Use Intelligent Page Formatting For Seo

Try using smaller paragraphs with mixed-case text. Use boldface, italics, uppercase,
and different text color variations for emphasis. Employ browser-safe fonts such as
Times New Roman, Georgia (serif font), Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana (sans serif font).
Strategically employ bulleted lists, headings, and subheadings for clarity and information
organization. Using these options is helpful from an SEO perspective. Furthermore,
employ sufficient alignments, whitespace, and text padding for additional clarity
and web page look and feel.

Be mindful of web-safe colors. Use high-contrast color schemes for clarity and ease of
reading. Be consistent with colors. Don’t use too many colors. Try to stay away from
image backgrounds.

Video Sitemaps Seo

Video Sitemaps are yet another extension of XML Sitemap Protocol. Video Sitemaps
can be helpful if your videos show up in Google SERPs. The following fragment shows
a basic video Sitemap with one example video:

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
<url>
<loc>http://mydomain.com/article23423.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:content_loc>http://mydomain.com/videos/article23423.flv
</video:content_loc>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>
For simplicity reasons, just one video is listed with only the single optional tag of
<video:content_loc>. You can use many other optional tags to further classify videos.
For more information on all the optional video tags,

Using Analytics As a Business Case for SEO

You can use a properly structured plan as the business case for an SEO project. The way to do
this is to express the target results of an SEO project in terms of financial impact. You could
include a variety of metrics in a business case,
such as:
• Revenue
• Lead generation
• Margin
• Branding value
• Reach
• Other action triggers (newsletter sign-ups, contact requests, demo requests, free-trial
acceptance, viewing a specific piece of content, etc.)
Measuring such things requires that you tie organic search engine visits to the revenue and
other conversions that result.

Why Measuring Success Is Essential to the SEO Process

Although quantifying deliverables and measuring progress are important for external reporting
purposes, it is just as important for SEO practitioners to measure the efficacy of their own efforts
to make timely adjustments as necessary. As you will see in this chapter, numerous tools are
available to aid in this process.

At the beginning of any SEO project it is wise to establish baseline data points for the website.
This includes the following:
• Quantifying organic search traffic by search engine and keyword
• Quantifying a baseline of the major keywords that are driving traffic by search engine
• Quantifying a breakout of what sections are getting the current organic search traffic by
search engine and keyword
• Quantifying data on conversions broken down by search engine and keyword
• Identifying poorly performing pages
• Tracking search engine crawler activity on the site
• Determining the number of indexed pages
• Identifying 404 error pages and external sites linking to these pages, if any
Remember: you cannot methodically improve what you cannot measure.
Defining and mapping the path toward concrete goals are crucial aspects of the SEO process—
and over time, some goals may change. Therefore, it is also important to make sure the data
you capture helps you understand your progress against these goals.

Google Quality Guidelines: Search engine spam

Hidden text Using invisible text specifically tailored to search engine spiders
Cloaking Presenting different content for the same URL to the web user and the search engine spider
Sneaky redirects Using JavaScript to redirect web users to a page they did not expect, usually one that is unrelated to their
search query
Irrelevant keywords Employing techniques such as keyword stuffing
Duplicate content Using the same content on numerous domains or subdomains
Badware Using malicious tactics including phishing (pretending to be another site) and malware software
(installable on the victim’s PC)
Doorway pages Pages designed specifically for search engines to rank for certain search terms. Typically, doorway pages
include a redirect to the target page of interest

Search Engine Spam

Search engine users search to find relevant content. And search engines try to deliver
links to relevant content. Unethical SEO, referred to in the industry as spam, attempts
to boost page rank by abusing the idea of relevant content—that is, improving page
rank by doing something other than delivering quality, relevant pages. So, for example,
getting a page about Viagra to come up in a search for sports results would be considered
search engine spam.

