Major online directories

Like search engines, there are hundreds of different directories online. Some are general directories,
whereas others are very specific and associated with only one industry or organization. When you’re
selecting the directories to which you’d like to submit your site, be choosy. Don’t try to list your site
in a directory that’s inappropriate. You’ll just be wasting time and collecting rejection slips.

Some of the most well-known directories on the Web are:

Yahoo! Directory (dir.yahoo.com): The Yahoo! directory is one of the oldest directories
on the Internet, but when you go to Yahoo.com you actually won’t be taken to it. Instead,
you’ll be taken to a search engine, because Yahoo! changed its format not too long ago.
How ever, you can still access the directory, by going to the web site just listed. Yahoo!
directory is a general directory.

GoGuides.Org (www.goguides.org): This directory’s purpose is to be completely spamfree.
It’s a comprehensive search directory that even has image-searching capabilities.

Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org): The Open Directory Project is one of the most
widely accessed directories on the Web. Users submit sites, and volunteer editors review
them. ODP is also an open-source technology, so many other directories use this technology
as a basis for their own offerings.

Google Directory (directory.google.com): The Google directory is one of those directories
built on the ODP platform. Google is most well-known for its search capabilities, but
adding a directory takes advantage of the desire of Internet users to dig deeper into very
specific search results.

SearchSight (www.searchsight.com): Another general directory, SearchSight is one of
the lesser-known directories, but it’s quickly gaining traction in the search market.

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How Does Web-Site Content Affect SEO?

The catch with web-site content is that is must be fresh and original to be most effective. If it’s not, the
content can do more harm than good. As you’ve already seen, content is the one element that can keep
customers coming back to your site time and again. When customers return often, your site ranking
improves, because the traffic registers the site with search crawlers as a valid and in-demand site.
When your content stinks, though, your site is headed in the opposite direction. If you have content
on your site that’s not professional, the search engine crawler will register this, and your ranking may
drop lower and lower and you could possibly be delisted altogether.

How do you know if your content stinks or not? It’s mostly a game of finding the right combination
of content types and consistent updates. But before you can even get to determining the right type of
content, you need to create a content strategy.

Your content strategy is the plan by which you’ll infuse your site with the right types of content at the
right times. It starts with determining how to reach your target audience. By now your target audience
should be engraved on your forehead, but how you reach that audience is something entirely
different. If your audience is teens, the language and method with which you’ll reach them will be
different than if your audience is senior adults or stay-at-home moms, or even full-time professionals.

One more consideration as you’re planning your content strategy: what do you do that’s different
from your competition? You should already have a good idea of what your competition does, and
how it seems to work for them. But what can you do differently? What sets you apart from all of
the other web sites out there that come up when a user searches for widgets?

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Components of an SEO-Friendly Page

Building an SEO-friendly web site doesn’t happen by accident. It requires an understanding of what
elements search engines examine and how those elements affect your ranking. It also requires including
as many of those elements as possible on your site. It does little good to have all the right meta
tags in place if you have no content and no links on your page.

It’s easy to get caught up in the details of SEO and forget the simplest web-design principles — principles
that play a large part in your search engine rankings. Having all the right keywords in the right
places in your tags and titles won’t do you much good if the content on your page is non-existent or
completely unreachable by a search engine crawler.

Understanding entry and exit pages
Entry and exit pages are the first and last pages that a user sees of your web site. It’s important to
understand that an entry page isn’t necessarily the home page on your web site. It can be any other
page where a user lands, either by clicking through search engine results, by clicking a link from
another web site or a piece of marketing material, or by bookmarking or typing directly into the
address bar of a browser.

Entry pages are important in SEO, because they are the first page users see as they come onto the
web site. The typical web site is actually several small connected sites. Your company web site might
contain hubs, or central points, for several different topics. Say you’re a pet store. Then you’ll have
hubs within your sites for dogs, cats, birds, fish, and maybe exotic animals. Each hub will have a
main page — which will likely be your entry page for that section — and several additional pages
leading from that central page to other pages containing relevant content, products, or information
about specific topics.

