Methyl Vizcarra asked:


 

Once we are hired to optimize a client’s site, we start taking responsibility for it, may it have a positive or a negative result. But of course, we always guarantee our client good search engine ranking. But what do we do to attain that?

Here are some guidelines for beginners venturing into optimizing their websites for Search Engines:





Use targeted keywords





Do intensive research. Gather key words or phrases that are worth targeting. Look for websites where you can check each search term’s popularity in search engines. These words are the commonly searched terms by the visitors therefor you can get significant traffic once you start to rank on SEs. Keywords with moderate competition and a high number of searches are the best candidates.





Meta Content





Meta content is what users see in the description of your site in the search engine results. This should be relevant for your site to be visited. Detailed meta content can be of great help to your rankings and for the visitors to have a preview of what the site is all about.





A friendly design





A website should be both user and search engine-friendly. The design should be pleasing to the eyes and easy to navigate so that visitors will stay and come back to your site. Keep in mind that you should have something interesting for them not leave on the next second. At the same time, it should have a clean code so that the bots of search engines could easily find your keywords. Take time to create a proper site structure to let bots crawl each pages easily.





Web Content





A perfectly designed site for search engine robots is nothing if the content is not good or if the website has no content at all. Most guests surf the net for information so that’s what you should give them. Your visitors will surely come back if your content is always updated. Just be mindful of the grammar and sentence composition because it says a lot about the credibility of your information.





Relevant Links





The least inbound link that you want to have is from a link farm because bad links could hurt your rankings and your credibility in the market as well. Be very careful in choosing your link partners and make sure that when you submit on directories, choose the right category for your website.

Do not lose hope if you do not reach your goal fast. SEO takes a lot of hard work especially that there are hundreds or maybe thousands of competitors who also wants to be on the top of search engine rankings. Just be patient, be logical and play by the rules.

Scott Lindsay asked:


Nowadays it’s almost unfashionable for an online entrepreneur to not have a blog or two. Since the web abounds of personal blogs, informational blogs, art and poetry blogs, and so on, a business blog has to compete against all of the above-mentioned and business blogs for a high ranking in the search engine results pages.

For a blog to be successful it needs to be well written, frequently updated, well designed and honest. A business blog needs to focus on a target and discuss topics related to that target. The “know your audience” rule is the very foundation of a successful business blog.

Assuming you are not an online entrepreneur but still want to have a successful blog, here is what you should do:

Pick your topic. As a blogger you have the chance to write about anything you want. So what it will be? An online diary or a news outlet? Choose whatever is more appealing to you, a subject you are good at, and a theme that will reveal your talents, your passions and your knowledge.

Write in a personal manner and post frequently. The more you post, the more content you ad on your pages. And content is food for the search engines that scan blogs on a daily basis. A frequently updated blog has more chances of success than “lazy” blogs where people post a thought or two every once in a while.

Make your opinion known: that’s the whole idea behind blogging. You have to be an active member of the blogosphere, visit and post comments on other blogs as well. A good comment will attract traffic to your blog.

A blog is a great promotional and marketing tool. Use it wisely. Don’t use a blog to insult a person or to damage another business. Use a blog to provide quality information for the online community. If you have a business blog don’t use it to sell products, but to offer customer support, to request feedback, to make announcements and to publish advice. Use a website for sales and let the visitors decide whether they want to visit the “products” page or not, by providing a direct link to it from your blog. If you are a writer, the more quality content you post the higher chances to become popular and be recognized online as an expert in your field.

Promote your blog. Include your blog’s URL in your email signature, mention it in your newsletters and submit it to blog directories.

Companies and online entrepreneurs should really think twice before starting a blog. A blog needs constant updates and quality content. It will not be successful without these two important ingredients. A professional writer paid to update the blog on regular basis is sometimes the best alternative for business blogs. A professional writer will create a blog with attributes of clarity and simplicity. For blogs, SEO writers are preferable because they know how to write content that is keyword rich but not keyword stuffed and quality headlines that will grab the attention of the readers.

Last but not least, the content of the blog should be included in an RSS feed to increase blog’s popularity.

neha Patel asked:


At the end of last month, Google rolled out a new page offering advice to those seeking a search engine optimization firm. Since being unveiled, there’s been both support and criticism of the tips and recommendations that Google has posted in various SEO forums.

From my perspective, most of what Google has posted is sensible advice and positive for the SEO community as a whole, especially compared to what was said by Google previously about SEOs, within its help area:

“Be very careful about allowing an individual consultant or company to ‘optimize’ your web site. Chances are they will engage in some of our ‘Don’ts’ and end up hurting your site.”

A brief and fairly negative statement, to say the least. The impression one comes away with is that most SEOs are likely to cause you problems, so you’re better off avoiding them. Compare that to what Google’s now saying:

“Many SEOs provide useful services for website owners, from writing copy to giving advice on site architecture and helping to find relevant directories to which a site can be submitted. However, there are a few unethical SEOs who have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to unfairly manipulate search engine results.”

So, congratulations, SEOs! Google, in my opinion, is legitimizing the majority of you and certainly the industry.

