SMO is Effective for SEO

social media optimization (SMO) strategies, is quickly becoming a serious consideration for SEO. Social bookmarking is provided by services such as de.icio.us, Digg, Technorati, and Furl.net,
which are taking the Internet by storm. They’re often referred to as Web 2.0 services, because they
involve a high level of social interaction, which is the fastest growing element of the Internet today.
In social bookmarking, people create their own topics and lists for places on the Internet that they
like or dislike. Those people can then give the places they choose a category (or tag) and a rank.
Once they’ve ranked a site, they have the option to send that ranking out to anyone who is subscribed
to their RSS feed.

The implications this can have on SEO are dramatic. For example, let’s say that one person visits
your site during a web search and finds that it’s easy to use, and contains all the information they
were looking for. That person could very well tag your site. The tag is then distributed to the people
who are subscribed to his or her RSS feed.


Listening to your audience before you join the conversation. This time
allows you to gain an understanding of the language, the tone, and the expectations of
conversations.

As you begin to participate in social networks, monitor what effect your participation is
having. Watch closely at how you’re received, and track your site metrics at the same time.
Sudden jumps or dips in your metrics can point to participation that works, or doesn’t.

Use what you learn to craft your social-media optimization strategy. You have to have one.
Use the information that you gather as you’re watching and listening on a social network
to ensure that your strategy is targeted properly.

Measure how many readers are actually subscribing to your RSS feeds. The number of subscribers
you have on your RSS feeds will be a good indicator of how well you’re doing in your SMO efforts.
The more subscribers you have, the more popular your site is.

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Internet Marketing for B2B and B2C Marketing

This is the time to start the SEO process. I think SEO hasn’t been something that they’ve focused
on in the past as much, because they haven’t focused on web-site redesign. A lot of things are happening
now that are causing people to refocus at this time.

Conversion from organic click vs. paid click is three to one overpaid.
And B2B  clients do know the difference and intensive search marketing needs in the B2B, finance, insurance industries.

It provides qualified leads from potential customers who are looking for your products and services.

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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.

Next you need to determine what type of content you plan to include on your site to meet all the
needs that have been defined by the preceding questions. There are several different types of content,
and each type has its own implications:
Licensed Content: Licensed content is what you might buy from a content broker. For
example, if you’re looking for a quick way to populate your site with articles, you might
turn to a company like FreeSticky.com that offers many different articles you can use.
The problem with this type of content is that it’s often repeated all over the Internet. You’re
not the only one who will need to populate your site, and others will likely use some of
the same services you do. Being used often doesn’t make the content less valuable, but it’s
not going to rank as well with search engines because of the duplication.
Original Content: There are several types of original content. There’s the content you
write and share with others for free. This is a good way to get links back to your site. You
can use the content for a limited amount of time exclusively on your own site and then
allow others to use it for nothing more than a link back to your site. This incoming link
adds credibility to your site.
Another type of original content is that which is distributed freely by visitors to your
site. This original content can take the form of comments on your site or forum message
boards. This type of original content is an excellent addition to your SEO efforts, because
it tends to be focused on a specific subject.
Some original content is exclusive to your site. This is content that you create, and the
only place it appears is your web site. This is the most valuable type of content for your
site, and it’s the type search engine crawlers like the best. Think of it as giving the crawler
some variety in its diet. It gets tired of the same thing day in and day out, just like we do.
The more original and exclusive content you can provide for a crawler, the better you’ll
rank in search results. It also doesn’t hurt if that content has an appropriate number of
keywords in it.
Dynamic Content: Dynamic content can be licensed or original. Blogs are the perfect
example of dynamic content.

