Your Site

This is a very important factor that many people (including myself until some time ago) tend to overlook. When you use images or tables on your pages you should always include the height and width tags. If the browser does not see those tags it will need to figure the size of the image, then load the image and then load the rest of the page. Here is an example of code containing those tags:

<img id="moon" src="http://www.domain.com/moon.png" alt="moon image" width="450" height="200" />


When the height and width tags are included the browser will automatically know the size of the image. As a consequence it will be able to hold a place for the image and load the rest of the page contemporaneously. Apart from the improvement on the load time of the page this method is also more user friendly since the visitor can start reading the text or other information while the image is being downloaded.

Tips to designing your own website

As the rate of information technology increases, many small business owners and individuals are now aiming to increase their communication and business with the use of the Internet. Some of the benefits of the Internet is that people can frequently improve their knowledge, be critical, and analyze new concepts and developments.

Not only does the Internet provide an opportunity for people to access new and foreign knowledge, but people are also given the opportunity to share knowledge through the use of creating their own websites or visiting chat rooms.

The concept of building a website may at first seem to be foreign to the less technologically inclined, but once the basics of website building are mastered, then the concept becomes routine and easy to handle, especially with updates. However, the building of a website does not only involve conquering technology, but also the design of your website will largely affect how many visitors will stay on your site and the amount of information that is consequently attained. For example, a website that is offensive in their use of language or ideologies, or even which has unsuitable colors will deter viewers from going to the site. Below are some tips that need to be taken into consideration when building your website.

Here the tips:

  1. Make sure the color of the text on your website is not too bright and is suitable for the content of the website. For example, if you are designing a website to talk about the death penalty, a pink background with yellow text may not be the most appropriate format.
  2. The pictures or images that are presented on your website also need to be taken into consideration. A website incorporating cartoons and pictures of Barbie but which is aimed at mature age people in the content may not be as successful. Remember, when people go to a website the first thing they will see will be the graphics, and just as easily as getting to the website, people can just as easily go to another website.
  3. Make sure the links that you put on your website are relevant to your content. Although advertising is permitted and incorporated into some websites, too much advertising and propaganda will act as a deterrent and may compete for the attention of the viewer. Also, although advertising may pay for the cost of maintaining your website, remember the initial purpose of designing the website and don’t let in-your-face advertising overtake your valuable content.
  4. Although most people feel that a website is made more interesting when there are graphics on the site, do not put in too many graphics and make the size of your website too large. Viewers can become frustrated if a website takes too long to download and will go to another website.
  5. Remember to reference everything that you have researched and include a bibliography or a list of references. Do not plagiarize. Plagiarism can have consequences if you are an academic, or you may be liable for court action if it is too serious. Remember to indent long quotes that you may have gotten from a person or from research. Acknowledge help and all your sources.
  6. Be mindful of different ideologies and cultures. Colors for backgrounds may have significance to the content. However, in another culture it may have a completely different meaning and may be misunderstood.
  7. Ensure that the content is concise and attractive to the viewer. The content of websites can be written in formal as well as informal language. This will depend on the target audience and what you want to promote. For example, a person who is aiming at a teenage market may want to use less formal language, however, if you are aimed at academics or mature age people, correct referencing and research as well as formal language will be better appreciated.
  8. Ensure that the links that are put on your website work and that your website is easy to navigate. For example, endless links that go nowhere can cause frustration and deter people from your website. Information that is not concise or inaccurate can cause misunderstandings. Hence, check all information before you put it on the website and check your links before you publish the website.
The building of your website can be a challenge at first, but the rewards are that many people will have the opportunity to share in your knowledge and communicate with you in relation to your ideas. For entrepreneurs, websites have the ability to promote your business and also ensure that consumers have the ability to gain better information about your goods and services.

Wednesday

Growth Up Traffic Of Adsense Site With Using Social Bookmarking

Bookmarking your sites, articles, videos and everything else you do online is a great way to get backlinks and drive traffic to your site. Bookmarking sites are where people go to have a list of their favorite sites online and to share these sites or other related sites with others. These sites can generate traffic to your web site(s) because the bookmarking sites have a very large community. But the most important aspect of this bookmarking sites is that you are getting quality one way backlinks. Backlinks are very important to have if you want to rank high in the search engines for your keywords.


Bookmarking sites can generate traffic more quickly than search engines because they index and categorize content faster than the search engines. So be sure to have a well planned and targeted bookmarking campaign and you will drive free targeted traffic to your web site.

When you start to bookmark everything you do online, here is a few of the main sites that you should be using:

1. Digg - this site is for people to submit stories that they find on the internet. When other people like your story, they digg it. The more diggs a story gets, the higher it is ranked. If you can get enough diggs your story can appear on the front page with the potential of getting thousands of views.

2. Technorati - is one of the main authority sites when it comes to blogs. They monitor the content, comments and links between.

3. Stumble upon - Bookmarking or telling people which web sites that you stumble upon and think are interesting.

4. Del.icio.us - high authority bookmarking site with a large community

when you are bookmarking be sure to add the correct tags to your bookmarks. This will guarantee that they are seen and will increase links to your site. When adding tags, be sure to pay attention to the format that the site uses.
The two most common formats are comma separated and space separated. Make sure you follow the correct format so you get the full benefit of each bookmark.

