Moe Tamani asked:


Search engine optimization is a marketing strategy that many websites are employing to make their sites’ ranking go up during searches. Actually, search engine optimization employs many methods to ensure that the website has constant traffic.

Search Engine Optimization for Search Engines

Before anything else, it is better to understand how search engine optimization works. Initially, webmasters would present a URL or a web page to the search engines operating in the Internet. From then, the search engine would try to gather relevant links and information regarding the website or URL. The information and other relevant data that these crawlers would get from the website are what the search engines would use to catalog or index the site. The relevance of the site and the rate of which it is visited has an effect on its ranking during search engine results.

Initially, search engine optimization first turned out to be a highly maneuverable business where webmasters would put irrelevant meta tags and keyword on their site to rank higher and to attract traffic. These black hat methods were soon found out by search engines and nowadays meta tags have lost their relevance in search engine optimization. Many revisions were done with search engines in order to avoid webmasters’ tactics and tricks used by search engine optimization firms which have no relevant information at all for those searching for serious ideas and materials.

Some search engines have also refused to be used by SEO companies and their blatant inappropriate ways of marketing their clients. Search engines are repeatedly banning search engine optimization companies and their clients who are noted to use black hat techniques to raise their rankings. Consistent banning of sites and SEO companies who optimize these sites can ruin a site’s integrity and bring about lesser traffic since search engines are usually what most people use to scour the Internet. Not appearing in search engine results will create a vacuum for your company and you will have to create another site if you are continuously banned from search engines.

SEO companies who repeatedly go against the search engine rules will ultimately lose clients because search engines might automatically block off their clients without any reason other than that this certain SEO company has a reputation of using black hat techniques to manipulate higher rankings for their clients. Search engine optimization can be easily manipulated just by submitting content which are rich in keywords and key phrases but have less relevance. Spamdexing is also one way of immersing the Internet with irrelevant information designed to raise rankings.

These methods are frowned upon by search engines and your site may be banned for a period of time if you or your SEO company indulge in underhand techniques. Other black hat ways that some search engine optimization firms use to raise a site’s ranking is to insert a hidden text in the site itself which human browsers can not see or detect but robotic spiders or crawlers can easily find and include in their indexing. Search engine optimization does not actually have a lot of fixed rules and regulations regarding what to do and what not do when optimizing a site.

Search Engine Optimization Methods To Raise Rankings

There are actually many methods of search engine optimization which is why there is actually no need for black hat techniques and other underhand techniques to raise rankings. The varied ways of optimizing a site is to have relevant keyword rich content, having articles title rich in keywords, have images and pictures scaled down to a size that does not require long waiting time to load. Other methods for search engine optimization are website redeveloping, putting links and submission to search engines.

Choosing a Search Engine Optimization Company

Many SEO companies deal with marketing a site using white hat methods, which is to say that they do things aboveboard and without offending any of the search engines. You would just have to make your choice well when you are in the market for a company to do your search engine optimization work.

One of the ways to check and see if the SEO company you wish to contract with has no underhand dealings is to get recommendations from older sites that have used the search engine optimization methods of the said company. More recent sites might not have had results yet regarding ranking and traffic so it is better to evaluate the SEO company through sites which are already more than two months old. You will also benefit by learning a little about ways of search engine optimization so you will be aware of any underhand techniques employed by the SEO company.

Bill Hartzer asked:


Whether it’s a corporate blog, a news-type blog, or even a personal blog, optimizing your blog for the search engines is a must. There are some simple changes that you can make to WordPress and Moveable Type that will make your blog more search engine friendly and make the search engines beg for more (more post and content, that is!).

Optimizing a blog is just like optimizing any other website. The content and pages (posts) must be unique, they must be search engine friendly, and it needs links from other websites. If it’s a new blog, then you first need to make sure the blog software you’re using is set up so that it takes advantage of all of the possible optimization features. Then, announce it to the world, work on getting some links to it, and start making posts.



