Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

Here are a few SEO Tips to help boost your search engine ranking. When you are building your website and want to make sure that you maximize your search engine optimization (SEO) you can make a series of small changes to it that are easy and quick. These changes may seem very small and unimportant, but you will be surprised at what a difference they make the next time your site gets ranked by a search engine. If you are building a site from scratch, make sure that you include these points; if you are just revamping an existing site, look for these items and make the necessary changes so that you can start driving customers to your site.

A big part of search engine optimization is keywords and keyword phrases. Look at your file names. Do the file names include one of your keywords or keyword phrases? (more…)

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First off, common sense usually goes pretty far. If a page or site links to a bunch of off-topic or low-quality garbage, you can feel safe, assuming the page does not pass link authority. If you have doubts, you probably do not want to link.

Secondly, Google has a toolbar that shows how it currently views a web page or website. The Google toolbar is one of the top search engine optimization tools for a person new to search engine marketing. It works on Windows and is downloadable at http://toolbar.google.com/.

PageRank is a measure of link popularity, which can come and go. It's not hard for a successful business to rent a few high PageRank links into their site and then leverage that link popularity for link exchanges. A site with decent PageRank can get penalized just the same as a site with low PageRank. Usually, you will want to error on the side of caution off the start.

Instead of making PageRank your primary criteria when evaluating a page or site, just think of it as a baseline.
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Backlinks is another way of saying "links into a page".

When you check backlinks in Google (link:www.whateversite.com,) it only shows a small sampling of your total backlinks. Many links that do not show up when you use the "link:" function in Google still count for your relevancy scoring. In addition, there is a time delay between when links are created and when they will show up in search results.

To get a more accurate picture of links, you will also want to check backlinks using Yahoo! or MSN. Yahoo! typically shows many more backlinks than Google. The code to check Yahoo! backlinks to a site is "linkdomain:www.site.com."

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The value of a single directory link is usually not very great. Directories add value after you list in many of them, especially if you are listing in high-quality ones next to other sites that are in your same vertical.

If you have a keyword-rich domain name, it will help you get descriptive inbound links from directories. Most sites on the web only have links from a few dozen sites. By listing your site in a half dozen to a dozen quality directories and also getting links from other relevant quality sites, you can quickly build up a great linking campaign at minimal cost.

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Some people buy a directory script, create a ton of categories, and then only add links if people buy them. The problem with this is that many categories will not have unique content. Many of these same directories will list any business that wants to pay for a link.

If there is no unique content, or if the content is all sponsored links, the site does not add value, and search engines may not want to index it. When looking at a directory, ask yourself, if you were a search engineer, would you want to count links from that site? Would you want to allow that site to influence your search relevancy algorithms?

You can view how many pages Google knows about from a directory by searching Google for "site:www.directory.com".
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Some sites that pose as directories do not provide static text links and/or their pages do not get indexed. Many of these databases will never provide any direct traffic or link popularity. Additionally, many directories require reciprocal linking and use their sites to promote aggressive high-margin products. If you link into sites that primarily promote off-topic high-margin items, then you are sharing the business risk that site owner is taking.

If you choose to spend money on directory submission, you should ensure that the directory provides direct traffic or link popularity. You can do this by checking to make sure their directory pages have some PageRank on them and are in Google's cache. Search Google for "cache:www.directory.com/page.php," and check the links of listed sites. When you scroll over a link in the directory, the status bar at the bottom should indicate the domain that the link is pointing to and not some sort of redirect. You also can right click on the link to copy link location and then paste that to the address bar.
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Some directories require reciprocal links to be listed in them. I do not recommend swapping links with most of these types of directories. Directories are intended to list sites. Sites are not intended to list directories. If you like something, then feel free to link to it, if not, then don't. Some vertical niche directories are of high enough quality to deserve links, but most are not.

Link popularity is a currency, and if you are lacking money (as I was when I started on the web), you may need to reciprocate a few links off the start, but if you get too aggressive with link trades, you will be digging yourself a hole by making your link profile unnatural, and you can waste many hours of time.

The exceptions to this rule are that I am usually willing to reciprocate links with the following directories:

• Extremely powerful sites that I do not believe are going to get penalized. Generally this type of site still should be on the same topic as your site.
• Directories that are well-focused and are defined as an industry hub in my topic. The SEO Consultants Directory, for example, would not be a bad directory for SEO sites to link to.

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Oftentimes a site will fit many different categories. When choosing a category to submit to in a directory, I look at a few different ideas.

• Is my site likely to be accepted if I submit to this category? I tend to be more conservative when submitting to a free directory than if I am submitting to a paid directory.
• Are there reasons that this organization, or other sites outside of this organization, are going to place extra emphasis on (or otherwise link into) this category?
• How many links are listed in this category?
• Where does this category fit in the directory structure?
• How related is my site to the sites listed in this category?

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Over time popular bloggers build up hundreds or thousands of subscribers. These subscribers are people interested in the field or topics that blogger writes about. Each time those bloggers write a new post those readers get notified of the new content in their RSS readers.

Imagine that"¦

• everytime you had an idea to share, that 5,000 people who trust your opinions see it.
• most of those 5,000 also write blogs in your field or related fields.
• some of those bloggers frequently mention your site
• some of those bloggers also have thousands of subscribers.

Blogs are all about spreading ideas (via in content links) and accumulating attention. Where people go search engines follow. If many people link to your blog posts that also boosts your search engine rankings for the other parts of your site.

If you write a frequently updated blog the media is more likely to believe you are a topical expert than if you are just a merchant selling goods in your industry.

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