Sitelinks revisited

Sitelinks can be well defined as the links or sub-listings that some times appear below some websites in Google search results. These are additional links that Google sometimes generate from website contents so as to help users navigate the website. Sitelinks are generated periodically and subject to change dynamically. This is important to note that sitelinks appear only under the first listing on the first page in the Google search results. I have noticed that sitelinks for a website will be shown only if search is being made with it’s domain name (do not use domain name extensions like .com, .net, .info etc.) or the particular keyword which very much specific and refers only to that website and not for any other website.

You can view the links that are intended under the main listings. These are Google Sitelinks. Sitelinks give a good overview of the Google understanding of the website structure.

Remember that, sitelinks will appear only if website has minimum of four sitelinks and it has been noted that Google shows maximum of eight sitelinks. Google analyze the website structure and create shortcuts to save users time and allow them to find the content they are looking for. Sitelinks are completely automated and will not appear if the website structure do not allow Google algorithm to find good sitelinks or if the sitelinks for the website is irrelevant to the user’s query.

Besides website architecture, domain age is also seems to influence the sitelinks appearance as very few websites that are 6-8 months older have got the sitelinks. Only the best sites get sitelinks and help to enhance the website’s visibility and reputation.

Although the algorithms of Google like any search engines are kept secret to discourage people from manipulating the rankings, but we can still try to understand the concept of sitelinks with keen observation of the examples. I have taken some websites with sitelinks under consideration and observed some of basic similarities among them which can, in my view, might have influence over the sitelinks. These are:

1. 1.The website ranks first for the keyword(S) that generate the sitelinks listing.

2.Easily spiderable and structured navigation.

3. 3.Fairly good natural search traffic.

4. 4.Good CTR from the search results page.

5. 5.Useful outbound links.

6. 6.Quality inbound links.

7. 7.Website age (older websites seems to get sitelinks).

These factors may or may not be exactly what Google trigger to generate the sitelinks for a website but they are sure to have the website in a better reputation over the search world.

One more thing that must be refer here is that although there is no any specific criteria to generate sitelinks but Google allows us to block the sitelinks, if we think the displayed sitelinks is inappropriate or incorrect for the website.

To block a sitelink, first we have to ensure that we have verified ownership of the site. Then:

1. On the Webmaster Tools Dashboard, click the site you want.
2. Under Links, click Sitelinks. If we have sitelinks information for your site, we'll display a list of sitelinks.
3. Click Block next to the sitelink you want to remove. Please let us know why you want to block the sitelink - it will help us improve the way we generate and display sitelinks.

Once you've blocked or unblocked a sitelink, it can take some time for your changes to be visible.

Metacrawlers and Metasearch Engines

Unlike search engines, metacrawlers don't crawl the web themselves to build listings. Instead, they allow searches to be sent to several search engines all at once. The results are then blended together onto one page. Below are some of the major metacrawlers. Also see the Search Toolbars & Utilities page for metacrawler-style software that you can run from your desktop.

Some of the major meta search engines

Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com

Popular metasearch site owned by InfoSpace that sends a search to a customizable list of search engines, directories and specialty search sites, then displays results from each search engine individually.

Vivisimo
http://vivisimo.com/

Enter a search term, and Vivismo will not only pull back matching responses from major search engines but also automatically organize the pages into categories. Slick and easy to use.

Kartoo
http://www.kartoo.com

If you like the idea of seeing your web results visually, this meta search site shows the results with sites being interconnected by keywords.

Mamma
http://www.mamma.com

Founded in 1996, Mamma.com is one of the oldest meta search engines on the web. Mamma searches against a variety of major crawlers, directories and specialty search sites.

SurfWax
http://www.surfwax.com

Searches against major engines or provides those who open free accounts the ability to chose from a list of hundreds. Using the "SiteSnaps" feature, you can preview any page in the results and see where your terms appear in the document. Allows results or documents to be saved for future use.

Other Top Choices

Clusty
http://www.clusty.com

Clusty, from Vivisimo, presents both standard web search results and Vivisimo's dynamic clusters that automatically categorize results. Clusty allows you to use Vivisimo's dynamic clustering technology on ten different types of web content including material from the web, image, weblog and shopping databases.

CurryGuide
http://web.curryguide.com/

Meta search engine for the US and several European countries, as well as in various subject areas. Has ability to save your results for easy rerunning at a future point.

Excite
http://www.excite.com

Formerly a crawled-based search engine, Excite was acquired by InfoSpace in 2002 and uses the same underlying technology as the other InfoSpace meta search engines, but maintains its own portal features.

Fazzle
http://www.fazzle.com/

Fazzle offers a highly flexible and customizable interface to a wide variety of information sources, ranging from general web results to specialized search resources in a number of subject specific categories. Formerly called SearchOnline.

