Designing Sites for Search Engines and Directories

In terms of layout, many web sites are not designed for optimum search engine and directory visibility. People or companies seem so centred on their corporate or personal images, products, and services that they neglect to design their web sites with search engines and directories in mind. Search engines and directories vary in the way they rank your web site in a search query. Some search engines place primary emphasis on the text within your title tags. Some search engines place emphasis on the main ideas presented in all of your text on a single web page. Some directories emphasize the text you submitted in their "Description" field. How and where you place your text, both in the copy your visitors see and within the HTML tags your visitors do not see, will affect your ranking

1. Keyword selection 
2. Keyword placement 
3. Keyword frequency 
4. Links & architecture
5. Site statistics 

Keyword Selection

Of primary importance is selecting the best keywords for your industry and the keywords you believe your potential customers will use to find you. Selecting the right keywords requires research.

Look at your company's printed materials. What words do you use over and over? When you speak to new and current customers on the phone, what questions do they frequently ask and what words do they use? Ask your current customers how they would find you on the Internet. Then go to the major search engines and directories. Type in the keywords you want to use. Study the source code of the web sites that appeared in the top 20. Look at how your competitors ranked in a search query. Adjust your keyword selection accordingly.

Keyword placement

Of equal importance is keyword placement on individual pages. The text in your title tag is one the most important elements for ranking well in search engines. The text in your titles should be descriptive, using the words and lingo in your industry, and should accurately reflect the contents of each web page.

For optimum search engine positions, your keywords need to appear at the top of your web pages. Thus, before you design your web page, ask yourself if you (or your web designer) have strategically placed your keywords within your title tags, meta-tags, headings, graphic images, and the first paragraph within your body tag. If not, you might need to rethink your site design.

Keyword Frequency

What is important to both the search engines and your target audience is keyword frequency and keyword prominence. Designing and coding your site with keywords in the right locations and the right frequency is an art form. Keywords need to appear frequently on your web pages, but if they appear too frequently, your site will be penalized for word stacking (also known as "spamming the index") or could be removed permanently from the index.

Also, some search engines ignore meta-tags. Thus, if you have included your keywords in your meta-tags but have not placed them elsewhere, you have missed a huge target audience, namely AOL users. Sites with frames have problems being indexed well because there is little opportunity otherwise to include additional text with keywords.

Very, very few web sites can get in the Top 10 of all the major search engines (AltaVista, FAST Search, HotBot, Google, Lycos, Teoma) without spamming. We cannot emphasize this enough: if you hire anyone (a submission service, an individual, an online promotion service, etc.) to do the services we just described, they need to have HTML and design experience, online marketing, and excellent copy writing skills. You do not want your web site to be permanently banned from a search engine or directory due to ignorance or lack of experience. Furthermore, submission services usually do just that: submit. Many do not perform keyword research, the HTML coding, and copy writing necessary to get a site optimally placed within the search engines. Ask a lot of questions before handing over any money.

Links & site architecture

Placing keywords throughout your web pages is useless as a search engine marketing strategy if the search engine spiders are unable to record the text on your web pages. Therefore, always have a link architecture (also known as a site map) on your site that the search engine spiders can follow. Oftentimes, this means having two forms of navigation on your site: one that your target audience prefers, and one for the search engines.

Site Statistics

For the first few months after you have your web site submitted to the major search engines and directories, you should see a jump in traffic. If you look at your site reports with your visitor statistics, which should do frequently, you will see when the search engines spider and index your site.

Hopefully, because you have been thoughtful enough to give potential customers a reason to return to your site again and again, people will bookmark your site, and your web statistics will show an increase in a "No Referrer" category under referral URL's. Your site reports should show you where your potential customers are coming from (i.e. which search engine or directory they used to find you) and which keywords they used to find you.

After your site has listed in the search engines and directories for a few months, review your site statistics and determine where the majority of your traffic comes from. Then focus your advertising efforts on those directories and search engines. You get better sales from targeted marketing than from spreading your net too wide.

One client did exactly what we recommended, from keyword selection to monitoring site statistics. They found most of their sites referral traffic came from Yahoo queries. They bought banner space from Yahoo for two months. Whenever two of their keywords were typed in a search query, their banner would appear. Their traffic increased over 500%, and their sales reached five figures per month.

Lastly, the saying "Content is King" still rings true. You can increase traffic to your web site, but if (1) people do not like what they see, (2) you do not offer potential customers what they want to buy, or (3) you do not give customers incentive to stay and/or bookmark your site, they will click off of your web site as quickly as they clicked on to it.

