Showing posts with label SEO. Show all posts

Jan 25, 2017

Attention SEO Rock Stars! All Keywords are BRANDED Keywords

For the past few days, SEOs and PPC marketers alike have been segmenting brand campaigns and content from more generic search terms.

However, while branded keywords tend to be unicorns in PPC, which generate ridiculously high CTRs (click-through rates) (40, 50 or 60 percent) and Quality Scores (9 or 10); and the branded keywords in SEO rank at the top of the SERP. Meanwhile, non-branded keywords perform like donkeys in other words, i.e. just average at best.

While branded vs. non-branded is an interesting differentiation, it’s an incomplete one as well. Even non-branded keywords can perform like brand terms when brand affinity exists. This is the reason why we have performed re-examination of our assumptions about branded vs. non-branded keywords in both paid and organic search marketing.

Enhance the Optimization of Websites

Search Engine optimization (SEO) is a mind game and it’s all about staying one step ahead of your opponents. One of the best possible ways to accomplish this competitive dominance is to be aware of how search engines are modifying, and adjust your content and SEO strategy before your competitors have a chance to catch up.

Many of the internet titans could do with a bit of optimization of their websites. The SEO industry is always moving, so it’s better to be aware of these evolutions. It looks like 2017 will be an interesting year for SEO, with the latest updates dominating the arena.

Get all the latest SEO updates and NEWS for 2017. Here we are providing the latest SEO strategies and techniques required for 2017.

Google RankBrain Algorithm Update

Google RankBrain Algorithm

The information covered below comes from three sources. First, the Bloomberg story that broke the news about RankBrain yesterday (see also our write-up of it). Second, additional information that Google has now provided directly to Search Engine Land. Third, our own knowledge and best assumptions in places where Google isn’t providing answers. We’ll make clear where any of these sources are used, when deemed necessary, apart from general background information.

What Is RankBrain?

RankBrain is Google’s name for a machine-learning artificial intelligence system that’s used to help process its search results, as was reported by Bloomberg and also confirmed to us by Google.

What Is Machine Learning?

Machine learning is where a computer teaches itself how to do something, rather than being taught by humans or following detailed programming.

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

True artificial intelligence, or AI for short, is where a computer can be as smart as a human being, at least in the sense of acquiring knowledge both from being taught and from building on what it knows and making new connections.

True AI exists only in science fiction novels, of course. In practice, AI is used to refer to computer systems that are designed to learn and make connections.

How’s AI different from machine learning? In terms of RankBrain, it seems to us they’re fairly synonymous. You may hear them both used interchangeably, or you may hear machine learning used to describe the type of artificial intelligence approach being employed.

So RankBrain Is The New Way Google Ranks Search Results?

No. RankBrain is part of Google’s overall search “algorithm,” a computer program that’s used to sort through the billions of pages it knows about and find the ones deemed most relevant for particular queries.

Paginate Your Website for SEO

Content pagination dominates all over the web to categorise information on resource-heavy websites such as e-commerce suppliers, blogs, and publish places. If you have a website with a lot of information, how should you handle pagination with respect to SEO? Get away from what you have as it is and let the search engines choose the rest? Or should you offer some simple HTML mark-up to offer them a aiding hand? This publish will tell you how to paginate for SEO, as well avoid a few of the standard pagination problems.

A couple months ago, The look for applications offered a way to help entrepreneurs put into exercise appropriate, look for search engine-friendly pagination. By using the rel=”next” and rel=”previous” weblink meta information within the go place of your website, you can tell The look for applications if there is a website which follows the existing website, or if there is a previous website before the existing one. Usually, this locations your web sites into a amazing, easy-to-understand pattern.

International SEO Strategy

Establishing a global web presence and optimizing for search engine results is more than just translation. In fact, without a true understanding of the cultural, political, linguistic, and social differences of the targeted country, marketers run the risk of driving users away. And, without the proper International SEO Strategy, they run the risk of something worse – never being found by users in the first place. Take a look at some of the best-practices and strategic tips below to help you gain international exposure and SEO value.

