Archive for the ‘Search engine optimization’ Category

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Finding Links Into Your Site

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

For search engine optimization, having a large number of links into your site from qualified sites (sites Google trusts) is very important. Reciprocal links don’t work as well as those one-way links coming in from good sites. Here’s a good trick to find your incoming links. It doesn’t work too well in Google (the link command is broken there), but you can do it in http://www.yahoo.com. Probably the same links will be in Google.

In Yahoo, enter the following in the search box, replaceing yoururl with your domain name:

link:http://www.yoururl.xxx

This will return both the external and internal links for your site; i.e., it will also show pages linking into the home page.

To get ONLY the external links to the site, use:

link:http://www.yoururl.xxx -site:yoururl.xxx

To get the listing of links to any page of your site:
linkdomain:www.yoururl.xxx
(no http:// this time!)
and only the external links to any page of your site:
linkdomain:www.yoururl.xxx -site:yoururl.xxx

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Posted in Links, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

What are the ten major mistakes of SEO?

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009
  1. Not seeing the search from the user’s perspective.
  2. Not planning an objective SEO strategy.
  3. Not using the right keywords.
  4. Not using link text correctly.
  5. Ignoring accessibility issues for physically challenged.
  6. Designing for a high number of links to the site instead of looking for link-in quality.
  7. Building menu structures with JavaScript or Flash and not providing an alternative.
  8. Not creating a site map.
  9. Not creating strong content.
  10. Not tracking site statistics.

Want more? See http://netadventures.biz/seomistakes.htm

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Posted in Search engine optimization | No Comments »

Ten search engine optimization tips for the non-professional

Saturday, April 11th, 2009
  1. Identify the key words the user might use to search for you on the
    search engines. Build the page from these. What is the problem
    that the user has? How will he or she search to resolve
    that problem?
  2. Choose a title for each of your pages that includes 1-2 of the primary
    keywords you are using.
  3. Do not duplicate titles between pages.
  4. Use Heading tags (H1, H2, H3) to define subtitles and use keywords in
    them.
  5. Build links into your site from other high-quality sites.
  6. Drive people to your site from your content. Google loves content-rich sites. Establish yourself as an authority.
  7. Google really doesn’t like JavaScript menus or Flash for menus and doesn’t see those links. Use CSS or direct links instead.
  8. Use lots and lots of social networking to sell your site. The pages of social networks are very dynamic, and Google loves indexing
    dynamic pages.
  9. Keep your site clean of errors.
  10. Make sure you have an ALT tag that uses keywords of the destination page for every image you are using.

Want more? See
http://www.netadventures.biz/tentips.htm

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Posted in Search engine optimization, Web Design | No Comments »

Google Changes

Saturday, March 3rd, 2007

It use to be that Google did a “Google Dance” once a month indexing everything and if you were lucky you held on to your position or climbed up some. The less fortunates saw their site head for the back forty or disappear entirely. One of the famous ones was the Florida Dance that happened before a recent Christmas, dropping a lot of commercial sites the never-never land and getting these online businesses upset going into the Christmas shopping season.

The Dances are gone now. Google uses a different strategy. There are billions of pages, and the indexing challenge for returning the good sites to a searcher was too big for “the old way”.

Google now tries to return only pages with good ranking that are relevant to the search. These are indexed every month or less - some indexed every day. The main page of this site was indexed less than a week ago. The more important your page, the more often Google will index it. Sites considered less relevant are banished to the supplemental index. These are only returned to the searcher if Google can’t find much matching the site. These pages are indexed much, much less frequently if at all. If one of these pages is returned in a search, it is marked supplemental. Here is an example from our business site:

Comments on: Not getting a good Google position?
http://www.netadventures.biz/wordpress/2005/07/19/not-getting-a-good-google-position/ Building Web Sites that work.. Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:32:58 +0000 …
www.netadventures.biz/wordpress/2005/07/19/not-getting-a-good-google-position/feed/ - 1k - Supplemental Result - Cached - Similar pages
Don’t worry if some of your pages get into the supplemental index. We have thousands of pages in our site and a good number in the supplemental index. We just make sure the important pages aren’t there. Our book shows you how to get your pages out of the supplemental index.

To see if you have pages there, search your site on:

site:www.netadventures.biz *** -yuiopjkl

where the domain specified is your own. Use the three asterisks and any nonsense string with a minus sign in front of it. Avoid any special characters in the string. This is an undocumented feature, so don’t trust it too much.

PS - yes, we know there are some bad links in this site. We are working on that.