WordPress Optimization

If you’re using WordPress for your blog software, it’s important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly, meaning that it can easily be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible. It’s important to set up your blog’s software so that the URLs don’t contain a lot of variables. Instead, use URLs that include the post title or post name in them. For example, if you’re using WordPress you’ll need to set the permalinks so that it uses %postname% in the URL. You can also set up a specific category for the post archives, and you might consider using a keyword that’s related to your blog instead of the default, which is typically the word “archive”. Fintan Darragh of www.dech.co.uk has a great blog post called “Ultimate WordPress SEO Tips” (http://www.dech.co.uk/2005/11/ultimate-WordPress-seo-tips/). Mr. Darragh talks about permalink optimization and says, “The goal: stick more keywords up into the URL and remove the faff which nobody uses, to make the URL search engine and people attractive. Having keywords in your URL is an absolute must, especially when it’s as easy as WordPress makes it.” He also goes on to talk about getting rid of useless tags like the month, day, and year, as well as one important detail: whatever you do stick with the site structure you choose—otherwise you might end up with a lot of useless links to your site. Other tips that Mr. Darragh mentions are optimizing your page titles and your post titles–and installing a few plugins that are useful such as the “Related Posts Plugin” and the “Technorati Tag Generator”.

There are several other places where you can get specific tips about setting up WordPress in a search engine friendly manner, including: * SEO at Aleeya Dot Net – http://www.aleeya.net/category/WordPress/seo/

* The Best WordPress SEO Possible – http://WordPress.org/support/topic/49168

* Search Engine Optimization for WordPress – http://codex.WordPress.org/Search_Engine_Optimization_for_WordPress

* Search Engine Optimization for Blogs – http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm

* DYI Search Engine Optimization – http://lorelle.WordPress.com/2006/01/15/dyi-search-engine-optimization/ One of the best tutorials out there is one called “DYI Search Engine Optimization” by Lorelle VanFossen. Specifically, Lorelle (lorelle.WordPress.com) has some great tips, including how to optimize your code, develop strong intrasite links, write with strong keyword usage, use categories and tags, and how to use ping services. Lorelle says that “the goal is to help search engine crawlers move through your website collecting information to be stored in the search engine’s database. The key to your blog’s data making it successfully into a search engine’s database is to: 1) Make sure there are no road blocks in the path of a search engine crawler.

2) Make sure the crawler can move through your blog, examining all your web pages.

3) Provide adequate keywords and key phrases which clearly help categorize your content.

4) Provide clearly labeled tags and categories recognized by tagging service crawlers and many search engines today.

5) Take advantage of pinging services.” There are several WordPress Plugins available that will help you take advantage of internal linking (like the Related Posts Plugin) which will link to other posts in your blog that are on the same topic.

Other plugins that might be helpful are plugins that automatically generate a Google Sitemap file as well as plugins that help you categorize the site such as the WordPress Subdomain Plugin (http://www.webguerrilla.com/WordPress-subdomain-plugin/).

Movable Type Optimization

If you’re using Movable Type for your blog software, then it’s also important to make sure that your site is search engine friendly and can be spidered by the search engine spiders. Just like optimizing a website, it’s important to have good title tags and meta tags. Keep in mind that blog software usually uses the title of your post as the title tag, so include keywords in your titles as much as possible. Miles Evans (http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060310Movable TypeSEO.html) says that “Movable Type is optimized quite well out of the box, but there are a few quick tricks to easily providing the spiders with some dynamic content.” He goes on to say that you need to optimize your template. “For my main home page and category index pages I hardcode most of my meta data. Your meta tags will be at the top of the template within the tag. You can get fancy on your index pages but I cannot really see why. Optimize these two templates by hand for whatever keywords you are targeting site wide.” Mr. Evans also has another article titled, “Best Movable Type Plugins” (http://www.webpronews.com/expertarticles/expertarticles/wpn-62-20060310BestMovable TypePlugins.html) that talks about his favorite plugins that help him get great search engine rankings. His favorite Movable Type Plugins for SEO are Dashify, MTPaginate, MT Blogroll, MT InlineEditor, MT-Textile, BigPAPI, as well as Ajaxify (a set of plugins that adds several ajax/javascript widgets into the Movable Type interface), CheckLinks, FormatList v1.0, and Better File Uploader for uploading files. Nicholas Carvan (http://www.nicholascaravan.com) has a great article about Movable Type optimization called “Optimizing your Movable Type blog for Google” (http://www.nicholascarvan.com/blog/optimizing_your_Movable Type_blog_for_google.html). In it he talks about PageRank (and how it relates to your internal linking on your blog), having keywords in your URL (which is important for all blog optimization) and blogrolling. He defines the term blogrolling very well, saying, “Blogrolling: Inbound links are gold, but in Google’s eyes, not all links are equal. In particular, Google isn’t wild about links contained within JavaScript – apparently they can index them, but that doesn’t mean they always want to.”