Understanding which of your pages are likely entry pages helps you to optimize those pages for
search engine crawlers. Using the pet-store example, if your home page and all the hub pages are
properly SEO’ed, you potentially could be ranked at or near the top of five different sets of search
results. When you add additional entry pages deeper in your web site structure (that is, a dogtraining
section to the hub for dogs), you’ve increased the number of times you can potentially
end up at the top of search engine rankings.

Because entry pages are important in the structure of your web site, you want to monitor those pages
using a web-site analytics program to ensure they are working the way you expect them to work. A
good analytics program, like Google Analytics, will show you your top entry and exit pages.

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SEO Page elements

Another facet of SEO to consider before you build your web site is the elements needed to ensure
that your site is properly indexed by a search engine. Each search engine places differing importance
on different page elements. For example, Google is a very keyword-driven search engine; however, it
also looks at site popularity and at the tags and links on any given page.
How well your site performs in a search engine is determined by how the elements of your page
meet the engine’s search criteria. The main criteria that every search engine looks for are the site
text (meaning keywords), tags — both HTML and meta tags — site links, and the site popularity.

Text
Text is one of the most important elements of any web site. Of particular importance are the keywords
within the text on a page, where those keywords appear, and how often they appear. This
is why keyword marketing has become such a large industry in a relatively short time. Your keywords
make all the difference when a search engine indexes your site and then serves it up in
search results.


Tags
In search engine optimization, two kinds of tags are important on your web site: meta tags and
HTML tags. Technically, meta tags are HTML tags, they just appear in very specific places. The
two most important meta tags are the keyword tag and the description tag.
The keyword tag occurs at the point where you list the keywords that apply to your web site. A
keyword tag on a search engine optimization page might look something like this:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”SEO, search engine optimization, page
rank”>
The description tag gives a short description of your page. Such a tag for the search engine optimization
page might look like this:
<meta name=”description” content=”The ultimate guide to search engine
optimization!”>

The title tag is the tag that’s used in the title of your web site. This tag will appear like this:
<Title>Your Title Here</Title>
Once you’ve tagged your site with a title tag, when a user pulls the site up, the title that you entered
will appear at the very top of the page if the user is using an Internet Explorer browser (IE) earlier
than IE7



High-level headings (H1s) are also important when a crawler examines your web site. Your keywords
should appear in your H1 headings, and in the HTML tags you use to create those headings. An H1
tag might look like this:
<h1>High-Level Heading</h1>
Anchor tags are used to create links to other pages.

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Facebook pages

Facebook
Currently, Facebook is the dominant social networking site, and it has the most features useful to the social
media marketer. It began in universities, so Facebook boasts a commanding percentage of college students
as members. Recently, however, its fastest growing segment has been users older than 35, and recent data
suggests that the 35–54 age group has become bigger than the 18–24 age group. For these older users,
Facebook presents a middle ground between the stuffiness of LinkedIn and the adolescent playground of
MySpace, and is a fun but easily navigable place where they can reconnect with old friends.

Pages

Facebook allows businesses to create public profiles that have many of the same features as a user’s
profile. Users can connect with a page and become fans. Pages can have public messaging walls, events,
photos, and custom applications. Nearly every company engaged in social media marketing should have a
Facebook page; it can often serve as a central place for the integration of other parts of a campaign.
One of the most popular pages on Facebook is the Coca-Cola page, yet it wasn’t even created by the
company itself. A Coke fan in Los Angeles made the page featuring little more than a giant can of soda, and
in a few weeks it had 250,000 fans. At the time of this writing, it has more than 3.5 million fans. Facebook
noticed the size of the group and asked Coca-Cola corporate to take it over, but the soda company’s marketing

team demonstrated its social media savvy and didn’t charge in and strong-arm the original creator
out of the picture. Instead, it assigned a team of people to help him maintain the page. If you go to that
page today and post a comment such as “Pepsi is better than Coke,” Coca-Cola corporate lets it stay. The
best social media marketing is always going to be done by your fans, not by you, so get out of their way.
When you’re setting up a page for your business, you can use a few applications to make the page
more interesting to visitors and make them more likely to return.

