Will automated submission to search engines hurt your site or hurt rankings – search engine optimization tip feb 22 2004

Automated submission are not good, Todays search engines are sophisticated crawler based search engines and they find sites based on links pointing to that site, Better and more the links better search engines will crawl the site,

Automated submission rarely hurt your site, Search engines understand that even your competitor can submit your URLs repeatedly to search engines, So automated submission rarely hurts, but we have to avoid automated submissions, Just for self satisfaction we can do a manual submission and leave it to search engines to find the site, crawl it, index it and rank,

Keep building links to your sites definitely all search engine crawlers will find your site,

Avoid automated search engine submissions,

SEO Blog Team,

Subdomains or sub-folders which is better for search engine optimization? SEO tip – Monday – feb 21 2005

Sub-domains or sub-folders for search engines, This has been an important questions among forums,

In our point of view to build a big quality site sub folders are better, search engines usually treat sub domains as different sites, Subdomains and subfolders use completely different standards,

A subdomain acts as a different site, places where sub domains are useful,

1. Say suppose you want to start a site completely unrelated to your existing site, but you dont want to buy new hosting or use some other domain, that time subdomains serve a very good purpose, if your site is real-estate.yourbrand.com then you can start a completely different topic site saying cosmetics.yourbrand.com here real estate site will talk about real estate and cosmetics will talk about cosmetic items,

2. Also if you are a free hosting provider it is will be costly process to give away domain hosting, so lots of free hosting companies give sub domain hosting, some sites like freeservers, netfirms, tripod etc give free sub domains, since sub domains are treated completely different sites people can use it freely without any problems,.

3. If your organization is an affiliate, subsidiary, or chapter of a national or international organization, you might ask the headquarters if you can get a subdomain within the organization’s domain; if you can, this would save you the InterNIC registration fee (subdomains don’t cost anything to register) as well as give your organization an address that indicates its affiliation.

4. One more thing to note is that, if you use cookies in your site, they only work within one domain. For security and privacy purposes, browsers will not transmit cookies to any site in a different domain from the one that set the cookie. They can be shared across subdomains and hosts within a domain, but not from one domain to another.

5. Subdomains is appropriate, especially if you have a domain name that has a high level of brand recognition, For example sites like google, excite, yahoo etc use subdomains to show diversity among their sites,

subfolders are always considered part of a site,

For example

here there are two subfolders, Both those subfolders talk completely about different topics, research subfolder talks about all research done by google, their research materials etc,

Services subfolder talks about all services provided by google.com, those they talk about completely different areas they virtually stay on the same site, So they literally belong to the same site, this type of division helps identify a site being an authority,

For better search engine ranking and becoming an authority site in search engines we recommend using subfolders than sub domains, Some major disadvantage of sub domains are subdomains are subject to a lot of spamming, Lots of spammers create 100s of subdomains for lots of keywords and just manipulate the search engine results,

because of this search engines frown upon these type of sites slightly, So better go for subfolders if you want to run a quality site,

SEO Blog Team,

Is frames a hindrance for search engines, Seo tip feb 20 2005

Search engines have difficulty indexing framed sites, We seo people recommend not to build framed sites, Frames can help navigation of large sites but they are not search engine friendly, You can use frames to load a third party sites as well as any page inside your site, This is one reason search engines stay away from indexing contents inside a frame,

Those contents may not necessarily be from your site it can come from any site,

Say suppose your site is built in frames and you don’t want to rebuilt them, best way to get some content crawled is to add the contents in a noframes tag,

these tags helps the search engine to identify frames and index content inside the no frames tag,

If you want best search engine ranking avoid frames totally and design sites which render proper html to the browser, Whether it is a dynamic site or static site proper rendering of html matters, Search engine crawlers are just simple browsers like netscape or firefox,

If you have a framed site we at search engine genie will help remove it and optimize it for better search engine rankings, Contact us if you want to get rid of your site from frames,

