In terms of SEO, what’s the best strategy to use when ranking for a name with 2 different spellings?
I’ve created an interactive resume/electronic portfolio of myself online – but all of my site’s content uses my full name MICHAEL. What if people search for MIKE? My site comes up as the 4th listing for MICHAEL (LAST NAME) but not on the first page for MIKE (LAST NAME). Does anyone know what I can do so I can rank for both MICHAEL and MIKE?
Hi Mpax,
You can try to help the search engines position you for both terms:
Ex: Title Tag:
<title>John Michaels – John Mike – Resume – Atlanta Georgia Software Engineer </title>
what this does is use both of the names in the tag in a prominent position, and also detail other relevant info.
Ex Description: <meta name="description" content="John Michaels interactive resume and electronic portfolio. Learn more about this talented Atlanta, Georgia software engineer.">
Ex Keywords: <meta name="keywords" content="John Michaels, John Mike, Atlanta Georgia resume, Atlanta Software Engineer, knowledge">
You can also build external links from high page rank blog sites to the site with both spellings of your name. If you optimize the page for your primary name, and include a little bit of text to address the shortened last name, the links you build to this page will have more value.
I’d be happy to help you – drop me a line via email with your site.
Brian
Originally posted 2010-07-23 18:46:18.
What is the best way to bring traffic to a website appart from SEO?
I have a website that is only very small ( 4 pages ) and there isn’t that much text on each page so I suppose SEO wouldn’t be very effective with this website.
What other alternatives do I have? What is the most effective thing you have ever done to your website?
Ok, time for the truth. Content is not king, no matter what someone tells you. That was a gimic by content writers to sell their services. As long as your pages are targeted and some good onpage is completed, quality links will get you top positions in the major search engines.
I have always said that "king content" has no kingdom online without a throne of links.
I have argued with the so called "guru’s" over the years and called out many. Let’s compare traffic and bank accounts of the "king content" crowd against my throne of links and we can settle this dispute once and for all. I have never had a taker, not one! because it is lies and deceptions.
You have 2 options for traffic that will convert, that is SEO or PPC. The reason for this is because it makes YOU the target, not the other way around.
Would you rather be looking for money, or money looking for you?
When you do banners, social and other marketing, you are looking for money in the general population of the internet. With PPC and seo, you are in the right place at the right time every time, so they are looking for you "by keyword search".
When you place an ad on the radio, you are betting that a small precentage of people are interested in what you have to say or offer. This is mass marketing and has a very low return on investment. This is the same as "other" marketing plans online, like banners , social and all of the other crap these other people are telling you to do.
Now, PPC and seo are like having the first ad in the yellowpages for what you offer, and that is HUGE because they are hunting you.
So when you have an active potential customer that is directly interested, your conversion rates will go through the roof.
I would rather have 200 keyword specific visitors thn 2 million non keyword visitors.
Your title is the most important onpage factor for seo, and you can have limited content and gaine some great traffic that will convert. So don’t buy the lies.
Originally posted 2010-01-14 17:47:24.
8 Linking Strategies That Work
When it comes to linking strategies for your website you need to concentrate on one word. Backlinks! A backlink is defined as having your website address on another website. This creates a link pointing your visitor or a search engine back to your website. If you were in a game and were keeping score every backlink gives you a +1. An outoging link is the link of another website on yours pointing back to theirs. You would score this a -1.
If you were playing a game to win you would want the most pluses you could get. So it is with linking strategies. Here are some basic ways to get backlinks to your website.
1. You can buy a text link. Websites that get high amounts of traffic and are ranked high with the top search engines will let you pay them to put your website link on their site.
2. Forum marketing is a way to get a backlink. If the forum let’s you create a signature file you can hyperlink you website to a keyword phrase pointing back to your website. You can also list your website in your online profile and get a backlink that way,
3. Writing and submitting articles is a quick way to get alot of backlinks. Create a bio box at the end of each article with a link for your website. Then submit your article to as many directories as possible. Or even better yet use a software of article marketer to submit your articles for you.
These articles can be picked up by other directories, webmasters, or online newsletters and spread all over the internet giving your website a viral marketing benefit.
4. Place classified ads with popular directories like USFreeAds or AdlandPro. Upgrade to paid member and you can place unlimited ads with links pointing back to your website.
5. Blog and ping. In each blog post include a sort resource box with your website address. If you archive you posts this gives you backlinks for years to come.
6. Trade links with quality websites. We are not talking about reciprocal linking to directories with thousands of worthless links. A better strategy is to trade a link with a website that closely mirrors your site without being in direct competition to it. Also look to place their link on one of your pages that has the same page rank as the link they are giving you.
7. Post comments on other peoples blogs. Take the time to read the post before you make a comment. Don’t write something worthless like ” I like your blog.” Make your comments informative and relate to the blog post you just read. Then include your website address along with your name.