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Subscriptions the powerful platforms

Blog software gives you the powerful ability to syndicate your content using popular formats such as
RSS and Atom. These standards are designed to allow people to read your content—as well as their
other favorite blogs—in a piece of software known as a feed reader. Good blogging software makes
this easy by providing people with a simple button to click to add your blog to their subscription lists.
People who subscribe won’t come to your site every time they read your content, but once they have
subscribed to your feed, they will read most or all of your posts.

Hosted Versus Self-Hosted
Blogging software falls into one of two varieties: hosted or self-hosted. Hosted software, such as
LiveJournal, resides on a server owned by the organization that maintains the code. Many hosted solutions
will give you a URL to use, such as http://<example>.wordpress.com. Self-hosted software is run
on your own server. Self-hosted platforms require installation and configuration, but once they are set
up they’re completely under your control. Blogs running self-hosted software are located on a domain
owned solely by you, as opposed to the shared domains often used by hosted blogs. Hosted software
is often easier for new bloggers to get started on, but for best results your blog should appear on your
own domain. Some hosted blog systems allow you to use your own domain; take advantage of this if
you can.

Most popular blogs today use self-hosted software, and chances are good that you’ll need help installing,
designing, configuring, and maintaining your blog to get it running to your needs. Rather than hire a
dedicated in-house person to manage this for you, you should look for technical help in your industry or
location. Mashable’s Pete Cashmore recommends finding a firm or individual who would like to increase
her exposure in your niche, and offering a trade of advertising space on your site and blog for free or
discounted services.

WordPress
WordPress is the most well-known and widely used blogging software, as well as my personal favorite.
It is free, is open source, and has a robust community of developers and designers who’ve built
thousands of plug-ins and themes for it, making it the most customizable platform available.

Movable Type
Many of the most high-traffic blogs on the Web use Movable Type. In the past few years, Movable Type
has shifted to an open source model and now has great support for multiple blogs, but it is not as easy
to use as WordPress. The most popular paid, hosted platform on the Web is TypePad (see Figure 2-11).
Based on Movable Type software and owned by the same company (Six Apart), TypePad is simpler to
use than the self-hosted version and includes a few additional features. Some sites running on TypePad
use domains such as http://<example>.typepad.com, whereas others use their own domains.

Blogger
One of the earliest blogging platforms, Blogger is hosted software (see Figure 2-12); most sites using it
appear on URLs such as http://<example>.blogspot.com. It is very easy to use, but it lacks many of the
features available in other platform solutions. It is a popular choice for new bloggers creating their first sites.

HubSpot
HubSpot (the company I work for) sells a set of tools, including a blogging package. This paid, hosted
service allows your blog to appear on your domain and includes features for companies that want to
integrate their blogs with their lead-tracking and marketing analytics.

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Internet marketing

Affiliate marketing

    Cost per action
    Revenue sharing

Search engine optimization
    Social media marketing
    Email marketing
    Referral marketing
    Content marketing

Search engine marketing
    Pay per click
    Cost per impression
    Search analytics
    Web analytics

Display advertising

    Contextual advertising
    Behavioral targeting



Mobile advertising

Intelligent ad targeting is now the key to the development of the mobile as a reach medium. Both consumers and marketers are taking more and more notice of mobile advertising.

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Vertical Search from the Major Search Engines

The big three search engines offer a wide variety of vertical search products. Here is a partial list:

Google
Google Maps, Google Images, Google Product Search, Google Blog Search, Google Video,
Google News, Google Custom Search Engine, Google Book Search, Google US Gov’t
Search, etc.

Yahoo!
Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Local, Yahoo! Images, Yahoo! Video, Yahoo! Shopping, Yahoo!
Audio Search, etc.