SEO Blog Team,

Does Off-topic inbound links cause problem to your site or does search engines ignore them? – Search engine optimization tip feb 19 2005

Many of us have this problem with offtopic inbound links, Some people think off-topic links are bad for a site, The fact that is not the case, Internet is a huge network of websites, Any site can link to anysite that is just a simple rule of thumb,

For example if I run an ice cream site and my friend runs a real estate site is it wrong to link to my friend’s site recommending his services to my visitors, Nope, Infact Seos or search engine optimizers are the ones worried about off-topic inbound links, Some misguided webmasters, site owners also worry about off topic links,

From Search Engine Genie team’s point of view there is nothing wrong in getting off topic links for a site, Just get them natural not artificial by link buying, Our site gets a lot of natural backlinks from various sites simply for quality contents do that for your site too, Attract people to link to your site,

Search engines today are not sophisticated enough to identify quality or related inbound links, If they ever think of doing it, they have to spend a lot of on it and also it will use up a lot of resources for them,

Best rule
Dont get too many sitewide offtopic links,
Dont go for too many unrelated links,

SEO Blog team,

Http list of header status Important tip of the header status of a site – seo tip friday 18 feb 2005

list of HTTP status :-

100 Continue

The client SHOULD continue with its request. This interim response is used to inform the client that the initial part of the request has been received and has not yet been rejected by the server.

101 Switching Protocols

The server understands and is willing to comply with the client’s request, via the Upgrade message header field (section 14.42), for a change in the application protocol being used on this connection

200 OK
The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request

GET an entity corresponding to the requested resource is sent in the response;
HEAD the entity-header fields corresponding to the requested resource are sent in the response without any message-body;
POST an entity describing or containing the result of the action;
TRACE an entity containing the request message as received by the end server.

201 Created

The request has been fulfilled and resulted in a new resource being created.

202 Accepted

The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed.

203 Non-Authoritative Information

The returned metainformation in the entity-header is not the definitive set as available from the origin server, but is gathered from a local or a third-party copy.

204 No Content

The server has fulfilled the request but does not need to return an entity-body, and might want to return updated metainformation.

205 Reset Content

The server has fulfilled the request and the user agent SHOULD reset the document view which caused the request to be sent.

206 Partial Content

The server has fulfilled the partial GET request for the resource.

300 Multiple Choices

The requested resource corresponds to any one of a set of representations, each with its own specific location, and agent- driven negotiation information (section 12) is being provided so that the user (or user agent) can select a preferred representation and redirect its request to that location.

301 Moved Permanently

The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URIs.

302 Found

The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.

303 See Other

The response to the request can be found under a different URI and SHOULD be retrieved using a GET method on that resource.

304 Not Modified

If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code.

305 Use Proxy

The requested resource MUST be accessed through the proxy given by the Location field.

306 (Unused)

The 306 status code was used in a previous version of the specification, is no longer used, and the code is reserved.

307 Temporary Redirect

The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.

400 Bad Request

The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.

401 Unauthorized

The request requires user authentication.

402 Payment Required

403 Forbidden

The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it.

404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

405 Method Not Allowed

The method specified in the Request-Line is not allowed for the resource identified by the Request-URI. The response MUST include an Allow header containing a list of valid methods for the requested resource.

406 Not Acceptable

The resource identified by the request is only capable of generating response entities which have content characteristics not acceptable according to the accept headers sent in the request.

407 Proxy Authentication Required

This code is similar to 401 (Unauthorized), but indicates that the client must first authenticate itself with the proxy.

408 Request Timeout

The client did not produce a request within the time that the server was prepared to wait. The client MAY repeat the request without modifications at any later time.

409 Conflict

The request could not be completed due to a conflict with the current state of the resource.

410 Gone

The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known.

411 Length Required

The server refuses to accept the request without a defined Content- Length.

412 Precondition Failed

The precondition given in one or more of the request-header fields evaluated to false when it was tested on the server.

413 Request Entity Too Large

The server is refusing to process a request because the request entity is larger than the server is willing or able to process. The server MAY close the connection to prevent the client from continuing the request.