Effective Title Tag Optimization To Get Into Rankings

Title Tag Optimization:

Web page titles are most important part of getting your site or blog in to rankings. When Google launched, Google was entirely dependent on the title and meta tags. Over time, meta tags, has lost its value due to a lot of people who completely inappropriate. However, the titles of the pages still hold a value to it, when it comes to SERP [search engines results page]. Together with your other SEO tactics to optimize the titles of web pages can cause a substantial difference in traffic from Google.

Avoid site’s name in titles:

This could also be read as "avoid duplication of texts." If you want an opinion, most blogs have their own names on the titles included on each page. For example, over-I would be 'About Me |. Mysite.com "In practice, it will include" mysite.com "on each page of your blog or site Google does not like duplicate titles. Double that have less value than others. The first thing I do is make sure that all titles are unique. Make sure that does not repeat the same text in all the titles on your page. The best fitting title would be "my first post", which is the title of your post.

Top 25 Websites for every SEO

1. http://www.seomoz.org – seomoz have not held back over the last year and 9 months, most notably the addition of Linkscape and Rand’s constant travelling have done nothing but push this company to the top of the industry.

2. http://www.linkdiagnosis.com – this website has also come a long way since I first started using it back in early 08, this link analysis tool is actually quite accurate although the results are only taken from Yahoo, link building can be very effective using this site

3. http://www.twitter.com – Twitter was a must in my previous list and it’s a must now. Any budding SEOs can learn a lot from following some of the leaders in the industry and seasoned SEOs can get a lot of good stories aggregated straight to your twitter home with absolutely no effort.

4. http://www.wolf-howl.com – A search blog with a different stance from many other industry leaders, not always agreeing with Google tactics and methods Michael Gray provides a good contrast in perspective and a sometimes light hearted Friday afternoon read.

5. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com – The official Google webmasters blog, there’s always a lot of activity happening over at the big G, it pays to keep on top of developments.

6. http://www.huomah.com/dojo – I can’t stress enough how good this website is, recently voted as number 1 for the “best paid subscription SEM community” by readers at Top Rank Blog. I’ve spoken to Dave (the ninja boss) many times and the amount of SEO he knows is scary!

7. http://www.sphinn.com – Sphinn is the equivalent to Digg for anything search related, the community has continued to grow over the last few years and although some recent technical decisions have caused some negative chatter – it still feels ace.

8. http://www.seobook.com – Aaron Wall has been in this business a long time and SEO Book provides great resources for SEOs around the world, I especially like the tool “Rank Checker” for snapshot views into ranking performance.

9. http://raven-seo-tools.com – The Raven site provides excellent SEO tools in the form of benchmarking, I used the site in it’s early days and it’s continued to get better and better – solid SEO blog too.

10. http://www.seo-browser.com – It’s important to know how search engines view your website, using SEO Browser can easy display what’s working and what’s not, very useful for performing site audits.

11. http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleWebmasterHelp – A lot of good SEO questions have been answered by Matt Cutts and co through the video format on YouTube, great watching, even if you just want to find out what T-shirt colour Matt wears.

12. http://www.avivadirectory.com/strongest-directories – Link building from authority based directories does still hold SEO value – fact. Aviva Directory created this list a while a go but many listings are still valuable, decent bookmark to have.

13. http://www.google.com/insights/search – Alas another Google link but extremely important for identifying keyword opportunities on generic and local based levels, although take a pinch of salt with the data provided.

14. http://searchengineland.com – one of the most important search blogs online with great insights and in depth discoveries, it would be rude not to include these boys.

15. http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog – This website has grown in authority and reputation over the last few years with much deserves. Constantly providing good SEO blog posts, free e-books and valuable insights, you’d be crazy not to be subscribed to this blog.

16. http://www.seounique.com/blog – I felt the need to add my blog on the list because I do run tests which may provide insights, I’m by no means like the others on this list but I’d appreciate the signup to my feed!

17. http://www.seroundtable.com – Great site for breaking SEO news stories or developments within the industry, plus they have great resources and a forum

18. http://www.bruceclay.com/blog – Solid SEO advice and one to keep on top of.