Bing
Bing Image, Bing Video, Bing News, Bing Maps, Bing Health, Bing Products, etc.

Image search
All three search engines offer image search capability. Basically, image search engines limit the
data that they crawl, search, and return in results to images.

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5 Unique Tips for Using Google+ for Marketing

1.Event Blogging As A Link Building Technique

Page Rank Calculation completely depends on the number of Inbound links. That is number of links which you got from other sites. If the number of Inbound links got increased simultaneously Your Page Rank get increases. Quality Inbound links are precious for the hike in Page Rank. If there is no Quality Backlinks you will not get any Page Rank.


2.Use Data Mining for Search Engine Optimization
There are some more Paid Tools. They charge Annually and monthly depending on their Popularity.

1.    Keyword Discovery
2.    Wordze
3.    Keyword Spy
4.    Keyword Elite
5.    SEM Rush
6.    KeyCompete

3.Using Local Search to Gain More Customers4.Site structure
5.Number of keywords on a page

Choosing the right keyword helps in optimizing the webpages in the Organic Results. New researches had revealed that about 80 percent of the users doesnot go beyond from the top 10 results from the google search engine. By considering this point we should take the analysis of top 10 sites of that keyword from the organic results in the search engine. Make sure that you good at these results.
Google follows an Page Rank Algorithm to calculate the page rank of a web page. Before Starting with the Page Calculation. We should know what are INBOUND LINKS and OUTBOUND LINKS

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How To: SEM

SEM stands for -search engine marketing.

There’s no denying the synergy between SEO and paid search marketing, and paid search marketers would do well to take away a lesson or two from the world of organic search engine optimization to improve their campaigns. 1.  Keywords! Keywords! Sherlock Holmes exclaimed, "Data! Data! …I can't make bricks without clay." And likewise, keywords are the backbone, heart and soul of all search engine marketing, paid or organic. There’s a whole mess of keywords work and reports done for organic search optimization that paid search marketers 

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Best Practices for Multilanguage/Country Targeting

Many businesses target multiple countries with their websites and need answers to questions
such as: do you put the information for your products or services all on the same domain? Do
you obtain multiple domains? Where do you host the site(s)? It turns out that there are SEO
factors, as well as basic marketing questions, that affect the answers. There are also non-SEO
factors, such as the tax implications of what you do; for some TLDs you can get them only by
having a local physical presence (e.g., France requires this to get a .fr domain).

Targeting a Specific Country
Starting with the basics of international targeting, it is important to let the search engines know
where your business is based in as many ways as possible. These might include:
• A country-specific TLD (ccTLD) for your domain (e.g., .co.uk)
• Hosting in the local country
• Physical local address in plain text on every page of your site
• Google Webmaster Central geotargeting setting
• Verified address with Google Maps
• Links from in-country websites
• Use of the local language on the website
If you are starting from scratch, getting these all lined up will give you the best possible chance
of ranking in the local country you are targeting.

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Tying SEO to Conversion and ROI

it is important to tie your SEO campaign to the
results it brings to the business. A fundamental piece of that is measuring the conversions
driven by organic SEO traffic. Here are some of the most common types of conversions:

Sales/sales revenue
This is the one that everyone assumes is part of conversions. Sales and sales revenue (or
better still, margin) conversions can be the simplest things to track, except when you are
selling many different products at different price points and in different quantities. In this
case, the process would need to be a bit more sophisticated.
If your site is advertising-driven, you need to look at the impact of organic search traffic
on advertising revenue. If you have no financial goals for your site, you need to look at
some of the other types of conversions.

Email/blog/newsletter subscriptions
Anytime a user signs up to receive regular communications from you it is a win. Even
though there are not direct financial consequences to this it is still a conversion. Someone
who has subscribed to something you offer is more likely to become a customer than a
first-time visitor to your site, so you need to credit this type of conversion.

