Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Onpage offpage optimization tips

If you want your website to be visible amidst the clutter and want to increase the traffic for your site, then Search Engine Optimization is the solution for your entire problem. However, to make the SEO effective you are required to follow certain guidelines. The tips or the guidelines are as follows:

First identify your target audience. Only then you would be able to decide on the key phrases and catch words for your site. The next important thing is about getting aware of link building and link popularity. A proper understanding on this matter will lead you to locate websites that are matching your site. If this is possible, then you can opt for link exchange. However, you should keep in your mind the factor of page ranking of several sites done by Google, while doing this exchange process. It would be wise not to devote your entire time on link building alone, for SEO is a lot more than it.

Try putting links to new pages on your website. Don’t forget to mention the new page on your blog. Add an additional link on that page. Give every opportunity to the search engine to adopt various ways to find the important pages of your site. Try to get a proper understanding of Cascading Style Sheets can help you with the SEO work. The W3Schools provides an excellent course, free of charge.

Always remember that the Title Tag of your Web page is very useful. Avoid the practice of using the title with full of keywords. Create a Title on your own that reads well. Keep your Keywords, Title and the Description restricted to the page you are working. Avoid using the same Description Tag and Meta Keyword Tags on every page.

The Fagan finder is the Web site that has more than 100 tools, which you can use for finding information on your URL. The link to the site is http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/. Again if you do not concentrate on a single topic per page, you will lose out on the opportunity of getting your website a better page rank.

Do not get excessively obsessed with page rank. A lower page rank can prove to be effective than a higher at times. The page ranks done by Google are based on a ten-point scale. They constantly vary and are only considered a small part of the entire SEO process. It is an accepted fact that all people look for gain in business; in today’s globalized world to be successful in business they need a web presence. And if they have a website they need to have visitors to it? How would they manage to do so? Simply by making it search engine optimized. So if you are a person aspiring to have a web presence we have just told you the tricks how you can do so.

Every webmaster should have some basic understanding of these simple SEO techniques if they want to achieve
Top Rankings for their site. The more you know about these Search Engine Optimization techniques; the better your
web pages will fare in the different search engines, especially Google.

Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your main priority because conquering and dominating your
chosen keywords is often cited as one of the major determining factors in the success of your online site or business. You must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you and your site.

These simple SEO Tips will help you understand
the basics and help you reach your online goals.


Title Tag

The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about. When you open your page in a browser these are the words at the very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title tag is crucial to 'on-page optimization'; it should include your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less if you want your title to appear in full on Google.

Many SEO experts create web pages in a three-prong approach. They place the title in:

- the title tag
- on the webpage itself
- and in the URL for that page.

Sometimes they will just pick the main keywords from the title and place them in the anchor url instead.

Seo Updates

For example: www.yourwebsite.com/keywords.html


Meta Description Tag

The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page. Your description will show up in all the search engines so you have to be careful to write precisely and objectively. It should be about 140 characters or around 20 words. Make sure to include your keywords but don't spam - don't repeat your keywords more than twice, using variations is helpful.

Keep in mind, successful webmasters make their descriptions stand out from the crowd and entice the surfer to click their link. It is also the first contact with your potential visitor or prospect so make a good first impression.


Anchor Tag or URL

The anchor tag is used to form links within websites or from site to site. This tag should have your title or the main keywords from your page title to be the most effective.

Anchor text is also important to know, these are the underlined, clickable text or words in a link.

<*A HREF="url"> anchor text <*/A>

If you want to check Google for all web pages containing your keywords in the anchor tags.

Just type into Google Search:

allinanchor:yourkeywords


Finding Backlinks

One of the keys to higher rankings is building quality links from relevant related quality sites. The search engines, especially Google, counts each link as a "vote" for your site or content. Many experts suggest you include your main keywords in the anchor text of these inbound links in order to rank high.

If you want to find the number of backlinks your site has.

Just type into Google Search:

link:yourURL

and it will give you the number of backlinks you have.

Google doesn't give you all your existing backlinks, so you can try Yahoo! to find a more exact number.

Just open Yahoo! and type in:
linkdomain:yourURL


Checking Indexed Pages

If is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.

You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.

Just type into Google Search:

site:yourURL

Another way to look at your pages in Google is to type in "http://yoursite" and "www.yoursite" with the quotation marks to see the exact number of listings for each.

Checking Google Cache

You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.

Just type into Google Search:

cache:yourURL


Finding Associated Keywords

Keywords are the heart of the Internet, you must dominate the search engines for your chosen keywords if you are to succeed online. So make sure you have your main keywords in the Meta Keyword Tag on your page. Many experts
suggest you place your page's main keywords in the first and last 25 words on that page.