Gimenei
http://gimenei.com/

Gimenei queries an undisclosed number of search engines and removes duplicates from results. Its most useful feature is an advanced search form that allows you to limit your search to a specific country.

IceRocket
http://www.icerocket.com/

Meta search engine with thumbnail displays. The Quick View display, similar to what WiseNut has long offered, is cool. The service queries WiseNut, Yahoo, Teoma and then somewhat repetitively also includes Yahoo-powered MSN, AltaVista and AllTheWeb. Disclosure of search sources within the actual search results is not done, sadly. Makes it hard to know exactly where the results are coming from.

Info.com
http://www.info.com

Info.com provides results from 14 search engines and pay-per-click directories, including Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Kanoodle, LookSmart, About, Overture and Open Directory. Also offers shopping, news, eBay, audio and video search, as well as a number of other interesting features. (Review: New Metasearch Engine: Info.com Search Engine Watch Blog, Oct. 18, 2004)

InfoGrid
http://www.infogrid.com

In a compact format, InfoGrid provides direct links to major search sites and topical web sites in different categories. Meta search and news searching is also offered.

Infonetware RealTerm Search
http://www.infonetware.com

This site is primarily designed to demonstrate classification technology from Infogistics. It's a meta search engine, and it does topical classification of results, like Vivisimo. However, it is unique in that you can select several different topics, then "drill down" to see results from all of them, rather than being restricted to the results from only one topic.

Ixquick
http://www.ixquick.com/


Meta search engine that ranks results based on the number of "top 10" rankings a site receives from the various search engines.

iZito
http://www.izito.com

iZito is a meta search engine with a clever feature. Click on any listing you are interested in using the P icon next to the listing title. That "parks" the listing into your to do list. Click on the P tab, and you can see all the pages you've culled. It's an easy, handy way to make a custom result set. Also interesting is the ability to show listings in up to three columns across the screen, letting you see more results at once. (Review: iZito & Ujiko: Meta Search With Personality Search Engine Watch Blog, Sept. 29, 2004)

Jux2
http://www.jux2.com/

This search result comparison tool is cool. It allows you to search two major search engines at the same time, then see results that are found on both first, followed by results found on only one of them next. The small overlap visual tool displayed is great. I used to make examples like this to explain search engine overlap and why one search engine may not cover everything. Now I have an easy dynamic way to do this.

Meceoo
http://www.meceoo.com/

Meta search with the ability to create an "exclusion list" to block pages from particular web sites being included. For example, want to meta search only against .org sites? French version also offered.

MetaCrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com

One of the oldest meta search services, MetaCrawler began in July 1995 at the University of Washington. MetaCrawler was purchased by InfoSpace, an online content provider, in Feb. 97.

MetaEureka
http://www.metaeureka.com

Search against several major search engines and paid listings services. Offers a nice option to see Alexa info about pages that are listed.

ProFusion
http://www.profusion.com

Brings back listings from several major search engines as well as "Invisible Web" resources. Formerly based at the University of Kansas, the site was purchased by search company Intelliseek in April 2000.

Query Server
http://www.queryserver.com/web.htm

Search against major web-wide search engines, as well as major news, health, money and government search services.

Turbo10
http://turbo10.com

Turbo10 is a metasearch Engine accesses both traditional web search engines and some invisible web databases, with a very speedy interface.

Search.com
http://www.search.com

Search.com is a meta search engine operated by CNET. It offers both web-wide search and a wide variety of specialty search options. Search.com absorbed SavvySearch in October 1999. SavvySearch was one of the older metasearch services, around since May 1995 and formerly based at Colorado State University.

Ujiko
http://www.ujiko.com/

From the makers of visual meta search tool KartOO, this is a really slick service to try. Do your search, then scroll through the list. See something bad? Click the trash can icon, and the listing goes away. It's a great way to prune your results -- even better would have been if everything trashed brought up something new to look at. That would be a help for those who simply refuse to go past the first page of results.

WebCrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com

Formerly a crawled-based search engine owned by Excite, Webcrawler was acquired by InfoSpace in 2002 and uses the same underlying technology as the other InfoSpace meta search engines, but offers a fast and clean, ad-free interface.

ZapMeta
http://www.zapmeta.com

Provides a variety of ways to sort the results retrieved, plus provides interesting visualization tools and other features.

Specialty Choices
The metacrawlers listed below let you meta search in specific subject areas.

Family Friendly Search
http://www.familyfriendlysearch.com

Meta search service that queries major kid-friendly search engines.

