Archive for June, 2007
published by Dan in SEO Basics
Much has been written about SEO. However, most of the tips and advice you will see on the internet (and in books as well) focus on websites with mostly textual or written content. There are also many tips about what to do with images like using ALT tags but when it comes to optimising websites specialising on video content there isn’t much in depth SEO advice that you’ll find. Because of this I have decided to write a series of posts on optimisation for online videos. The tips and advice that will be given are very familiar since it does echo most of what you already know about basic SEO. However, you will find some special considerations that is the result of the uniqueness of video clips.
To be able to optimise your video content it is important to remember that just like with written content the content of the video still determines the success of the video. Despite all the optimisation techniques to help promote the video the number of people that would end up viewing your videos and respond to it in the way you want them to (whether that means simply enjoying it or converting the views to sales/subscriptions) will still depend on how substantial and relevant your target audience finds your video. So before spending time on optimising your online videos make sure you have videos that are actually worth watching.
Popularity: 12% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Tools
Setting up an AdWords account is very easy. The first thing you need to do when signing up is to choose between two options: Starter Edition and Standard Edition. As the names imply the Starter Edition is for people who are new at internet advertising. The Standard Edition are for those who are more familiar with internet advertising and want the full flexibility and power that AdWords has to offer.
Starter Edition - If you choose the Starter Edition you then choose again from two options. This time the choice depends on whether you already have a webpage that you want to advertise or not. If you don’t Google will help you create your webpage. Assuming that you already have one then you can continue. The thing you will need to fill in to create your add are:
- The location of your customers (250 countries available)
- The primary language used by your users (14 languages available)
- Your website’s URL
- The add itself (written by you)
- Your keywords
- Currency
- Monthly Budget
After filling up all the needed information you can then choose to use your existing Google Account or create a new one (for those who do not have a Google account yet or want to use a separate one). Your ads will start to show after you have verified your AdWords account thru Gmail and provided your billing information as well.
Signing up using the Standard Edition is equally easy but gives you a bit more flexibility. It is after signing up and when you use the two versions that you see the big difference. Note though that if you really need simplicity the Starter Edition will be powerful enough for you. To keep track of metrics and to help you manage your Adwords account you can use other Google apps that can really help like Google Analytics and AdWords Editor. They’re both free and are designed to walk-through even the newest of new internet advertisers.
Popularity: 17% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Tools
Nowadays everyone knows that the number one search engine is Google so that placing well in their SERPs is of utmost importance if you want to be able to say that your SEO campaign is successful. Now, if your isn’t even indexed yet or is just not placing well, paying to get listed using Google AdWords is the way to go. Last post I discussed how paid listings will get you listed instantaneously and get you the traffic you need while waiting for your other optimisation efforts yield results (or supplement your existing methods).
Google AdWords, integrated with Google’s intelligent search technology has changed the internet landscape and the importance of online advertising. Their targeted or personalised search results ensured advertisers that a larger percentage of people who get to see their ads are interested in the product or service they are selling. This means that the money spent on advertising is maximised. The targeted approach isn’t the only perk of Google Adwords. The flexibility of the number of ads, keywords you want, and the budget you are willing to spend is also something that allows businesses of all sizes to take advantage of AdWords. Since there is no minimum spending requirement even the smallest of businesses can set up their own account. If you are new to the idea of advertising you can also rely on Google to suggest keywords for your campaign and analyze the costs for you so that you can adjust your AdWord campaign according to your needs and financial capability.
In my next post I will give a simple “tutorial” on how to set up your AdWords campaign.
Popularity: 18% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Strategy
Whether they are called sponsored posts, ads, or paid listings, the concept is still the same. Your website URL will automatically be listed in the search engine results and be shown as a sponsored link.
If you are in a hurry to not only be listed but actually get significant traffic submitting your website to search engines and paying to actually be shown makes real sense. After all you might not want or have the luxury of waiting just to get listed and then waiting again till your optimisation efforts take effect to rank well and get a good position. The great thing about advertising through search engines is that you really will get instant results. In just a matter of hours or a couple of days at most your ads will appear among the top results for the keywords you pay for. Of course converting the traffic you get into revenue is a totally different issue but if you simply need to gain visibility fast and you have the budget for it, this is probably the best option for you.