19. http://www.reelseo.com – Video SEO is something that’s been “around” for a while but never implemented to the full potential. Learn how to maximise this at this great site.

20. http://www.mybloglog.com – Essential for bloggers and online community builders.

21. http://technorati.com – I don’t think I need to explain why you should be aware of this site, news is information, knowledge is power.

22. http://econsultancy.com – An absolute must for any internet marketer. Community content, breaking stories, industry insights and a gazillion more things related to SEO.

23. http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/ – I’ve been in contact with Jeffery for a long time and his blog has never stopped producing quality SEO insights, theories and discoveries over the last 20 months, I suggest those of you who aren’t signed up do so!

24. http://www.google.com/analytics – This is quite an obvious one really, analytics packages are the backbone to any good online marketing campaign as they show the results and RIO for campaigns. The positives include extended insights and functions, landscape benchmarking, in depth data breakdown and its free!

25. http://socialmention.com/ – Brands are becoming more important in natural search and from social aspects, this website helps you monitor brand mentions online through various channels, best thing about this site – it’s free, unlike competitors.

Oct 8, 2009

New Strategy to Increase Search Engine Visibility

Recently Google has released a new algorithmic solution for better search experience so that you can directly jump to the information you want right from the search snippets. It’s good news for web searchers, because they can get directly to what they are looking for. But, what’s in it for SEO experts and web designers?

New Google Search Snippet Explained

From a searcher viewpoint, when you enter a page with long textual content in it, a kind of “table of content” with links to subtopical sections within the same page can make navigation extremely easy at that page. At the top of the page, you realize what that page consists of, click on it and get to the information you want to read.

From Google viewpoint, the new algorithm has recently made it possible for different named anchors of your page (subtopic sections) to individually rank at search engine result pages (SERP). So, now you may look for something in Google and see that the Google search snippet (the descriptive sentences, phrases, etc under the title and above the URL) shows part of a webpage as a subotpic with a slightly different URL at the same page.

Such results are indicated by the phrase Jump to.

An Example of How Google Search Snippet Works!

I provide you with a list of search queries that all link to one webpage, but different topical sections of it:

I think this example could show you to the heart of how Google search snippet functions. Without wasting time, you can jump to what you are looking for. But, there’s a great lesson here for the web designers, SEO experts, online marketers, etc.

An Amazing Strategy to Increase Search Engine Visibility

Now that you know how Google search snippet takes people directly to particular sections of some webpages, here’s some SEO tips you can use to get benefits from this new algorithmic solution to increase search engine visibility:

Plan to write comprehensive long articles, posts, textual content for your site/blog.
Divide your content into several suptopics, headings, etc.
Create named anchors to identify sections on your page.
Write a descriptive phrase for each section.
Make sure you use your keywords at these name anchors.

Such strategy could be implemented at FAQ pages, Help pages, About Me Page, etc as well. You can use this strategy at any page with lots of information that could be categorized fall into subtopics.

Benefits of Dividing a Page into Several Sections

When you click on a link in such pages with named anchors, the URL of the page changes somewhat: the anchor text is added to the page URL. So, it is treated like a different page. So, your the page with such named anchors is seemingly divided into several other pages. When you include a keyphrase at each subtopic and write extensively about it under that subtopic, because it’s linked from the top of the page, an internal linking is also enhanced within the page. It will also include the keyword in it.

So, when you write about a general topic and divide it into several subtopic, each with a different keyphrase, the page is divided into several subpages that could help you increase search engine visibility for that page. What happens, at the end of the day, will be to get ranked for different subtopics of the same page. Consequently chances increase for that page to show up in the SERP due to the different sections individually ranking highly for their own keyphrases.

Eventually, you add to the search engine visibility of your pages by implementing such strategy.

Jul 23, 2009

Pay Per Click Vs Organic SEM

Organic Search Engine Marketing

When we talk about search engine traffic it is important to realise that it is not a homogenous unit. Search engine traffic comes in two very distinct flavours; organic and pay per click (PPC).

