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Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

The Magic Keyword Density Formula in SEO

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

A major success of any website or online advertising campaign is your search engine optimization (SEO). By researching the best keywords and ensuring you haven’t used them too much or too little is worked out by an easy, yet very effective formula:

Step 1: Firsty, count how many words you have on your page.
Step 2: Then, count up how many times you have used your keyword

Step 3: And then apply the following formula:

Your Keyword Density = ([key word count]) * 100 / (total word count]

So, for example if you have a 400 or so page or blog post about holiday accommodation, and you are optimizing it for ‘hotel’, then the total keyword count is 400, and the example of the word ‘hotel’ is 14, then:

Density of the word ‘hotel’ would equal (14 * 100) /400
So the keyword density for ‘hotel’ on that particular page is 3.5

Too much density and you can be caught out for spamming and be blacklisted from the search engines, and too little will get you nowhere at all to start with.

Now, depending on how you set up your navigation and internal page text links (this is linking from particular words or phrases which link to a related page) you can increase your overall density by using the same method throughout the entire website, which is more powerful than the density of just one single page of the site.

If your mathematics isn’t that great, and you really want to fine tune it perfectly, then I recommend using an SEO software package such as Web CEO to do the hard work for you. This easy to use software reviews your entire website and shows you exactly where you need to fine tune your site for the best results. Easy!

Keyword Density doesn’t just cover the visual text keywords. You can actually use the same principle mentioned above for your Alt Tags on your images, which appear in Google Images and a few other major search engines.

Try out this technique for yourself. You will be amazed how a quick optimization of your density followed by a resubmission to the search engines will quickly change your listing on the search engines.

And as I mentioned in a previous post on keyword density, make sure if you decide to link your website to another website in any way, that you either set up your page to tell the search engines not to follow other pages, or fully test the keyword density of the site you are linking to first. If their website does not relate directly to your keywords or they already have a poor density, or for that matter, a density that is too high, they may damage your own website. It is well worth spending the few minutes to check.

Article by Chris Bourke: Devision Design and Web SEO Coach

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One way Link Building: Securing Lasting Results for Your Website

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

Author: Akhila Choudhary

If you are contemplating link popularity building , the best advice is think long term. Don’t rely on the traditional reciprocal links. They may give you link popularity for a short period of time but are not long lasting. On the contrary, the benefits you get from one way link building last for years and help improve your website’s ranking on search engines results.
Now, let’s see how one-way links are more beneficial than reciprocal links. It is true that both one way links and reciprocal links do a world of good to your website’s ranking on search engines. Link popularity is one of the criteria that Google and Yahoo use while evaluating web pages. Pages acquire link popularity depending on the pages that link to them. But if you use a number of reciprocal links, the popularity of your site may even be decreased. Though these links point back to your site, they may not be links which shares the same area of interest as yours. They may lead to sites which are quite different from yours in term of content.
One way links are difficult to acquire. But once you have them, you are guaranteed of lasting benefits. These are links that points back to site and they also lead to sites that share the same topical focus as yours. As such, they also add value to the users and search engines see this as an authentic and not an artificial way of building link popularity. Consult link building services providers to get one way linking sources.
Building links through this method also secures permanent results as website owners feels that their users can be benefited from your site’s content. Hence they don’t easily drop your link from their sites. So turn to one way links for link building.

About the Author:

I am the webmaster at www.synapseinteractive.com . Synapse Interactive is a one way link building company in India.

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SEO – Get your Business to the top of Google

Monday, May 4th, 2009

By Scott Van Achte

In today’s online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.
In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.
The focus of Part 1 will be with on page website optimization.

THE RIGHT KEYWORDS
This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly.

Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still provide a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.
Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word “hotel” would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to “Victoria BC hotel” you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.

WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION
There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to improve your chances of success.

Title Tag
The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.
It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term “hotel” and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.
If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.

Meta Description Tag
The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.
The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and not repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on your site should have its own unique description tag.
Meta Keyword Tag
When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won’t influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.

Density
Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.
This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
Body Text and Keyword Placement
The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.

Synonyms
Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.
To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as “~hotels”. Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the “~hotels” example Google brings up phrases such as ‘travel’, ‘tourism’, ‘accommodation’, as well as various hotel chain names such as ‘Hilton Hotels’.

Keywords in Domain
There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.
If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can provide some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.