Once you’ve set up and configured your blog’s software, it’s important to make sure that you leave it alone—if you change your page URLs then any links that you’ve received from other bloggers may not be valid anymore. If you need to change your site’s structure (perhaps you’ve been blogging already and wish to use the tips from this article to optimize your blog), then you might want to take a look at the Objection Redirection WordPress Plugin(http://WordPress-plugins.biggnuts.com/objection-redirection-WordPress-plugin/) if you’re using WordPress. The Objection Redirection Plugin gives you a simple interface to redirect users (and search engine bots) to the proper page, especially if you’ve changed your site’s structure.

Start Blogging

The best thing you can do is to start blogging. Go ahead and post to your heart’s content and write, write, write about your topic. The more content you can provide the better—and it seems as if adding content on a regular basis really helps, as well. Feel free to link out to other blog posts that are related to the topic you’re writing about. For example, before you publish a post, go on over to your favorite blog search engine and find another recent post on the same subject—and link to the post. Linking out to other bloggers will get their attention, and hopefully they’ll end up linking to you as well. If other bloggers have trackbacks turned on then their blog will link back to your post. Some trackbacks are moderated, so it might take some time before your link shows up on the other blog. And some bloggers have trackbacks turned off, so a link back to your site might take some manual intervention. Categorize your posts as much as possible, and feel free to add categories as you blog—it will help the internal linking structure of your site, and help the search engines and users find on-topic posts.

Promoting Your Blog

Whenever you make a post in your blog, your blog software will attempt to ping certain sites to let them know that you just updated your blog. There are many blog ping services out there, including Ping-O-Matic and Pingoat. Your blog software can be configured to ping sites automatically, and I’ve posted a list for WordPress of ping services on by blog (http://www.corporatewebsitemarketing.info/cwm/WordPress-ping-list). If your blog is new or you would like to get some more links, you can submit your blog to blog directories as well as other sites that will list your blog (don’t forget to submit to DMOZ.org, Yahoo! Directory, and the Best of the Web Blog Directory). About.com has a great article about promoting a blog (http://weblogs.about.com/cs/blogpromotions/a/promoteblog.htm) and even Biz Stone has great tutorial about promoting your blog (http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1060). Lastly, don’t forget to turn on your blog’s RSS feed. And if you’re looking to promote your RSS feed, try searching your favorite search engine for “promote rss” to find a lot of good tutorials.

Promoting your blog is just like promoting a website—you need good spiderable content, links to your content, and you need to set up your blog software to take advantage of all the great features. There are also plugins that will help make blogging easier for all of us.

Moe Tamani asked:


There is a lot of talk nowadays about Search Engine Optimization, but not so much about Organic Search Engine Optimization itself. So what exactly is Organic Search Engine Optimization?

Organic Search Engine Optimization is just like ordinary Search Engine Optimization in that it is the process of optimizing the design of your website so that search results using keywords in search engines will rank your website higher in the non-paid listings. Organic Search Engine Optimization (also called Natural Search Engine Optimization) however, also has a slight difference from ordinary Search Engine Optimization in certain aspects but the main focus is to work towards getting the best ranking in Natural or Organic search results (SERPs).

For instance, Organic Search Engine Optimization requires your SEO team to evaluate your website thoroughly to see how best to optimize your website’s potential. The SEO team will then try to identify any technical issues which can bar your site from being indexed properly during the Organic Search Engine Optimization process.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires detailed keyword analysis to be done so your Organic Search Engine Optimization team can produce a list of appropriate keywords and phrases that can be used for your website. Keyword analysis should require real information about the function, products and services offered at your website, stay aligned with your goals for marketing your website, and try to get the best Organic Search Engine Optimization impact on the search engines and end users. Some Organic Search Engine Optimization specialists will give you a list of target keywords and phrases that have been ranked as to how popularly use each is by Internet searchers.