GoFish
http://www.gofish.com

Meta search service for licensed and commercially available digital media downloads including music, movies, music videos, ringtones, mobile games and PC games, searching over 12 million media files.

Searchy.co.uk
http://www.searchy.co.uk

Searches 15 U.K. engines. The advanced search form allows you to change the order that results are presented, either by speed or manually to suit your own preferences.

Watson for the Macintosh
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/watson.html

Watson is a "Swiss Army Knife" with nineteen interfaces to web content and services -- an improvement on Sherlock, with nearly twice as many tools, including Google Searching.

All-In-One Search Pages
Unlike metacrawlers, all-in-one search pages do not send your query to many search engines at the same time. Instead, they generally list a wide-variety of search engines and allow you to search at your choice without having to go directly to that search engine.

Google Versus Yahoo Tool
http://www.langreiter.com/exec/yahoo-vs-google.html

See visually how results compare on Google versus Yahoo.

One Page MultiSearch Engines
http://www.bjorgul.com/

Clean interface lets you query major services from one page.

Proteus
http://www.thrall.org/proteus.html

Lets you easily send your search to one of several search engines. It also has links to search engine help pages.

Queryster
http://www.queryster.com

Queryster lets you quickly get results from one of several major search engines, simply by clicking an icon.

YurNet
http://www.yurnet.com

Select your search engines from the many choices offered. The results will all appear within one page, side-by-side. It's a great way to compare results, though a bit hard to read with more than two search engines selected.

How Search Engines Rank Web Pages

Search for anything using your favorite crawler-based search engine. Nearly instantly, the search engine will sort through the millions of pages it knows about and present you with ones that match your topic. The matches will even be ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Of course, the search engines don't always get it right. Non-relevant pages make it through, and sometimes it may take a little more digging to find what you are looking for. But, by and large, search engines do an amazing job.

As WebCrawler founder Brian Pinkerton puts it, "Imagine walking up to a librarian and saying, 'travel.' They’re going to look at you with a blank face."

OK -- a librarian's not really going to stare at you with a vacant expression. Instead, they're going to ask you questions to better understand what you are looking for.

Unfortunately, search engines don't have the ability to ask a few questions to focus your search, as a librarian can. They also can't rely on judgment and past experience to rank web pages, in the way humans can.

So, how do crawler-based search engines go about determining relevancy, when confronted with hundreds of millions of web pages to sort through? They follow a set of rules, known as an algorithm. Exactly how a particular search engine's algorithm works is a closely-kept trade secret. However, all major search engines follow the general rules below.

Location, Location, Location...and Frequency
One of the the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Call it the location/frequency method, for short.

Remember the librarian mentioned above? They need to find books to match your request of "travel," so it makes sense that they first look at books with travel in the title. Search engines operate the same way. Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic.

Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.

Spice In The Recipe
Now it's time to qualify the location/frequency method described above. All the major search engines follow it to some degree, in the same way cooks may follow a standard chili recipe. But cooks like to add their own secret ingredients. In the same way, search engines add spice to the location/frequency method. Nobody does it exactly the same, which is one reason why the same search on different search engines produces different results.

To begin with, some search engines index more web pages than others. Some search engines also index web pages more often than others. The result is that no search engine has the exact same collection of web pages to search through. That naturally produces differences, when comparing their results.

Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine "spamming." An example is when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page, to increase the frequency and propel the page higher in the listings. Search engines watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including following up on complaints from their users.

Off The Page Factors
Crawler-based search engines have plenty of experience now with webmasters who constantly rewrite their web pages in an attempt to gain better rankings. Some sophisticated webmasters may even go to great lengths to "reverse engineer" the location/frequency systems used by a particular search engine. Because of this, all major search engines now also make use of "off the page" ranking criteria.

Off the page factors are those that a webmasters cannot easily influence. Chief among these is link analysis. By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be "important" and thus deserving of a ranking boost. In addition, sophisticated techniques are used to screen out attempts by webmasters to build "artificial" links designed to boost their rankings.

Another off the page factor is clickthrough measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren't attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. As with link analysis, systems are used to compensate for artificial links generated by eager webmasters.

How Search Engines Work

The term "search engine" is often used generically to describe both crawler-based search engines and human-powered directories. These two types of search engines gather their listings in radically different ways.

Crawler-Based Search Engines

Crawler-based search engines, such as Google, create their listings automatically. They "crawl" or "spider" the web, then people search through what they have found.

If you change your web pages, crawler-based search engines eventually find these changes, and that can affect how you are listed. Page titles, body copy and other elements all play a role.

Human-Powered Directories

A human-powered directory, such as the Open Directory, depends on humans for its listings. You submit a short description to the directory for your entire site, or editors write one for sites they review. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted.