If you are an established brand or company, your image is everything and you will do
everything to protect that image. If you are struggling to get to the top of the SERPs,
you might be tempted to use artificial, or black hat, SEO. Artificial SEO strives for
immediate benefits—usually to make a quick profit. Its sole focus is in tricking search
engines by finding loopholes in the search engine algorithms. It is this “tricking” component
that makes it unethical SEO. Nevertheless, black hat SEO practitioners are
always looking for ways to manipulate search engine results.

What exactly are such SEO practitioners trying to do? Simply put, they are trying to
use search engines to get much more traffic. The goal is as simple as the law of large
numbers. Suppose a site gets 50 search engine referrals per day. On average, it takes
about 200 referrals to make a sale. This means it takes four days to make only one sale.
Some people need better sales results than that, and they are easily tempted by unethical
techniques to attain the results they desire.

SEO Keyword Tuning with PPC Testing

The PPC paradigm allows for fast, real-time feedback loops. You do not need to wait
several weeks or months to realize whether your SEO is working.
Say you have a list of pages with specific targeted keywords.

You can create an equivalent
PPC test campaign using exact keyword matching to see whether your pages
perform as expected. You can also use broad keyword matching to see whether there
are other keywords that you may have missed but are producing good conversion rates.
Finding mistakes quickly can save you a ton of money and time in the long run. Use
PPC platforms as your SEO testing ground.

Choosing Better Keywords
When it comes to choosing keywords, you should generally be interested in highvolume,
low-competition keywords. The Google AdWords Keyword Tool shows you
relative keyword search volume numbers. Although the accuracy of this data is questionable,
it should give you a relative baseline when comparing different keywords. If
you take this information together with the number of derived competitors by using
Google’s intitle:, inurl:, and inanchor: commands

Utilizing blog comments, newsgroups, and forum postings

The idea is much the same when posting comments to blogs, newsgroups, and forums
as it is when submitting articles. Simply include your signature with your URL every
time you post. Note that some sites do not allow URLs. Others employ the nofollow
attribute to discourage you from placing links in your posts.
The basic rule of thumb is to be relevant to the topic you are posting about. Try to
include keywords relevant to your site. Otherwise, your post could look like spam and
you might get banned. Here are some search command tips you can use to find relevant

discussion sites:
"video games" forum
wine producers inurl:forum
"sports apparel" inurl:forum
"fishing gear" forum
Build a Complementary Site
This is not a call to create duplicated content. You want to create a complementary
content-rich site that targets many other keywords not specifically targeted on your
main site. You can utilize a free host or an inexpensive shared host when using this

technique. Go easy with cross-linking. Too much or too little is not good. Use a more
balanced, natural approach. Host these sites on different IPs as well as different IP range
blocks if you can.


Adding Your Links Everywhere

You can do many things outside your site to foster healthy link building. You can write
articles, submit blog comments, and post to newsgroup and forum messages. What
you want to do is leave your URL within any content you create.
Submitting articles

Many sites let you submit your articles, including ArticlesBase, EzineArticles, Article
Geek, and many others. When you choose your article submission vendor, ensure that
your articles are always properly credited.
When your articles are (re)published, you want to make sure they contain appropriate
attribution by containing one or all of the following: your name, a link to your biography
page, and a URL of your choice. To find more article submission services, simply search
for article submission service. You may also want to find article submission services for
your niche. Simply add your pertinent keywords to the same query to find relevant
providers.

Backlinks from .edu and .gov domains

When Matt Cutts (Google search quality engineer) was asked about the extra ranking
boost from inbound links originating from .edu and .gov TLDs, he responded as follows:
This is a common misconception—you don’t get any PageRank boost from having
an .edu link or .gov link automatically.

