How to Be an SEO Guru

SEO is not rocket science; it's much more difficult than rocket science. To become a ninja-level SEO master takes years of practice for most people, and like a ninja if you don't practice, one quickly loses one's skills. The reason for this is that the search algorithms shift constantly, and as they are well guarded secrets, you never know what the search engineers are up to. No, it's not rocket science; It's more like reverse engineering a UFO that you can only see off in the distance and whose propulsion system constantly shifts gears.

It is extremely difficult to be a true expert in this field. The competition is fierce, and one mistake can cost you months of work. If you are working for a client, you had better be certain that you do not get their site thrown into the "sandbox," meaning that it will never be found. This is like being exiled to the far reaches of the Internet where only the most intrepid explorers will ever find them. It's not good for business.

For this reason, it is extremely important to choose the right SEO company or employee if you are in business. If you want to become that person (the right SEO company or employee), here is what you need to do:

1. Administer at least five websites for at least a year. Do not link them to each other. Each is its own little petri dish that must not be contaminated.
2. Be scientific about it. Develop theories and test them rigorously. Keep track of results. Note changes in the way the search engines index your site and in the way your visitors find it, and connect those changes to actions that you have taken (link building, keyword weight, social networking, etc.)
3. Learn how to find the right keywords. This is not as simple as finding words that people search for and that are not insanely competitive. In this, you have to be somewhat intuitive. What keyword combination is a potential customer likely to use as opposed to a bored web surfer?
4. Use different tools until you find one that works. I have my favorite, but I'm not allowed to mention it. Follow the link in the resource box and surf around my blog. You'll figure out what it is. It may not be for you, but you can try it free.
5. Get at least 20 pages to the top for fairly competitive keywords. This is what turns prospects into clients.
6. Be a ninja. Once you figure out how to do it, take a cue from the people who write the search algorithms and keep it to yourself. Also train and improve continuously so that your skills do not slip.

That is how to become an SEO guru who commands top dollar with good reason, the good reason being that you know how to attract the right people, not just the most people. More on that later.

Bing SEO - How to Optimize Your Website For Bing

A few months ago, Microsoft launched their new search engine: Bing. Since it's launch, there are many discussions and debates about whether Bing will overtake Yahoo and Google. Although it is still very early to talk about Bing disposing the big 2, the future seems good after several good reviews about Bing.

It does not matter whether Bing is going to be the new number 1 or number 2. The fact is, Bing is definitely going to capture a bigger market share compared to its predecessor MSN Live. So it is important that you know how to optimize your website for Bing. Now, let me share with you a few tips to get your website to rank high on Bing.

1. Name your HTML pages properly. If a page is talking about cleaning services, you should name your file as "cleaning-services.html", using hyphen to separate each word. Using important keywords to name your files will definitely help in Bing optimization.

2. Make sure the title is relevant to the content of the page. Title tag optimization is very important when it comes to Bing optimization. Place important keywords at the start of the Title and make sure that the keywords you use are relevant to the content of the page.

3. Register your domain name early and don't change it unnecessarily. The age of a domain plays a part when it comes to SEO. Bing tends to like older domain names. So you choose the right domain name from the beginning so that you don't need to change it after a year.

4. Add more content to your website. Search engines love content, especially Google and Bing. So if you have articles, post them onto your websites. If not, add a blog to your site and update it regularly.

5. Keep your URL simple and static. URLs that change frequently are difficult to index. So make your URL static and keep it as simple as possible. Remember to place keywords in your URL.

6. Build links. Link building is an important process of SEO. If you want to rank high on Bing, get other sites to link back to your website. Bing will see your site as popular and reward you with high rankings.

7. Rank well on Google. If your site ranks well on Google, most probably you will rank well on Bing.

So start optimizing your website for Bing today and get more traffic to your website.

Getting Traffic - Page Rank 101

Page rank is where a web site places on the pages of search engine results. The search engines use algorithms to determine the importance of a page and where it will place.

