Archive for the ‘Search Engines’ Category
Oct 3
If you are done with your website designing, the next thing that immediately jumps to your mind is its marketing. There are a number of website optimization methods available through online and offline; however, most of them cost you a significant share of your budget. Article submission is one of the best SEO methods that allow you to submit the articles free of cost and earn external link to your website.
Directory submission simply refers to the idea of submitting articles to a directory where thousands of articles are published daily, under different categories. Almost all the websites in western countries today are involved in this practice of article submission as they have found them the best way to increase their page ranking in the Search Engine Page Result (SERP). Thus article directories today consist of almost all the topics under the sun.
What happens to your articles after they reach the directory site? This question is important because the articles that are created by you or through outsourcing will bear fruits only if they are used effectively. In fact, your articles will be picked up by the websites that do not have sufficient text contents in them or the websites that find the relevant contents in your articles and publish them in their webpage. While publishing the articles, most directories offer the facility to add a certain number of hyperlinks within the content or at the bottom of the text. Thus the articles that find its way to a website display your link in that website. In this manner, many websites (you may not know who they are) publish your articles, and in return, you gain many external links to your website.
External links gained by article submission improve the page rank in different ways. As most of us know, relevant links are one of the major contributing factors of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Article submission is the best way to achieve external links. The advantage of these links is that they are unidirectional, i.e., they are not reciprocal links. Many of the websites that use reciprocal links are found to be facing the threat from the search engines because of their ‘link farm’ nature. Thus articles directory is of great help to the websites to improve the page rank in an ethical manner.
Secondly, article submission helps the websites mutually. They share the contents and thus increase the richness of the contents. Search engines trap the websites with the help of the keywords present in the textual contents of the website. Thus websites that have got the rich contents will gain more popularity among the search engine spiders. Article submission service, therefore, is a boon to the websites that do not have enough contents in them. For example, a banking firm may not find much textual matter to be published in its website. However, if it uses the article directory for publishing a number of articles that describe the various features of the service offered by the bank, they will improve the contents and thus gain popularity.
In short, article submission is an effective way of improving the page rank for both the author website and the recipient website.
Sep 23
The ’sandbox’ phenomenon is a mirage to a large number of web users. Does it really exist or not? Some webmasters are of the opinion that the page ranking of a website is decided by a set of mathematical algorithm and that it cannot be altered by an individual policy such as sandbox.
What is Sandbox?
Sandbox refers to a temporary cache in the search engine where the domains of the recently registered websites are saved. These domains do not show up in the search engine page result until a time is deemed when the search engines think that they can commence the ranking. It is the time when the websites picks up their ranking by using other methods such as external linking or any advertisement methods. This process of restricting the new websites from search engine pages is accepted in order to avoid the sudden ‘jump’ of the newer websites in the SERP. Usually the websites are kept within the sandbox for two to three months. However there are instances of not showing the websites for more than eight months.
The sandbox feature now explains the reason for your 0 page rank in the initial days of your website irrespective of its procurement of many reciprocal links. It is commonly noticed by the website owners that the page ranking starts from the lowest, almost nil, to a sudden 7 or 8 within a period of three months.
The ’sandbox’ concept has been the most debated by the search engine experts. Some of them accepts the existence of sandbox in search engine and attribute it as the reason for the low page ranking of the newer websites whereas the others are of the opinion that the low page rank is caused because of the natural delay caused by the Google search engines to interpret the credibility of the website before assigning it a page rank.
Another shocking information is that a well-established link may also be put in the custody of sand box if it is identified as a link farm. Many websites that have collected hundreds of links in a brief period of time have realized that their page rank dropped to the lowest all of a sudden and remained there for almost a year or so.
Now comes the most important question. Is there any solution to come out of this choking sand box? In reality, nothing. The only thing you can do is to wait. The hope that your website will show up in one fine morning with flying colors makes your waiting more meaningful. Meanwhile you can concentrate on other popular strategies such as Adwords for popularizing your website. Adwords help your website procure quality links from other sites. It will also find a proper place in the search engine pages of AOL, AskJeeves, Netscape, etc. As it earns more visibility, Google will release the website from the sandbox.
Do not get discouraged by the ’sandbox effect’. Apart from Google, there are Yahoo! and MSN as popular search engines where you can get a decent page ranking from the beginning itself. Keep working on your website. Improve its quality and update the contents focusing on the user side. Do not waste your time worrying about the ‘non-existing’ (?) sandbox.
Aug 23
The Google Patent covers all the aspects of search engine optimization (SEO) in a comprehensive manner. Any website that wishes to be a part of the competitive virtual world needs to understand the important clauses covered in the Google Patent. Here is a brief coverage of the most important components involved in it.