When people talk about search engine results, often they are talking about organic rankings. An organic search engine ranking is one that is decided by reference to the subject website and its defining features such as link structure, text content, META tags, link popularity and so on.

Organic search engine rankings are difficult to maintain since the various search engines keep the algorithms they use to decide where a site will appear based on a particular search a strict secret. The ultimate organic position your site obtains is largely out of your hands.

Fundamentally organic optimisation is about ensuring your website makes itself as 'search engine friendly' as possible in the expectation that search engine friendly content is significantly more likely to see the site gain good rankings.

At this point it is important to raise a critical distinction between organic search engine results and what you find on human edited directories like DMOZ. A search engine is a considerably automated beast. It actively seeks out web content by following links to other sites and indexing the web that way. To appear in a directory you need to submit your site manually whereas a search engine will find you so long as a site already in its considerable database has a link to yours.

Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing

Pay Per Click (PPC) traffic is effectively the opposite of organic traffic. With Pay Per Click the vast majority of the factors that influence your ranking position are controlled by you. The easiest way to think of PPC traffic is as bought traffic.

PPC advertising is effectively a keyword auction. The idea is that people bid for their ads to appear on certain keywords, the higher the bid the better the chance of getting the top position. Advertisers also compete with advertising creative as those ads that have a greater percentage of people who have seen it clicking on the ad (click through rate) are given a position boost. The final position being effectively a balancing of keyword bid amount and click through rate.

It is important to remember that the advertiser is only paying for people who click on the ad creative. One advertisement could get viewed a million times a day but unless that advertisement is clicked on the advertiser is not charged.

One final feature worth mentioning is that PPC allows geographic targeting to limit your presence to those people who are your target audience. Through the use of appropriate keywords and geographic targeting you can make sure that you never pay for an inappropriate site visitor.

Organic vs Pay Per Click

Despite their mutually exclusive definitions, Organic and PPC traffic do not operate in isolation. On most search engines around the world search engine results pages (SERPs) provide both organic and pay per click listings on the same page. The degree to which PPC traffic is easily identifiable differs from search engine to search engine. Some bury PPC amongst their organic listings but most will alert the user to the sponsored nature of the link in one fashion or another.

Of the two types of listing it is organic listings that currently generate the most traffic but that does not mean the PPC has no place in a well rounded search engine marketing strategy. The diagram below is an eye tracking heat map developed by EyeTools (http://www.eyetools.com) displaying the way people interact with Google. The areas that are red in colour indicate a greater concentration of users focused their attention in these areas, grey spots received little to no visual attention from users. In Google the organic results fill the majority of screen space with just the side bar devoted to paid advertising and occasionally a small header section above the organic results.

As you can see there is a definite preference exhibited by users for organic results over PPC results but this is not to be taken as an indication that one is necessarily better than the other. For a better examination let us visit the advantages and disadvantages of both systems.

PPC Advantages

Listing content and positioning is controllable by the advertiser.

Only pay for clicks, not impressions

Changes are immediate.

Custom creative allows advertisers to pre-qualify visitors prior to them clicking on an advertisement.

Can guarantee results assuming the search volume is large enough.

Allows geographic targeting down to immediate locality in many cases.

Organic Advantages

Traffic from search engines is free.

Search engine visitors currently show a preference for clicking on organic results making for a larger pool of potential traffic than exists for PPC.

PPC Disadvantages

Traffic comes at a cost.

Increased competition on certain keywords can inflate the cost of traffic.

Organic listings make up a higher percentage of total clicks on a SERP than paid listings.

Restrictions on the keyword bids and creative content put in place by PPC providers.

Smaller pool of potential traffic than organic.

Organic Disadvantages

Traffic from search engines is free.

Traffic may be free but labor and other costs associated with ensuring good organic positioning can be quite high.

Organic optimisation is reactionary, not proactive.

Minimal control over results, organic optimisation is more focused on influencing rankings, not dictating them.

Can't guarantee performance.

Ideally a solid search engine marketing campaign will see efforts made with respect to both types of traffic. By having your site appear in both paid and organic listings you increase your brand equity in the eyes of the search engine user, increase the chances one of your links is clicked on and ensure that you don't exclude either people who prefer organic or people who prefer paid listings.