What Is SEO And How Backlinks Help In Better Serp's

SEO is one of the most unnecessarily complicated jobs there is in the internet business world. There are so many “secrets” and “gurus” that offer you the hidden knowledge necessary for top search engine rankings, when in reality, search engine optimization is actually pretty simple.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be divided into two parts: on-site SEO, and link building.

On-site SEO is the process of optimizing the content of your pages for a particular keyword or keywords. The easiest way to do this is to use a free tool like WebCEO that will analyze your webpage and make suggestions on how you can better optimize it.

At it's simplest, on-site SEO is making sure that your keywords are found (in the right numbers) in the right places. Specifically, the search engines want to see your keywords in:

- Page titles
- Page body
- Bold text
- Top of page
- Bottom of page
- Alt text
- Text links

Link building, the second half of SEO, is at least as important as on-site SEO, but is often neglected. When search engines look at your site, they also look at all of the sites that link to your site. Each site that links to your site gives your site a certain number of “votes”, based on several factors.

So, the more quality links you can get to your site, the higher you will rank in the major search engines. But before you can start gaining links to your site, you need to know what makes a quality link. There are several factors that determine a link's quality:

1 – Anchor text
A high quality link will have your keyword(s) in the anchor text, or the clickable text part of the link.

2- Site quality
A high quality link is one from a quality, unique, content based site related to your site.

3- Anchor text variation
When building links, you'll want to vary your anchor text. If all of your links have the same text, search engines may discount them as spam.

4- Slowly but surely
Good things come to those who wait. Building links should be done slowly and steadily. If you build a whole bunch of links at once, you risk the links being discounted as spam by the search engines.

Ten Indications That Point To A Rogue SEO Company

Search engine optimizers are everywhere, it is a booming business. SEOs as they are known help websites in numerous ways. They handle writing of copy, site architecture, as well as submission to directories.

With rampant development of the web and its related services it is becoming harder and harder to separate the “wheat from the chaff.” Sadly along with genuine SEOs are present unethical or rogue SEOs who play the game by unfair rules.

You need to be savy and think on your feet and learn to recognize a rotten apple quickly. Be wary of SEOs who send you e-mails unsolicited and make statements about getting you no 1 rank on large and popular sites like Google, Yahoo, and so on.

1. If a SEO beats around the bush and does not lay cards on the table then the company is suspect. An established SEO will have nothing to hide and will utilize only ethical practices. So, any SEO should explain with clarity what they will do for you. Never get taken in by big statements like “we have special arrangements with x,y, z so your site will get priority listings.” Watch out for misrepresentation of the SEOs success rate and false promises.

2. Unethical SEOs present what look like impressive lists of search engines that your site will appear on. Often many of the search engines listed will be dead sites. If the SEO was a professional outfit they would make efforts to ensure that the information they provide will withstand scrutiny.


3. There are companies that are in actuality just telemarketing business that will hound you, take an advance, and fail to deliver whatever they promise. Beware of companies that plague you on the e-mail and phone.

4. SEOs often abuse search engines. They buy links with high page ranks and link the site to yours. Often the link site is not of quality or good content. Practices like this can get your site banned by search engines, damaging your reputation. You need to check the references provided by the SEO and do a market survey to establish their credentials and business standing.

5. SEOs who work in the dark manipulate key word frequency by producing content that is nonsensical with the correct frequency of key words. This is done to ensure that your ranking improves. Avoid this and determine exactly how the SEO is going to help you.

6. Any SEO that promotes free-for-all links or popularity schemes is to be avoided. These are just meaningless exercises and embellishments of a grandiose scheme. This will never improve your ranking or lead anywhere.

7. Beware of SEOs that use shadow domains to gather hits. SEOs create and own such domains to fulfill false promises.

8. Tools like spyware and scumware are used to generate traffic. Generating fake traffic is not going to do your website any good in the long run. No business can sustain on the creation of a mirage.

9. SEOs club search engine results with pay-per-click and pay-per-inclusion and even place you in the advertising section than in the search engine itself. Be clear what they are charging you for and what the SEOs plan of action will be.

10. Unscrupulous SEOs even urge customers to pay for the ability to type keywords directly into the browsers address bar. Be cautious and never take a SEOs claim at face value.

Be wise and careful. Do your homework thoroughly and check the credentials of any SEO you are considering. If you are suspicious check them out. If you feel you are deceived by a SEO complaint at http://www.ftc.gov/ . And, do include a money back guarantee in your contract.

Search Engine Keywords Selection

Search engines are the vehicles that drive potential customers to your websites. But in order for visitors to reach their destination - your website - you need to
provide them with specific and effective signs that will direct them right to your site. You do this by creating carefully chosen keywords.