Sign-ups
Closely related to the notion of subscriptions are other types of sign-ups. Perhaps you offer
a service such as a tool that people need to sign up for to use. Even if the tool is free, you
should track this as a conversion.

You most likely received the person’s email address in the process, and even if she indicates
that she does not want to receive commercial communications from you, you should be
building loyalty with the tool you provided her access to (or whatever she signed up for);
otherwise, why would you be providing her that service?

Downloads
Many sites offer free downloads, such as white papers, or free downloadable tools. Even
if you do not require a sign-up of any type, you should still count this as a conversion.
You are getting your message out there with the downloads you offer.

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SEO for Mindshare/Branding

A less popular but equally powerful application of SEO is its use for branding purposes.
Bloggers, social media/community websites, content producers, news outlets, and dozens of
other web publishing archetypes have found tremendous value in appearing atop search results
and using the resulting exposure to bolster their brand recognition and authority.

The process is fairly simple, much like the goals in traditional advertising of ad repetition to
enter the buyer’s consideration set. (Read about the three laws of branding at http://www
.palgrave-journals.com/bm/journal/v16/n3/full/2550139a.html for more information on this topic.)
Similarly, online marketers have observed that being at the top of search rankings around a
particular subject has a positive impact on traffic, consideration, and perceived authority.
Here are some factors to think about when considering SEO for mindshare/branding:
 
When to employ
Use it when branding, or communicating a message, is your goal. If you do not have direct
monetization goals for the moment or for the foreseeable future, this is the approach for
you.
 
Keyword targeting
A keyword focus is less critical here—you’ll likely have a few broad terms that receive the
high traffic you want, but the long tail may be far more achievable and the better target.
Focus on keywords that are going to bring you visitors who are likely to be interested in
and remember your brand.

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Algorithm-Based Ranking Systems: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking

Understanding how crawling, indexing, and ranking works is helpful to SEO practitioners, as
it helps them determine what actions to take to meet their goals. This section primarily covers
the way Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft operate, and does not necessarily apply to other search
engines that are popular, such as Baidu (China) and Naver (Korea).
The search engines have several major goals and functions.
These include:
     • Crawling and indexing the billions of documents (pages and files) accessible on the Web
      • Responding to user queries by providing lists of relevant pages
In this section, we’ll walk through the basics of these functions from a nontechnical
perspective. This section will start by discussing how search engines find and discover content.

Crawling and Indexing
Imagine the World Wide Web as a network of stops in a big city subway system. Each stop is
its own unique document (usually a web page, but sometimes a PDF, JPEG, or other file). The
search engines need a way to “crawl” the entire city and find all the stops along the way, so
they use the best path available: the links between web pages

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Elements of Link Building

There are countless opportunities for link building. Everything starts on your site. Your
site should make it easy and intuitive for anyone wanting to link to it. To increase your
chances of people linking to your site, you need to provide something of value.
Basic Elements
The following subsections talk about the rudimentary elements that all sites need to
consider.

Take out the guesswork
Take out the guesswork for your web visitors by providing the HTML code fragment(s)
for people to link to your site. Create “Link to Us” and “Tell a Friend” links. Most CMS
software includes prebuilt forms for handling these simple concepts.

Run a daily, weekly, or monthly email newsletter
Running your own newsletter provides several benefits. First, you get to remind your
existing visitors of your new offerings, whether it is content, products, or services. Plus,
the recipients of your newsletter are likely to forward it to people they know if they find
your newsletter interesting.

Provide registered services
Many sites offer free and members-only content. This model offers several benefits. If
your free content is already great, many of your visitors will also be interested in your
members-only content. The idea is that the content that is provided to members only
is of even greater quality than the public content. Many sites charge for members-only
content. Providing registered services helps you build up the email lists

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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".

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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])

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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.

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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,

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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Different types of SEO

This guide covers all major aspects of SEO, including:

• content SEO
• analytical SEO
• performance SEO
• Technical/HTML SEO
• Image SEO
• Off-site SEO

Where possible I will demonstrate techniques (or refer to other articles) with verifiable SEO
examples that you can look at on Google.