Keywords in page specific URL
Using keywords for specific page URL’s can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:
MyTourismSite.com/Victoria/Accommodations/Hotels/Hilton.html

Link Anchor text
This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
While a link that simply states “click here” or “www.domainname.com” does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use “discount hotels” as its anchor.

Image Alt Text
While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.

Inline Links
These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.

Site Navigation
It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google’s ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.

- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.

- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google’s Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.

- Images: Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google’s cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn’t mean Google won’t follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.

URL Structure
Avoid long elaborate URL’s with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.
MyTourismSite.com/?locid=”victoria”&catid=”accommodations”
&type=”hotel”&comp=”hilton”
stands a better chance if cleaned up to read:
MyTourismSite.com/victoria/accommodations/hotels/hilton.htm

SUMMARY
Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture.

Scott Van Achte is the Senior SEO at StepForth Web Marketing Inc.; based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read more of Scott’s articles and those of the veteran StepForth team at http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com

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Posted in Accommodation Websites, Brisbane Website Design, Caboolture Website Design, Caloundra Website Design, Mackay Website Design, Marketing, Maroochydore Web Site Design, Mooloolaba web site design, New Zealand Website Design, Noosa Website Design, Restaurant Website Design, SEO, Sunshine Coast Website Design, Website Development | No Comments »

12 Simple Steps to Effective Websites

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

By Nancy Fraser

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.

Edward Lear must have had some precognition about what was in store for us all with the development of the internet when he wrote this nonsensical poem.

Many people do feel at sea after they launch their website and attempt to navigate the sometimes confusing channels of the internet. They wonder why their website doesn’t get more traffic and why their inbox is not filling up with emails from people clamoring to buy their products or services.

It seems that the rules change as often as Oprah changes her clothes and who could ever hope to keep up with that!

Price quotes for search engine optimization are all over the map; the process seems never-ending and expensive.

How is it that some people seem to have great success on the web without spending a huge amount of money? Is it unrealistic to think that you can make a living working on the web?

When faced with a seemingly overwhelming challenge it helps to break things down into bite-sized pieces.

Effective websites should include the following:
1. Your website needs to focus on a specific niche.

2. You need to do keyword research and although Google no longer gives weight to Meta keywords some of the other major search engines still do.

3. Your website should have the main keyword used throughout and each page should be written around 5-10 keywords that are tightly focused on that particular page’s topic.

4. Content is still King. Well written, focused content is crucial.

5. Meta titles need to include your keywords.

6. Organization of content should include headings and subtitles to make it easy for readers to scan the pages. Be sure to include your keywords in these headings as well.

7. Most people on the web are looking for information. If you don’t give them anything of value or entertain them, they will be gone, probably for good.

8. Use keywords in links whereever possible.

9. Include a call to action and,if possible, offer a Free trial. You have to build trust before you can make a sale.

10. Check your website in various browsers (FireFox, Internet Explorer, etc.) to make sure it displays equally well in all.

11. Your personality is what attracts people to you so why would you create a generic website with all of the excitement of a flat glass of pop. Keep the content fresh so it has Fizz!

12. Most importantly, have realistic expectations of what you want to achieve with your website. With all the hype about overnight successes on the internet it’s difficult to put your results into perspective. If you expect instant success and it isn’t happening, it’s easy to become demoralized and quit before you reach your goal.

Some Other Important Web Marketing Tips

Google page rank counts! The higher your page rank number the higher you will rank in user searches. How do you find out your page rank? Download the Google toolbar here for Internet Explorer http://toolbar.google.com/T4/ or here for FireFox http://tools.google.com/firefox/toolbar/install.html.

Improve your page rank by encouraging other highly ranked websites in complementary businesses to link to yours and by developing content with a niche focus. Page rank is also affected by traffic numbers. A couple of ways you can boost traffic are pay-per-click advertising and posting articles on the web.

Your web image is at least as important as your personal image. You wouldn’t go out to meet a prospective client wearing a mishmash of styles and colours but many businesses have websites with tools that don’t work, tables and text that are out of alignment, old information, dated colours, and confusing navigation. Those things are bad enough but when an experienced web developer looks at the code on a website they often find a website that looks good but is not built to encourage search traffic.

Be prepared like the wise owl and make the job of marketing your business as easy as possible with a website that enhances your brand image and is technically sound and purrrr your way to success.