For its part, Google actually denies that there has been any significant change in its view toward SEOs. The company notes — accurately, I would add — that it has worked with the SEO community for some time, speaking at conferences, posting information within its own web site and via public forums. If the tone on its help pages now seems more positive toward SEOs, Google says it is just now wording things better.

“Maybe we are expressing it more clearly. Certainly there’s always room for a consultant that gives you good advice,” said Matt Cutts, a software engineer at Google who deals with webmaster issues. “The intent is not to be negative or positive [about SEOs] but provide more information.”

Whatever the reason behind the change, I think it clearly gives the general public a more positive impression about SEOs from Google. However, Google says the main intent behind the page is educational. Google wants the public to understand how to choose an SEO wisely, so they are not likely to encounter problems getting listed with Google or other search engines.

“The overall goal is to give people the tools so that they can assess a decision about search engine optimization,” said Cutts.

Let’s take a closer look at some of those tips.

Some SEOs may try to sell you the ability to type keywords directly into the browser address bar

This tip really stood out in my mind, because there are definitely people out there selling namespace services via dubious practices. However, these pitches have nothing to do with Google. Instead, they involve Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

So why’s Google calling this out? The company says it’s just trying to educate people generally about SEO-related issues, regardless of whether they are Google-specific.

“It goes back to Google just trying to do the right thing, the same way we did with the pop-up page,” Cutts said, referring to an educational page the company posted earlier this year on pop-up ads.

To learn more about problems with namespace pitches, see my recent article, RealNames Clones Causing Confusion. I also expect to revisit the issue in the near future, because I continue to get emails from people confused by misleading pitches. If anything, it would be nice to see Microsoft itself, rather than Google, make a loud, public statement on the issue.

Nice advice, but then Google doesn’t offer any real help on how to do this. That’s OK, I’ll fill in some blanks.

Finding Search Engine Optimization Professionals is a fairly recent SearchDay article that talks about three SEO directories. Both SeoPros.org and the SEO Consultants Directory are directories that screen who is allowed in, while SEMList.com allows anyone to list themselves and information about their companies.

MarketingSherpa.com publishes a Buyers’ Guide to Search Engine Optimization Firms. My last review was of the first edition, but I’ve skimmed the second edition and still think it is well worth the money for anyone thinking about hiring an SEO firm. Along with reviews, the guide offers a lot of helpful advice.

you should ask how long a company has been in business and how many full time staffers it employs

How long a company has been in business is good, but number of staffers isn’t necessarily relevant. You could find a small firm of only one or two people that is great. They may not have more people because they don’t want to grow beyond that.

On the forums, I saw several posts questioning the wisdom of this tip, as well. For its part, Google explains that it didn’t mean to suggest that companies with big full-time staffs are better than others. Instead, Google says it is really suggesting that consumers learn more details about the company, period.

“We are not making this general statement that the number of people matters,” Cutts said. “This is more an example of doing your homework.”

Hopefully, Google will look again at the wording. A simple change to something like, “You should ask how long a company has been in business, who is employed there, how did those employees gain their experience?,” might get across Google’s point that you should learn more about a company before engaging them without the focus seeming to be on number of employees.

Ask your SEO firm if it reports every spam abuse that it findsto Google using our spam complaint form. Ethical SEO firmsreport deceptive sites that violate Google’s spam guidelines

Sorry, I completely disagree, and I’m far from alone, judging from forum posts and other comments I’ve read. You can indeed be an ethical SEO without also playing the role of Google’s volunteer spam police.

In fact, there are plenty of “ethical” SEO firms that feel that reporting spam actually can be an unethical practice. These firms feel like they should focus on doing positive work — promoting their clients, rather than getting involved in negative work of expending time reporting spam.

http://www.seoguru.biz/blog/seo-guidelines/google-offers-seo-selection-guidelines/

JR Lang asked:


Let’s face it, getting an increase in web site traffic is the leading task for any Internet Marketing Campaign, and it is also one of the most daunting tasks. While there are several ways to get traffic, including PPC, here I will focus on 10 free and highly effective techniques.

These techniques not only benefit the long term goal of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but at the same can be a good source of direct traffic. SEO is the process of getting ranked high in search engine results (SERPS) for a respective KW. To land on the first pages in search engine results is the Internet Marketer’s dream.

Google Webmaster Tools says that in order to gain SERPS you should have high quality sites linking to yours, which is termed a backlink. So, the most effective way to climb the ranks is to have the most backlinks leading to your site. And some of the backlinks discussed here are also great sources of direct traffic which can lead to sale conversions.

The two most popular types of backlinks are reciprocal and one-way. A reciprocal link is where you exchange links with another site. A one-way link is where you get a link to your site from another site without having to place a link back.

One-way links hold the most juice with search engines. But, a diverse link building campaign is best. Just get lots of different links everyday! There are several ways to build links and all of them should be utilized to optimize your sites for SEO and increasing web site traffic.

1. Relevant/Reciprocal Link Exchange – This is where you exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours. Now there are many webmasters who exchange links with whatever site comes along, but think about this. If you have a website about computers, how helpful is it for your visitors to see a link to a weight loss site? This is just common sense, think about your visitors and build links for them and not for ranks and your site will be rewarded.