Content SEO

Content SEO refers to the techniques you can use to help content appear higher in the SERPs
(Search Engine Results Pages).
How to implement content SEO: Content SEO requires you to know which SEO keywords and
phrases you want to target. This in turn means you need to do some SEO keyword research before
sitting down to write.

The following articles tell you everything you need to know about content SEO:

• Anatomy of a blog post: How to get more traffic and s ocial engagement from your content
• Killer SEO tip: How to make the long tail pay

What's new in content SEO: Google's Panda and Penguin algorithm updates hit a lot of sites. Not
all of the updates affected content SEO - Penguin focused on spammy backlinks, for example.
However, almost all of Google's updates are designed to improve the quality of the content returned
by their search. Quality! That's the new buzzword. Good content SEO starts with high quality
content that is useful, engaging, valuable or entertaining.

Analytical SEO


Analytical SEO makes use of traffic analysis through an analytics service like Google analytics. By
analyzing the sources, demographics, browsing patterns and conversions of organic search traffic, it
is possible to improve your SEO strategy.

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Small business SEO ROI calculation

For the purposes of the ROI (Return on Investment) calculation for small business SEO, we'll make
a few assumptions about the amount of traffic clicking through from Google (feel free to modify
these if you think they are different).

In both cases, we're looking at the traffic generated by results appearing on the first page of Google
that's the whole point of proper SEO after all.
To make the maths easy, let's assume that Google generates 100 000 impressions for your keywords
each month.

We'll also say that the ADV is $5 and that the conversion rate is 2%.
Top of 1st page results:
Monthly value of SEO = 100 000 x (20% click through) x $5 x 0.02 = $2000
Bottom of 1st page results:
Monthly value of SEO = 100 000 x (3% click through) x $5 x 0.02 = $300
The difference between ranking right at the top of the first page in organic search results, and at the
bottom of the first page is considerable. So the margins for error in SEO are very thin - second page
results may generate no traffic at all (depending on the popularity of the keywords).

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Weekly SEO top 5

This SEO list for bloggers and small business will show you five things you should do at least once
a week in order to ensure that your blog or website is driving as much Web traffic as possible.
In many cases, the SEO or search optimization related tasks mentioned in this list should be
performed more than once a week.

1. Create content
Add content to your site at least once a week. If you rely on revenue from the Internet then it is
definitely worthwhile creating content on a more regular basis, as a high authority, highly ranked
niche website can bring great ROI (Return on Investment) online.
New content must be original and relevant to your blog or business niche. In addition, you might
consider doing some SEO keyword research to further enhance the rankings of your content in
search.

2. Monitor analytics
Analytical data, provided by a service like Google analytics, can tell you a great deal about how a
blog or website performs. In particular, it is important to pay close attention to the following
aspects:
• Overall traffic volumes: This metric can provide strong evidence for how well or poorly
various marketing and SEO efforts are paying off.
• Traffic originating from organic search: This provides insight into how well your blog or
website ranks in the SERPs( Search Engine Results Pages).
• Top content: This can tell you which posts bring the most traffic and allows you to tailor
advertising or marketing on these pages, or work to help other pages move up in the
rankings.
• Conversions: If you have set goals, analytics can provide data about how well your blog or
site is converting traffic to meet predefined objectives, such as newsletter signups or product
purchases.
• Bounce Rate: A high bounce rate may indicate poor or confusing web design, or poor
quality content. A low bounce rate is a good indication that your blog or site is engaging
readers well.
To learn more about analytics and how to use analytical data, I recommend reading the following
articles:
• Five awesome tips to extract valuable SEO secrets from Google analytics data
28
• How to double your search traffic using SEO, Webmaster t ools and Google analytics
• Five ways to make more money using analytics

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SEO and Internet marketing diversity