About The Author
Nancy Fraser of Nota Bene Consulting has been helping clients get better results with their marketing and advertising for over 20 years. Sign up for Notable News and get free marketing tips at www.notable-marketing.com.

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Posted in Brisbane Website Design, Caboolture Website Design, Caloundra Website Design, Mackay Website Design, Maroochydore Web Site Design, Mooloolaba web site design, New Zealand Website Design, Noosa Website Design, SEO, Sunshine Coast Website Design, Website Development | No Comments »

Link Building – Now More Than SEO

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Success and failure in Link Building is more often determined by the rankings. Unfortunately, most of the Internet resources are giving the same advice “build links to enhance ranking”.

The bad thing about this statement is to assume that there is no other purpose of building links. But there is lot more to it than just SEO. If you don’t know the ultimate goal of building links then you won’t know how either.

So, there are the other benefits that can be attributed by building links:-

Brand Exposure: Brand exposure is what every marketer is keen to get in their respective field. For brand exposure, you must have to put emphasis on your brand name. Buy banner ads in highly visible sections on top sites in your niche, use a familiar logo in all banner ad creative, and place your brand name in link anchor text.
Authority site has itself a big brand value. Usually, people have more trust on authority sites what they are recommending. Thus text links on high authority sites will be especially valuable for this cause.

Direct Traffic: If you are aiming to get traffic to your website, not only rankings can drive traffic, but your links can directly send visitors to your site. However, you have to engage with social media and forums as these are the sources where you can put your content/comments or share your views which ignite others to visit your site by clicking your link.
Links for direct traffic usually need to use descriptive anchor text that explains your content and uses a call-to-action. The more alluring your link, the better result you get.

Lead Generation: Almost all the efforts we put in website promotion is intended to get business. There are marketers, who think that more traffic on site means more conversion. Not true, however. For lead generation, you must have to target classified customers rather than SEO professionals or SEO gurus. And you have to take a different approach than branding exposure.
The best way to target your customers is to post classifieds, distribute press release and get backlinks from thematically relevant sites.

Now, treat your every link as your currency on the web and use this currency to get multiple benefits from it. Knowing the benefits will facilitate the link building process.

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Posted in Marketing, SEO, Website Development | 3 Comments »

Finding Balance Between SEO and Non-SEO Traffic Generation

Monday, April 20th, 2009

By Kurt D. Lynn

So much SEO.

You might think, from all the buzz about search engine optimization – SEO – that it offers a cure for all the world’s business ills. Somehow, SEO has been propelled from the backwaters of Internet geekdom into the forefront of modern business marketing. For example, if Google’s own search results are any indication, the interest in SEO yields almost 50% of the interest in general advertising. That level of interest seems way out of proportion to the realities of business advertising.
So Why All The Hubbub?
The excitement seems to be around the notion that SEO means “free advertising”, that it means, if you do it right, millions of people will be clicking through to your site willy-nilly having found you on some search engine and then will immediately do business with you. And behind all that excitement are thousands of overnight SEO “experts” that, variously, all claim to … (pick one):

  • Have SEO secrets that will help you get an unfair advantage over the next guy;
  • Guarantee you a first-page listing for an incredibly low monthly rate;
  • Provide hundreds of high page rank sites that will link to your site;
  • Give you 5/10/20 quick tips to immediately improve your rankings;
  • Tell you what Google/MSN/Yahoo doesn’t want you to know about SEO;
  • Tell you that whatever SEO you’re doing is all wrong; or
  • Some other variant of the above.

To some extent, this notion of “free advertising” is not altogether inaccurate. SEO can result in your site being found – free of charge – and it can result in traffic to your site that may, in fact, result in new business. But the reality of SEO is not quite that simple.
SEO Is Far From “FREE”
SEO takes work… often, hard work. For those that aren’t familiar with what’s involved in SEO, below is a list of some of the typical activities that when applied in a conscientious program will result in higher search engine rankings.