Bookmarking your sites manually can be very time consuming. Here are two tools that will help you make the process go a little faster.
  1. Only Wire
  2. Social Marker
So get started and sign up for accounts at these bookmarking sites and remember to bookmark everything you do online.

How To Improve Your Adsense Earning

Adsense is a great program, if you run a content based website, then it can effectively offer you 'free money'. Basically just by placing Google's AdSense code on your site you can make money from anyone who clicks through on any one of those ads.

This is great and most website owners end-up applying for the AdSense program. Once approved the tendency is to log into your account, chose a few ad formats, place them on your site and wait for the money to start rolling in... or not...

The truth is that AdSense is extremely easy to implement (you just copy the text from Google's website and paste it into your own site). But it's actually fairly complex to get right. That's why many website owners feel very, very disappointed when they reach the end of the first month and little money has come through.


Partly this is because displaying ads on your site is a numbers game... The more people you have coming to your site the more likely it is that they will click on the ads on your site. Typically you will get a click-through rate of between 1% and 5% (ie for every 100 people who visit your site only between 1 and 5 of them will click on an ad). You can improve this number by altering the layout of your ads (ie ad size, font colours and border colours) where plain ads that actually resemble the overall look and feel of the text on your site tend to perform best. Basically you're trying to make the ads merge in with the content of your site so that they do not look like ads. That's why some of the more unusual ad sizes can look better than the standard 'banner' style of ads.

Obviously you also need to look after your SEO. You need to build more links so that more people find your website and see your pages (remember that earning income from ads is a numbers game, the more people who visit your site, the more clicks you get).

However, it's also often forgotten that each ad is worth a certain amount of money and only pays you a certain amount for each click. You want to get ads to your site that will entice your visitors to click on them and which will earn you the most income. This is why you need to pay particular attention to how your website is indexed and the keywords you have.

Your keywords should always be related to your site's content, however some keywords are better at getting high-paying ads than others. Also , the google bots index the whole of your site and if you have a complex page with lots of links this may not be a good thing.

The links and other text you have may lead to areas of your site and topics that are not related to the main focus of the page they're on (this is particularly true of portal sites and forums and article sites) and this is where Google provides tools to help you. One of the most important of these is a series of tags:

text of section

This tells Google that the text between those tags is the most important part of a web pate. Now, the remainder of the page won't be ignored but whatever's between those tags will be given extra weighting. Google recommends that you include at least 20% of a page's content in those sections and you certainly can't use it to just highlight certain words and phrases. But if your page is complex and especially if your page design puts some of the main navigation elements before the main content it can be very powerful.

If, however, you want certain text on your pages to be ignored completely for ad indexing you can use the following tags:

text of section

Using these tools can help you dramatically help the focussing of ads on your site and this can help your click-through rates and incomes.

Sunday

Plus Minus Using Flash in Web Design

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a powerful multimedia technology that brings life and color to the web. Flash however, comes with various disadvantages that often hinder its implementation in web page design. At a time when SEO is a necessity in web design, flash should be used very cautiously. Following are some reasons why:

Browser incompatibility
While it's true the Adobe Flash plugin has been installed in very many browsers, you often need the latest version of the plugin to view content created using new versions of flash authoring software. You are also not sure that every user updates their plugins diligently. This presents the risk of your flash content not being properly viewed by all your site visitors. Woe unto you if your entire site is in flash.


Near-impossible site indexing
Site engine robots cannot execute JavaScript nor index content that is embed within flash files. For that reason, flash site designers are encouraged to provide html or text only versions of their web pages. This should however be carefully implemented to avoid penalties of web page duplication and spamming search engine robots.

Very small screen fonts
For some reason, many web sites designed entirely in flash have very small fonts that are particularly hard to read. Worse, there are no ways of resizing the page text size used on such pages. The worst part is that flash sites have no accessibility features for visitors who use text-only browsers or those who are visually handicapped.

Distracting animations and eye-candy
Many overzealous designers often go over themselves to come up with extremely busy web pages full of flashy graphics, animated banners and other multimedia flash elements. With Flash, it's very easy to yield to the temptation of creating web pages full of eye candy that fails to delight the eye but ends up distracting thge mind. Be careful, most modern browsers e.g. Opera offers users the option of instantly disabling animated graphics and other multimedia content.

Slow-loading multimedia content
It is true that most Flash content is handled as vector graphics in flash authoring applications. On the web however, these files are incorporated as SWF flash files. In view of the ActionScript that facilitates animations and interaction, the file sizes increase. Ultimately, web sites with heavy flash content take longer to load. This can easily drive your visitors away. Flash content is to be kept to a minimum.

The Great Keywords For Growing Up Web Traffic

Keywords are not just for search engine optimization of your website, rather these can serve as subjects when you are writing fruitful content for your website. Keywords provide you with topics people are searching for. No wonder you would want these to be converted into informative articles.