Depending on your needs, advertising in search engines can be a long term or a short term part of your strategy. Some opt to simply use this option for a several months or a year until they are able to build their reputation, get links, and their optimisation efforts starts to show some results. After that the returns they get from advertising might not really justify the cost of paying for it. On the other hand, some continue on using search engine advertisements for select keywords that they are not placing that well for in organic search results. This is a very good idea since you cut back the costs of advertising yet benefit from it where you need it most.
Popularity: 13% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
In the previous post I mentioned three ways to get indexed or listed with search engines. One of the fastest ways to do this is by submitting your website’s URL to the search engine’s listing itself. The problem with this is that not all search engines have this feature. The good news is that Google and Yahoo! do allow webmasters to submit their site’s URL. Of course since these two are acknowledged to be the top search engines then most would prioritize being listed with these two. Ask and MSN are also popular but as long as you’re listed with Google and Yahoo you can just wait for Ask and MSN’s bot to crawl and index your website later.
To submit your website to Yahoo! just click on the Submit Your Site link at the bottom right corner of the Yahoo Search homepage. You can also just head directly to this link. Yahoo gives plenty of options. You can submit your site (the usual website, mobile site, or media content) for free, for a basic fee (Search submit) or as a sponsored post (which I will discuss in later posts). Of course paid submission will get you listed a lot more quickly (within 48 hours) but chances are that you will still get listed pretty fast for free.
Submitting to Google for free is a step easier since you don’t even need to log in (which is a requirement to submit to Yahoo). All you need is to go to their Add URL page, fill in the empty boxes with your URL and comments (description of your page). Unlike yahoo they don’t have paid submissions aside from the sponsored posts.
Remember that it will still take some time for their bots to get to your website but at least by submitting your URL it is guaranteed that your site WILL be crawled in a matter of weeks, if not less.
Popularity: 17% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
A website is almost always a plus for any business. However, I use the word “almost” because however pretty and informative your website might be it wouldn’t do your business any good if it doesn’t get lots of traffic. Since everyone knows that that major way people search for information in the internet nowadays is through search engines (as opposed to memorising website URLs and using directories) then getting listed with search engines is the FIRST step towards getting more traffic.
A website CAN get listed by simply existing and without the owner/webmaster doing anything actively to get it listed. This is because search engines send out bots/crawlers/spiders that automatically index or list websites. However, getting listed this way could take a really long time. If you want to maximise your website’s potential and really make the website more than a dead asset then of course you won’t just wait for this to happen.
One way you can hasten getting listed is by simply submitting your website to search engines. Search engine submissions can be done in three different ways. You can submit to crawlers like Google and Yahoo. You can submit to directories, which aren’t really search engines but since search engines regularly crawl the good solid ones then you can expect to get listed pretty soon once your listed on directories like DMOZ and Yahoo Directories. You can also get listed by paying and appearing as a sponsored ad.
Remember though that, as mentioned earlier, getting listed is just the FIRST step towards getting traffic. You will need more than this to get actual PEOPLE to come and visit your website regularly.
Popularity: 12% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
Realising that the impacting of addressing on-site issues with the use of simple techniques I have decided to come up with a second part. Here are more SEO techniques you should make sure you never overlook.
- Using the alt tag to label important images. You should always lable images that are really relevant to your content so that the engines will know what the image is about.
- Using generic analytics tools. I personally endorse Google Analytics although any other general analytics tool like Indextools will do. Just make sure you have something to help you track the actual results of your SEO efforts.
- Performing a simple IP location test. The results will show you where your main market is located so that you can make sure that you are hosted near it.
- Pinging major content aggregators like Google Blog Search and My Yahoo. Sure the website will probably be crawled some time or another but pinging never does any harm and speeds up the proccess.
- Taking advantage of social media especially the major platforms like Digg, Technorati, del.ico.us and more. It might not optimise your page in technical terms but it really does help generate traffic.
- Using Feedburner. Feedburner is very useful not only in automatically generating universal RSS feeds for the website but also provides you with useful stats.