Posted in Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization | 1 Comment »

Google Bombs

Tuesday, February 13th, 2007

A few months ago if you searched Google on “miserable failure”, you’d find the bio of George W. Bush at the top of the list that was returned. Google tried to communicate that this wasn’t a political statment on their part, it was simply the result of their ranking algorithms putting it topside.

This ranking was the result of what is popularly known as a Google Bomb. People set their websites with a link to the bio page with the phrase “miserable failure” in the visible part of the link. They get their friends to do the same thing, and their friends to…you get the idea. Soon you have thousands of links to the Bush bio site, all with the same visible link or variation of it. The practice is called Google bombing. It was used to push many sites to the top of the ranks.

No more. Google has changed their ranking algorithm to detect such Google bombs and direct you to sites that discuss the practice instead. Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines l will still give you that bio site at the top of the list. Has Google gone Republican?

Posted in Google, Search engine optimization, Yahoo | 2 Comments »

Google Inside Scoop with Matt Cutts

Thursday, January 25th, 2007

One very important blog - if you haven’t found it - is Matt Cutt’s blog. Matt works at Google and has become the primary interface between Google and the SEO community. This is as close as you are going to get to the inside scoop on how Google works. You can find his blog at:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/.

Check it out - search by topic or scan the archives.

A good recent posting is available at:

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/infrastructure-status-january-2007/

This describes some of where Google is going in 2007. It’s a little big of technical stuff here, but those supplemental results he mentions are the listings Googe returns when it can’t find enough information on a search in its main database. These are labeled as such in the return from a search. Obviously, that isn’t a good place for your site to be listed. If you are there, it generally means you have a weak image to the search engine (too few links to your site?) or you are doing borderline spamming of the search engines. Matt says it basically means you have low PageRank.

Posted in Adwords - Google, Blogging, Google, Google Mapping, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization | 1 Comment »

Yahoo’s New Paid Advertising System

Thursday, January 18th, 2007

Yahoo has changed its bidding system (paid advertising) to compete more effectively with Google. You can find more details of this at:
http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2007/01/08/the-new-bidding-system/

Posted in Adwords - Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Overture, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

What happened to the DMOZ Directory?

Thursday, January 11th, 2007

DMOZ is the without doubt the major directory on the Internet. It’s unlikely, however, that someone will search it for your website. Why, then, is it so important? It’s important because (1) it is updated by human operators (2) it’s free and (3) it is Google’s directory. If you are in DMOZ, Google considers you important and that helps your ranking. More than that, the DMOZ drives your position not only in Google, but also in AOL Search, InfoSpace, Lycos, Netscape Search, and many others. In other words, a listing in DMOZ is important for good listings in the search engines.

A bit of terminology here. DMOZ is the directory name. It is the product of ODP, the Open Directory Project. The editors that keep it updated are ODP editors, not DMOZ edtors.

If you have followed our directions for getting listed in DMOZ in our book, you will notice these directions haven’t worked lately. The problem is that DMOZ crashed in late October. In addition, there wasn’t adequate backup. The directory was patched back together with clones from various sites (including Google’s clone) and is now operational again. The directions in our book for getting listed are still correct once DMOZ is fully operational.

Unfortunately, if you submitted a site back then and were waiting to see it listed, your request is probably lost. Check the DMOZ, and it you are not there try to submit it again. We’ve noticed in the categories we’ve tried they aren’t quite ready for submissions yet. Just keep watching for your category to get back up. Then submit again. Getting your site listed here is important.

Posted in Google, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

OnLine Sales and the Holidays - Part II

Thursday, November 30th, 2006

Google Adwords has changed things a bit for their ads going into the holidays. Bid price has become more important for positioining your pages and the quality of the landing page less so. This, I presume, is to enhance Google’s profit during December. This means you may have to increaee your bid to maintain the same CTR during the month.

Posted in Adwords - Google, Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization | No Comments »

Online Sales and the Holidays

Wednesday, November 15th, 2006

If you have a web site targeted for the coming holiday sales, here are a few tips for your site:

  1. It’s a little late for optimizing a new site for the organic (free) engines for the holidays. If you have an existing site, target your title, description, and page contents to one to three keyword phrases that are used frequently in searching the engines and have a minimum of competition. Second, get as many links into your site as possible. Our seo book has many tips on these strategies and others.

  2. Using paid advertising gets you positioned well in minutes (Google’s Adwords) or in a week (Yahoo). Our seo book now has a lengthy chapter on using these PPC strategies to get them working for you quickly.

Order the book today and get your site going today!

Posted in Adwords - Google, Google, Internet Marketing and Promotion, Search engine optimization, Yahoo | No Comments »

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