Changing your web pages has no effect on your listing. Things that are useful for improving a listing with a search engine have nothing to do with improving a listing in a directory. The only exception is that a good site, with good content, might be more likely to get reviewed for free than a poor site.

"Hybrid Search Engines" Or Mixed Results

In the web's early days, it used to be that a search engine either presented crawler-based results or human-powered listings. Today, it extremely common for both types of results to be presented. Usually, a hybrid search engine will favor one type of listings over another. For example, MSN Search is more likely to present human-powered listings from LookSmart. However, it does also present crawler-based results (as provided by Inktomi), especially for more obscure queries.

Stop Words

Some words are in such common usage (a, and, the) that they appear on almost every web page. It makes little sense for a search engine to index every occurrence of the word “and” on the internet – there are just too many, and they don’t mean very much. There are, in fact, a couple of hundred such “stop words.” Different search engines, naturally, use different lists.

This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use stop words in your writing. A search engine might read your page where it says “finding the truth” and ignore “the” as a stop word… but when someone searches for “finding the truth,” the search engine will take into account that the search term has a word in between “finding” and “truth.”4

So, it really doesn’t help to try to eliminate stop words from your search term list. In fact, since search engines consider word order and proximity when ranking pages, you’ve actually got a better chance of showing up for “finding the truth” if you use the words naturally, and write the phrase out.

Keyword Density

Keyword Density is the percentage of occurrence of your keywords to the text in the rest of your webpage(not including HTML code used for writing the web page).It is important for your main keywords to have the correct keyword density to rank well in Search Engines. It is one of the most critical aspects of successful search engine optimization. To improve your search engine ranking potential, your keyword density must be just right.

It has been said that the keyword density should always be between 3% and 8% but practically 2%-3% is a better to maintain otherwise pages will remove from the search index or will degrade in rankings.

The best way to increase your search engine ranking potential is to develop your keyword strategy by researching the most relevant (and most searched for) keywords or keyword phrases before you even begin building your site.


Few tips

1. Use our Search Term Suggestion Tool (powered by Overture) to research your keywords. This powerful tool will direct you to the most popular keywords for your specific business based on how many times that keyword or keyword phrase is searched for each month. You can then take that information and develop your keyword strategy based on those results.

2. Incorporate these keywords or keyword phrases in your meta tags as well as your site content. People often forget that search engines will spider the heading meta tags first because they preceed and stand out from your main site content.

3. Write keyword-rich content that not only satisfies the search engine algorithms but is equally informative for customers visiting your site. This is the most difficult part of writing your content - but also the most critical.

4. Try to write at least 300 words for each page on your site. Again, the more content you have the better chance you will have to include those all-important keywords you diligently researched and ultimately selected.

5. Too often we see content saturated with too many keywords that, as popular as they may be, just don't relate to the site itself. Avoid doing this - it will only irritate potential customers.

6. Web sites should be updated on a regular basis -- don't let them go stale. Add new products/services, update users with new information and tools, do what you can to change your content (keyword-rich content, that is!) and keep users coming back for more.

Stop Words Most Search Engines do not consider extremely common words in order to save disk space or to speed up search results. These filtered words are known as 'Stop Words'.

Below is a comprehensive list of words Ignored by Search Engines.