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Creating outbound links-seo Tips

All controversy does is muddy the waters. And that’s exactly what the controversy over
whether or not you should have outbound links on your site is good for — making life difficult.
The subject of outbound links has often been debated. There are some who worry about leaking
PageRank — what (supposedly) happens when you link out to other sites. The fear behind leaking
is two-fold: when you lead people away from your site they may not come back (hence your visitors
“leak” away), and when you link out to other pages, you’re reducing the value of each “vote”
because the value of an outbound link is divided by the total number of outbound links.
No one knows for sure exactly what mix of elements is considered when your page is ranked by a
search engine. However, it’s safe to say that if you have only inbound links and no outbound links,
it can’t look good for your site. And especially these days when social marketing is becoming more
and more of a factor for search engine results. The best plan of action is to have a balanced mix of
inbound and outbound links. Your site visitors will expect to see some links leading to other sites
on the Web, whether those links are simple resources to help them find what they need or something
else.
Outbound links also help to establish your expertise in a particular area. Yes, inbound links help
with that as well, but it’s not enough just to have people pointing to you. You should also have some
favorites out there that you find helpful and that you think others will find helpful. When your visitors
click through these links and find that you do know what they’re looking for, the loyalty points
will be awarded to you.

Keep your links relevant. That doesn’t mean that you can only link to pages that are in
the same industry as your own, but if you do link outside your industry, make sure there
is some logical reason for sending your visitors in that direction.

Don’t overuse links. There’s nothing more frustrating for site users than to find that every
other word in an article is linked. A good rule of thumb is no more than two or three links
per article or blog post on your site. Other links, like ads for other services, can be added
in addition to these text links, but again, keep them to a minimum.

Use keyword anchor text as often as possible when creating your links. Using the
phrase “click here” won’t gain you any leverage with a search engine crawler. Using a link
that reads “gourmet ingredients,” when that phrase is one of your key phrases, will help
improve your search engine ranking as long as the link leads to a page that truly is about
gourmet ingredients.

Be careful whom you link to. You may have heard the phrase “Don’t link to bad neighborhoods.”
What it means is that you don’t want to link to low-quality sites, because some
search engines will penalize you for that. For example, if you link to a spam site or a link
farm, search engines are not going to look favorably on that link. If, however, you link to
high-ranking sites, you’ll gain even more traction with search engines. Remember, though
you may not be penalized for sites that link to you, the outbound links on your site are
under your control.

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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.
One reason search directories are still hanging on in an age of search engines is the social nature of
those directories. Internet users like to participate in organizing the Web (and you learn more about
that in Chapter 18). Socially monitored sites also seem to have more viability with Internet users.
People trust others who have the same needs and desires they do much more than they trust robots,
crawlers, and spiders.

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Need Of SEO

SEO is the science of customizing elements of your web site to achieve the best possible search engine
ranking. That’s really all there is to search engine optimization. But as simple as it sounds, don’t let it
fool you. Both internal and external elements of the site affect the way it’s ranked in any given search
engine, so all of these elements should be taken into consideration. Good SEO can be very difficult to
achieve, and great SEO seems pretty well impossible at times.
But why is search engine optimization so important? Think of it this way. If you’re standing in a crowd
of a few thousand people and someone is looking for you, how will they find you? In a crowd that
size, everyone blends together.
Now suppose there is some system that separates groups of people. Maybe if you’re a woman you’re
wearing red and if you’re a man you’re wearing blue. Now anyone looking for you will have to look
through only half of the people in the crowd.
You can further narrow the group of people to be searched by adding additional differentiators until
you have a small enough group that a search query can be executed and the desired person can be
easily found.
Your web site is much like that one person in the huge crowd. In the larger picture your site is
nearly invisible, even to the search engines that send crawlers out to catalog the Web. To get your
site noticed, even by the crawlers, certain elements must stand out. And that’s why you need
search engine optimization.
By accident your site will surely land in a search engine. And it’s likely to rank within the first few
thousand results. That’s just not good enough. Being ranked on the ninth or tenth page of search
results is tantamount to being invisible. To be noticed, your site should be ranked much higher.
Ideally you want your site to be displayed somewhere on the first three pages of results. Most people
won’t look beyond the third page, if they get even that far. The fact is, it’s the sites that fall on the
first page of results that get the most traffic, and traffic is translated into revenue, which is the ultimate
goal of search engine optimization.

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SEO tips-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.

Many sites let you submit your articles, including ArticlesBase, EzineArticles, ArticleGeek,
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.