The date of inception
Google prioritizes the websites on the basis of its date of inception in Google’s register. It may be the date when the website’s domain was registered with Google or the date when it was first caught by the Google spiders. The older the website, the more recognized it is.
Updates
Google differentiates the websites as ‘fresh’ and ’stale’. A fresh website is always preferred by Google. You can easily notice these facts by doing a research on your own. If you compare the contents of the websites in a Search Engine Result Page (SERP), you can very well notice that the pages are displayed in the order of freshness. Thus you will see the last updated page first and the stale pages at the bottom of the SERP. However, there are certain websites which are by nature ’stale’ and do not require any updates. Google does not penalize these websites for their static contents. Thus a website that describes the biography of prominent people is not likely to suffer like the one that caters the daily weather forecast.
Renewal
A site that applies for a regular renewal will get better ranking than a website that stays with the Google for a shorter period. According to Google, a website that requests renewal possesses quality content and thus is likely to remain for a longer period.
Change in the content
Google monitors the content of the website. If a website that is quite old suddenly changes its content to a totally new one, it will lose all the page ranking that it had achieved even if its domain names and links remain the same. Content is the most important component of a website, according to search engines.
Spamming
Google search engine ethics strictly prohibits any kind of spamming. This includes link farming, using alt texts and other hidden content and cloaking. Apart from discouraging these popular spamming methods, Google also monitors different spamming attempts and prevents them from time to time by the following activities.
· Monitoring the links that are already in the ‘black’ list.
· Monitoring the links that have got an unexpected search engine indexing.
· Monitoring the sites with duplicate contents
· Analyzing the link gain of the websites
Google Patent analyses the nature of the links that are associated with a website. Both inbound and outbound links are monitored, and there are more chances that the Google search engine labels your website as ’spammed’ because of the links that you exchanged with your partner. However, there are appropriate measures adopted by Google to segregate the appropriate links from those irrelevant links.
There are 63 clauses mentioned in the Google Patent. It is very essential that every Webmaster go through each of these and understand the essence of the clauses mentioned in order to improve the SEO of his website.
Aug 21
Website designing in today’s terms demands a meticulously created content in it. The role of a website designer cannot be merely restricted to attracting viewers with animated graphics and luring phrases; it also demands the inclusion of critical components necessary for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO-friendly websites should meet the following criteria.
Quality Content
The content includes the keyword/phrase, the text and the links. The keyword is the main component of the body of the website. The search engine spiders recognize the content of a website through these keywords. There should be a good number of keywords repeated in every page of your website. Care should be taken to include the keywords in the beginning of the paragraphs, especially in the first and last paragraphs.
Layout
A SEO-friendly website should have an appropriate layout to attract the search engines as well as the viewers. It is always better to keep all the navigation tools on the left hand side of the page, so that the search engine crawlers can segregate the inner contents and links from the navigation tools and identify them easily.
Sitemap
It is a good idea to include a sitemap or index for websites that have more than ten pages in it. Sitemap will guide the search engines appropriately to different segments of your website, even if it is crowed with contents.
Javascripts and Flash
Avoid using Javascript codes. These are not identified by the search engines. Similar is the case with Flash images. Try not to use them in your website. If they are very much necessary in your website, you may include them but don’t give those pages for search engine optimization. In situations where they have to be given for SEO, modify them by adding appropriate Meta tags and contents to them.
Frames and dynamic URLs
The search engine crawlers are hostile to frames and dynamic URLs. Avoid using them if possible in your website. However, in some websites, frames are found to be very essential. In such cases give them the ‘no frame’ tag in the frameset.
Tables
Just as the case with frames, tables also do not find much relevance in SEO. They are not recognized by the search engines. Why to create unnecessary blocks in your website if they are not helping the websites anyway?
Image
Everybody will accept the fact that images improve the quality of the website, except the SEO experts. Images not only delay the search process, but also pose as a hindrance to the effective traffic of the website. Moreover, a website with a lot of flash and other types of pictures and animations takes a long time to get downloaded, and so are likely to be ignored by the busy viewers. Add images only if they are very much essential and relevant to the contents of the website. In such cases, split the image into different sections and add keywords in them using alt tags appropriately. This will improve the SEO of your website.
To conclude, a website designing must be carried out in such a manner that it satisfies the demands of both the user and the search engine spiders. You cannot ignore either of them.
Aug 13
Copy writing and directory submissions are proving to be effective in improving the search engine optimization (SEO). Copywriting is all about preparing the contents of the website in a manner which is friendly to both the search engines and the user. The quality of the content makes the optimization process of the website much easier.
Directory submissions are all about giving the website proper links for self-marketing. Providing a link from a popular directory site to your website will improve the traffic of your website multifold. Websites that have got more relevant links to it will be considered better in ranking than those which do not have any external links. Depending on the popularity of the linked directory site, your website will improve its page ranking.