a
able
about
above
abroad
according
accordingly
across
actually
adj
after
afterwards
again
against
ago
ahead
ain't
all
allow
allows
almost
alone
along
alongside
already
also
although
always
am
amid
amidst
among
amongst
an
and
another
any
anybody
anyhow
anyone
anything
anyway
anyways
anywhere
apart
appear
appreciate
appropriate
are
aren't
around
as
a's
aside
ask
asking
associated
at
available
away
awfully
b
back
backward
backwards
be
became
because
become
becomes
becoming
been
before
beforehand
begin
behind
being
believe
below
beside
besides
best
better
between
beyond
both
brief
but
by
c
came
can
cannot
cant
can't
caption
cause
causes
certain
certainly
changes
clearly
c'mon
co
co.
com
come
comes
concerning
consequently
consider
considering
contain
containing
contains
corresponding
could
couldn't
course
c's
currently
d
dare
daren't
definitely
described
despite
did
didn't
different
directly
do
does
doesn't
doing
done
don't
down
downwards
during
e
each
edu
eg
eight
eighty
either
else
elsewhere
end
ending
enough
entirely
especially
et
etc
even
ever
evermore
every
everybody
everyone
everything
everywhere
ex
exactly
example
except
f
fairly
far
farther
few
fewer
fifth
first
five
followed
following
follows
for
forever
former
formerly
forth
forward
found
four
from
further
furthermore
g
get
gets
getting
given
gives
go
goes
going
gone
got
gotten
greetings
h
had
hadn't
half
happens
hardly
has
hasn't
have
haven't
having
he
he'd
he'll
hello
help
hence
her
here
hereafter
hereby
herein
here's
hereupon
hers
herself
he's
hi
him
himself
his
hither
hopefully
how
howbeit
however
hundred
i
i'd
ie
if
ignored
i'll
i'm
immediate
in
inasmuch
inc
inc.
indeed
indicate
indicated
indicates
inner
inside
insofar
instead
into
inward
is
isn't
it
it'd
it'll
its
it's
itself
i've
j
just
k
keep
keeps
kept
know
known
knows
l
last
lately
later
latter
latterly
least
less
lest
let
let's
like
liked
likely
likewise
little
look
looking
looks
low
lower
ltd
m
made
mainly
make
makes
many
may
maybe
mayn't
me
mean
meantime
meanwhile
merely
might
mightn't
mine
minus
miss
more
moreover
most
mostly
mr
mrs
much
must
mustn't
my
myself
n
name
namely
nd
near
nearly
necessary
need
needn't
needs
neither
never
neverf
neverless
nevertheless
new
next
nine
ninety
no
nobody
non
none
nonetheless
noone
no-one
nor
normally
not
nothing
notwithstanding
novel
now
nowhere
o
obviously
of
off
often
oh
ok
okay
old
on
once
one
ones
one's
only
onto
opposite
or
other
others
otherwise
ought
oughtn't
our
ours
ourselves
out
outside
over
overall
own
p
particular
particularly
past
per
perhaps
placed
please
plus
possible
presumably
probably
provided
provides
q
que
quite
qv
r
rather
rd
re
really
reasonably
recent
recently
regarding
regardless
regards
relatively
respectively
right
round
s
said
same
saw
say
saying
says
second
secondly
see
seeing
seem
seemed
seeming
seems
seen
self
selves
sensible
sent
serious
seriously
seven
several
shall
shan't
she
she'd
she'll
she's
should
shouldn't
since
six
so
some
somebody
someday
somehow
someone
something
sometime
sometimes
somewhat
somewhere
soon
sorry
specified
specify
specifying
still
sub
such
sup
sure
t
take
taken
taking
tell
tends
th
than
thank
thanks
thanx
that
that'll
thats
that's
that've
the
their
theirs
them
themselves
then
thence
there
thereafter
thereby
there'd
therefore
therein
there'll
there're
theres
there's
thereupon
there've
these
they
they'd
they'll
they're
they've
thing
things
think
third
thirty
this
thorough
thoroughly
those
though
three
through
throughout
thru
thus
till
to
together
too
took
toward
towards
tried
tries
truly
try
trying
t's
twice
two
u
un
under
underneath
undoing
unfortunately
unless
unlike
unlikely
until
unto
up
upon
upwards
us
use
used
useful
uses
using
usually
v
value
various
versus
very
via
viz
vs
w
want
wants
was
wasn't
way
we
we'd
welcome
well
we'll
went
were
we're
weren't
we've
what
whatever
what'll
what's
what've
when
whence
whenever
where
whereafter
whereas
whereby
wherein
where's
whereupon
wherever
whether
which
whichever
while
whilst
whither
who
who'd
whoever
whole
who'll
whom
whomever
who's
whose
why
will
willing
wish
with
within
without
wonder
won't
would
wouldn't
x
y
yes
yet
you
you'd
you'll
your
you're
yours
yourself
yourselves
you've
z
zero

Search Engine Optimization and Themes

"Theme" is the basis from which the site is developed.

How do themes work for you and how are you optimizing your themed sites?

What’s good though is if Yahoo pulls another Inktomi type split again someday with Google, I imagine a well themed client positioned across the board won’t feel the bump quite so severally as those who are following traditional engine optimization strategies.

It doesn't mean that we all have to theme our sites or that engines are drawing from that source for their rankings. It's just suggestion that creating a site based on a theme theory may open a new avenue for placement and new avenues for searchers to find you while at the same time helping to build the sites link popularity and presence.

It seems themes are like pyramids. You put your main general topic at the top and then support it with subtopics in the next level down. The support those subtopics with subtopics in the third level down etc.

Some questions that might be considered regarding a web-site in order to determine their needs of high search engine rankings. Also this will help me in understanding their website promotion as a whole.

How important is achieving a high search engine ranking?
If their web-site is a small part of your total marketing program and you have a strong brand name recognition, search engine ranking may not be critical. If you plan to use your web-site as a significant portion of your marketing efforts, ranking may have top priority.

What are your keywords?
Keywords are the words that they use to lead visitors to your site. Keywords would generally include your company name, brand name, and any other words specific to your company or product. Keywords should also reflect the mind-set of your customers, their needs and opinions, and how they would search for the products and services that you offer.