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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Ranking Fluctuations-SEO

The motive of any business is growth. If you don’t grow, you could be in trouble. This
is especially the case with businesses that depend solely on their websites for revenues.
For some, the Internet is one way to expand and increase their business. For others,
the Internet is their lifeline and the core of their business model. With tens of millions
of domains all competing for popularity, trying to stand out in the crowd can be a
daunting or even frightening prospect.

With continuous improvements in search engine technology, search engines are using
hundreds of different ranking factors. Sometimes all it takes is for one factor to change
for your site to sink in the rankings or (even worse) be wiped out of the index
completely.

Although nobody knows the exact ranking formula, each search engine has its own
take on ranking factors. “Positive” ranking factors aid your rank. “Negative” ranking
factors (such as having duplicate content) penalize your rank.

Time Factors
Each site is different, so the SEO strategy applied to each site will also be different.
There are so many factors that it would be naïve to put an exact time frame for SEO to
show desired results.

SEO is not finished when you start seeing results. Even if you get to the top spot on the
Google searches that you care about, your job isn’t done. You need to make sure you
stay on top of these searches. Your competitors will want to take your top spot away
from you.
SEO fosters the natural, long-term growth of a website, and once you achieve its benefits,
there is usually a ripple effect where you’ll be getting traffic from sources other
than search engines by means of other websites linking to yours. If you have the content
or product that people want to see, it is only natural to attract inbound links.

Organizational Structure
Organizational structure can play a significant role in SEO. Big companies can sometimes
be difficult to navigate. It may be unclear who is responsible for SEO. Having no
ownership typically means no work gets done. Smaller companies can be faster paced,
but also carry their own troubles.

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magic-seoTips-Keyword-Based Competitor Research

With the manual approach, you run all the keywords on your keyword list through at
least two of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, or Bing). Of course, not all of
the search results will be those of your direct competitors. You will need to browse and
research these sites to make that determination.
You might need to browse through several SERPs to get to your competition. If you
do, this may mean the keywords you are targeting may not be good. If you find no
competitor sites, you may have hit the right niche.
While going through your keyword list, analyze each competitor while finding any new
keywords you may have missed. For each competitor URL, run Google’s related:
command to find any additional competitors you may have missed. Repeat this process
until you have run out of keywords.
Analyze your competitors’ sites using the information we already discussed regarding
internal and external ranking factors. When analyzing each competitor site, pay attention
to each search result and to the use of keywords within each result. Expand your
research by browsing and analyzing your competitor’s site.
You can determine the kind of competitor you have just by doing some basic inspections.
For starters, you may want to know whether they are using SEO. Inspect their
HTML header tags for keywords and description meta tags, as these can be indications
of a site using SEO.
Although the use of meta keyword tags is subsiding, many sites still use them, as they
may have done their SEO a long time ago when meta keyword tags mattered. The meta
description tag is important, though, as it appears on search engine search results. The
same can be said of the HTML <title> tag. Examine those carefully.
Continue by inspecting the existence or the lack of a robots.txt file. If the file exists, this
could indicate that your competitor cares about web spiders. If your competitor is using
a robots.txt file, see whether it contains Sitemap file definition.

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Why Prohibit Crawling or Indexing?

You may want to prohibit crawling or indexing for many reasons. Sometimes this is
done on just a few pages or documents within certain portions of a site, and other times
it is done across the entire site. Here are some typical scenarios.

New sites
Say you’ve just purchased your domain name. Unless you already changed the default
DNS server assignments, chances are that when you type in your domain name, you
get to a domain parking page served by your domain registrar. It can be somewhat
annoying to see the domain registrar’s advertisements plastered all over your domain
while passing (at least temporarily) your domain’s link juice (if any) to its sites.
Most people in this situation will put up an “Under Construction” page or something
similar. If that is the case, you really do not want search engines to index this page. So,
in your index.html (or equivalent) file, add the following robots meta tag:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
The suggested practice is to have a “Coming Soon” page outlining what your site will
be all about. This will at least give your visitors some ideas about what to expect from
your site in the near future. If for some reason you want to block crawling of your entire
site, you can simply create a robots.txt file in the root web folder:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
The star character (*) implies all web spiders. The trailing slash character (/) signifies
everything after the base URL or domain name, including the default document (such
as index.html).

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