Although Google denies that .edu and .gov links get a PageRank boost, you can easily
construe that the domain extension does matter in some sense. When Google flat out
denies something, it is almost always because it is not true. But when Google is cagey
about something, you need to beware. Most people believe that .edu and .gov links are
more valuable than others because those sites typically have strong PageRank and
therefore more link juice. It is doubtful that Google actually gives these sites greater
weight simply because of the TLD extension. When your site has a link from an .edu
or .gov link, it says a great deal about the site’s trust and authority.
It is very hard to get an .edu or .gov domain. Only one registrar today has permission
to grant .edu domains: EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit organization that won the right to be
the sole registrar of all .edu domains in 2001. Not everyone can get an .edu domain,
and .edu domains are not transferable. Eligibility requirements are very strict (http://net
.educause.edu/edudomain/):

Eligibility for a .edu domain name is limited to U.S. postsecondary institutions that are
institutionally accredited, i.e., the entire institution and not just particular programs, by
agencies on the U.S. Department of Education’s list of Nationally Recognized Accrediting
Agencies. These include both “Regional Institutional Accrediting Agencies” and “National
Institutional and Specialized Accrediting Bodies” recognized by the U.S. Department
of Education.

Website Success Metrics Seo

Although website content optimization is basically common sense—who doesn’t
want a fast, easy-to-find site with engaging content?—it helps to know the real
impact that it can have on your audience growth, engagement, and ultimately, conversion
and monetization. The following are generally accepted, simple metrics that
you can change through the optimization techniques.

Unique visitors
Hits are not what you think. A server hit is an HTTP request for a single web
object. One web page view can require many hits to the server. The true mark of
how you should measure your audience is in unique visitors. You want to
increase your unique audience by providing fast, engaging, relevant, and navigable
web pages. Tracking new unique visitors can help you track audience
growth.

Average time on site (ATOS) and length of visit
How long are your users sticking around? According to ClickTracks, ATOS is
one of the best measures of user engagement and the propensity to buy.

Pages per visit
The number of pages that were consumed during a visit is a broad and simple
measure of user engagement. Pages per visit and ATOS are two measures that
can indicate possible flow states of high engagement.

Top 10 Tips for Optimizing CSS Seo

The following 10 best practices are designed to speed-optimize your CSS, and your
HTML markup:
1. Replace inline style with type selectors to target multiple instances of identical
elements.
2. Use descendant selectors to avoid inline classes.
3. Group selectors with common declarations.
4. Group declarations with common selectors.
5. Combine common styles into shared classes.
6. Use inheritance to eliminate duplicate declarations.
7. Use CSS shorthand to abbreviate rules and colors.
8. Abbreviate long class and ID names.
9. Use CSS2 and CSS3.x techniques.
10. Replace JavaScript behavior with CSS techniques.
In addition, you can eliminate extraneous whitespace by removing tabs, comments,
and returns.

Tip #1: Replace Inline Style with Type Selectors
This section starts with simple type selectors to streamline markup, and then it
moves through grouping, inheritance, and CSS shorthand, and finally to some
applied techniques to replace JavaScript behavior.

Web pages that use inline style pepper HTML code with unnecessary font and style
tags. This effectively hardcodes the presentation directly within the HTML. Unless
the style is used only once, it is more efficient to create a CSS rule and target all elements
of a certain kind with type selectors (i.e., p, ul, h2, etc.). For example, this:
<h2 style="font-size:1.2em;color:red;">Little red Corvette</h2>
<h2 style="font-size:1.2em;color:red;">Baby you're much too fast to embed</h2>
<h2 style="font-size:1.2em;color:red;">Little red Corvette</h2>
<h2 style="font-size:1.2em;color:red;">You need a love that's gonna last</h2>
becomes this, by abstracting the inline style to a block style:
<style type="text/css"><!--
#main h2{font-size:1.2em;color:red;}
--></style>
The corresponding HTML cleans up to this:
<div id="main">
<h2>Little red Corvette</h2>
<h2>Baby you're much too fast</h2>
<h2>Little red Corvette</h2>
<h2>You need a love that's gonna last</h2>
</div>
Note how clean the code becomes after you remove the inline styles. This CSS technique
also helps search engine optimization (SEO) by boosting keyword density and
prominence.

Image SEO

Images are integral to content. Meaningful or unusual images that attract attention also serve to
associate your content in the reader's mind. Think of an image as an internal reference that helps
readers remember a piece of content.