How many keywords can one subject contain?
There is no dearth of keywords for a single subject, because there are millions out there trying to search for information and trying new keywords all the time. Therefore, proper research will reveal the numbers of available keywords for a single subject.


It is absolutely normal if you put in the main keyword and take use those which have highest numbers of clicks. This strategy will work when you are trying to market your website. However, using single line or vertical keywords can really make your website SEO friendly. If you want continuous flow of traffic your efforts should be directed towards building a user friendly and highly informative website.

Are website content keywords any different than the marketing ones?
Keywords for both purposes would be almost similar. However, for the purpose of building an informative website, you should use keywords with a wider spectrum rather than eyeing just the bull's eye. When building a website and adding content, it becomes necessary to include as many related topics as possible, this is what will bring in regular visitors.

Keyword mining software will always provide you with not just vertical keywords which are directly related to the subject. Instead through these software you will find keywords that are related to the subject but do not happen to be the very main stream ones. These keywords are very useful in providing you with topics that can become informative articles to a wide range of Internet users.

For example: If your website is about particular jewelry, it would be easier to attract traffic if it contained jewelry for men, women, children, different age groups, different occasions, information regarding what jewelry goes well with what apparel, with examples, etc. this would automatically increase use of the jewelry website and people would visit it often to get ideas and information. You can also provide visitors with information regarding preserving, cleaning and repair of the jewelry.

Can all the above keywords bring in traffic for the website?
Some keywords can be used simply for building your website. Though internet users do not search for the product or service using the keyword, you will be surprised to see that many who visit your website will check out the information page. If visitors find information worthwhile, you can be assured they will come back each time they want to more knowledge about the subject.

Keywords used for web content building may not always pull in traffic, but they are always helpful in retaining traffic if the content answers their queries and current problems effectively. You have the long tail keywords and short keywords; both can be used for building website content.

Tuesday

Best Ways to Increase Blog Traffic

For beginner and even the expert, here are the simple and best ways for increasing the traffic to your blogs or websites:
  • Trade links with others website owner (Traffic exchanges) - This method should be related to the subject of your blogs. But is not encourage by search engines. This method able to drive unlimited amounts of traffic to your website. Traffic exchanges are websites that award its members with advertising credits in exchange for viewing other members websites or business opportunities.
  • E-zines or Articles - Write some articles and submit them to e-zines, websites and magazines that accept article submissions for free. And, include your business information and web address at the end of the article.
  • Online community - When people get involved in your community they will regularly come back to communicate with others such as online message board, forum or chat room.
  • Freebie - Give away the freebie to your visitors because this will increase your blogs exposure and attract many online users to your blogs at the same time.
  • Online directories - List your particular item or service for free. If you’re offering a free e-zine, submit it to all the free e-zine directories on the web.
  • Message Boards - Participating to other people’s questions and give comments and post appropriate information.
  • Exchange classified or sponsor ads - Exchanging ads or links means more traffic to the web site and make money online in converting the traffic to sale much effective to the blogger and internet marketer.
  • Free advertising Listing - You can post it on free classified ad sites, free for all links sites, news groups that allow ads, free yellow page directories, etc. Free advertising sites offer you free advertising to entice you to upgrade in the future. When you place an ad with a free advertising website you are basically testing that website to see if your ad will generate traffic to your site, once your ads begins to generate traffic, you will most likely upgrade your account.
  • Setup blog and post - Setting up your own blog is one of the simplest way to generate traffic to your website either free blog or self-hosted blog. Blogs help you to simply your thoughts and ideas and the best way to communicate in a blog is to write the same way you speak. Make sure that when you are blogging you use the keywords relevant to your niche at least 5 times in the body of your blog. You can get indexed rather quickly with blogs. Therefore generating a lot of traffic to your website through the search engines.
  • Backlinks - This way can be achieve several ways such as reciprocal link. Reciprocal links is when you place another marketers link on your website in exchange for them placing your link on theirs. Another way is to place ads free or paid in several listings across the internet using your url as the source.
  • Yahoo Answers - Answering questions related to your niche will help you to generate traffic to your website for the simple fact that Yahoo allows you to post your url as the source of the answer.
  • Thank You Page - When someone fills your form with their information it takes them to a thank you page where the message usually read thank you for your subscription. You can redirect your thank you page to any website of your choice. The reason the traffic is targeted is because the person signing the form was definitely interested in your product.
  • Opt-in Form - An opt-in form is a web form used to capture a prospects name, e-mail address or phone number. This way works if you offer a prospect a free gift or service, but they must fill out your form in order to receive delivery of their gift. One caution is to make sure not to spam your list, because just as they opt-in, they can choose to opt-out.
  • Post comments - Make comment to others people blog will let other people to click your link because people will curious about your comment and want to look more about you and your website.
  • Giving testimonials - This involve giving comments and endorsement to other people’s products. As soon as you use another person’s product, send a quick email to the person telling him/her how much valuable or helpful the product was to you. Soon , you’ll be having people putting your testimonials on their high traffic website with a link to your site.
  • Signature - Include your signature file with links to your web site at the end of all your postings or emails or even articles.
  • Submit your URL to major search engines - This increase the possibilities for online users to search your website with the keywords.