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Enjoy the blog section that covers performance marketing articles, tips and tactics and they are for free to educate newbie’s, web masters, online business owners and seasoned professionals!

Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts

Thursday, January 20, 2022

5 SEO Tips to follow in 2022

You would have already knew these SEO tips but you would have ignored or missed out. If you know or not, do consider following and look very close to these,



#1 Disavow file

Check your site backlinks using your fav SEO tool and find out backlinks which you think is bad and add to the disavow file

 

Reference https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main


#2 Page Speed

Improve your page speed for better user experience. This is one of the important ranking signal. Do an analysis & optimize your website with Page speed tool.  

 

Reference https://pagespeed.web.dev/


#3 User Interaction

Make sure you provide a good user experience by not completing your web page design. Make it simple and drive the user through an interaction in the form of simple CTA button to get the data.


#4 Page layout Shift


Every web page should have visual stability. Image or video with unknown dimensions or fonts that loads large then falls back to small or any wired widget or an ad so on leads to an unbalanced visual for users. It reflects to bad user experience.


Learn more on CWV report https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en


#5 Your USP & keywords on Title, Meta & Content


Always look into GSC for the individual page CTR and work on the title, Meta snippet & page content. One of the top most signal combined with users interaction & user page navigation to determine how valuable your page is for user and based on the same the page is ranked for relevant keywords.


Hope you enjoyed reading the post. Feel free to connect to know more & stay tuned for upcoming posts!

Friday, October 07, 2016

Link Earning AKA Quality Link Building After Real Time Google Penguin 4.0 Update (September 23rd 2016)

As we know it's been 2 weeks since the Google Penguin 4.0 real time algorithm (September 23rd 2016) stated to roll out to the core algorithm which has about more than 200 ranking signals. The complete roll out might take 2 weeks to 3 weeks as per Google's information and I believe there could be couple of tune-up in upcoming weeks to get the results even better.


As well Google announced that they will no more be announcing Penguin update which is real time, obviously :)

How is Google Penguin 4.0 different from previous updates?
  • Algorithm now manages to devalue the spam instead of demoting the spam i.e. Google ignores the spam links and adjust ranking accordingly. This is the exact way the entire SEO industry, webmasters and business was looking for from very first Google penguin update which happened on April 24, 2012. Algorithms should be tuned for the better web results and the web results should not be tuned for the sake of algorithm!
  • Now by using disavow tool, Google basically asks to help them to help you by using the disavow tool but it is not mandatory since the spam links are ignored by themselves. You technically need not use the disavow file to help fix your Google Penguin issues unless you get a manual action notification or if you knowingly spam the web frequently with bad link building and the site gets demoted.
  • Since refreshed in real time, changes will be seen faster, once after Google re-crawl and re-index a web page. You can get the help from Google Webmaster manual fetch section.
  • Now, no site wide penalty instead more granular, so could be a specific page impact for a specific keyword to the worst.
With the new changes of devaluing links in Google penguin algorithm even if the domain authority (DA) or page authority (PA) of the inbound links goes down, you need not worry, your website / web page doesn't get demoted.

Assume, now on Google will be using the disavow backlinks section for the internal purpose of improving the algorithm and gradually in some time Google might remove the disavow tool once for all as to avoid technical challenge for the webmasters and businesses.

Reference article: Penguin is now part of our core algorithm

Saturday, August 08, 2015

Why Are You Afraid Of Google Penguin Update?

Would say, you don't have to be panic!

SEO recovery is doable. As per the industry experience and Google's confirmation, penguin update goes on regular basis and the major updates are announced and named in versions.

Started on April 24, 2012 (Google Penguin 1.0), May 26, 2012 (Penguin 1.1), October 5, 2012 (Penguin 1.2), May 22, 2013 (Penguin 2.0), Oct. 4, 2013 (Penguin 2.1), and October 17, 2014 (Penguin 3.0). Penguin 4.0 is expected in couple of months. Don't wait for Penguin 4.0 to hit your website.


First thing you need to know is about the information that to be collected before you start the work on Google's penguin lift and the proceedings in your website in order to stay back in the competitive search spot game!

(1) A Search Console (Former Google webmaster tools) account need to be created. Reference google.com/webmasters
(2) DA and PA check tool. Reference moz.com/researchtools/ose/
(3) Knowing how hard it has been hit your website. Reference reconsideration.org
(4) Manual action analysis. Reference google.com/webmasters/tools/manual-action
(5) Using Disavow tool. Reference google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main
(6) Social Media Promotion.
(7) Content writing and marketing.
(8) Inbound Marketing.

Login to your Search Console (Google webmaster tool) account and look for links to the site section under search traffic. Now you will see "who links the most, your most linked content & How your data is linked". From the list of "who links the most", you will be knowing the level of unnatural links, paid links and scrappy links if you have built it or if a third party did the same, you can use tools to check DA and PA for the websites and webpages.

Search Google for bulk DA tool. There are few free tools that can help you to list 100 domains. Pick the low domain authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA) URL's and save it in a notepad. Look for low DA sites & PA pages. Find the level of your keywords you have used to build links for the websites. You need to check for money keywords and brand keywords. Money keywords unnatural links are the most dangerous one. You need to contact the webmaster and request for the site removal. Again if you find brand keywords in a poorly maintained website like less worthy information, too much of Ads & Popups, scrappy content then again you need to remove your website from those domains and pages.

Most of the website webmasters won’t be responding and some would be charging for link removal. In the notepad file that to be disavowed, you can mention the details as said in one of my post "Disavow.txt Smart Code Report to Disavow Spammy Or Low-Quality Links".

An important thing that need to be checked is "Manual actions" section under "Search traffic" section. If Google penguin has been hit hard to your website, you will notice a message from Google about the site wide or partial penalty and list of sample backlinks that is harming your web site. Work on those and similar sites. Take a complete list based on the sample sites referred by Google and remove those backlinks. As well mention those in disavow text file and use request a review button. If your domain is not been hit hard then you will see a message "No manual action found".