As a final point PPC advertising can also be used in some measure as a way to supplement poor organic results. If there are critical terms your site is not appearing under no matter what you do from an organic standpoint, PPC can ensure that your have some form of presence on those terms despite poor organic performance.

May 20, 2009

How To Optimize A Dynamic Website

Internet technologies and e-commerce are advanced now and still developing day by day. As a result people prefer to have a dynamic website for their businesses or their online presence. So for some webmasters or new search engine optimizers who have experience in doing SEO for a simple static websites becomes necessary to know also about how to optimize a Dynamic Website?

For successful search engine optimization (SEO) of a dynamic website it is require to have some complex search engine technology and methods that are substantially different and much more sophisticated than the SEO techniques used for ordinary, more conventional "static" web sites.

In this article you can find some useful and important tips for how to optimize a dynamic website but first I would like to describe about what are Dynamic Websites?

Introduction to Dynamic Websites:

Now days often business websites are dynamic means that the web pages are dynamically built pages that allow user interaction and online shopping cart is an example for that.

Dynamic websites are websites whose pages are generated on the fly and usually built with a programming language such as ASP, PHP or JAVA. Often Dynamic sites are database-driven means that the site content is stored in a database and the dynamic code "pulls" the content from a database.

Problems in indexing Dynamic URLs:

It is really difficult to get dynamic web sites properly indexed in the major search engines unless they are professionally optimized. Even most search engines claim that they now index the majority of dynamic web sites but still only in some cases and it is limited to a number of URLs.

One of the most important reason behind having problem with dynamic sites to get indexed by major search engines is that Search engines often consider a dynamic URL as a set of infinite number of links.

Now days often dynamic web pages are created "on the fly" with various technologies such as ASP (Active Server Pages), Cold Fusion technology, JSP (Java Server Pages) and so on. Now all these pages are user friendly and works very will for real users actually visiting the web site, but they usually create a mess with most search engine spiders.

The main reason behind it is because all dynamic pages do not even exist until a user actually goes through a query or variable that generates the pages. Often search engine spiders are not programmed to select or choose any of query or variables. In this way, those dynamic pages do not get generated and that is why do not get to be indexed.

One of the main difficulties with search engine spiders are that they cannot read and are not trained to understand any of the dynamic databases of URLs which either contain a query string delimited by a question mark or any other database characters (#&*!%) that refers to as "spider traps." Once a search engine spider falls into any of those traps, it usually spells bad news for that dynamic web site.

As a direct consequence that most search crawlers have significant problems "reading" any level into a typical dynamic database, most of these search engine spiders have been programmed to initially detect and then ignore most dynamic URLs.

How to optimize a dynamic website to get it indexed by major search engines:

1. Using URL Rewriting Tools or Softwares - There are some URL Rewriting Tools and software available on the web that converts a dynamic URL to Static URLs. So it is better to use these tools to convert a dynamic URL of your site to Static URL.

For an example- Exception Digital Enterprise Solutions offers software that helps to change the dynamic URLs to static ones.

In this way, changing a dynamic URL to static one helps it to get easily indexed by search engines.

2. Using CGI/Perl Scripts - Using CGI/Perl scripts is one of the easiest ways to get your dynamic sites indexed by search engines. Path_Info or Script_Name is a variable in a dynamic application that contains the complete URL address.

In order to correct this problem, it is needed to write a script that will pull all the information before the query string and set the rest of the information equal to a variable.

When you are using CGI/Perl scripts, the query part of the dynamic URL is assigned a variable. So, in the above example "?id=586" is assigned a variable, say "X".

The dynamic URL www.xyz.com/abcproduct.asp?id=586

will change to- www.xyz.com/productname/A

through CGI/Perl scripts that can be easily indexed by the search engines.

3. Managing Web Servers-

Apache Server - Apache has a rewrite module that enables you to turn URLs containing query strings into URLs that search engines can index. This module however, isn't installed with Apache software by default, so you need to check with your web hosting company for installation.