Think of the right keywords as the Open Sesame! of the Internet. Find the exactly right words or phrases, and presto! hoards of traffic will be pulling up to your front door. But if your keywords are too general or too over-used, the possibility of visitors actually making it all the way to your site - or of seeing any real profits from the visitors that do arrive - decreases dramatically.

Your keywords serve as the foundation of your marketing strategy. If they are not chosen with great precision, no matter how aggressive your marketing campaign may be, the right people may never get the chance to find out about it.

So your first step in plotting your strategy is to gather and evaluate keywords and phrases.

You probably think you already know EXACTLY the right words for your search phrases. Unfortunately, if you haven't followed certain specific steps, you are probably WRONG. It's hard to be objective when you are right in the center
of your business network, which is the reason that you may not be able to choose the most efficient keywords from the inside. You need to be able to think like your customers. And since you are a business owner and not the consumer, your best bet is to go directly to the source.

Instead of plunging in and scribbling down a list of potential search words and phrases yourself, ask for words from as many potential customers as you can. You will most likely find out that your understanding of your business and your customers' understanding is significantly different.

The consumer is an invaluable resource. You will find the words you accumulate from them are words and phrases you probably never would have considered from deep inside the trenches of your business.

Only after you have gathered as many words and phrases from outside resources should you add your own keyword to the list. Once you have this list in hand, you are ready for the next step: evaluation.

The aim of evaluation is to narrow down your list to a small number of words and phrases that will direct the highest number of quality visitors to your website. By "quality visitors" I mean those consumers who are most likely to make a purchase rather than just cruise around your site and take off for greener pastures. In evaluating the effectiveness of keywords, bear in mind three elements: popularity, specificity, and motivation.

Popularity is the easiest to evaluate because it is an objective quality. The more popular your keyword is, the more likely the chances are that it will be typed into a search engine which will then bring up your URL.

You can now purchase software that will rate the popularity of keywords and phrases by giving words a number rating based on real search engine activity. Software such as WordTracker will even suggest variations of your words and
phrases. The higher the number this software assigns to a given keyword, the more traffic you can logically expect to be directed to your site. The only fallacy with this concept is the more popular the keyword is, the greater the search engine position you will need to obtain. If you are down at the bottom of the search results, the consumer will probably never scroll down to find you.

Popularity isn't enough to declare a keyword a good choice. You must move on to the next criteria, which is specificity. The more specific your keyword is, the greater the likelihood that the consumer who is ready to purchase your goods or services will find you.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. Imagine that you have obtained popularity rankings for the keyword "automobile companies." However, you company specializes in bodywork only. The keyword "automobile body shops" would rank lower on the popularity scale than "automobile companies," but it would nevertheless serve you much better. Instead of getting a slew of people interested in everything from buying a car to changing their oil filters, you will get only those consumers with trashed front ends or crumpled fenders being directed to your site. In other words, consumers ready to buy your services are the ones who will immediately find you. Not only that, but the greater the
specificity of your keyword is, the less competition you will face.

The third factor is consumer motivation. Once again, this requires putting yourself inside the mind of the customer rather than the seller to figure out what motivation prompts a person looking for a service or product to type in a particular word or phrase. Let's look at another example, such as a consumer who is searching for a job as an IT manager in a new city. If you have to choose between "Seattle job listings" and "Seattle IT recruiters" which do
you think will benefit the consumer more? If you were looking for this type of specific job, which keyword would you type in? The second one, of course! Using the second keyword targets people who have decided on their career,
have the necessary experience, and are ready to enlist you as their recruiter, rather than someone just out of school who is casually trying to figure out what to do with his or her life in between beer parties. You want to find people who are ready to act or make a purchase, and this requires subtle tinkering of your keywords until your find the most specific and directly targeted phrases to bring the most motivated traffic to you site.

Once you have chosen your keywords, your work is not done. You must continually evaluate performance across a variety of search engines, bearing in mind that times and trends change, as does popular lingo. You cannot rely on your log traffic analysis alone because it will not tell you how many of your visitors actually made a purchase.

Luckily, some new tools have been invented to help you judge the effectiveness of your keywords in individual search engines. There is now software available that analyzes consumer behavior in relation to consumer traffic. This allows you to discern which keywords are bringing you the most valuable customers.

This is an essential concept: numbers alone do not make a good keyword; profits per visitor do. You need to find keywords that direct consumers to your site who actually buy your product, fill out your forms, or download your product. This is the most important factor in evaluating the efficacy of a keyword or phrase, and should be the sword you wield when discarding and replacing ineffective or inefficient keywords with keywords that bring in better
profits.

Ongoing analysis of tested keywords is the formula for search engine success. This may sound like a lot of work - and it is! But the amount of informed effort you put into your keyword campaign is what will ultimately generate your business' rewards.