This doesn't mean you are not hit by Google penguin, if you see a drop in traffic when the Google penguin algorithm is updated then you need to work on the process explained above. Once you are done with the link cleaning process and list of links to discount in the text file, you can upload the using Disavow Tool (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main).

In parallel you need to start with blogging, resource write-ups, inbound marketing and social media promotions by making use of top social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google plus to name a few. All these signal will balance the discounted unnatural links and betterment your site traffic by regaining and improving SERPs.

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Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Best 3 Free LSI Keyword Research Tools

There are couple of standard keyword research tools and out of that these 3 free LSI keyword research tools provides straight forward solution.

What LSI is all about?

LSI stands for Latent Semantic Indexing. These combination of keywords helps in indexing process and to better understand about the pages. Google and other search engines confirmed using more Latent Semantic Indexing keywords, the pages will boost in rank process. Let's see more on LSI keyword research tools.

(1) LSI Graph - LSI Keyword Generator




The tool lsigraph.com is a free LSI Keyword Generator tool that provides related keywords to the keyword that you us in search engines. These are related keywords that are semantically linked to the main keyword used in search.

(2) Soovle LSI Tool




Soovle.com generates LSI keywords not only for Google, the tool also provides LSI for Bing, Yahoo, Youtube, Wikipedia, Answers and Amazon.com. This tool creates a result set by looking through the main keyword.

(3) Ubersuggest LSI Generator




With Ubersuggest.org LSI Generator, you can choose a language and a source like web, images, news, shopping, videos and recipes. In addition with the base term, you can see a letter or a digit. You can extract suggestion for the base term. This is a pretty interesting option. You can get hundreds of keyword ideas from user's query database.

The combination of above mentioned tools can help you with the keywords for your next blog post, on-page SEO or to optimize PPC Ads.

If you find any other free LSI Tool, feel free to mention!

Friday, March 30, 2012

5 Search Engines that can bring English and Non-English organic traffic other than Google

Anybody looking for online business looks for Google traffic as it sends the majority of traffic to the website and followed by Bing/yahoo and referral sites like Facebook, twitter etc.

Here are the 5 other search engines, your audience may be looking for information. Do not take charge only on Google. It is recommended for small & large business to focus on the below search engine too.

https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html
http://webmaster.yandex.ru/site/add.xml
https://register.search.daum.net/index.daum?t__nil_footer=register
http://search.seznam.cz/pridej-stranku

Again these are based on your global business. You need to study where your audience exists and then target accordingly. Optimize your site for user’s experience and not for search engines alone. Build quality backlinks and not quantity backlinks. Write unique content and with all these factors stay at the forefront of your competitors.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

10 Quick Tips for Successful Press release

Now more people are using online sources to find information on products, services and ideas. A perfectly optimized press release can bring top results for your new heading.

(1) Proofread what you have written. Print it and proofread again. Invest more time.

(2) Identify strong headline and summary with most related & preferred keywords. Grab readers and search engines attention.

(3) Have a professional content writer and provide her/him a draft of your content. Make sure the writer understands the requirement. Read the content two to three times.

(4) Write for your audience. Apart from stating your products and businesses launches do mention about the experience your type of audience will feel.

(5) Have your press release with info-graphics, links and videos.

(6) Use anchor text and hyperlinks to point to your site and products/services page.

(7) Give examples of solutions you have provided with your products & services.

(8) Don't feel shy or afraid of mentioning your success. Highlight your success stories.

(9) Provide introduction for your products and services and for more details, provide links that goes to your web pages.

(10) Write the facts and shorten the story with fewer words with well picked search keyword phrases.

Monday, December 26, 2011

Keywords 101 - Types of Keywords and Search Operators

This blog post is about Keywords 101 and it includes information on how keywords works with search, types of keywords and effective easy to search keywords using Google operator. Keywords are of many types that vary to the individual human behavior. Keywords are not created they are formed.

What are Keywords?

Keywords are words that are used to search information in Search Engines that refers to a specific topic. Keywords can vary like Singular Keywords, Plural keywords, Strong & Weak keywords, Global & Local keywords, Misspelled keywords, Seasonal keywords and Long tail keywords.

How Keywords work?

When you search for information using a Keyword[1], the Search Engine looks for all the indexed pages in the database contacting the specific word or words (Called as keywords). If you try for a Keyword 'SEO and SMO' then the search engine will look for the pages that contain the words 'SEO and SMO'. Despite you will see topics that relates to only SEO and as well you will also find topics that only relates to SMO. If you need the search result that includes both 'SEO and SMO' then you have to use an advance operator " ". Here an example advance search Keyword "SEO and SMO" to check the web search results that has all words and following the exact order of words. You can read more on advance operator section below..

Types of Keywords

Keywords are of many types that vary to the individual human behavior. Keywords are not created they are formed. Sometimes Today's Keywords will not be Tomorrow's. Even there are Keywords that get disappeared. For example, if a Keyword is based on a specific technology and the technology is outdated than people will not be searching for those words and obviously the Keywords will be disappeared or can be changed to some other form based on the versions and future technology. Likewise same for many industries. Here are the types of Keywords that can give you more idea.

(1) Singular Keywords:

Form of a word that is used to search a single piece of product or niche information. Singular Keywords had to be used according to the need and generally Keyword formation should be smart.

For example, a singular keyword can be something like - book and can't be like - Cricket shoe. People will search for shoes and not shoe.

(2) Plural keywords:

Form of a word that is used to search more than one specific object or range of information. Compared to the above example Plural keywords can be used like - Cricket shoes and it is meaningful and the simple difference between the singular and the plural is an “s” or “es” at the end of the word.

Now a days, Google and other major search engines are smart enough to find the relationship between plural and singular. Google also index and values singular keywords for some of the targeted plural keywords based on the people search behavior. That is, users who search for the plural keywords may still get benefit out of web pages that focus the singular keywords.