What is your sites theme?
To determine your sites "theme" we must first understand the content within its pages. Most sites content displays detailed information about their products/services as well as company information. Analyzing the all the text from every page we can compile a list of words that are relevant to their site.

How to determine a theme?
With the list of terms extracted from the sites content we can then drill down to a theme. First, by removing all of the "stop words" we create a list of marketable words to work with.

First we have to compare words that are synonyms and decide witch ones are being search with at the search engines, and remove then ones that are not.
We can also remove words that are common to each other in nature of definition.
We then need to categorize the words that are left and group them in categories that I have predefined from sites that use categories.

Once we have determined the "themes" we can then build multiple sites each one targeting a single category.

By using this technique we can create more effective and relevant sites for the client and the search engine users.

The whole Themes theory is to look at the site as a whole and compartmentalize it. Start with broad content (1 keyword) and work your way down to the specific keywords you want to target. Then link to the topics above and below, but not across, to reinforce the pages with link text and insite link popularity.
The idea of themes are great for everyone the SE's get an optmized site for each specific topic and the user get a more relevant return.

Keyword Research

After making your website more search engine friendly at the design time, now The next step is to establish your best search terms (keywords) or better phrases. This is a very important phase of search engine optimization. Keywords are the heart to effective Internet searches. Whether optimizing a web site or searching for a hard-to-find item, consider tapping resources to locate a variety of keywords. Just go for what you THINK are your best keywords and you may well regret it afterwards, when you find most searchers do not use the search term you thought was good.

'keyword selection'is the most critical element of any search engine optimization campaign.the keywords and phrases you select to describe your site within your META tags and body text can make or break your listings in the search engines.Even sites that have excellent rankings will not benefit if those rankings are for unsuitable keywords.

So, be careful while selecting the keywords and phrases for your site, remember to select search terms that describe your products and services in the most logical, simple and specific way. By doing so you'll not only increase the search engine traffic to your site, but you'll ensure your visitors are highly qualified to buy your products and services when they arrive. Research your keywords properly and you are halfway home. Identify keywords and phrases that are relevant to the products,

services, or information you are promoting or searching for. Do you know for example what users are typing into search engine boxes to find sites with similar or the same content your site provides? Do you know what two and three word combinations are most commonly being used and have relevance to your site? Do you know how many competing pages there are for each of your main keywords? Which keywords will bring you the best visit/sale conversions? What keywords your competitors are targeting? There are essentially 3 main methods you can use to establish the best keywords for a given web site.

1. Make a public compaign over search terms. Just try to get some words or phrases that general people mostly use while searching for product or services that you provide. Do it within your known fellows. Than collect the results from everyone and you can normally see clearly what most peoples had in their mind for the keywords relating to your site. This method is particularly useful if you have plenty of people to ask. The more the better really. Ideal for companies with more than a handful of employees. You will commonly see keywords that you would never have thought of yourself and it gives you a great start on your keyword selection process. Studies have shown that 65% of the replies will be 2 words or more combinations. This is good news, I'll tell you why later on this blog.

2. One of the best ways to get ideas for keywords, is to analyze your direct competitors pages. This doesn't mean you simply copy and paste your competitors keyword meta tags into your own site! Also be VERY careful not to use trademarked names.

You can best find your competition websites by searching with what you believe to be your own top two keywords in your favorite search engine and taking a look at the source code of the top 5 web sites in the results. Pay special attention to the contents of the title tag and of course the keyword and description meta tags. These should help you get some keyword ideas.

Successful companies know their competitors.So, Analyze your competitors websites in depth.

3. There are online resources that assist in the process of keyword research and selection. Generally through the use of large keyword databases holding the number of searches for any given term over a specific time frame. Normally a month or two worth of keywords. These databases can be very useful as they not only provide the number of searches but also help with synonyms and common keyword combinations relating to your specific theme. There is one particular company in the UK called Rivergold Associates Ltd. who offer a service called wordtracker. There are also other free keyword databases which I will provive you later on INTERNET RESEARCH CELL.

Local Search Engine Optimization

As the fastest growing vertical in search, many people are now starting to recognize the value of local search engine optimization can have on their site traffic. Also known as regional search, it's basically geo-targeting your audience when they search.

Local search works best for the service provider, or a retailer that has numerous locations. While the search volume won't be as great as a non-regional phrase, the person who reaches your site will be a more targeted visit and most likely ready to convert.

Another happy accident in local search is that for sites that are well optimized may also pick up rankings in mobile search.