It has been found that to get the best search engine rankings, Organic Search Engine Optimization should rely on effective and efficient organization of the website, with content selected by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team so that keywords and phrases will not look ridiculous when used in the website content. Organic SEO starts with selecting the right Title and Meta tags, creation of on-page text with emphasis on content and layout, and then followed by insertion of internal links of the various web pages of your website. If these are followed by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team, keyword relevance and correct page formatting will increase.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires manual submissions of your website to directories and search engines. This helps assure you – the client – that Organic Search Engine Optimization will meet the special demands, regulations, and legal requirements of every search engine that is contacted by your Organic Search Engine Optimization

team.

Your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must rely on ethical link building techniques, not only to safeguard the security of your search engine rankings but also to allow your website descriptions to be placed under the right directory categories. Ethical Organic Search Engine Optimization link building will also help your website use only the correct resource web sites.

Does Organic Search Engine Optimization end here? Actually, no, your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must constantly track search engine submissions so that they can tweak and amend your website if needed to provide the best results for you. Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires that the team document their monitoring activities so you yourself know what is happening all the time.

It would be helpful if your Organic SEO team can track the numbers of visitors your site generates, to make it more convenient for you. After all, you need to concentrate on running your organization and/or business so Organic Search Engine Optimization should be a separate endeavor that others should do for you.

Otherwise, why outsource this function?

Organic Search Engine Optimization aims to help you bring in more visitors than you were getting before, so that your potential sales will be maximized in the process. But you need to avoid illicit practices and favor Organic Search Engine Optimization more because:

1) illicit marketing practices do not reflect well on you or the SEO team you hired.

2) Organic Search Engine Optimization does work when used the right way.

3) Organic Search Engine Optimization does not harm the search engine you will submit your website to, so you have a favorable image with search engines in general, and

4) Organic Search Engine Optimization is part of the use of best practices that have

been accepted by most of the Internet world nowadays.

How then do you find an Organic Search Engine Optimization team that you can work with? One way is to look for SEO industry data about who are the best Organic SEO players currently operating online. Examine the background of the company, and pay close attention to who they cite as their satisfied clients. You might want to contact these clients yourself discreetly so you can inquire into their Organic Search Engine Optimization experience with that SEO player. Another way is to ask people you know who have used Organic Search Engine Optimization themselves. Sometimes, the best way to get proper service is through ordinary word-of-mouth advertising from people you trust.

Moe Tamani asked:


Getting a Search Engine Optimization Specialist depends on what stage of development your website already is in. Many website owners err by creating the website first then hiring a Search Engine Optimization Specialist to implements his expertise so that the website ranked higher in search engines like Google and Yahoo! A much better way of using the services of a Search Engine Optimization Specialist is to hire him even as far back as the website design planning stage to get much better results.

How do you know if the Search Engine Optimization Specialist you hired is competent in this field? Your Search Engine Optimization Specialist might simply do the usual integration of multiple keywords and phrases with those keywords into the content of the website (and into the HTML coding as well). Since this Search Engine Optimization Specialist practice is already being done by many, the effectiveness of this tactic is watered down significantly.

Choose a Search Engine Optimization Specialist team that can write content for you, assess the statistics of the website, are well-versed in HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), know how Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be applied to websites for different industries and occupations, and can monitor the latest on search engine developments for you. This may entail several skills so you know you’re getting more bang for your buck when you hire a Search Engine Optimization Specialist team.

It is important that your Search Engine Optimization Specialist team be aware of the difference between directory enhancement and a search engine optimization effort. Directory enhancement means your Search Engine Optimization Specialist team will select the categories under which your website seems to be most related to. The Search Engine Optimization Specialist team will then create concise descriptions about the content of your website (excluding the keyword stacking tactic which we mentioned earlier.) Search Engine Optimization, on the other hand, requires skills in the design, writing and then encoding into HTML of pages from your website so that your preferred search engines will rank your website highly enough so when Internet users search for certain keywords, your website will appear in the top search results.