(3) Strong Keywords:

Strong keywords have high volume of search and it takes up from single word to even some Geo specific keywords. This depends entirely on the user volume those who are looking for the information. Promoting web page for strong keywords is not so easy as the competition would be much high and as well will have large number of results.

Here few examples for Strong Keywords:

* Apple ipad
* Toyota

(4) Weak Keywords:

Weak Keywords are low volume keywords but it can produce a decent reference for business enquiries. Normally more than two or more words search keyword comes under weak keywords criteria. For creating week keywords, you can try to add your location to strong keywords and measure the search volume using a keyword tool.

This will work for many industries and you can obtain a decent traffic for start and gradually you can focus strong keywords. There are even week keywords that are not location specific since those keywords might have less competition and search results based on industries you target.

(5) Global Keywords:

Global Keywords are not location specific and most of the keywords are targeted for Dot com search engines and the importance of site listing for Global keywords are not restricted to regional specific search engines.

(6) Local Keywords:

Local Keywords are location specific and the keywords can be targeted for regional search engines. Normally local keywords are specific to your languages and targeted country.

Example for local keywords

* Web design London
* SEO New York

(7) Misspelled Keywords:

Misspelled Keywords are formed when huge volume of search engine users have problem with spellings and make typo mistakes while searching for information. And also some spell different and it depends on country. In US the spell is 'color' and in Australia it is written as 'Colour'

One good example is 'accommodation' word. Some type as 'accomodation' and 'accomadation'

(8) Sesonal Keywords:

Seasonal Keywords occur only on certain times of the year. A good example is a greeting card site and seasonal product-selling site. Seasonal Keywords competition changes based on the volume of the search.

In Christmas period, users will be searching for Christmas greeting cards and Christmas gifts. Other than November and December these keywords will have least importance.

(9) Long Tail Keywords :

Long tail keyword are combination of highly searched keyword phrases that generates relevant phrases. These long tail in keywords can provide a significant amount of traffic and when promoted well these keywords can provide a good amount of traffic for original keywords that are used to combine to form a long tail keyword.

These type of long tail keywords are used for article title and press release heading and a good long tail keywords can generate higher conversion rate than a normal keyword (Called as short tail keyword).

Keyword Search Operators

Keywords search Operators[2] help a lot with search and to become a real Keyword search expert you can use the following operators like,

(1 ) Plus (+) Operator

+ Operator with a word / keyword helps to search the web results with those specific keyword around content, title, Meta tags and links.

Example:



Figure (A)



Figure (B)

From Figure (A) you can see a search keyword "business directories" and the results would be varied based on the words directory and directories. The actual search was for "business directories" and not "business directory" but yet you can see results for both directories and directory.

When you use an operator "+" you can see changes in results as seen in Figure (B). The result shows for the word directories.

Note: Now Google has replaced + with "".

(2) Minus (-) operator

- Operator with a word / keyword helps to omit those words from search results.

Example:



Figure (C)

When you use an operator "-" you can see the web results as seen in Figure (C.) The result will not show search terms that include the word “directories” and show only related to the word “business”.

(3) Related (~) operator

~ Operator with a word / keyword helps to find search results that are related to the search term.



Figure (D)

When you use an operator "~" with the word “directories” as seen in Figure (D), then you can see the results that includes words like "search, guide, white pages and so".

(4) OR operator

OR operator in-between search terms help the user with the results containing either one word.

Example:



Figure (E)

When we use OR operator in-between “business” and “directories” words as seen in Figure (E) then the web search results will be displayed containing word business OR directories.

Keywords Role in SEO

Being Keywords as one of the major factor for SEO - an explanation is given in one of my post about how effectively Keywords can be used for Search Engine Optimization(SEO). The below topics are covered in the post"how to improve content writing to rank in first page?".

(a) SEO copy writing - Two Ways
(b) Four Keyword Strategies
(i) Keyword Density
(ii) Keyword Prominence
(iii) Keyword Frequency
(iv) Keyword Proximity
(c) Maintaining the position.
(d) Example on SEO Copy Writing Using Keywords

By now this Keywords 101 post should have helped you to know all about Keywords and its use. Feel free to post your comment on what you know about Keywords.

Monday, December 19, 2011

What Google Hates?

As we know Google is trying to bring best search results with wide range of algorithms and the most popular panda update does a lot to meet user’s experience. In some cases, even now we see n number of scrapper sites and search manipulation sites in web search. Google is still fighting to get all these sites dumped.

What Google hates?

1. Serving different results for search engines and users.
2. Content copied from different sites.
3. Buying paid links to manipulate site ranking.
4. Keyword stuffing in content and HTML tags.
5. Hiding keywords using style sheet.
6. Too many JavaScript pop-ups in a page.
7. Slow loading sites.
8. Low server response sites.
9. Duplicate URLs and sites that don’t use canonical URL tags.
10. Dynamic sites that doesn’t use parameter handling.
11. Pages that have high bounce rate.
12. Tags that doesn’t meet body content.
13. Low average time spent on each page.
14. Non-search engine friendly URLs
15. Images that are not optimized which results in slow loading pages.
16. Interlinking with your own hosted domains.
17. Getting traffic from Spyware or through running some sort of scripts.
18. Links to spammer sites and bad neighborhood sites.
19. Having same content in your domain and sub domains.
20. Pages that installs Badware.
21. Affiliate program with no unique or relevant content.
22. Too many reciprocal links with irrelevant content sites or reciprocating links with bad neighborhood sites.
23. Misspelled words to get higher ranking in search results.

If you find any of these Google hates (Black hat SEO techniques) in your site or your friend’s site, take immediate steps to resolve or the site will get banned at any time or will be flagged as spam in search. If the site got banned for not following Google guidelines, take immediate measures by analyzing the above mentioned points and fix accordingly. Once you're are sure that you follow the Google guidelines then you can use the Google index reconsideration form.