Algorithms are mathematical formulas that use data in a complex series of steps. While the algorithms can be simple or very complicated they turn numbers into usable language. The factors considered by the algorithms to rank a page are estimated to be over 175.

Search engines are working around the clock to crawl web pages and index them. As pages are compared to other pages and every link is weighed, the complexities are mind boggling. You can see some of the results on search result pages. These include a relevancy score which shows how the search engine ranked the pages on the results page, the page title, a brief description, and the total number of relevant pages found which can number in the millions.

Websites strive to get better page rank, or page placement within the search results. Better page placement or page rank usually means more visitors. These search results are called natural or organic because the website did not pay to be there but was placed there by relevance and importance. Website marketers practice SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which includes keyword research, and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) to achieve better page rank.

Most search engines are making money through advertising and searching is free. Most of them earn money through PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. These show up as sponsored listings on a search results page.

Search Engine Positioning and Promotion

According to a research conducted by iProspect and Jupiter research, 62% of internet users click on a link within the first page of results. To win higher rankings in natural search engine position results, businesses and individuals have sought the assistance of search engine optimization (SEO) service providers and consultants.

Some of the search engine promotion techniques used by search engine optimization service providers and consultants are web content optimization, which is the frequency of a specific keyword or keyword density throughout the pages of the site. A web page optimization report provides this information and an analysis on what to improve and work on in terms of on-page SEO. However, search engines, nowadays, have been very clever in crawling the sites and have set keyword density limits to avoid spamming and outright promotion and advertising. Another common web promotion strategy is by securing links to the site from other high-ranking websites. This is, by far, the easiest SEO service either by link submission to link building directories or by link exchange.

However, if one has the extra budget, and would want to go the easier way of web marketing, what better way to do it than by having a paid search campaign. Popularly known as Pay Per Click Management, paid search campaigns drive traffic to the website and at the same time increase its search engine position ranking.

Though reaping the benefits of increased visibility and search engine promotion, there are also a couple of misconceptions of having an SEO website. One of which is that the whole internet marketing project stops once the website has reached its desired position and ranking. In line with this, there are also people out there who think that establishing an SEO website and achieving a high page rank is enough. It may be enough for a couple of days or weeks but as more and more people seek SEO service providers, the more difficult for one's SEO website to sustain its position.

In addition to the usual SEO techniques and campaigns, the success of an SEO website and its search engine promotion is market and competitor intelligence. Some SEO service providers and consultants provide ranking and indexation reports to be aware of how well their competitors' websites fare in web marketing and page ranking and to compare which one is improving or being left behind.

Getting Traffic - Is Your Website Money Optimized?

SEO is a continual marketing process. Many website owners measure their results by page rank achieved and conversions. For better performance your website must be tested. Every time changes are made you should test. For best results you must split test. Split testing is a controlled experiment where you create different variables to find what works best.

Create two landing pages that are identical and then alter one thing at a time and check results or conversion rates. Run the same pay per click keyword campaign and then compare conversion rates. This is a typical split test. Change something such as a headline, graphic, or content and measure results.

Make sure you allow enough time and measure the same amount of traffic for each test. Take into account any extraneous factors such as the day of the week, competitor offers, or news events that could affect your product or service. You want your comparisons to be as identical as possible except for the change you control.

You can test a single site by altering just one variable at a time. Test your page and then make only one change and run the test again. This type of testing can take longer.

Split testing can be a bit time consuming but the information you obtain can be invaluable. The smallest changes, such as a color, font type, word changes, or page placement of a graphic can have surprising results. Within a short time you should be able to money optimize your website.

Getting Traffic - Keyword Optimization 101

Getting your website listed in the search engines requires the optimization of each page of your website with the correct keywords. If you have an HTML based website these keywords will be in the tags. If you are using a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress, there are some great plug-ins that will assist you.

Choosing the right keywords for initial site optimization is crucial. Phrases are often better than words. As you are starting a new site, if you want to get decent page rank, check out the competition for your term. A term with heavy competition is going to leave your website buried for some time to come.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes. What words or terms would they be using to find your offer, service or product? Ask any present customers, family, friends, and associates what terms they would use. You might get some surprising answers that reveal valuable keyword phrases you would not have thought of. Make a word game out of your search and add, subtract, and mix words up.