The Search Engine Optimization Specialist should be able to tag for you the specific keywords and phrases which seem to be used most commonly in most Internet searches. A little known fact is that search engines do not use the same algorithms for very long – these search

engines actually switch to new algorithms frequently. This practice helps keep spamming Search Engine Optimization Specialist from mastering the search engines and allows them to produce better search results for Internet users over time. So, apparently your search engine ranking is not cast in stone and may need to be pursued constantly by your Search Engine Optimization Specialist to insure that people will find your website among the millions out there on the Net.

If the web page uncovered by the search engine spider seems to differ from the web page viewed by the end user, that web page will be deemed spam and your website will be eliminated from the search engine database. This is tantamount, actually, to copyright infringement

whose Search Engine Optimization Specialist rely on the cloaking practice to get away with their stratagem. Unfortunately for these people, search engines are trying to get the practice of cloaking by any Search Engine Optimization Specialist to be banned altogether because cloaking does not benefit the search engine and may even have detrimental side effects on search engines.

Some software programmers will even resort to taking content owned by another site and putting it on their client’s website so that the Search Engine Optimization Specialist team can create “gateway pages”. Never resort to this because it does not produce the optimal long-term results you are looking for. Rather, your website should be dependent on original and excellent content produced specifically for it, as well as a spider-friendly navigation system applicable for search engine usage.

The best way for your Search Engine Optimization Specialist to work for you is still dependent on the basics:

1) Create a well-planned and well-designed website

2) Create web pages that your audience can follow, and

3) Rely on a navigation system that both end users and search engines can follow and use.

4) Have a good strategy increase you link popularity.

If you follow these basics, you not only assist in your users’ search activities but you also make life easier for the search engines themselves. In short, choose a Search Engine Optimization Specialist that really knows how to optimize search results for you the right way, rather than resorting to illicit tactics. Illicit tactics may work for a short time, but in the long term will only give you a bad rep among search engines and the wide, wide world of website owners.

Ranju Kumar asked:


If you run your own internet business, then creating a website is essential. It is the only way that customers and clients can find you and it enables them to find out more about the company and how you can potentially help them. Even if you run an offline company, it can still be extremely beneficial to have your own company website.

However, it is not just enough to put up a website for your company; you also have to promote it too. If you don’t spend time promoting the site then you will gain no customers.

Understanding Website Promotion

There are various methods of website promotion that you can use. A common one is placing banners on other websites that will link back to your site. However, you can also promote your website through search engine optimization, which basically involves submitting your site to search engines where customers can find you after searching for particular words. You place tags in the text of your site and when a potential client types in those tag words, they will be presented with a link to your website.

Search engine optimization is extremely common but it is not the only way of promoting your site. However, it is one of the main techniques that you should focus on and it can be difficult understanding how to optimize your site for the best search results.

What You Should Avoid

When it first came about, search engine optimization mainly included listing as many targeted words and phrases as possible within the site as you could. This meant that some text did not make sense. So, to stop junk sites being promoted highly on their networks, search engines began to change the rules.

These days it is advisable to limit the amount of keywords that you use. For example, if your target keyword is applying for a loan, do not overload the website with that keyword. Keep it down to around 1-2% density and that way you will have good website promotion text that will be favorable to most search engines.

Another point to remember is to keep the keywords as unique as possible. If you are selling radiators for example, it is likely that your keyword will be radiators. However, there is likely to be thousands of other websites with the same keywords. So it would be a good idea to change the word slightly and perhaps have a more specific phrase. It could be Radiators followed by the place where your business is run, changing it to something such as Radiators Alabama.

Generally, search engine optimization is the best form of website promotion available today. However, you could also try pay per click banners and affiliate marketing too. For best results, you should combine a number of different website promotion methods. That way, you will reach more customers and therefore gain more profits!

Overall website promotion may seem complicated at first, but once you know the general rules, it is fairly simple. It isn’t something you should skip, as you need website promotion to reach potential clients and customers.