Reciprocal link placement on your site can be done in several ways. There is the links/partners page, where links are placed one after the other. But, this technique is not the best option. These days search engines place less value on links pages and in reality, how good is a links page for your site and its visitors?

A better option is to place your links and get the reciprocal site to place links within the content on your site, as a hyperlink (with relevant KW) this looks far better on the site, provides a natural flow of links and gets more link juice with the all mighty Google.

Also home page links and footer links (sitewides) are better options that link pages and this is something that can entice higher page rank sites to want to trade with you when your site rank is lower than theirs. Best Strategy: The key to link building on your sites is to make the link look like a side effect and not the end goal!

2. Directory Listing Links. Another way to get backlinks is by placing a listing of your sites in Internet Directories. These links vary depending on the directory. Sometimes directories require reciprocals, and sometimes they are one-ways. Of course, you want to get the one-ways as much as possible. But overall when your site is new get links in as many good directories as you can, even if, they have a lower page rank.

Some of the more popular higher ranking directories, like Dmoz, have a long wait so it is important to submit to the less popular directories to get the links quicker. Also directory listings are in in of themselves a good source of web site traffic since many people use these directories when searching the net.

4. Links in Relevant Forums/Discussion Groups. A great way to get a backlink and also get relevant targeted traffic is joining forums that are relevant to your sites theme and those that allow a backlink in the signature.

The key to this technique is having a genuine interest and knowledge within the theme. Don’t join a forum just to get sales, with this attitude your posts will quickly translate to SPAM and you will get booted faster than you can say boo. Instead, add helpful and meaningful posts, answer other members questions in these forums, participate in a genuine manner and not only will you get a powerful backlink, it will also increase your web site traffic. Plus, highly targeted and relevant traffic that will likely convert into sales since the visitors to those forums have a deep interest in the respective theme.

5. One-way links from Comments on Blogs. A great way to get links to your sites is by leaving comments on blogs relevant to your sites theme. Some blogs use a “no-follow” command for links which is a code attribute value used to instruct some search engines that the link should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. But if you read high traffic blogs that are of interest to you this often becomes a source of traffic to your site from the other readers of those blogs.

Also there are many blogs that offer “do-follow” links, a simple search for those can definitely optimize your SEO efforts and bring an increase in web site traffic.

6. Link Bait. Another great way to build quality one way backlinks is to use a link bait on your site. This is the method of choice to get get higher page rank sites to link to lower page rank sites. Link Bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. These link baits could be, information hooks, news hooks, humor hooks, tools hooks like a widget or some helpful tool that other sites can use.

7. Write a Press Release. Make sure to educate yourself on how to write a press release, many confuse these with sales ads and that is not what they are. For a complete guide to press releases, including the how-to’s you can visit PRWeb.

8. Social/Bookmark Site Links: The social revolution is hot on the web. Social and bookmark sites are growing in huge numbers and have tons of traffic and members. Join sites, like Facebook, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Furl It, just to name a few. Also you can save tons of time with Social Marker where you can add to over 50 of these sites at once from one browser window. Submit your site content to appropriate categories and get a backlink. Plus, these sites can be a great source of direct traffic from readers interested your content.

The key to some of these sites, like Facebook, is the word “social” which means that for optimal traffic you need to participate, make friends, take interest in what others are doing, join relevant groups etc.

9. Create a Squidoo Lens. A Squidoo lens about your site is a great way to advertise your site, get a backlink and traffic. The key to Squidoo is joining lots of Squidoo groups and once again participating with other lensemasters, commenting on their lenses and link to relevant lenses by creating lensrolls and they will do the same for you, this creates lots of cross traffic.

10. Article Marketing. Last but never least, Article Marketing is the BEST way to get quality one way backlinks and at the same time get direct targeted traffic to your sites. There are many benefits to this method, including getting relevant and targeted traffic which converts well into sales if you follow the method of “relevancy” with KW anchor text techniques.

Ken Ivey asked:


One of the successful strategies that webmasters and web owners use to optimize search engine results is to set up links in order to gain link popularity. It really works because when you actually look at how search engines weigh and rank a website, you will be surprised that the presence of external site links pointing to your website really do count. Considering this, try this strategy:

1. Contribute and submit articles to pertinent sites. This is one very good approach of promoting your website to other sites that would want to create external links with you. By contributing valuable and insightful articles on their sites, you are helping its customers by making a stronger bond with the site owner. When you have successfully formed the affinity, crafting links with his site will be simple.

2. Select the site where you are exchanging links. Not all websites are deemed appropriate by a search engine. You must make sure that you are making a link with a site that has relevance, because the links from there are more valuable. It would be nonproductive for a accounting consortium to get a link from a coffee merchant.

3. If you have an adequate amount of money, you may want to submit your site to highly regarded and trusted paid directories like Yahoo. This can be high-priced, but these links are priceless.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to REAL WORLD internet success, ‘7 Habits of Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs‘

Download it free here

http://www.Principles-of-Internet-Success.com