Research your competition. Do a search on a search engine using the keywords you have chosen and visit the sites from the results. You can view the source code of these sites to see what keywords they use in their Meta tags. To view source code, go to "View," then "Source" in Internet Explorer, or "View," then "Page Source" in Mozilla Firefox. You can then view a text document with the code with their Meta tags.

Getting Indexed by Search Engines

If you read a lot of articles, guides, tutorials and any other materials about basic search engine optimization, getting indexed to search engines is the most important part of SEO after you've created your site and optimized its content. What will you do after you've uploaded those web pages, optimized the content as well as your meta tags? Getting listed in SERPs of course! Here's what learned about indexing web pages:

Submitting to Search Engines
Many would say that submitting your home page to search engines is just a waste of time. Well, if your trying to submit on all those search engines then you really are just wasting your time. You can still do this method but my advice is to submit only to what webmasters' call "The Big Three", namely Google, Yahoo and MSN.

You can still get your web pages indexed without having to do this method. There are other ways, which I think are much better, that can help you get your site indexed in SERPs.

The Power of Social Bookmarking
If you haven't heard if Digg.com or StumbleUpon.com then you're way behind in search engine optimization. These are samples of a social bookmarking sites which is similar to the ordinary bookmark tool we have in our web browsers' menu bar. The difference between the ordinary bookmarking and with social bookmarking are:

* you can access your bookmarks on any computer you use just by registering an account;
* and share your bookmarked sites/links with other members

Why Should I Submit to Social Bookmarking Sites?
Here are the reasons I've learned why I submit to social bookmarking sites:

1.For fast indexing - high traffic social bookmarking sites are more frequently visited by search engine spiders. If you submit your site, the higher the chance you have getting indexed.
2.For traffic - people love interesting topics, important news, humor and tutorials.
3.Increase more traffic - posts on Digg, and other social bookmarking sites, also appears in SERPs, giving you a higher chance of visibility!

Social Networking Sites
Do you like Facebook or Twitter? These are social networking sites where you can submit your links. Isn't that great?! Now the key to the successful use of social networking sites is you got to have lots of friends. Mingle with other members, join different groups, share your profile and be active, don't just login to your account to post a link. This link building technique is very helpful if you use it properly.

I find social bookmarking and networking as a part of link building technique that you can both use for work and have fun at the same time. Because you get to meet other webmasters doing link building of their own, you can exchange SEO tips and secrets, and the normal internet users you can interact with while doing work. And best of all you can even earn extra income by offering link building services to companies/sites that needs help with their search engine rankings.

Sitemaps
There are two types of sitemaps we can use, the XML and HTML sitemaps.

.XML Sitemap - This sitemap is used to inform search engines of pages that are available for crawling in a website.

.HTML Sitemap - This sitemap is for your visitors. It is used as a guide/navigation for visitors who are looking for a specific page, product or service you might be offering.

Now, you'll find these search engine optimization techniques quite easy to learn and do. Submitting your site or blog to the big three search engines can take you at least five minutes to do, social bookmarking and networking can be time consuming but it's all worth it, and submitting sitemaps to search engines is a must-do if you want to get all your web pages indexed.

SEO-internet Marketing Tool

For starters, who dont know what SEO means and what it is all about.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the technique of improving and increasing quantity of traffic from search engines like Google and Yahoo via direct search results. It is obvious the earlier the site appears on search engine the more traffic it attracts. To have your site on first two-three pages you need to do SEO of your website. It means you need to develop back links of your website on the WebPages of other websites. It is an internet marketing strategy which considers the working of search engines and looks what people search for which helps to add relevant keywords. A SEO company optimizes your websites by editing content and HTML codes. They also add keywords related to website which helps in indexing activities of website on search engines.

If you are in online business then it becomes very important for your website to be on first 2 pages so you need internet marketing and website promotion which can increase the ranking of your site.

