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.

Read More

Build Inbound Links with Online Promotion

Now that your website is keyword-optimized, it is time to build up your inbound
links. Promoting your site to build more inbound links than your competitors, especially
from high PageRank sites, is the most important way to increase your search
engine rankings. Here are some techniques you can use to boost your inbound links
to build up the buzz and rise above the noise:
• Use XML news feeds such as RSS and Atom to automatically syndicate your content
to other sites.
• Register your feeds at news aggregators.
• Interview luminaries.
• Write articles on your most important topics for other sites, and have your bio
link back to your website.
• Create useful tools.
• Publicize new content with press releases.
• Get listed in the major directories in the appropriate category:
— http://dir.yahoo.com
— http://www.business.com
— http://www.dmoz.org
— http://botw.org
• Get listed in industry directories and resource pages (e.g., the WorkForce.com
Vendor Directory for HR software providers at http://www.workforce.com/global/
2007/vendormain07.htm).
• Get links from industry websites and discussion forums (write articles, send
press releases, post to forums, and use your link in signature files).
• Use “high-end”link

Read More

Web page optimization streamlines

Your pages to download and display faster. As
your website performance improves, your bailout rates and bandwidth bills will go
down while your conversion rates and profits will rise. In this chapter, you learned
how to minimize HTTP requests, optimize graphics and multimedia, substitute
server-side for client-side sniffing, and load JavaScript wisely.

To reduce the overhead of multiple objects that causes the majority of web page
delay, minimize the number of objects referenced within your web pages. Also, put
all of your images, still and motion, on a strict file size diet. Minimize the size of the
head of your HTML, and layer your markup to display useful content quickly and
maximize your potential search engine rankings. Finally, move your CSS to the top
and your scripts to the bottom of your pages to enable progressive display.

Read More

Top Search Engine Ranking Factors

PageRank is not the only factor that Google uses to rank search results. Google uses
more than 200 “signals”to calculate the rank of a page.a According to a survey of SEO
experts, the top 10 most important factors include the following:
• Keyword use in title tag
• Anchor text of inbound link
• Global link popularity of site
• Age of site
• Link popularity within the site’s internal link structure
• Topical relevance of inbound links to site
• Link popularity of site in topical community
• Keyword use in body text
• Global link popularity of linking site
• Topical relationship of linking page
The top factors that negatively affect a search engine spider’s ability to crawl a page or
harm its rankings are as follows:
• Server often inaccessible to bots
• Content very similar to or duplicate of existing content in the index
• External links to low-quality/spam sites
• Duplicate title/meta tags on many pages
• Overuse of targeted keywords (indicative of stuffing/spamming)
• Participation in link schemes or actively selling links
• Very slow server response times
• Inbound links from spam sites
• Low levels of visitors to the site

Read More

SEO Testing

SEO is both an art and a science. As with any scientific discipline, it requires rigorous testing
of hypotheses. The results need to be reproducible, and you have to take an experimental
approach so as not to modify too many variables at once. Otherwise, you will not be able to
tell which changes were responsible for the results.

And although you can glean a tremendous amount of knowledge of SEO best practices, latest
trends, and tactics from SEO blogs, forums, and e-books, it is hard to separate the wheat from
the chaff and to know with any degree of certainty that an SEO-related claim will hold true.
That’s where the testing of your SEO comes in: proving what works and what doesn’t.
Unlike multivariate testing for optimizing conversion rates, where many experiments can be
run in parallel, SEO testing requires a serial approach. Everything must filter through the
search engines before the impact can be gauged.

Read More

AdWords Tips For SEO

Observe and track your competition
Observe the competition. Write a script to track ads of your targeted keyword list.
Record competitor ads for several weeks. Note changes in ads. Analyze ads that
changed. If the ads are not changing, this could mean they are working.

Experiment
Don’t stop with weeding out the nonworking keywords. Experiment with new keywords.
Learn of any new competitors. Learn what their keywords are. Don’t be afraid
to gradually lower your bid prices to see the effects on your CTR.