ColdFusion - It is needed to reconfigure ColdFusion on your server so that the "?" in a query string is replaced with a '/' and pass the value to the URL.

4. Static Page linked dynamic Pages - Creating a Static Page that linked to an array of dynamic Pages becomes very effective especially in case you are the owner of a small online store. Initially just create a static page linking to all your dynamic pages. And optimize this static page for search engine rankings.

Make sure to include a link title for all the product categories, place appropriate "alt" tag for the product images along with product description containing highly popular keywords relevant to your business. Submit this static page to various major search engines including all the dynamic pages as per the guidelines for search engine submission.

In this way if you are going to optimize a dynamic website then all above tips can help you to successfully optimize your dynamic website and your site will get indexed by major search engines without facing any problem and you have a great chance to take your site among top ranks on major search engines.

May 4, 2009

Why Is It Better to Optimize Your Search Engine Rankings as Opposed to Other Methods of Advertising Online?

Most websites have their main sources of traffic coming from search engines. Search engines, the main ones being Google, Yahoo, and MSN, are at the center of online traffic. Their role cannot be emphasized enough. In light of the always increasing number of sites on the Web, people all over the world rely on search engines to direct them to the right source of information.

The reason why search engine optimization (SEO) is so popular amongst webmasters is that it is the best way to bring in traffic at low cost. Not only do you bring in traffic, but you also build your site's goodwill. That is a very important notion.

SEO also brings in targeted traffic because webmasters assume that when visitors arrive through search engines, they must have previously entered a search query. SEO brings in "normal" traffic but also "webmaster" traffic. What do you think that webmasters do when they want to exchange links? They search for similar sites. Again.... using search engines. Putting emphasis on good SEO allows you to attract targeted visitors, to increase your site's goodwill, and to build visibility with other webmasters as well. It is almost a self-sustaining process. If your site is well ranked in search engines, other webmasters will automatically approach you to suggest possible partnerships, which will reduce the amount spent doing "active" promotion.

That being said, it is always recommended that you diversify your online marketing strategy to include other means of attracting traffic, such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, pay-per-impression advertising, or pay-per-action advertising. In addition to entering into online marketing campaigns, you can also utilize traditional marketing campaigns in the "real" world. Experiment and see what works best.

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Digital Marketing

Jan 25, 2017

Attention SEO Rock Stars! All Keywords are BRANDED Keywords

Aug 18, 2016

Enhance the Optimization of Websites

Oct 28, 2015

Google RankBrain Algorithm Update

Google RankBrain Algorithm

What Is RankBrain?

What Is Machine Learning?

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

So RankBrain Is The New Way Google Ranks Search Results?

Dec 22, 2011

Paginate Your Website for SEO

Nov 17, 2011

International SEO Strategy

Sep 6, 2011

Effective Title Tag Optimization To Get Into Rankings

Jan 26, 2010

Top 25 Websites for every SEO

Oct 8, 2009

New Strategy to Increase Search Engine Visibility

New Google Search Snippet Explained

An Amazing Strategy to Increase Search Engine Visibility

Benefits of Dividing a Page into Several Sections

Jul 23, 2009

Pay Per Click Vs Organic SEM

May 20, 2009

How To Optimize A Dynamic Website

May 4, 2009

Why Is It Better to Optimize Your Search Engine Rankings as Opposed to Other Methods of Advertising Online?

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Jan 25, 2017

Aug 18, 2016

Oct 28, 2015

Google RankBrain Algorithm

What Is RankBrain?

What Is Machine Learning?

What Is Artificial Intelligence?

So RankBrain Is The New Way Google Ranks Search Results?

Dec 22, 2011

Nov 17, 2011

Sep 6, 2011

Jan 26, 2010

Oct 8, 2009

New Google Search Snippet Explained

An Amazing Strategy to Increase Search Engine Visibility

Benefits of Dividing a Page into Several Sections

Jul 23, 2009

May 20, 2009

May 4, 2009

Search This Blog

Change Your Language

Cheap Holidays

Facebook

Popular Posts

Blog Archive

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