Here are some tips in order to rank for local seo:

*Be sure to have your location(s) full address.
*If you have a regional number, list that as well since some people start with an area code.
*Be sure to include driving directions to your location.
*Use a mapping service to display your location.
*Have pictures of your locations and name them with your street address.
*Make sure your site appears in any regional directory that might be online.
*If you can afford it, get listed in your local yellow pages.
*Place the regions you want to rank for in your page titles.
*Get text links that contain the regional phrase

Most of these techniques are are not only common sense, but also good web design.

Pay Per Click Marketing

Advertising investments of all kinds, from billboards to print ads to television spots to pay per click marketing, all share a common trait. They exist in the public eye for as long as a company is willing to pay for them. Stop paying, and they disappear. True, a print ad may continue to exist for a while after it runs (until the newspaper or magazine gets recycled, at least), and a television spot may get attention if it wins any awards (or winds up on YouTube). But a pay per click marketing campaign will simply vanish as soon as the budget is cut. This means that when a company reduces its advertising spend in this arena, it loses all of its exposure immediately.

What does this really mean? Well, for one, it means that figuring out the average per click costs of a pay per click marketing campaign makes sense because everything happens in real time. A pay per click campaign will begin nearly instantly after a company signs up and pays, and it will vanish just as quickly when the company ceases payment. In other words, there is a clear delineation of when a campaign begins and when it ends.

This delineation is important, because it excludes many other potential factors that muddy the waters when you try to apply this same ROI analysis to a campaign created by a search engine optimization company.

Prepare Your Feed

A feed is a file on your webserver just like any other webpage except that it contains pointers to recent updates. Instead of ending in .html or .htm, most feed files end in .xml or .rdf. Once this file is in place, most blogging software packages update this file automatically with pointers to your latest content. This file is then fetched by feed-reading software so that when you publish new content on your site, it automatically pushed to your subscribers. Best of all, it's incredibly easy to set up a feed. In fact, you may already have one.

Popular blog-hosting services such as Blogger and Typepad create feeds for you, as does blogging software such as MovableType and Wordpress. And many others offer built-in tools to help you publish and update your feed. Your feed will be one of two types: RSS ("Really Simple Syndication") or Atom. Both do essentially the same thing.

Too much SEO

There are certain rules and guidelines to SEO. Black hat and white hat aside, much of SEO is done through keyword optimization on the site as well as generating links back to the site from other sources. But according to some, there can be too much of a good thing. If you are so focused on producing pages of keyword rich content that your site becomes repetitive or pattern based, you might be throwing up a flare to Google and other search engines that your site is essentially spam.

Spam SitesGoogle penalizes spam sites when it finds them (and feels like it.) If Google feels like your site follows the pattern of spam sites, you will most likely find your site and all your hard work booted off results pages. Characteristics of spam sites include highly repetitive pages often created as duplicates of a template to increase the amount of content on the site. Content is keyword laden gibberish, and the overall offerings of the site contain little or no value to visitors. Why create a spam site? To have visitors click away from it, preferably onto your Adsense or other ads cluttering up the perimeter of the page. Or to sell paid links – many paid links.
Avoiding SpamThere is nothing wrong with an Adsense based website. Likewise there is nothing wrong with templates and cloned pages, providing you are offering legitimate and preferably unique content on each. To keep your site about the line, be sure you are steering clear of these common spam site indicators:

Cloned Pages – If all of your pages are similar or exactly the same save a single keyword or phrase, it’s obvious you were cutting corners and have nothing unique to offer on those pages. If your pages aren’t ready, keep them offline until you have something meaningful to say on each.
Duplicate Content – Articles and even site designs that are found elsewhere online make your site look like spam or at least not valuable to visitors. Don’t buy PRL articles and leave them unchanged. Don’t fill your site with free content, and don’t buy a premade site and leave it exactly as it is.

Paid Links – If you have obvious paid links on your site such as in the footer or sides of the pages, you might be in danger. The same is true for incoming links. If all your incoming links are through the same keyword phrase and the same source or type of source, it looks very suspicious.

Excessive Keyword Repetition – Yes, keyword optimization is important, but there is such as things as too much of a good thing. Ideal keyword saturation is between 2-8%. But too many keywords can be a bad thing. If your saturation levels are high, consider reworking your content to give it a more natural feel.

Lowercase Letters - Finally, it appears punctuation matters. Be sure to capitalize links, titles, and subheadings on your site. Lack of punctuation indicates lack of effort which indicates a site of little or no value.

Flash File Optimization

Flash File Optimization:

Flash gets a bad rap, undeserved in my opinion, for harming search engine visibility. Why are search engine optimization (SEO) practitioners concerned about Flash, and how can we SEO Flash content? The main problem with Flash is that search engines don't yet understand it, and probably won't in the near future. Flash includes logic and can take input from the visitor, but search engines are designed to handle static content. Flash is actually a running program, so it's much harder to analyze than plain HTML code.