So here it is, based on the current state of search, SEO and social, we can make some pretty
powerful deductions about how to move forward with the best SEO and Internet marketing strategy
possible.
The keywords for small business SEO and marketing in 2012 are diversity, authority, and
engagement.
Content diversity
Content needs to be diversified to cater for different needs now that direct product sale conversions
are likely going to diminish with Google's product search taking the majority share of the pie.
Community discussions, reviews, human interest articles are good ways to get around Google
product search and still offer value to readers, with the potential to convert.
SEO and Internet marketing diversity
Don't put all your faith in SEO. It's not clear what effects knowledge graph and product search will
have. Combine that with the current algorithmic fluxes and, while SEO is hugely important, you
should agree that having all your eggs in the proverbial SEO basket is probably not prudent.

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Promote your website in the right ways

While most of the links to your site will be gained gradually, as people discover your content through
search or other ways and link to it, Google understands that you'd like to let others know about the
hard work you've put into your content. Effectively promoting your new content will lead to faster
discovery by those who are interested in the same subject. As with most points covered in this
document, taking these recommendations to an extreme could actually harm the reputation of your
site.
Good practices for promoting your website
• Blog about new content or services - A blog post on your own site letting your visitor base
know that you added something new is a great way to get the word out about new content or
services. Other webmasters who follow your site or RSS feed could pick the story up as well.
• Don't forget about offline promotion - Putting effort into the offline promotion of your
company or site can also be rewarding. For example, if you have a business site, make sure
its URL is listed on your business cards, letterhead, posters, etc. You could also send out
recurring newsletters to clients through the mail letting them know about new content on the
company's website.
• Know about social media sites - Sites built around user interaction and sharing have made
it easier to match interested groups of people up with relevant content.
Avoid:
• attempting to promote each new, small piece of content you create; go for big,
interesting items
• involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the
top of these services

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FILE NAMES FOR SEO

This is another are in which opinions are varied as to the effect of file
names on search engine ranking. But it’s good protocol to name your
files – webpages, mp3s, images, videos etc with useful, relevant
names, and since it definitely won’t hurt your rankings, I say ‘why
not?’. Without being spammy, you can choose wisely when naming
your files to make them relevant. If you have MP3s, don’t just name
them “track one” or something generic like that. Include the name of
your band, genre and track title for example, and remember to use
hyphens to separate your words
eg. “Blue-snake-rock-girls-are-cool.mp3”

Search engines like content that is updated regularly. If your site gets
stale, your ranking will drop because it becomes less relevant. Not
every kind of site lends itself well to updated content which is where a
blog can come in handy. A blog, by its nature can be any kind of
content and is frequently updated. If you are a band you can utilize a
blog even when you don’t have an album out because you can let your
fans know about what you are up to. Are you in the studio recording?
Post pics of your sessions or let them know what songs you are
working on. Share rough cuts of tracks – ask for feedback. Give your
fans the feeling they are getting some personal insight into your life as
an artist. This kind of regularly updated content not only helps develop
your relationship with your fans, keeping them engaged and coming
back to your site frequently, but it also looks good to the search
engines.
Also keep in mind that the more pages your site has, the better it
looks to search engines. So it’s important to keep adding pages on a

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Know Your Network For Seo

Imagine going to battle without an understanding of the terrain, roads, buildings,
weather, or even your own fighting force’s tactics and capabilities. This is the situation
faced by many information security professionals when they initially attempt to monitor
their network environment. Knowing your network is akin to understanding your
military capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses when preparing for an enemy attack.
In information security, the enemy will change tactics continually, but you have a
“home field advantage” because the battleground is your network. History proves that
blindly charging into or defending the unknown will almost certainly end in defeat.
One of the best ways to express this concept comes from Richard Bejtlich, information
security professional and author of The Tao of Network Security Monitoring. In a January
2007 post on his blog,* Bejtlich describes the “Self-Defeating Network” as having
the following characteristics:

• Unknown
• Unmonitored
• Uncontrolled
• Unmanned
• Trusted

Although you may not have control of or influence over these characteristics, you must
make every effort to Know Your Network! Doing so will help you succeed in most of
your security-related endeavors. In this chapter, we will explore two primary methods
of learning about a network: network taxonomy and network telemetry.