You must also be able to find and use variations of your keywords to completely conquer your targeted niche. To find what other keywords Google has associated with your main keywords, just use the tilde ~ command to find associated phrases
in Google.

Just type into Google search:

~keywords

Variations will be highlighted in bold print.


Finding Titled Keywords

If you want to find competing sites that have your keywords in the title just use the allintitle command.

Just type into Google search:

allintitle:yourkeywords


In summary, if used consistently, these basic SEO techniques should help improve your rankings and keep you in the picture with regards to your standings in the search engines. Your site's stats or raw traffic logs will also confirm the rise or fall of your keyword rankings. You must have complete knowledge of both your site and your keywords in the search engines, especially Google. Since Google will deliver most of your quality traffic, you must optimize for it and be aware of what is happening to your site and keywords within Google. This is yet another example where knowledge equals success.

Onpage Optimization for Web Directories

So, you have just started a web directory and spent a bundle on a very beautiful design. You wait for the expected crowd to come. But somehow, you don’t seem to be able to attract many visitors and worse of all, your site isn’t ranking well in the Search Engines. What do you do?

How about making your web directory Search Engine friendly through Search Engine Optimization(SEO) techniques? The best way to get visitors is through Search Engines. They can be your number one source which drives targetted traffic to your directory. What you need is patience, hardwork and some nice little tips to help you get started for your web directory.

So here is some easy to follow Onpage Optimization tips for a web directory owner.

1. URL Rewrite must be on. This option creates static looking URLs by removing the dynamic variables or session ids and since Search Engines don’t like dynamic URLs, this will help in your site being indexed faster. And, arguably static URLs can rank higher than dynamic URLs. Dynamic URLs can cause duplicate content problem for your directory and this will hurt you in the rankings. Apache Servers and even IIS Servers have mods or modules to help create static looking URLs. Please avoid session ids whenever possible!

2. Have a good keyword rich title for your directory. This is very important for Search Engine rankings as they place relevance on titles tags. Try to use the keywords first on your title tag, then followed by your directory name, for example , “Free Quality Web Directory | Submit URL | Power Directory”. You can see the keywords Free, Quality, Web Directory and Submit URL come first before the directory name. For your categories and subcategories, make sure that the title tag changes accordingly. Domain names with keywords can help too, but I believe that their value in ranking is not that great.

3. Good Keywords in your categories and subcategories names which in turn produce meaningful URLs which again helps in ranking for these terms. Remember, keywords in URLs are important and you should use them effectively to get good rankings. For example “http://www.yourdirectory.com/cars/showroom/” have the “cars” and “showroom” keywords in them. Try not to have “and” or “or” in the category names as they are useless and Search Engine spider don’t use them. But of course, you should make them look natural to your visitors.

4. Avoid having your category links too deep. Search Engines don’t like crawling into levels to find your listings and having subdirectories which are too deep will affect your rankings if they don’t get indexed or don’t get indexed often. It is my opinion that you should not have more than 5 levels deep.

5. No broken links. Broken links prevents Search Engine spiders from indexing your directory completely. It also discourages the spiders from crawling your directory because of this.

6. Good Internal links & No dead end pages. Make sure every page you have is linked to your main directory page or some other page. Just like broken links, they disrupt the Search Engine spiders from finishing or doing their job, which is to index your site. And even internal links do pass PageRank to their destination URLs, so make use of these links to get PageRank to your internal as well as your mainpage. Even pages with “zero” PR has still a little PR to pass onto their destination links. Having a good internal linkage can also help Search Engine navigate your directory properly.

7. Good keyword rich descriptions for your links, at least 300 words or more. Make sure your visitors submit meaningful descriptions with good keywords and without any spelling mistakes, so that your directory won’t look like a link farm to Search Engines and spammy to your visitors. Your directory is a QUALITY directory, remember? A good description for each URL makes your directory listing look professional and helps your image. It also helps your visitors understand what that URL is all about. Do edit the descriptions submitted by your visitors if needed.

8. Anchor text for your menus. A often forgotten way to get proper keywords anchor text to your pages is through internal links. I have seen a lot of directories failing to use their menus anchor text properly. Choose proper anchor text for your menus. Instead of using “Home” to point to your mainpage, give it a name like “Web Directory”. If you have 1000 pages, that is 1000 anchor text “Web Directory” pointing to your mainpage. Although internal anchor text are probably less valued than anchor text from external sources for obvious reasons, they still do help to rank for those keywords.

9. Uptime is very important. What’s the point of doing all the SEO in the world when Search Engine spiders can’t even find your site because it is down. Get a good and reliable webhost with a solid uptime.