Now that we’re done just make sure you implement what you’ve read because the biggest mistake an SEO consultant or web designer can make is not overlooking these techniques but ignoring them altogether.
Popularity: 15% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
Many SEO consultant and web developers get too focused on link building and though they do page optimisation often overlook simple but important aspects. Always remember that SEO is about optimisation and not just link building. SO if you want to get the maximum overall effect of y our SEO campaign then you should be wary of overlooking these simple but commonly overlooked optimisation techniques.
- Running test campaigns instead of just basic keyword research. A test run is never a waste of time or money because what you can learn from it almost always proves to be far more valuable than what you put in.
- Putting unique attractive Title and Description tags on every page. This will give search engines more page specific data to help match you with keywords being searched.
- Using H1/H2 tags for the content titles and subtitles. This tells the search engine that content in the page is mostly about the keywords within the titles. These tags highlight the importance of the titles.
- Using a sitemap. This pertains not to the site map that helps your users navigate their way around your page (although the presence of a static sitemap for visitors is usually overlooked as well) but a sitemap.xml to help the spiders crawl through your website.
- Using breadcrumbs. I suggest you read my post about breadcrumbs in our Web Design blog to understand how breadcrumbs can make navigation through a website easier.
- Modifying your 404 Page. Modify your page and put a link to your main page, main categories, or at least a search box so users can still use even those pages as a spring board for delving deeper into your website. A 404 Page is really irritating but you can lessen the negative effect by making it useful.
There are actually a lot more overlooked SEO techniques but even if you just start by giving notice to these you will be sure to have improved your SEO campaign a whole lot.
Popularity: 12% [?]
published by Dan in SEO
The amount of inbound links is very important if you want to rank well in SERPs. This is a fact everyone knows. In fact this statement has been rephrased and reused so many times in the SEO world that this is one of the first thing you’ll ever learn about SEO. The next thing you’ll learn about inbound links are the actual link building methods. Depending on your exposure you can learn of organic ways to build links, black hat methods, and gimmicks that are questionable but not outright unethical.
In the quest for more inbound links what is often left under the radar is the importance of the steadiness of the increase in links. Those who resort to black hat methods often fail to see the importance of this fact and so in their haste to get as much inbound links at once apply methods that are not really acceptable. This is true even though people are warned again and again the those who use link farms and other such link building methods will probably get caught by Google and get penalised. The reason for this is that they probably don’t believe that they will actually get caught. However, if they just paid attention to Google’s patent application that was filed way back in March 2005 they would have realized that Google HAS the capability to analyze temporal trends and link growth. They can actually determine how often new pages are added, how often documents are updated/edited, how often new links point to the site and if those links increase or decrease. From these data they are able to analyse trends so that a sudden jump in links can be scrutinised. Now unless you have a very good reason for having a sudden influx of inbound links (like having posted something really newsworthy and getting Dugg or linked to by a news site) then Google engines can detect your spurious methods and react accordingly. So next time you think of a questionable gimmick keep this in mind. Quick and dirty just doesn’t work in the long run.
Popularity: 12% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Basics
It is often repeated that you need QUALITY inbound links more than plenty of links that are not substantial if you want to increase traffic to your site. So of course you set out to try to get quality links. But how do you really determine a link’s quality? Is there a way to actually measure how good or how bad a link is? The truth is there is no actual formula for computing a link’s quality. To help you us with the problem, Randfish, owner of SEOmoz, has some pretty good advice though on determining a link’s value. Here are some of the most important factors that will determine the quality of the inbound links:
1. The linking site’s page rank at Google for the term you are interested in getting a higher ranking for.
2. The linking site’s page rank at Google for 1-2 important, competitive terms in its title tag.
3. The linking site’s content’s overall or general ranking for competitive terms in its pages’ respective title tags. You should target for pages that generally rank in the top 20 results since you can be sure that these site’s have domains that are considered to be of high value and the link’s values they pass will of course be of very good quality.
4. The number of brokered sets of links (Read: paid link/ paid ads) that the linking site carries. If it has too many paid ads then you might not want this site to link to you.
5. The relevance of the linking page/site to your target page.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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