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How To Increase Traffic to Your Website

• Review sites are the most cost-effective form of social marketing for small, local businesses.
• Make sure your listings on review sites include plenty of relevant keywords so that people can find
you in search results.
• Respond to negative reviews, but always remain calm and try to resolve the issue.
• Unlock your business page at Yelp.
• Post stickers and badges on your websites and physical locations to encourage more reviews.

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Considerations for Multi-Lingual Sites

Creating SEO-optimized content for a multi-lingual web site presents a whole new challenge for
SEO. Needing a multi-lingual site is a good problem to have. It usually means that you have customers
in multiple countries. However, it also means you have to double or triple your SEO efforts.
The good news is that optimizing your foreign-language web site is very much the same as optimizing
your English one. You just do it in a different language. Here are some guidelines that should
serve as reminders of what you should plan to do during the SEO process:
Translate keywords into the new language. In some cases, you won’t be able to translate
your keywords into a matching word in another language. In that case, you’ll need
to choose new keywords.

Translate existing web content. Again, translations can sometimes be squirrelly. Unless
you’re an expert in the language to which you’re translating, hire someone to do it for you.
A bad translation could cost you more in lost traffic than the services of a good translator.
Apply all of the same SEO rules to your foreign content that you’ve learned for your
English content. Just because the language is different doesn’t mean that the search
engine or the search engine crawler is any different.

Include the proper links both to and from your English site to your foreign-language
site, but also include the appropriate links to English on the foreign-language site.
Make language options clearly available on your web site. If these options are not clearly
marked, your foreign visitors could miss them, and then you’ll lose visitors before they’re
fully engaged in your site.

SEO is really no different in any other language than it is in English. The biggest concern when
translating your site to another language is the actual translation. The SEO efforts are essentially
the same, but getting the language wrong could cost you just as much as not having a foreignlanguage
site at all.

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Seoo Traffic Sources

On this page, you can see a summary of your inbound traffic. This includes direct traffic,
search engine traffic, and referring sites traffic. The top part of the page shows this type
of information.

The bottom part of the page is divided into two tables. The table on the lower left shows
a summary of your main sources of traffic. The table on the lower right shows the
pertinent keywords bringing the traffic.

The submenu options under the Traffic Sources main menu item include pages that
show segregated views of traffic. If you are using Google AdWords, you will see the
options relevant to AdWords paid ad traffic. Other SEM networks can have tagging
included in the

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OFF-PAGE OPTIMIZATION

This refers to ways to improve your site’s ranking that involve 3rd party
sites, not just your own.
BACKLINKS
Backlinks are simply links from other websites back to your own site.
Backlinking can be an entire marketing strategy in itself and I
recommend that you consistently work on this aspect. The idea is that
in addition to the content of your site, search engines look at who you
are associated with – which, and how many sites are linking to you. If
sites they deem to be high quality are linking to you, this makes your
site look better in their eyes. If low-quality or ‘spammy’ sites are
linking to you, it will have an adverse effect.
So, as with all popularity contests, it’s all about the company you
keep.
Swapping links with blogs and other sites can be a good way to get
backlinks and increase traffic. However, you want to be selective about
your links and choose only relevant sites to link with. Don’t associate
yourself with a site that has a lot of ‘spammy’ links in their link
directory, or that does not have good, regularly updated content. This
is the equivalent of being guilty by association.
You can strategize by Googling the keywords you are targeting and
trying to get the top ranked sites to link to you. If your site is brand
new it might be a struggle to get major sites to link to you because the
big dogs may have nothing much to gain by linking to you, rankingwise,
but if you are providing great content they may want to link to
you as a good resource for their visitors. I would recommend at first
targeting sites within your own ‘social circle’ or just above it until you
increase your own ranking, then you can start to reach out to bigger
sites with more confidence.

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