Refine your ad copy
A poor CTR usually means bad ad copy, bad keyword targeting, and bad timing. You
can easily create several versions of your ads for your campaign. Use that to your advantage.
Learn which ads are converting and which are not. Learn which words are
being used in the ads that work and in the ads that do not. In general, the higher your
CTR, the lower your average cost-per-click will be.

Try other platforms
If you have stiff competition on AdWords, you may want to examine other PPC platforms.
Yes, search volumes may be lower, but less competition and more keywords of
interest could compensate for the lack of volume.
If you score a successful campaign with ads producing clicks and, ultimately, profits,
you may want to consider replicating the campaign across the other platforms—
especially Yahoo! and Microsoft. Replicating your winning formula is smart marketing.

Read More

SEO Benefits Of A Quality Website Structure

The main benefits of having a great navigation structure for both search engines and people
are:

Indexation - If the search engines such as Google can follow your structure from Homepage
right down to the lowest levels, then it will get to “crawl” (see) every page on the site. It means
that as long as the rest of the site is optimized correctly, every page on the site should be
indexed in the search engines.
Following on from this, any new pages you add should get indexed more quickly as the site can
be crawled more easily.
Usability - It gives a better impression of the website to the search engine due to its usability
for humans. Big search engines look for this mainly.
You should always focus at designing a simple website structure, as you should be going to
innumerable unknown users.
Page

Read More

SEO Research and Analysis

even more challenging and complex by the constant evolution of best practices and
optimization opportunities.
Fortunately, a great variety of resources that make the job easier are available on the Web.
Many leading SEO practitioners regularly post their thoughts on blogs or in forums, or speak
at conferences. This creates many opportunities to interact with them, learn from their
experience, and keep your skills sharp and up-to-date.
In this chapter, we will talk about those resources and how to leverage them to be more
successful in your SEO efforts.

SEO is rapidly evolving. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, and new
media and technologies are being introduced to the Web on a regular basis. Staying current
requires an ongoing commitment to research.


One of the easiest ways to research what is happening in the world of SEO is to study the
websites and periodicals that cover SEO in detail, but ongoing testing of SEO hypotheses should
also play a role.

Read More

SEO for Lead Generation and Direct Marketing

Although lead generation via the Web is less direct than an e-commerce transaction, it is
arguably just as valuable and important for building customers, revenue, and long-term value.
Millions of search queries have commercial intents that can’t be (or currently aren’t) fulfilled
directly online. These can include searches for services such as legal consulting, contract
construction, commercial loan requests, alternative energy providers, or virtually any service
or product people source via the Web.
Here are some factors to think about when considering SEO for lead generation and direct
marketing:

When to employ
Use it when you have a non-e-commerce product/service/goal that you want users to
accomplish on your site or for which you are hoping to attract inquiries/direct contact
over the Web.

Keyword targeting
As with e-commerce, choose phrases that convert well, have reasonable traffic, and have
previously performed in PPC campaigns.

Page and content creation/optimization
Although you might think it would be easier to rank high in the SERPs for lead generation
programs than for e-commerce, it is often equally challenging. You’ll need a solid
combination of on-site optimization and external link building to many different pages on
the site (with good anchor text) to be competitive in the more challenging arenas.

Read More

Search Ranking Algorithm-Social sharing data

Include social sharing and follow buttons on your site, your blog, and in
your emails

social sharing strategies increase traffic and increase profits. For
those internet marketers wondering how big can social media be in terms

of helping businesses online explode

 Twitter Followers -> Email Subscribers: Twitter is a great communication

channel. It helps you contact and stay in touch with anyone you want. But

it doesn’t directly make you real money. Email marketing is still the

most profitable online marketing channel.


Facebook Fans -> People Talking About This: Facebook’s EdgeRank was

designed to keep companies from spamming their “fans”. So it only allows

you to reach the fans that actively engage with your brand. “People

Talking About This” is the closest metric you have to increase your

“viral reach”. The higher that number goes, the better chance you have of

reaching more people. And the bigger your page will grow because you’ll

start reaching more “friends of fans”.

Read More