Friday, December 02, 2011

How to Improve Content writing using SEO to Rank in First Page?

A Guide to write quality Content to reach your Readers by having SEO standards and factors in mind.

This blog post is about improving your content writing to rank in first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing by following set of SEO standards and factors. This post can help you reach your content to all your readers who search for similar information. Always write content for Readers first, not for bot's alone. Have the keywords in your content as reader friendly then search engine friendly. Read this post so that you "Don't give a chance for your readers to miss your Content".

This post helps you to know how to improve content writing by formatting the content with HTML & SEO standards that can be easily understood by search engine bots about the importance of the content subject along with researched keywords. If you do not format properly, even quality content will not reach your readers. Make Google[1], Yahoo[2] and Bing[3] search engines, easily crawl able. Have your content to follow the SEO standards like Title, SEF page URL, Mata tag, H1, H2, H3, H4 tags, Image ALT, Anchor text, feed, formatted external CSS, JS and body content in Div code. Don't miss the chance and get to know how to use these standards.

Improve Content write-up to reach your readers with SEO Factors

Normally only few content writers thinks about SEO for Content, that is writing content and optimizing for search engine to make it easily spiderable[4]. One must follow SEO factors to reach readers local and global. Now a day’s SEO for Content is very much essential even for quality content to win search engine results and to reach readers who look for your quality information.

(a) SEO copy writing - Two Ways

You need to start a ground work of picking relevant keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6] for your content and you may start writing your contents with those single, two word key phrases and long tail key phrases. Do not make the content odd by stuffing those keywords. You can think of the keyword and write the content and if the information is clear and beneficial for it's users then you win the game. If content is written with related images and examples, if any, then you will get even better responses.

Another way is that you can first prepare your content drafts and based on the subject you can look for keywords using Google Keyword selector tool[5] or Search-based Keyword Tool[6]. Then related to the content you can add keywords and make the copy more meaningful and as well make sure that you don't add too many keywords[7]. Do follow Keyword Strategies that can help your to determine the best practice.

(b) Four Keyword Strategies

Here is a much enhanced keyword strategies that can make big difference in your new content write-up and as well to improve your existing content. The strategies are keyword density, frequency, prominence, and proximity.

(i) Keyword Density

To make your content win in search results you need to add top search keywords that your readers use in search engine. Your content may have those key phrases but make sure those are used in your content in correct format that meets keyword density.

Keyword Density % = Amount of keywords used / Total amount of words in the content.


Keyword density in percentage terms is calculated based on the amount of keywords you have used and the total amount of words you use in the content. This strategy is used to avoid the chance of keyword stuffing[7]. Keyword density can be between 2% to 8% and not more than that.

(ii) Keyword Prominence

How prominently your keywords are placed in your content depends on how much top priority for the keyword is given in your starting content, Title, H tags and Meta tags.

(iii) Keyword Frequency

The number of times a particular keyword has been repeated. Referring to the example you can see how many times "Photograph Editing Software" Keyword appears on a page content. Some may think that more the times Keyword found in a page, then the page ranks better for that Keyword. It is not so. Stuffing Keywords in a page will result in penalizing since it looks like spam[7]. Here you need to follow Keyword Density.

(iv) Keyword Proximity

Keyword proximity refers to how close two or more keywords are to each other. You will achieve higher rankings if you place your keywords close together.

It depends on how you frame your two or more words to each other. If you are able to have words in your keywords close then you have chances to rank much higher. Here are two types of examples of how keyword "Photograph Editing Software" is focused.

Example 1: Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop.
Example 2: Best Software for Photograph Editing is Adobe photoshop.


Example 1 will work better when compared to Example 2 since in example one "Photograph Editing Software" is used as one single Keyword were as example 2 uses "Software for Photograph Editing". Words are not close and in order.

In detail, In Example 1, "Photograph Editing Software" 3 words are in same order as searched by users, whereas in Example 2, "Software for Photograph Editing" are not in order as you can see "Software" word is used in front of "for Photograph Editing" rather than after "Photograph Editing" as you can see from the actual keyword "Photograph Editing Software".

All the Four Keyword Strategies can be applicable in below tags and these are very much useful:


* Title.
* Meta Description.
* H1, H2, H3, H4 Tags.
* ALT attribute.
* Page name.
* Anchor Text.
* The body of the text.

(c) Maintaining the position.

It is not only about winning the game on holding the position in #1 page. It is all about maintaining the position in #1 page. I see some get into the position and then drop down soon. This is due to the lack of updates on the topic. Don't give any chances. This may also happen sometimes when you don't follow keyword strategies in your content and when you don't follow SEO standards.

Plan of Action to Rank in First Page

1. Improve your content writing for readers and DO SEO[10].
2. Make sure you have fresh and informative content in your content[8].
3. Avoid thoughts of using content only for marketing.
4. Make your content unique so it stands out from the rest.
5. Work on your content regularly.
6. Do add relevant key phrases to your content and avoid stuffing.
7. Do apply HTML standards and SEO factors to your content for effective search engine listings.
8. Always set right balance for users and Search Engines.

Example on SEO Copy Writing

Here is an example based on optimizing the content. Suppose you plan to have a write-up on "Photograph Editing Software" as below. Here are the steps to show how to use Google Keywords tool to pick relevant keywords and optimize content for those keywords.


Step1: Now to start with optimization you can look for "Photography Editing Software" keyword search count and related keywords using Google Keyword tool.

Click Google Keyword selector tool and paste the keyword "Photography Editing Software" in the "Enter one keyword or phrase per line" text area box, next enter captcha security characters and press Get Keywords ideas button as seen in Figure 1.1



Figure 1.1

Step 2: Now you gets two types of results. One is "Keywords related to term(s) entered" and the other is "Additional keywords to consider". If you feel Additional keywords are useful you can very well use them.