8. Internal linking can bring valuable backlinks to your home page. This would be when you put your website address in a hyperlinked keyword phrase and point it back to your home page. This is a great way to build keyword relavancy along with building up your backlinks.
These are a few linking strategies that work. There are many others. Just keep it simple and remember this simple formula.
Jeff Casmer
http://www.articlesbase.com/link-popularity-articles/8-linking-strategies-that-work-102059.html
Originally posted 2009-02-26 13:54:59.
The Ten Important Steps for Optimizing your Website for Search Engines
“The Ten important Steps for optimizing your website for search engines:
In these ten steps we will know ten basics and important steps to optimizing a website to perform better on major search engines. If you will follow these steps correctly your website search engine position website will be surly improve depending on you industry competition.
Step 1 – Keyword Selection
Step 2 – Creating optimized Content
Step 3 – Site Structure
Step 4 – Internal Linking
Step 5 Submissions
Step 6 Link Popularity Building
Step 7 – Title and Meta tags
Step 8 Monitoring
Step 9 social bookmarking
Step 10 Testing
Step 1 – Keyword Selection
Selecting Keyword is the single most important factor in the entire search engine optimization (optimisation) process. Choosing the right and relevant keywords will not only help you in getting good search engine position and targeted traffic but it will also increase you return on investment (ROI).
Example: If you are a company based in UK providing search engine optimization (optimisation) (SEO) services. The first keyword in your mind would be definitely
Keyword Competition
SEO : 73,000,000
Search engine optimization : 63,600,000
Seo Company : 26,800,000
It is possible to get good ranking on these keywords but it will take lot of time and money instead you can target “”Seo Company Uk” and “Search engine optimization company Uk’ this way you are targeting two keyword at a time with less competition that means more chance of targeted traffic and good Search engine positions.
Keyword selection and research tools
The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
Site: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
Word Tracker
Site: http://www.wordtracker.com/
Step 2 – Creating optimized Content
There has been lot of changes in the search engine algorithms but there is no change in the importance given to quality content. In this step we will focus on how to create optimized and unique content for high search engine positioning using the keywords we have selected in the first step.
Unique and well written content will both grab your visitor’s attention and at the same time, make them want what you have to offer. So write in keeping mind what your audience are looking for and targeted keywords.
First ask yourself some questions:
What services you offer
Do you provide the services your visitors are looking for
Do some research
Provide as much as possible information on the subject. Provide useful and unique information about your industry / subject area it can entice your visitors to visit your website in future. It has found that most of the online visitors search for information about their interests.
Content Optimization
Four important factors for optimizing content
1. Heading Tags – (H1 to H6)
2. Special Text – (bold etc.)
3. Inline Text Links – (Anchor text and alt tags for images )
4. Keyword Density – (number of occurrences of your targeted keywords in a page)
Heading Tags
By default text in these tags appear too large than standard text in a browser. We can customize it by using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
Tip: Do not use the same tag more then once on a page.
Special Text
It can be used in bold, colored, “”In quotes”" or (in brackets). Using special text will help draw the attention to important information and also add weight to your keywords.
Inline Text Links
Example: We provide seo services and web hosting.
You add a link to related page on your site to these bold words. it gives the reader a way to find the information you are referring to.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the no. of occurrences of targeted keyword in the content of the page. You should not spam the targeted keyword in your content; recommended keyword density is between 4% to 10%.
Step 3 – Site Structure
You must structure your website to attract the visitor as well as the search engine spiders. The site structure will help spiders read your site. Keep the code as clean as possible so search engine spider can get to your content, where you want them to be.
Use CSS to cut down code extra code like for font style, tables, images etc…
Things to remember while planning site structure
Keep URL Short and close to Root of the site
While creating folder and files use keyword
Eg: for a page in web hosting packs www.domainname.com/web-hosting/website-hosting.html
Use Hyphens (-) while splitting name in to 2 instead of underscore (_) as shown in above example.
Step 4 – Internal Linking
Internal linking means linking to your pages within the website by way of sitemap, navigation bar, footer, header etc. The sitemap should be linked on all pages of your website to get spidered by search engines from anywhere. You should also include Google sitemap on your site to get indexed easily by Google. It adds relevancy to the linked page which directly helps in getting high rank for the linked page
Using text based links with anchor text, footer navigation and use inline text link will improve Your Internal Linking Structure. So spider can crawl it easily add relevancy to the linked page. The closer a page is in clicks from your homepage. The higher the value the page rank is assigned.