The various methods of doing SEO are directory submission, keyword analysis, content writing, pay per click, links submission, affiliate marketing etc.

These would give you long term benefits if you spend at the earliest on it. I would say SEO is the only tool in coming time which would increase the page rank rating of your website or blog. It is opportunity of good business also. Social bookmarking is also a emerging service in SEO. Although it becomes unethical if it is done by non professional so remember to get it done by some professional.

Why You Should Optimize Your Website

If you ask any company if they have an on-line presence today - the chances are they'll say yes. But what they consider as an on-line presence is the fact that their company has a website.

Now, ask those same people if they have "optimized" their sites for higher rankings on the major search engines and more than likely all you'll get from them is a blank stare. That is because most companies believe that if they have a website...that is all you need and people will be knocking down their doors for their products or services.

Do you remember the saying "If you build it - they will come"? Well, I think that most people feel that way about their website. Because they don't understand what search engine optimization is.

So, What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume of qualified visitors to your web site by increasing your companies natural search engine ranking on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo, to name the two largest.

Why Optimize?

The reason to optimize is clear! It is estimated that 80% of consumers use search engines to find the products or services that they are looking to buy. And if you are are not on the first pages of the major search engines, then it's a good chance that your competition will be and those consumers will be buying from him and not you. Is that a practice that you can afford?

How Do You Optimize Your Website?

There are 5 basic steps in optimizing your website for the search engines. Four are on-site and one is not.

1. Your website must be well written with relevant content to your product or service that you are selling. This simply means that you can't fill the page with garbage that doesn't make any kind of sense or has no relation to your product or service and should be original content.

2. You have pertinent "keywords" (a keyword is a word or phrase that could describe your product or service) relating to your product or services throughout your site. This can get tricky because you want to place as many keywords as possible, but including too many will not only be regarded as trying to "spam" the system and could get your site penalized, but your content probably would not read very well either and that is not good for business.

3. Your page titles need to include your specific keywords. Take the time to consider the page names (titles). If you have a page that you're selling fairy tale stories for young girls. Title your page "fairytale storiesforyounggirls. This is perfectly acceptable and will score you points in ranking for the search engines.

4. Your website is easy to navigate. Make sure your links are working, you have a navigation bar and you include a "sitemap" with your website.

And the fifth reason that is off page

5. You need to obtain relevant links back to your website. The keyword here is "relevant". You want to have other websites that complement your site, have similar products or services or have some relationship to your product or service, that will place a link on their site back to yours and you can return the favor by linking their site from yours. Search engines actually recommend that you engage in a link campaign for this very thing. But BEWARE - do not get involved with "link farms". These are sites that do nothing except sell links back to your site with no real relevance. Search engines look for these situations and if caught again your site could be penalized.

It is getting more and more difficult to get your website found on any of the big search engines these days. That is of course unless you know the basics of search engine optimisation.

If you are a website owner you will have no doubt heard of the many different things you need to do in order to make your site successful. One of the main duties any website owner must do is promote their site and the best way to do this is through search engine optimisation or SEO for short.

As the search engines are very protective of their search algorithms, SEO is theory based through trial and error plus some official vague recommendations from companies such as Google, Microsoft & Yahoo. So what are the main points for a successful SEO campaign? Well first of all it is important to choose the right keywords then you need to write good quality content. After that it is advised that you get links to your site to promote it up the rankings.

First of all, with keyword research it is important you select the terms you wish your site to be found by a user. If your website sells shoes then make sure you optimise your website for keywords around that industry. This will give you a good start and a grounding for things to come.

Next you will need to write quality content around your product or service, this will ensure that the search engines will understand what your site is about as well as convincing any visitor that you know what you are talking about and are trustworthy. If you don't have any quality content it is going to be very difficult for you to rank for any competitive terms in the search engines.

Finally once you have achieved both the research of keywords and have written up some good content, it is time to promote your site with links pointing to your domain from external websites. These links are considered to be a popularity vote by all the big search engines and the more you have of these links from relevant sites the better you will do and of course more visitors will ultimately find your site.

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