Below keywords shown in Figure 2.1 are from "Keywords related to term(s) entered" section:



Figure 2.1

Step 3: Now we have 5 keywords to optimize and the write-up is about Adobe photoshop and we all know Adobe is not free so we can eliminate 5th keyword. (Refer Figure 2.1)

Now we have 4 keywords to consider to optimize the content. Here is an example how we add those keywords to the content.

"Looking for Photograph Editing Software? Go for Adobe photoshop. One of the Best photography editing software for Digital and Professional editing."


SEO Standards - Content formatting and practices

The content formatting and presentation is very much important.

(1) Title Tag

This is the main tag for search engines to know all about the page content. Keep your title tag Keyword rich and catchy since many search engine uses Title tag for search listing.

(2) Page name:

Page name can be same as Title tag (keywords). So again have the title name catchy, meaningful and keyword rich.

(3) H 1, H 2, H 3, H 4, H 5, H 6:

Have your Heading H1 and sub headings in H2, H3, H4, H5, H6. Make sure they are meaningful to the content.

(4) Image ALT Attribute:

ALT attribute for an image can be about the information on the image and related content. It also helps visitors with text-only browsers. ALT attribute text pops up when the mouse cursor is moved to the image.

ALT attribute plays important role in SEO factors and Googlebot and other spiders like to take up the information and ALT with relevant keywords helps keyword frequency to get better ranking.

[IMG SRC="URL" ALT="Insert your alternative Text Here"] (Not compatible for FireFox)

[IMG SRC="URL" ALT="Insert your alternative Text Here" Title="Insert your alternative Text Here"]

(Compatible for all Browsers. FireFox browser support IMG Title instead of ALT)

Make sure ALT attribute is useful and not written only for search engine bots[9].

(5) Meta Description:

This is an important tag for ranking your page. So make sure the description has most important meaningful researched keywords. Meta description content is been used as a Search Engine snippet for your page search users queries.

(6) Anchor text:

Anchor text helps the readers to know the information about the text to which the link point. Anchor text tag looks like,

Many writers use additional words to link a word string like, Google allows you to share your knowledge and add your name. To know more, click here

A much proper way of Anchor text in few words is, Google allows you to share your knowledge and add your name in Google Knol

This Anchor text code helps with linking benefits for readers as well as for search engine rankings.

(7) Activity Feed & Link Distribution:

Start populating your content and profile activity feeds through blog posts and feed submission sites. These ways will help to increase content popularity and increase the chances of referral hits and external link popularity.

Link Distribution can be done through content page link submission to external resources, tutorials and articles directories to help increase popularity and as well you can inter link your and other authors site related to your content. Make sure that the link distribution serves readers and they are natural[10], and not exclusive for search engine bots[11].

(8) Google Analytics:

Configure Google analytics for your content pages to track visitors and source of visit. You can also find user searched keywords for your content in Google analytics[12]. Pick those keywords and find the page position in Google, Yahoo and Bing. Update your content with those keywords till it meets keywords density and if the content already meets Keywords density then you might need to improve your content for users and increase page link popularity rather than adding keywords again that leads to Keyword stuffing.Be sure that the content should be meaningful and should meet users queries in search engine. And by following plan of action you can see extreme progress in site traffic.

Conclusion:

Congratulations on reading the post, as this covers all the practices that helps to improve your quality content to rank in First page. To summarize, now you have learned the importance of Content SEO with example of using Google Keyword tool for getting related keywords and optimizing quality content, implementing four types of Keyword strategies, applying HTML standards that supports SEO with content formatting and practices. By adding these content improvement standards and SEO factors to your quality content, you can see extreme difference in your page traffic and the analyses mentioned in this post help you to reach your content to all your readers.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Beginning Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101 Guide: Students & Beginners - Basics

Students & Beginners Guide on Basic Search Engine Optimization 101.

This Blog post on Search Engine Optimization(SEO) 101 for students & beginners teaches the basics about Search Engines and web page optimization. Search Engine Optimization in short is called SEO and is also known by different terms like web promotion, organic promotion and free search listing.

 SEO 101 Students guide - basic"Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 101: Students Guide - Basics" helps to learn What Search Engine is, What SEO is, Why we do SEO, How SEO works, Finding the website page index, Adding a website page to Google, Yahoo and Bing in a simple way.

Favorite or Bookmark this post as the author will be adding more information on Basic SEO and you may use this post as a reference guide whenever you like to implement SEO.

What is a Search Engine?

Search Engine is a tool that helps to retrieve information for a user when a query is typed into the search text box and by clicking search button submit. A large amount of information can be easily retrieved when you do a search for a particular query also known as Keywords[1] or Key phrase.

Search Engines have large databases that stores information consists of web pages, images, products, news, videos and many other types of files. Information are listed according to Search Engine internal algorithms. When you do a search for a keyword, you can notice the Webpages listing with total results on right hand side of the browser page of some thousands of records. Here the internal algorithms work for displaying the most relevant Webpage results for the keywords. Most Search Engines follow their own algorithm and a few combine or share with others.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process to maximize web page visibility in Search Engines for users search queries (Keyword or Key phrase).

SEO tells Search Engine what the site WebPages are about and helps with easy WebPage crawl through effective Page Title, Meta tags[3], Alt attribute, Anchor text, Search friendly HTML tags and code, Optimizing quality content, Keyword optimization and Link building strategy.

Why Search Engine Optimization?

* To increase targeted organic traffic.
* To create brand identity.
* To increase global online presence.
* To list ahead of competitor.
* For long-term sales conversion.
* To reach potential customers.
* To increase ROI.

How Search Engine Optimization work in General?

Assume you have a non-SEO webpage and you check for search queries (Keywords / Key phrases) related to your content and check for Search Engine ranking in first page, top 10 positions. If you are ranked, it is well and good. You can dance. But the possiblity is that you will not be ranked for highly user-searched keywords known as strong keywords. Here you need to start with SEO Basics.