10. Sitemaps can really help spiders navigate your directory so create them and submit to the Search Engines like Yahoo! and Google. This is especially true if you have a lot of categories in your directory. You should also create a html sitemap for other Search Engines. Make sure your html sitemap is linked from your mainpage so that when Search Engines crawl, they don’t have to go deep into your categories and subcategories before reaching your links.

11. Content other than just links. Try including a forum or a blog inside your directory. Or maybe an related article directory. You need content to rank well, links alone just won’t cut it for Search Engines. I always believe that having a forum or a blog is a good complement to any site. Just make sure you are active in it.

12. Avoid empty categories. One of the faults of using directory scripts is that pages may look very similar to each other due to the use of templates. And if some of your categories doesn’t have any links or descriptions in them, they may seem to be duplicate to Search Engines. With duplicate content penalty now strictly enforced, it is best to avoid having empty categories. For Google, if any of your category page goes into Supplemental Results, it is very hard to get it out. And worse still, usually Supplemental Pages will be crawled less often. When your visitors visit your directory and discover a lot of empty categories and it looks like a ghost town, they won’t be impressed at all.

13. Do it yourself. Yes, instead of waiting for someone else to submit websites to your directory, go add listings to your directory yourself. If you happen to come across some interesting site, do not hestiate to submit them to your own directory. Content people, content. This gives Search Engines something to munch on when you first start your directory. Best of all, if you give value to your visitors, they will come back for more.

14. Updated content. Search Engines love pages that are updated often and will crawl more frequently if they do. So try to update your pages often. However, unlike other sites, for web directories is difficult to have constantly updated content. One of the best way to do that is to include RSS feeds from other sources. Or have your “latest links” displayed on your mainpage.

15. RSS Feeds. A lot of directory scripts have features which help create RSS feeds. One of the things I discovered is that Googlebot loves it. My “latest links” feed has been spidered very frequently. Probably because they love constantly updated content and the “latest links” is one that updated more often than your other pages. This is a good example why you should constantly update your directory.

16. Meta Tags are less important, but if you can, make sure the meta tags are relevant to your category. Another thing, try to have different meta keywords and meta description per category instead of using the main directory’s. Also good and unique meta descriptions can help prevent duplicate content problem in your directory.

This onpage optimization article only covers what you can do on your own web directory, it doesn’t cover offpage optimization which can be very effective in getting good rankings in Search Engines as well. But if you use a combination of offpage and onpage optimization, you should get even better results.

For Good Pagerank

Keywords in title tag

Keywords in url (web address)

Keyword strength in content (3-7% major keywords, 1-2% secondary keywords)

Keywords in anchor text

Keywords in headings

Keywords at the top of the document

Keywords alt tags

Keywords in meta tags

Distinct between Keywords

Keyword phrase

Secondary keywords

Keywords plurals

Synonyms to keywords

Keyword typeos and abbreviations

Don’t dillute the keywords

Don’t use the keywords more then 10% of the total content

Inbound links with your keyword in the url

Inbound links from sites with good PR

Links from similar sites

Links from educational and government sites

Number of baclinks with your keyword in the url

Internal links with your keyword in the url

The text that surround your keywords

Age of inbound links

Links from directories

Number of links pointed out

Anchor of outgoing links

IP address of inbound links

Don’t use link farms (i.e. 1000 visitors per/day)

Don’t have pages with just links

Don’t have multiple links to the same site

Don’t list link farm on your site

Don’t Cross link (A links B, B links C and C links back to A)

Don’t Link to unreadable text

Description tags should contain your keywords

Remember to have a keyword tag

Include a language tag

Don’t use the refresh tag

Use unique content

Update site on a regularly

Keyword font size

Keyword formatting (i.e. Bold)

Age of site

File size (Small is preferred) Split long sites

Don’t separation site for browser type

Don’t created poor design pages

Don’t use other content

Don’t use invisible text

Don’t cloak url on your site

Don’t use gateways

Don’t duplicate content on your site

Use Javascripts spiders and read

Watch how many images you use

Watch how many videos you use

Fill in the alt tag for images

Don’t use frames

Spiders can’t read flash

Don’t make your home page with flash

Keywords in file download from your site

Fix any 404 errors

Create a sitemap

Site size (large preferred) this refers to your entire domain not individual pages with should be small.

Domain age

One theme sites

Files located in your root directory are more important

Subdomains are good

“.com” is better than “.ws”, “.biz” etc.

Hyphens in the url are okay

Url length should be 6 to 7 words

IP address

Adsense will not boost your ranking

Adwords will not boost your ranking

Hosting downtime can cause an issue

Dynamic vs. static — spiders perfer static

Don’t use session id’s

Don’t ban the robots.txt

Don’t use 301 and 302 redirects







1 comment:

Rakesh Jha said...

I am gajender friend rakeshjha & know about u very much that you r good seo vickey please give me some tips.

FeeD

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