There are two types of directory submissions- general and specific. General directories contain almost all general topics, categorized according to the services/ products. Therefore, the number of websites registered under this directory will be more and so the chances of getting proper optimization to your website is difficult. However, if the directory is very popular, the case would be different and your website would be able to gain popularity through it.
Specific directories, on the other hand, are meant for linking selected websites that are catering specific services/products. Selecting such a directory would be a better option for optimization of the related websites. The search engines will identify them more easily because of their matching contents.
To submit to a directory, the website should be prepared in a desired manner. Here comes the importance of copy writing. The viewable contents of the website should be prepared giving importance to the keywords. The primary keyword density should be approximately 20%. The keyword should be relevant to the content of the website, and at the same time, the content should be appealing to the eyes of the viewer. While focusing on the keyword density, one should not compromise the natural feel of the contents. Thus the content of each page should be created meeting the demands by the search engines and the viewer.
Most of the directories demand that you give a title and description to your link; and it is appropriate to give the website’s name or the business name as the title and the related phrases including the keywords as description. The description should be approximately 20-25 words that give a summary of the main products/services that are offered through your website.
If you are able to submit a list of keywords to the directories, the job will be easier for both you and your directory partner. You know your services better than anyone else. So prepare a list of keywords after making a thorough study on the net-surfing habits of your user. Though it takes up a little time and effort of yours, it is worth doing.
Directories are indexed by the search engines on a regular basis, and so there are all chances that they will identify your website too. Along with the directory site, your website will also get the credit of link popularity.
The above are the basic concerns that have to be addressed while copywriting and submitting your website to a directory. It is important that you understand the various criteria set by the search engines and avoid any possible mistakes that might crop up by choosing a wrong method.
Jul 13
There has never been such a tough war among the websites for SEO. With thousands of websites being launched on a day-to-day basis, how will the search engines sort the websites based on the search queries?
The answer lies in the quality of the content. For the search engines, content is the most important factor that decides the quality of the website. The website which caters a particular service can only be identified by the contents in it. Earlier, when there were very few websites that catered a particular service, identifying them with the Meta tags or title tags was quite easy. As competition increased in this new era of online communication, where thousands of websites are identified for a particular service or product, the process of identifying the right one as per the search request has become a tough task for the search engine crawlers. Thus, the new search engine strategies consider contents as the most important of all, demanding serious attention from the webmasters for preparing effective contents for their websites.
The following concerns have to be addressed appropriately while creating the contents of a website.
* Relevance
* Duplication
* Keyword density
* Freshness
Relevant content
How do you differentiate a banking website from a real estate one? Of course; by its contents. The thumb rule is that your website should contain the most appropriate content that describes your products or services. The quality content will enhance the visibility of your website and at the same time improve the standard of your website. Ultimately, user interaction is the purpose of all SEO processes. A website that contains the sufficient information for a user is always rated as the best. All the more, the right content will attract more inbound links to the website. The traffic of the inbound links is decided primarily by the relevance of the contents. A poorly managed content in your website, on the other hand, will invite penalty from the search engines for promoting spam links. Thus relevant content serves three fruitful purposes for the effective functioning of a website.
Duplication
There are two ways of duplicating your contents- internal and external. Internal duplication is caused when the content of one page is repeated in parts or full in some other pages, whereas external duplication is caused when someone else copies your content and publish in their websites. Internal duplication can be avoided easily as you have the total control over it.
Preventing external duplication is not very easy. The only method you can adopt is to check the duplication by using software such as ‘Copyscape’ on a regular basis and make the changes accordingly.
Search engines will penalize the website for duplication. Therefore, it is very important that you take precautionary measures to avoid any type of duplication.
Keywords
While preparing the content, care has to be taken for filling the content with appropriate number of keywords. As a thumb rule, the keyword density should be around 20% of the website. Avoid lengthy pages, but do not restrict them to less than 250 words.
Freshness
Search engine algorithm check the websites for updates. If a website is found without any updates for a long time, it could be ignored by the search engines, provided it found other similar websites with fresh contents. Don’t ignore the fact that the user who gets trapped into your website would wish for the most recent information.
Content of the website, thus, serves the most important functions of SEO.
Jul 7
‘Content is King’ is the mantra for improving the Google PageRank. Ultimately it is the content that matters most for the Google crawlers. The text, the appropriate keywords, inbound and outbound links- all play an important role in deciding the page rank of a website.