Image SEO is also crucial because Google recognizes the importance of images. I do the following:
• provide meaningful file names with SEO keyphrases
• provide Alt and Title tags with SEO keyphrases
This has helped me to drive traffic for hugely competitive SEO keywords via images instead of
content alone.

Lead paragraph SEO

I don't beat around the bush. I open my articles with a sentence that reiterates the page heading and
explains what the reader will get from the content.
This is great for SEO for two reasons:
• it creates a meaningful content teaser for humans viewing search results
• it allows you to use the primary SEO keyphrase again in a natural way
By making your opening paragraph as meaningful as possible, and as closely related to the page
header as possible, you encourage Google to return that portion of the page in the search results.
Bonus SEO tip: I use the lead paragraph in the META description tag of my HTML too.

5 reasons why video blogging is great for SEO and marketing

Video blogging (adding video clips to a blog) can help to drive traffic, lower bounce rate, increase
engagement and conversions, and generally improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and
Internet marketing.
Video blogging also provides plenty of "different" marketing opportunities that written content
can't.
Bloggers who rely on written content only may find their rankings in search engines suffering as
Google continues to include more and more video results (especially from YouTube) in its organic
search results.
Why start video blogging?
In order to capture as much valuable search traffic as possible, it is important for businesses and
bloggers to create as much high quality, relevant and engaging content as possible. Finding ways to
get that content in front of people is just as important.
Video blogging can help content to rank more highly in search results, and adds new channels for
online visibility. This is mainly because video content is becoming more and more popular as a
medium for social communication and marketing.
How to get started with video blogging
Getting started with video blogging is super easy. All you need is a:
• decent webcam
• YouTube account
Most modern webcams come with built-in YouTube integration. Once you have created a YouTube
profile, it will be easy to upload videos recorded with a webcam to your YouTube account.
YouTube makes it easy to annotate and describe video content, as well as embed it in other
webpages or blog posts.
5 top reasons why video blogging is important for SEO and
Internet marketing
Most of the world's Internet traffic originates with search, and more specifically, Google search.
Search optimization and Internet marketing is all about finding innovative and creative ways to rank
better in organic search results and drive traffic via social media, backlinks, and anywhere else
potential readers and customers may be found.

Benefits of long-tail SEO

There are a number of extremely beneficial side effects to targeting long tail SEO terms, including:
• More focused content
• More targeted traffic
• Higher conversions
• Implicit PageRank improvement for high competition SEO terms
In effect, what you are doing by going after long-tail SEO terms is improving the focus of your
content so that the traffic driven to your site is more targeted. Having highly targeted traffic arriving
on your blog or small business website means that you are able to increase conversions rates and
make more money.
In addition, Google still keeps an eye on your overall content quality, keywords, and popularity. If
26
you are persistent and consistent, eventually Google will have no choice but to start improving your
rankings for more popular search phrases, because your content still contains these terms.

long-tail SEO terms to increase website traffic

Targeting long-tail SEO terms to increase website traffic via Google search only works if you are
able to correctly identify the "right" SEO terms in the first place. The right SEO terms have the
following attributes:
1. Relatively low monthly traffic
2. Relatively low competition
3. Relevant to your blog or small business
4. Are focused and targeted to your ideal audience
Often, great long-tail keywords are slightly more focused versions of the SEO terms that you aren't
able to reach the top page on.
For example, you might not be able to reach the first page for the SEO phrase "small business
SEO", but you may be able to create content that uses the phrase "small business SEO 2012", or
"small business SEO tips", or "small business SEO new york".

PHP Array

array

array array([mixed ...])