The leading web development tool, Adobe Dreamweaver, embeds Flash in web pages with code that fails to provide accessibility for visitors or search spiders who cannot handle Flash. Instead of using the default code, my recommendation is to hand code Flash pages with primary HTML content, and a method of automatically testing for Flash support before attempting to insert the movie. The primary HTML content can be search optimized as if the Flash wasn't there, while the Flash provides an enhanced user experience for those visitors who have the necessary Flash player.

The April 11, 2006 release of Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer (IE) browser includes an update ("Eolas") that prevents ActiveX-based Flash controls from working properly. When the user attempts to interact with the Flash, a tool tip appears, stating, "Click to activate and use this control." That extra click is an annoyance. Fortunately, the programming technique described in this article solves the Flash Eolas problem.

Requirements for Successful Use of Flash:

Flash animation is a great way to present complex content because it allows the designer to put more content in a finite space, without wrecking page design. For technology sites, Flash is an ideal way to present a slide show or movie explaining a complex product. At the other end of the spectrum, art and entertainment sites have a real need for multimedia, and Flash is the perfect solution.
When using Flash, we'd like to satisfy each of these objectives:
Clean design
Search Engine Optimization
Accessibility for a wide variety of browsers, including screen readers and mobile phones
Code validation and standards compliance
Correct functionality with IE

SEO Flash Programming:

My recommended Flash SEO method uses a DIV with search-engine-accessible, primary content, and a Javascript function called SWFObject() to detect when browsers are capable of viewing Flash. When an appropriate version of Flash player is present, the Javascript manipulates the page's document object model (DOM) to replace the primary content with the Flash movie. Most search engine spiders can't handle Flash, so they will elect to view the primary content. The primary content may contain links, headings, styled text, images—anything we can add to an ordinary HTML page. With SEO copyediting and coding skills applied to the primary content, Flash becomes a non-issue.
Flash accessibility programming isn't spamming, as long as the primary content and the visible movie are essentially the same. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) specifically states that multimedia content should have an alternative representation available. Accessibility programming creates the benefit of presenting visual information without losing the visitors and search engines who depend upon textual content.
As of July 2007, I discussed this method with Dan Crow of Google. He warned that this programming method could draw attention because of the possibility for abuse. If you use this method, make sure the alternative content is a faithful representation of the Flash content, and avoid combining this with other coding methods that could be abused. While this SEO method is not abusive, it is aggressive because there is a small risk that the search engines could mistakenly decide that the primary content is a form of cloaking.

SWFObject and UFO:

SWFObject is a small Javascript file used for embedding Adobe Flash content. The script can detect the Flash plug-in in all major web browsers (on Mac and PC) and is designed to make embedding Flash movies as easy as possible. It is also very search engine friendly, degrades gracefully, can be used in valid HTML and XHTML 1.0 documents*, and is forward compatible, so it should work for years to come.

* Pages sent as text/html, not application/xhtml+xml.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization -- the process of making a site "search engine-friendly" — is probably the most important aspect of website design. Many, many commercial websites are designed and set up by people who know little or nothing about search engine optimization — how to give the search engines what they want to see when they index your site. This long page contains the information (or links to it) that they SHOULD know about optimizing a website for the search engines.

The most important thing to know about search engines is that SEARCH ENGINES ONLY INDEX TEXT. Make that your mantra while designing and optimizing your website. They don't index images, and they don't index Flash well. Although there are some exceptions to that rule, as search engines are becoming more intelligent and more able to index files such as PDFs and the captions of graphic files, and some of the text in a Flash file — for all practical purposes just remember that rule: Search engines only index text and you won't go too far wrong in search engine optimization.

There are a lot of small things you can do when designing or re-designing a site to get better treatment in the search engines — and every little bit helps in the end result. There is no one magic thing you can do to get top placement at a search engine for your website. But you can do a bunch of small things that will add up to excellent placement in the search engines for the key words you select.

You can and should optimize more than one page of your website for the search engines; it's not something you do on just one page and skip doing on the rest of the site. You can optimize your home page for your single most important keyword phrase and other pages for different key word phrases. If you sell different products on different pages, each page can be optimized for that particular product. That's a good way to organize it. We recommend search engine optimization on at least a dozen main pages of your site, for the best effect. Don't bother optimizing pages on which you do not have public content, or pages such as a "contact us" or "privacy policy" or "copyright info" pages. (No one will be searching for your copyright info.) The pages you want to optimize are the pages you want people to find — those pages with content about your service or product--whatever you are selling.