414 Request-URI Too Long

The server is refusing to service the request because the Request-URI is longer than the server is willing to interpret.

415 Unsupported Media Type

The server is refusing to service the request because the entity of the request is in a format not supported by the requested resource for the requested method.

416 Requested Range Not Satisfiable

A server SHOULD return a response with this status code if a request included a Range request-header field (section 14.35), and none of the range-specifier values in this field overlap the current extent of the selected resource, and the request did not include an If-Range request-header field.

417 Expectation Failed

The expectation given in an Expect request-header field (see section 14.20) could not be met by this server, or, if the server is a proxy, the server has unambiguous evidence that the request could not be met by the next-hop server.

500 Internal Server Error

The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.
10.5.2

501 Not Implemented

The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.

502 Bad Gateway

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, received an invalid response from the upstream server it accessed in attempting to fulfill the request.

503 Service Unavailable

The server is currently unable to handle the request due to a temporary overloading or maintenance of the server.

504 Gateway Timeout

The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response from the upstream server specified by the URI (e.g. HTTP, FTP, LDAP) or some other auxiliary server (e.g. DNS) it needed to access in attempting to complete the request.

505 HTTP Version Not Supported

The server does not support, or refuses to support, the HTTP protocol version that was used in the request message.

SEO Blog Team,

Keywords in domain name do the help ? Search engine optimization tip Thursday feb 17 2005

Lots of people in SEO industry are still worried about having keywords in their domain names, So are they worth having it, NO,

In our opinion best domain name is a domain name good for the users, Usually keyword domain names ar hyphenated and they don’t have good value from users, These days search engines place so little value on keywords in domain names it is just a negligible factor,

There are more important factors than just keywords in domain name, Keywords in domain name help if you are spammer, Say if a spammer wants to do automated blog comment spam and guest book spam he might not always get the backlinks with the anchor text he expected, that time if the keyword is in domain name search engines give value to them,

For legitimate search engine optimization keyword hyphenated domain names are a waste of time and effort, Best we recommend select a domain name best your brand and business, Keyword domains are a thing of the past don’t worry about keyword rich domain names unless you are spammer who want to spam search engines,

We hate spam and we hate people who do that,

SEO Blog Team,

Is sitemap necessary for a site? Search engine optimization seo tip wednesday February 16 2005,

Site map is a term coined and used for a site to show a list of important pages of a site, To avoid the homepage or any other page look cluttered sitemaps are created and connected to an important page of the site, Mostly it is connected to the homepage of a site,

There has been various debates across various forums whether a sitemap is essential for a site, As an opinion of search engine genie we suggest adding a site map to your site, Site maps help in various ways both for visiting search engines and regular visitors,

Some benefits of sitemaps on a site,

1. Users wont get lost of your site if you run a big site, If you connect your important pages in your site map users can navigate easily to any page listed in the sitemap and return to the main page without loosing their path,

2. For large sites it is difficult to navigate deeper and deeper, A good sitemap prevents this and users can navigate to any page without getting lost, Also most of the inner pages will come more closer to the homepage and this helps effectively in good navigation,

3. Not all search engine crawlers crawl a site deeper and deeper, Some crawlers like yahoo slurp tend to go into a site only to a certain extent, For crawlers like slurp pages shouldnt be buried deeper, A sitemap will combat this problem, When a site map is used pages will come closer to top level and this help yahoo’s crawler slurp to reach inner pages too,

4. Also suppose if a site has javascript menus, DHTM menus and other menus that are not search engine friendly a sitemap will definitely help in better crawling of a site, A sitemap with text only links to inner pages is very much useful,

5. Sitemaps also help in better spreading of a pagerank, Pagerank google’s trademark algorithm

Site maps are good for large sites as well as small sites, Hope our tips on sitemaps will give your site a better exposure to search engines,