Creates an array using the parameters as elements in the array. By using the => operator, you can specify specific indexes for any elements; if no indexes are given, the elements are assigned indexes starting from 0 and incrementing by one. The internal pointer (see current, reset, and next) is set to the first element.
$array = array("first", 3 => "second", "third", "fourth" => 4);
Note: array is actually a language construct, used to denote literal arrays, but its usage is similar to that of a function, so it's included here.
array_count_values

array array_count_values(array array)

Returns an array whose elements' keys are the input array's values. The value of each key is the number of times that key appears in the input array as a value.
array_diff

array array_diff(array array1, array array2[, ... array arrayN])

Returns an array containing all of the values from the first array that are not present in any of the other arrays. The keys of the values are preserved.
array_filter

array array_filter(array array, mixed callback)

Creates an array containing all values from the original array for which the given callback function returns true. If the input array is an associative array, the keys are preserved. For example:
function isBig($inValue) {
  return($inValue > 10);
}
  
$array = array(7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14);
$new_array  = array_filter($array, "isBig"); // contains (11, 12, 13, 14)
array_flip

array array_flip(array array)

Returns an array in which the elements' keys are the original array's values, and vice versa. If multiple values are found, the last one encountered is retained. If any of the values in the original array are any type except strings and integers, array_flip( ) returns false.
array_intersect

array array_intersect(array array1, array array2[, ... array arrayN])

Returns an array whose elements are those from the first array that also exist in every other array.
array_keys

array array_keys(array array[, mixed value])

Returns an array containing all of the keys in the given array. If the second parameter is provided, only keys whose values match value are returned in the array.
array_map

array array_map(mixed callback, array array1[, ... array arrayN])

Creates an array by applying the callback function referenced in the first parameter to the remaining parameters; the callback function should take as parameters a number of values equal to the number of arrays passed into array_map( ). For example:
function multiply($inOne, $inTwo) {
  return $inOne * $inTwo;
}
  
$first = (1, 2, 3, 4);
$second = (10, 9, 8, 7);
  
$array = array_map("multiply", $first, $second); // contains (10, 18, 24, 28)
array_merge

array array_merge(array array1, array array2[, ... array arrayN])

Returns an array created by appending the elements of every array to the previous. If any array has a value with the same string key, the last value encountered for the key is returned in the array; any elements with identical numeric keys are inserted into the resulting array.
array_merge_recursive

array array_merge_recursive(array array1, array array2[, ... array arrayN])

Like array_merge( ), creates and returns an array by appending each input array to the previous. Unlike that function, when multiple elements have the same string key, an array containing each value is inserted into the resulting array.
array_multisort

bool array_multisort(array array1[, SORT_ASC|SORT_DESC
                     [, SORT_REGULAR|SORT_NUMERIC|SORT_STRING]]
                     [, array array2[, SORT_ASC|SORT_DESC
                     [, SORT_REGULAR|SORT_NUMERIC|SORT_STRING]], ...])

Used to sort several arrays simultaneously, or to sort a multidimensional array in one or more dimensions. The input arrays are treated as columns in a table to be sorted by rows—the first array is the primary sort. Any values that compare the same according to that sort are sorted by the next input array, and so on.
The first argument is an array; following that, each argument may be an array or one of the following order flags (the order flags are used to change the default order of the sort):
SORT_ASC (default)
Sort in ascending order
SORT_DESC
Sort in descending order
After that, a sorting type from the following list can be specified:
SORT_REGULAR (default)
Compare items normally
SORT_NUMERIC
Compare items numerically
SORT_STRING
Compare items as strings
The sorting flags apply only to the immediately preceding array, and they revert to SORT_ASC and SORT_REGULAR before each new array argument.
This function returns true if the operation was successful and false if not.
array_pad

array array_pad(array input, int size[, mixed padding])

Send Email from a PHP Script

you use the mail() function (in combination with a web form in particular), make sure you check it is called from the desired page and protect the form with a CAPTCHA

mail(to,subject,message,headers,parameters);

<?php
$to = "someone@test.com";
$subject = "Test mail";
$message = "Hello! This is a simple email test.";
$from = "someonelse@test.com";
$headers = "From:" . $from;
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo "Sent.";
?>


The  mail() function is used to send emails.

WORDPRESS & BLOG PERMALINKS

If you are using Wordpress as your CMS (content management
system), or are running a blog on it, you should take the following
steps to optimize your URLs, also known in the blogosphere as
Permalinks. Permalink is just another name for the specific URL
assigned to each blog post or page you publish.