(i) Preliminary Measures and Checks

For starters, check whether you have everything in the WebPage to compete with the competition or the information that lists above your Search Engine indexed WebPage. Things to be checked are fresh informative content[4] compared to the page listing above your WebPage listing. Getting the best keywords[5], comparing with the pages listed above your listing and verifying with good keywords suggestion tools. You have various good tools like Google keyword tool[6], Wordtracker[7] and Keyword Discovery[8]. Write clean code with well-formatted Cascading style sheet and Java script, and have it as an external file.

(ii) Primary SEO Guidelines

Try to give more importance to content[9] and only use images[10] with Alt attribute if you find them more relevant to the content and make the web page light in weight. Improve navigation links and the best practice is to go with text navigation links rather than image links for easy Search Engine crawl[11]. Add user interactive forms, polls and quiz if the webpage information needs it. Then start submitting webpages to directories gradually. Once your WebPages are added to few directories and the search engine identifies these directories submission and stores the link information in database, then you will see improvement in your webpage position gradually. SEO works slowly and it is long term. It takes days, weeks and an even a month depending on the WebPage content competition and total search results. So we need to wait for the WebPage to generate traffic and conversion.

(iii) User Query, Search Engine Index & SEO Process

At the time when a Search Engine user searches for information using a query then the query is referred in Search Engine web server to retrieve index information page, the web server refers to index server. On the other hand assume a SEO work has been carried out as explained in preliminary measures and checks and primary SEO guidelines to the WebPages and submitted to the index sever (Refer Figure 1.0). This SEO process makes the WebPages re-indexed by Search Engine bots and stores in index server. Altogether the user query is being checked in index server and Search Engine internal algorithm looks for WebPages in doc server that match the user query and starts listing the indexed WebPages in results of 10 per page.

how search engine optimization work in general
Figure 1.0


How to find if a website is indexed or not in Search Engines?

To start with you need to check whether your site pages are indexed[12] or not in Search Engines (Refer Figure 2.0),.

Step 1: Go to www.Google.com, www.Yahoo.com, www.Bing.com
Step 2: Type, Site: www.yourdomian.com in Search box.
Step 3: Press, Submit search.

Figure 2.0


If your site pages are listed, you can see a search result page with total site pages indexed. If your site pages are not indexed and listed and Search Engines show "No Results" then you need to add site pages to Google. Yahoo and Bing.

How to list a site in Google, Yahoo and Bing?

If your site is not listed then you need to tell Search Engine about your site through Search Engine add URL page.

1. Add URL to Google

Go to www.google.com/addurl then enter your domain in URL text box, enter comments (optional) and type Captcha text and click Add URL button.(Refer Figure 3.0). That's all. Now your domain is added in Google Search Engine to index your domain WebPages.

Figure 3.0


2. Submit URL to Yahoo

Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit then enter your domain in text box and press submit URL button.(Refer Figure 3.1). That's it. Now your domain is submitted in Yahoo Search Engine to index your domain WebPages.

Figure 3.1


3. Submit URL to Bing

Go to www.bing.com/docs/submit.aspx then type Captcha characters and next type your domain and press Submit URL button. (Refer Figure 3.2). That's all. Now your domain is submitted in Bing Search Engine to index your domain WebPages.


Figure 3.2


Points to remember before you start SEO

* Write quality content for readers and help them with information for what the page is about.
* Use cascading style sheet for site page layout and clean code.
* Write meaningful page title with well researched keyword relevant to the page content
* Adding H tags for Headings and sub-headings for the content.
* Adding Alt attributes for images.
* Adding Anchor text for contents.
* Having content of 400 words minimum per page.
* HTML size should not be more than 50KB to 100KB.
* File name should be the same as page title.
* Adding text header navigation links, footer navigation links and Breadcrumb.

Common Search Engines

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Bing (Former MSN)
4. Ask.com
5. Aol
6. Alta Vista
7. All the Web
8. Cuil.com (Down - Sep 10')
9. Blekko.com
10. Dogpile.com

Oldest Search Engines

1. ALIWEB (1993)
2. JumpStation (1993)
3. Infoseek (1994)
4. Lycos (1994)

Search Engines Types

1. Meta Search Engines
2. Directory Search Engines
3. Paid Inclusion Search
4. Automatic Search Engines
5. Pay Per Click Search
6. Slash tag Search Engine

SEO Methods

1. On Page SEO
2. Off Page SEO

Bad SEO Practices

1. Adding Invisible keywords
2. Purchasing Links
3. Having Duplicate content
4. Having Doorway pages
5. Automated SEO software

Types of Directories

1. General Directories
2. Local Directories
3. Regional Directories
4. Human Edited Directories
5. Blog directories
6. Article directories
7. Paid Listing Directories

Basic Tools
  1. Google Toolbar
  2. Internet Archive
  3. Website speed check
  4. WebPage Spider Check
  5. Screen Resolutions Check
  6. Multi PageRank Check
  7. Page Visit Finder
  8. Alexa Site Traffic Lookup
References

Sunday, November 06, 2011

5 Minutes Google Panda SEO Checklist

Google panda update has made tremendous change in search engine results. The main goal of Google panda update is to get rid of content farm and scrapper sites. Google is still fighting on the panda factors. Go through the checklist and fix the factors and become a panda free site.

Factor 1. Do you have a low search performance page?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - You need to work on the quality of the page or you may delete the page. One non-quality page should not disturb other n number of quality pages.

Factor 2. Does your site loads slow?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - The site load time should not be high. You need to optimize your images and code to reflect site load speed.

Factor 3. Do you have well researched keywords that related your web page content?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - Without enough quality content, do not optimize your page titles for search keywords. The site page will be repeatedly listed for the user’s keywords only when the page is useful for the search user’s .Do not get into the personalized search users signed in site block list. At one point the search algorithm will be informed about the blocked sites.