  • Researching and selecting keywords that are truly relevant to your desired audience;
  • Researching competition for desired keywords;
  • Researching and analyzing competitive websites;
  • Re-writing and restructuring your website to address desired keywords, to be more accessible by search engine “crawlers”, to have appropriate label meta tags, headings, and inter-page links;
  • Create a program to build links to your site from other sites (directories, exchanged links,article marketing, etc.)
  • Create a program to keep content on your site regularly refreshed and synchronized with all the above.
  • Regularly (daily or weekly) monitor all the search engines and your competitors positions

SEO Is Not Easy

Doesn’t quite sound as easy as some people suggest does it? That’s because it’s not. And it’s all the more complicated when you realize that every site on that first page, and on the second and third, is trying to do the same thing – but against you! You boost your rank above them. They go to work and boost their site back above yours. And so on and so on… It’s a war and the SEO “experts” are the arms dealers.
Your Goals And Those Of The Search Engine May Be Different
If you’re going to pay good money for SEO, it may also be worthwhile to keep in mind that search engines don’t necessarily have a goal of making you the most findable site on the web. The bottom line for them is making sure that their users find what they are looking for. Satisfying that requirement may mean that you don’t and should not come up first. Google is the number one search engine for a reason: Google users get results they want. Those may not be the results you want.

Short Term and Long Term
In the short run, there may be some serious benefits from investing in SEO to boost your search engine rankings. In the long run, however, there’s probably not much you can do beyond a certain point. Frankly, if you have a finite budget, altering the basic nature of your site and trying to boost how valuable your site is to others (as represented by links to your site) can only be taken so far. After a point, the perfect market characteristics of the search engine will prevail.
Balance SEO With Other Forms Of Traffic Generation
What this means is: yes, do make sure you do the essential SEO necessary to optimize your rankings in search engines. But do it in the context of an overall marketing program. Definitely use SEO to ensure that you get a fair and accurate appraisal by search engines. But also invest in other non-SEO lead-generation methods to bring traffic to your site and business to your table.

Above all, measure the results of your SEO and non-SEO activities carefully and frequently. When SEO reaches the point of diminishing returns, cut the rate in which you invest in it and boost your reliance on non-SEO marketing to reach your goals. In the long run, traditional non-SEO marketing may just be the most reliable and consistent way to boost traffíc to your site

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Posted in Marketing, SEO | 8 Comments »

Is Content is King in SEO?

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

by Junaid Ashraf Mianoor

Seo services are basically performed to make a website visible in the search engine results at high posts. These seo services include further enhancements and development in website portions among which content is counted to be the important one. Its not that content is what on which website complete depends but without wholesome content a website can hardly get into high ranks of the search engines. Content is what that fills up your website, related to your product or service, giving complete know how and information about the product or service. Content makes the website’s position high, its basic purpose is to give the reader audience complete information-such way- that it makes their necessity and desire fulfilled. The best part of a website is when the reader audiences visits frequently and click the link as many times. This directly promotes the sales and the website gains in aspects, the money as well as rank in the search engine directory.

The website content can play the major role in attracting the reader audiences. The content follows some good points; the first good point is simplicity. The simpler the content the more attractive it gets. The simple content makes the website easily crawled in the search engine directory. The use of keywords phrases and tags are all meant to be placed simply in the website pages. The website content in seo services is critical, that is it should be performed smartly and with easy brains. Thinking of using complicated language and rich literature will make the reader run away, rather if the website content is simple, the reader feels like reading it again and again and get convinced for the statement, than of course the content is ideally perfect. Some weak points of content should also be cared, first thing is spellings, no matter if the reader himself is unable to read properly, he would like to have the text properly presented. Minor spelling mistakes, use of impropriate language will make the reader not interested, so it is always recommended to use good language terms and simple words so the reader feels comfortable to go through it.

Content is one part of the website that means a lot to the seo services, it is believed that website design and website content go parallel. Though all the parts are equally treated and all of them have their own values, but content is believed to be the king of seo as it is the most in quantity and quality. Website content has no formula; it is all done with brains. The website content is all extract of good use of keywords, correct knowledge, focused statements and reader audiences’ convenience. Content in seo services is enhances changed and aligned according to the website design. The website content is king of seo because it ranges in variety for changes and improvement. Complete impact on the reader audiences of the website and its product or service is all defined by its content.

The content of a website means a lot to the website owner, an owner usually to make his website perfect hires seo services to get rich content and appear unique. The website content needs to be unique and different from others, simplicity of words doesn’t mean it gets rough and dull; rather it gives a concept of direct and focus approach to the targeted audiences. For better results and higher ranking, contents needs to be treated in calculated intervals and the website must be updated to give the reader audience a fresh page every time he wants to get information.

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