There are other blog systems out there but I personally use Wordpress
mostly and it is my favorite so far. This principle applies to other blog
software but I’m using Wordpress as the specific ‘how-to’ example
here.

The default format of a blog post/page URL in Wordpress is to use an
id number, so that your URL will look something like:
Yourdomain.com/blog/?p=203
This doesn’t tell the search engines much. So here’s what you do.
Go to the Settings screen from your dashboard, then go to the
Permalinks section.

Check the button next to “Custom Structure” and in the text field,
type:
/%postname%/
This will automatically use the title of your post as the Permalink.
Eg. Yourdomain.com/this-is-my-first-blog-post
This is a much more search engine friendly URL. ***
You can also manually edit the permalink for each post when you are
writing or editing a post or page – the permalink will appear right
underneath the title and you can edit it as you choose. (If you are
using slightly older versions of Wordpress, the permalink is called Post
Slug,

Essential WordPress Plugins

One of the great things about WordPress is that you can extend it with all kinds of
functionality with WordPress Plug-ins. There are hundreds of plugins that you can use,
but here I’d like to list a few of the essential ones.
In WordPress 2.7 and above you can search for and install new plug-ins from within the
WordPress Admin UI. In the past, you had to find them in the Plug-in directory,
download them, and then upload them to your WordPress installation. WordPress 2.7+
simplifies this process a lot!
Here are a few of the essential plug-ins that you’ll want to install on your new website.
OpenHook
Another powerful feature of the Thesis WordPress theme is the ability to add “hooks” to
customize where things appear on your site.
You can add something just before your header, or just after. Just before your sidebar
content, or just after your footer. You get the idea.
To do this, you need to know a little bit about coding PHP. There is an excellent tutorial
that Sugarrae made called Thesis Hooks for Dummies.

WP-DB Backup
You should install this plugin, because you can use it to instantly back up your
WordPress database to a ZIP file and download it.
Even better, you can tell it to back up your WordPress database on a schedule - once per
week for example - and email it to you. It’s a great way to back things up automatically.
To get this plugin, just go to your Plugins menu and select Add New, just like you did
before, and search for WP-DB-Backup.

Headings & Links Seo

If possible, you want to use the core terms and top variations in
headings and sub headings (H1, H2, H3…) on the page. It’s not
absolutely essential that the heading is the first thing on the
page.

Besides the headings, you should also try to work these same terms into the text of
links on the page. This is usually a logical thing anyway, because you should have
two URLs that you’re trying to get ranked for every search term (a first and second
choice) so you can take care of this just by linking them to each other using
keywords.

You may have already done this site structure.
You do NOT need to work every keyword into links. Remember, the phrases you
use in your writing can contain more than one variation of a search term.

Make your site easier to navigate

The navigation of a website is important in helping visitors quickly find the content they want. It can
also help search engines understand what content the webmaster thinks is important. Although
Google's search results are provided at a page level, Google also likes to have a sense of what role a
page plays in the bigger picture of the site.

All sites have a home or "root" page, which is usually the most frequented page on the site and the
starting place of navigation for many visitors. Unless your site has only a handful of pages, you should
think about how visitors will go from a general page (your root page) to a page containing more
specific content. Do you have enough pages around a specific topic area that it would make sense to
create a page describing these related pages (e.g. root page -> related topic listing -> specific topic)?
Do you have hundreds of different products that need to be classified under multiple category and
subcategory pages?
The directory

URL structure

• Use words in URLs - URLs with words that are relevant to your site's content and structure
are friendlier for visitors navigating your site. Visitors remember them better and might be
more willing to link to them.
Avoid:
• using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
• choosing generic page names like "page1.html"
• using excessive keywords like "baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseballcards.
htm"
• Create a simple directory structure - Use a directory structure that organizes your content
well and is easy for visitors to know where they're at on your site. Try using your directory
structure to indicate the type of content found at that URL.
Avoid:
• having deep nesting of subdirectories like ".../dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/
page.html"
• using directory names that have no relation to the content in them