Factor 4. Do you have high bounce rate?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - The site need to have well structured related links within the content or around the content. The navigational structure of the site should be clear with quality content. If the content is clear and interesting then the bounce rate will gets decreased because users will be interested to visits other relevant links.

Factor 5. Do you see users spending minimum time in your page(s)?
Status - Yes / NO
Remark - For a good site the users average time spent on the page should be high. This is based on the size of the quality content and other relevant content pages. You need to work on your content to hold users on the page(s) for long period.

Factor 6. Do you have related images for the content and do you own the copyright?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - If you are having images for your content then it should be relevant to the content. The image should speak about the content. Use your own image content or make sure to get the copyright of the image.

Factor 7. Do you have a clean design?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - Users experience is one of the main factors for panda update. Make sure the content is readable and website structure is user friendly with right combination of colours for a proper look and feel. Balance users experience with search engines experience. Also make sure that you include unique title, Meta tags, H tags, P tag, blog font, alt attribute and anchor texts.

Factor 8. Do you have a Meta description that briefs your page content?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - Make sure that the Meta description is not stuffed with keywords and it includes a brief of the page content.

Factor 9. Have you done a grammatical check on your web page content?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - Try to avoid grammatical mistakes in your content. Try to proofread before the content goes live. Clear content has high chance to list top.

Factor 10. Do you have more backlinks from same c class IP sites?
Status - Yes / No
Remark - Natural links are always better that artificial backlinks. Natural links are risk free. Update you site often with quality content so that your readers will like to give link from their site(s). Artificial backlinks from directories submission site has high chance to be from the same c class ip unless it is well researched. Bunch of links from same c class IP are not valid and can also be considered as spam.

Hope the above Google panda SEO checklist helps. The main factor for panda recovery is to avoid duplicate content and to remove or update poor quality content. Feel free to share your experience and factors if any.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

5 Google web marketing tools that is not common

Google provides many free tools to help SEO’s and webmasters to market website online and as well to measure the ongoing traffic. Here is a list of tools that are not common and making use of these tools will improve your online presence and as well help to measure your online traffic.

(1) URL tagging tool - This Google Analytics URL builder tool will help you to fill in the form information like Campaign Source, Campaign Medium, Campaign Term, Campaign Content and Campaign Name and click the Generate URL button for the tagging URL.

The tagging URL will look like http://www.jagseo.com/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=post&utm_campaign=example

Tool URL - http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55578

(2) Rich Snippet tool - This Rich Snippets Testing Tool will help to check your structured data markup and it shows how Google display your URL in search results.

The Rich Snippets will look like below,













Tool URL - http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

(3) Crawl URL tool - This tool helps you to submit pages to the Google Index and which doesn't require ownership verification. So you can submit any URLs that you like.

Tool URL - https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

(4) Page Speed Service tool - This tool is for requesting access to the Google Page Speed Service. If your site is too big with loads of information and you like to speed up your website then you need to give it a try. This service is a limited service.

Tool URL - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dDdjcmNBZFZsX2c0SkJPQnR3aGdnd0E6MQ&ndplr=1

(5) Page Speed Online check tool - This tool helps to measure the website performance and provides optimization suggestions for developers.



The page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Help... got an overall Page Speed Score of 90 (out of 100)
Tool URL - https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/

Apart from the above tools, there are many widely used common tools like Google webmaster tools, Google keywords tool, Google insight, Google trends and Google traffic estimator.

If you find any new Google tool, feel free to mention.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

37 SEO tips and hints for 2012 released!

SEO tips changes and also gets updated day by day. Here is a list of SEO tips that can work for 2012.

(1) Create a mobile site and build it search engine friendly OR make your existing site mobile friendly..

(2) Include G+ in all your webpages.

(3) Have complete profile information on Google plus / Google profiles and link it from your webpage.

(4) Get G+ for your webpage from reputed persons.

(5) Get natural links from readers by writing quality content.

(6) Add Facebook like and share buttons to your webpage and promote through social networks.

(7) Include rich snippet to your web pages and indicate through rich snippet form for validation.

(8) Write quality content for users and not for search engines.

(9) Do not get links from paid directories without "nofollow" links. Go for paid directories only for traffic and not for ranking.

(10) Include your business information in Google places. This is the best place for getting local search traffic.

(11) Have monthly press release with right content and links.

(12) Participate in related forums. Engage posters and get engaged too.

(13) Do blogging and start valuable commenting on follow link blogs.

(14) Write keyword rich text in alt attributes. Especially on the images that are on top of the web pages.

(15) Get users reviews if you have a selling page and make sure that rich snippet works.

(16) Work on the low positioned search keywords that you see in analytics.

(17) Analyse webmasters tools and work on the pages that generate impressions and not clicks.

(18) Include all open WebPages in XML sitemap and inform Google & Bing through webmaster tools.

(19) Optimize your page title with search keywords only when you have unique content.

(20) Optimize your WebPages with right unique Meta description that speaks short about the webpage content.

(21) Add H tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6) towards the page heading and sub headings without keyword stuffing.

(22) Have text links in header and footer of the WebPages.

(23) Add a sitemap to a website.

(24) Add breadcrumbs to the WebPages.

(25) Have one homepage for a site. Redirect http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com/default.html to http://www.yourdomain.com.

(26) Make sure you balance keyword frequency, keyword prominence and keyword density.

(27) Make SEO friendly URLs with keyword rich page names.

(28) Use hyphens (-) instead for underscore (_) for web page name.

(29) Have CSS (Style sheets) in external file.

(30) Have JavaScript’s in external file.

(31) Make sure that the site loads fast.

(32) Have the home page size (KB) to the minimum.

(33) Use < p > tags for page contents.

(34) Use < b > tags for important texts in contents.

(35) Do link building with trusted directories.

(36) Get links from reputed person’s social media profiles.

(37) Always be a leaner of SEO.