Here are a few tips to improve the Google Page Ranking
§ Website Index : Check whether your website is indexed or not. On the Google Tool Bar, click ‘Options’ and find the ‘Page info menu’ under the tab ‘More’. This will give an idea whether Google has already indexed your page. To check which all pages in your site is not indexed by the Google test them with the link SSW Link Auditor Googe RageRank Report
§ Title tag: Title tag must contain the website name and the primary keyword. The size of the title tag should be approximately 10-20 words. The title tag should be descriptive, and at the same time concise.
§ Sitemap : A sitemap is an essential element required for larger websites or those with a large number of folders and subfolders. This will enable the search engines to locate each link easily.
§ Content: The website should have relevant content. Make sure that the content is unique; in other words, not a duplicate.
§ Keyword density : The quality of the content is decided by the keyword density. The keyword density (number of keywords per total word count of the text) should be between 5 and 20%. A content with keyword density less than 5% will not be identified by the website; on the other hand, a content with keyword density more than 20% will be ignored by the search engines for keyword redundancy.
§ Inbound links : Inbound links have to be used very carefully. They can be both advantageous and disadvantageous. Make sure that the website that you are linked to has the contents relevant to the page in your website. Inbound links from popular websites bring better results than from the unpopular ones. However, you should pay attention to the fact that if the website that gives a link to your website owns multiple outbound links and thus functions as a link farm, both of you will be penalized for that.
§ Blogs: Inbound links from blogs can be a good method to improve the page ranking. Blogs usually contain a part of the text from your website and so the links from such blogs will improve the traffic to your website.
§ Site link to Google : Google accepts the links of the websites through ‘Add a Site’ link. This will enable the Google crawlers to include your link to their search engine database.
§ Frames : Avoid frames in your website if possible. If the frames are very much essential for your website, use the ‘no frames’ tag in your codes.
§ Size : Do not exceed the content of the website above 101k. As a general rule, the search engines will give more page ranking to more number of smaller pages than fewer number of larger pages.
Also, you need to test the traffic to your website regularly. There are different ways to do that. Find out the details from the Internet.
May 27
Google has been served a letter by the European Union expressing concern about its prolonged data retention policies. Based on EU law, a company should only hold on to customer ata for as long as it is needed and not any longer. Google has replied that it will defend its policy stating that the company needs this information for the enhancement of their algorithms and search results.
You should be aware by now that with every search on Google that you perform, this search engine monster (as well as other search engines like Yahoo!, MSN, Alta Vista, etc) is collecting valuable information about your preferences, characteristics, mindset, etc. All this information is virtually a goldmine to the data mining companies.
While Google has been seen to strongly protect its customers’ data and consistently claim that this information is never sold or given to 3rd party companies for commercial gain, one wonders how long this will last. As some experts in the data mining field has said, that this is a data collection bomb waiting to go off.
I’m not sure about you, but I am uncomfortable with a complete stranger knowing information about myself that I don’t even know. In fact, Google is not ashamed to claim that they are making the search engine more personal in a way that it almost ‘knows’ you and what you would like to see. To make matters worse, I don’t even know entirely the type of information that they are constantly collecting about me! Do they know my hobbies? How about my biases and pet peeves? I’m afraid to even think about it, my vices and bad habits? I won’t be surprised if they can somehow gather this information through the things that I do online knowingly or unknowingly. Some of this information, even my closest friends do not have privy to.
Then the question is, what can we do about it? There is currently no law against companies from collecting raw data from people who use their services and definitely none that requires them to delete this information. As far as I see it, the current alternative would be to use a variety of search engines for your everyday use so that not one single search engine has all your data. Perhaps something like a ‘divide and conquer’ strategy? While this does not solve the problem, it may perhaps reduce the severity to a certain extent.
Another possible approach that I have figured would be to consistently delete the cookies that are automatically installed when I use Google to remember my preferences and feedback this information to the ‘Mothership’. I’m not entirely sure how effective this would be, but I know it will be a pain and many will frown at this idea. Anyway, it’s just a suggestion.
Then the other issue is this: How much would we be prepared to share in order to get the most relevant search results appearing on our screens? I believe that we all appreciate the relative effectiveness of Google in bringing relevant websites when we enter certain keywords and we definitely do not want to go to the other extreme of having a completely ineffective Google, which will make finding the necessary information a chore.
I believe that a balance needs to be struck, but of course, this is much easier said than done. The debate has been unending regarding where the line should be drawn for data collection and I think we will not see the end in the near future.
Bottom-line is this: Effective search results – GOOD. Data collection – BAD. Never the twain shall meet and a compromise must be reached. Currently, the chips are stacked in Google’s favour and they have unlimited freehold over the information collected and to be collected and currently, the onus is wholly on us, the users to control the amount of information we give to these giants until a clearer line can be drawn to mark the boundaries.
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Posted in: General Directories, Search Engines 
3 Comments »
By admin
October 3rd, 2007 