SEO Blog team,

Keyword research an important step towards effective search engine optimization – Seo tip tuesday feb 15 2005

keyword research is a vital part of search engine optimization, Targeting wrong keywords for a site will put all efforts in vain,

An effective keyword research and finding the right keywords will bring in targeted traffic to a site, Targeted traffic means good business,

Points to keep in mind when doing keyword research,

1. Compare the keyword suggestions of overture, wordtracker and adwords and see which are most searched and most popular,

2. Try running an adwords or Overture PPC campaign and check which keywords convert best,

3. Don’t try optimizing for all keywords, eliminate keywords which are too low competitive and which are bound to bring very less business,

4. Always research for both singular and plural keyword phrases/keywords,

5. Don’t go for spelling errors for a legitimate business site, it makes the site look bad,

6. Apart from the suggestion tools suggestion on the popularity of a keyword phrase we can analyze the competitiveness of a keyword/keyword phrase by checking the number of pages having that term in google/yahoo/msn, checking the number of pages added in title using allintitle: command, checking the targeted keyword distribution by using allintext: command in google, this command will reveal all pages having that keyword phrase on the page,

7. Short list keywords which are good for optimization, Separate words that are useless, words that are too authoritative and too competitive, Optimize for lower competitive keywords first and then move towards competitive keywords,

Hope the above tips are useful for your search engine optimization keyword research process,

Some tools for effective keyword research,

https://adwords.google.com/select/main?cmd=KeywordSandbox
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
http://www.wordtracker.com/

SEO Blog Team,

Meta Description tags – Meta keywords tag Do they help in search engine rankings Search engine optimization tip Monday 14th february 2005

Meta description and meta keywords tags are used in olden days when the search engines didnt have crawler capabilities and cannot crawl a whole site, They used to read only those tags and evaluate a sites ranking based on that, Later search engine spammers got aware of this tactic and started abusing these tags a lot, they just stuffed keywords in these tags,

Then crawler based search engines came into existence and they started seeing much more on a site than just just meta tags, they say onpage factors including alt tags, visible text on the page etc, Slowly the use of meta tags by search engines have become lesser,

But not all top search engines completely dropped using these days, Various top search engines use various meta tags for different reasons,

Yahoo uses meta description tag as part of their ranking algorithm, they see the keywords in that and use it with all the other factors of a site, similarly MSN uses meta description tag in their ranking algorithm, We have proved the above in our tests across these search engines, Also we have proved yahoo and MSN doesn’t use the meta keywords tag,

When it comes to google, NO they don’t use meta description tags,

How we tested for google??

We made up some bizarre phrases and added them to the meta description tag, only our site has those phrases, so when we search for those phrases in search engines we don’t see the result coming up so mostly google don’t use the meta description tags in their algorithm, But google uses snippets of meta description, google indexes the tag and during query time if the relevant words are present in the meta tags they just fetch it and display it, So it never hurts to add the relevant phrases to the page in the description tag, Keywords tag is completely ignored so we can just forget it,

SEO Blog Team,

Froogle an important shoppnig search engine – Search engine optimization tip Sunday 13th february 2005

Some tips on froogle can be found on our froogle section of the site,

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/froogle-feeds.htm

What google says about froogle:-)

Froogle is a new service from Google that makes it easy to find information about products for sale online. By focusing entirely on product search, Froogle applies the power of Google’s search technology to a very specific task: locating stores that sell the item you want to find and pointing you directly to the place where you can make a purchase.

To use Froogle, look for the Froogle Product Search box on the advanced search page or go directly to the Froogle home page. Type in the name of the item you want to find and click on “Froogle Search.” Almost instantly, you’ll see photos of relevant products and links to the stores that sell them. Or you may choose to browse through the merchandise categories listed on Froogle’s home page until you find exactly the item you want to buy.

As with all other Google search results, Froogle ranks store sites based only on their relevance to the search terms you’ve entered. Google does not accept payment for placement within our actual search results, and advertising that appears to the right of Froogle search results is always clearly identified with the label “Sponsored Links.”