Keep following this page. I will be adding more SEO tips for 2012 as I derive from practical experiences and industry updates.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Why natural backlinks are more important than artificial backlinks?

To be simple website's Search engine ranking works based on quality content and backlinks. The ultimate point we need to think about is to write fresh and informative content for users and not to write rephrasing content for Google and other major search engines. Your readers will love to give a link to your web page content only when it is found unique. This natural backlink has more weight age than your artificial backlinks such as directories submission, web page posting and so.

Content that attracts readers are given more importance by Google and other search engines. Readers who link to your webpage would be high and with right anchor text your web page will be boosted link anything.

Artificial backlinks needs more time and effort and to find the right sites for submission is not so easy. As per Google guidelines, paid links submission without “nofollow” attribute will be a big cause for penalty. Even if you pay for links with “nofollow” attribute, the link juice flow doesn't work like before. Instead if you put more efforts for writing quality content then over night you will have a high chance of getting more natural backlinks from your readers.

Writing quality content is a onetime effort. It automatically works for you round the clock but link submission is a repeated process. It is not that you need not get links from quality human edited directory; it is as simple as that you need to give more importance to write quality content to get natural backlinks and it grows as it reaches mass audience. Through researches it is found that natural backlinks brings more relevant users and conversion level is high.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

10 Tools to find copy image and content - Ways to fix copy content issue

Now copying web page content has become more common and there has been hard time for Google and other major search engine to find the original content. On many circumstances copy content lists top and original content lists at bottom. To find the copied sites, you can do an advance search on your original text using the double quotes operator ("your text") in Google search box or you can use the below tools,

(1) Find duplicate content and check if your content is original www.copyscape.com
(2) Find your copyright image that are used in other sites http://www.tineye.com/
(3) Plagiarism checking system www.plagiarismdetect.com
(4) Check articles with text and URL http://www.articlechecker.com/
(5) Duplicate content checker with 2 URL's http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php
(6) Find duplicate content with copy & paste original text http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/
(7) Track copy content by pasting or typing your original text http://www.plagium.com/
(8) Upload original content and find copy content http://www.duplichecker.com/
(9) Scan for copy content http://www.scanmyessay.com/
(10) File and web copy content checker www.doccop.com

To solve the copy content issue, you need to contact Google's DMCA agent, for that you can use the form and to mail or fax you can use Mail/Fax Process.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Bounce rate vs. Browse rate - Google panda metrics

As we know Google panda update strikes and still striking the best SEO practices. Even if your site follows all search engine friendly structure guidelines the main goal should also include user’s experience. For this the key metrics are bounce rate and browse rate.

Your Bounce rate should not be 100% and your Browse rate should be 100%.

What is bounce rate?

In Google Analytics, bounce rate in percentage shows the visitors activity on who left the page in one single visit. The possibilities are,

1. The entrance page is not relevant
2. The content is not clear
3. The design looks very bad
4. If there are no proper navigation links
5. If no relevant links to the subject
6. If the page loads too slow

What is browse rate?

Browse rate refers to the visits page depth and time spent on each page. If your site looks good and the content is informative then your page should be one of the favorites for the visitor.

By now you would have got an idea on Bounce rate and Browse rate metrics and how it helps your organic listing. Work on your site and improve user’s experience.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Why do Google list lower Page Rank site higher at SERP's in comparison to high Page Rank site?

Google lists sites based on the search algorithm. Some of the main factors are site authority, site search engine friendly structure, related unique tiles & tags, quality content and backlinks.

If you search for your keywords and compare with your online competitors, your listing would be different based on many factors. Here many do think "how competitors site ranks well even if their Google Page Rank is low than my website".

You need to understand two points, first point is that the Page Rank you see through Google tool bar or any 3rd party online tool is of old data. These are tracked for Google’s internal references and they are no more related to SERP’s.

And point 2, site SERP’s varies based on content and quality backlinks with right anchor text related to the site subject and also sometimes there would be difference based on keyword page you focus. Keywords in home page ranks well then keywords in inner page. So compare all these SEO factors with your site and improve your SERP’s.

Like Jag's SEO a day blog Facebook page. Help the page to grow and reach all SEO help seekers :D

Friday, July 01, 2011

Create SEO reports by integrating Google Webmaster tools & Google Analytics

We all know that Google Webmaster Tools provides query information, impressions, clicks, click through rate, and search phrases average position. And Google Analytics data is all about happenings after a visitor chooses to visit your site. All these days we need to extract the data individually and need to create a report. Now we have a way to integrate these two great tools. If you are interested, you may sign up and integrate.

Once you integrate Google Analytics & Google Webmaster tools, in Google Analytics you will see a navigation link "Search Engine Optimization" under "Traffic Sources".

Explore SEO reports. Enjoy!

Thursday, June 23, 2011

How to rank website inner pages in Search Engines?

Inner page optimization is as important as home page optimization. Here are the points that can help you for to rank site inner pages in search engines,

  • Inner pages rank better if you have unique quality content with keywords around. Do not stuff keywords in content.


  • Make sure you write for users and then for search engines. This works best for conversion.


  • Have unique meaningful page title, Meta tags & body titles with H tags.


  • Improve your internal linking strategy by having breadcrumb, anchor text & sitemap.


  • Also get quality backlinks through natural links, directory links & social sites links.

How to mention multiple XML sitemap in robots.txt?

A robots.txt file for a website helps to inform search engine bots whether to allow or disallow a file or a directory for search index

Typical robots.txt file will look like,

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /scripts/
User-agent: * - Means this section applies to all robots
Disallow: - Means that the robot should not visit any pages in the mentioned folder.

If you have a single or multiple XML sitemap then do not miss the opportunity to add to the robots.txt file. Below is an example of how multiple xml sitemap can be added to robots.txt

User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap1.xml
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap2.xml
Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap3.xml
Disallow: /includes/
Disallow: /scripts/

Related Post: Everything about Meta Robots and robots.txt