Step 5 Submissions
Where to submit:
o Search engines
o Web directories
Major search engines to submit
Google.com | yahoo.com | Msn.com
Major web directories to submit
1. Yahoo (paid)
2. Dmoz.org (most important)
http://www.about.com/
http://www.incrawler.com/
http://www.jayde.com/
3. http://www.wowdirectory.com/
Step 6 Link Popularity Building
There are 2 ways of building Link popularity
o Reciprocal link building (2 way link building)
o Non-reciprocal link building (1 way link building)
Reciprocal link building
There are some basic rules to follow when exchanging links:
Relevancy is more important
Check and make sure the reciprocal link aren’t being blocked and pages are indexed
Link pages with more than 50 links aren’t worth exchanging with
Non-reciprocal link building
It can be in form of paid link, directory listings, social bookmarking, article publishing ,blogs and press releases
Step 7 – Title and Meta tags
Once you have planned and completed the site structure and content integration. Its turn for Title Meta and Description. Unique and optimized title and Meta tags are really helpful in achieving higher search engine positions
Title:
this tag represents information of page this can be in browsers header bar
Meta keywords:
This include the targeted keywords for that particular page
Meta description:
The Meta description shows on the SERPS (search engine results page). It is used in describing the products / services you offer to your customers, you can describe specific pages within your website that shows in the search results page.
You can describe your pages the way you want them to be seen by your visitors in the SERPS (search engine results pages)
Next is alt tags, Alt tags is a white hat SEO practice used very commonly by search engine optimizers
Step 8 Monitoring
There are three basic things in the monitoring process. They are:
Monitoring your search engine positions:
You can go through the searches manually, you can use software like IBP to check your rankings or you can use online. There can find many related Seo tools listed here http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html
Monitoring Back Links
Schedule weekly checks of how many backlinks you have and are your link partners still linking to you
Monitoring Changes in the Search Environment
The last thing you will have to monitor is for changes with the search engines themselves.
Visiting forums and subscribing to newsletters to keep yourself updated about search engines algorithm changes
Step 9 social bookmarking
The social bookmarking is used by many people to bookmark their pages and websites. Using the social bookmarking visitors can bookmark the sites listed in the social networking websites. The popularity of the websites in the social bookmarking world gauged by most favorites websites among the visitors. The most bookmarked website obviously will get more traffic than others and it can also help improving your search engine ranking in major search engines.
How does it work?
In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Webpage Urls, which they find useful. Often, these lists are publicly accessible, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some social bookmarking systems allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis.
Most bookmarking websites allows to enter multiple tags for your web pages in order to be searched by the visitors that helps social bookmarking visitors to get relevant and accurate search results for their keywords.
Advantages
1. Social bookmarking helps in promoting your website users market your site.
2. It indirectly helps by building a brand.
3. Generates targeted traffic.
Some important social bookmarking sites
Dig.com | Blink |Del.icio.us |Digg |Furl |Google |Simpy |Spurl |Y! MyWeb
Step 10 – Testing
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now its time to see if all that hard work done has achieved the main goal of reaching the visitor and to convert them to a customer.
o Check for broken links :
o Other script errors
o Ease in navigating site
o visual appeal of the site
o placement of content
o are you able to find what u are looking for
You have created a great design and added SEO elements to your site. Now you should test your website for errors (i.e. 404 not found error, script errors etc.).
Check for broken links :
Other script errors
Ease in navigating site
Visual appeal of the site
Placement of content
Are your visitors able to find what they are looking for?
“
Sandeep Tyagi
http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/the-ten-important-steps-for-optimizing-your-website-for-search-engines-67620.html
Originally posted 2010-08-01 08:35:58.
what is search engine marketing and how do I utilize it for my business?
I have an automotive dealership with a website of pokchev.com, I keep reading about search engine marketing yet I don’t understand how to take advantage of it?
Search Engine Marketing is powerful way to reach out to your prospective customers who are actively searching for products you offer by placing sponsor links on pages displaying results of keywords relevant to yoru business
5 simple steps to place ads thru Search Engine Marketing.
Step 1: Visit the URL(s) -
http://yahoosearchmarketing.com
https://adwords.google.com/ads
Step 2: Choose Keywords (tools on the URLs assist you in the process)
Step 3: Write Search Listing for each of your keywords
Step 4: Determine the Bid amount for each of the Keywords {Payment is on cost per click basis (you pay the search engine only when your linked has been clicked on)}
Step 5 : Set up a payment account, a self serve system allows your credit card to be billed after the clicks have been delivered
Originally posted 2010-01-08 09:56:29.
Can someone please tell me what search engine optimization is!?
I’ve been searching all day, and I’ve been reading that your blog can be successful or fall falt on it’s face based on what you know of search engine optimization; SEO. I know what it is (sort of) but I don’t know how to do it, I don’t even know if there IS a "how." So I’d be grateful if someone told me what SEO is, and how to use it. Thanks.
What do you mean tags? You mean like the links on my site (well, in my case a blog) that describe my posts and stuff?
SEO
is the optimzation of your website content, html and links to your website in order to enhance your search engine listings as well as your buyer’s experience.
There is a how. Have a look at: http://www.getintogooglequick.com/seo_basics.htm
Originally posted 2010-02-13 17:50:26.
