Do you need a Robots.txt file for search engines?? Search Engine Optimization Tip 11 February 11th Friday 2005

Robots.txt is a text file placed on the root of the server to tell the search engine crawlers that there are restrictions for the crawlers in crawling the targeted site,

We can perform various tasks with robots.txt, some of them are prevent search engine crawlers from crawling the site, stop crawlers from specific pages/directories etc,

Robots.txt is not necessary for better search engine crawling, it will be good if an empty robots.txt text file is uploaded to the root, that way you can prevent 404 errors when crawlers request fetching the robots file,

Robots.txt file is not for users, it is only for search engines so nothing will be affected if there is no file, But adding one wont make any harm, An empty robots file will be nothing wrong in that,

keep visiting for new tips,

301 redirect to conserve pagerank and distribute proper link popularity , Search Engine Optimization Tip 10 February 10th thursday 2005

301 redirect is the most effective way for telling the search engine crawlers that a particular page is moved, For example if you want to drop a old domain and create a new domain then you are bound to loose all link popularity of the old domain, For new domain you have to create link popularity from scratch,
with 301 redirect we can tell then search engine crawlers that the page has moved to a new location and that the link popularity of the old site or old page should be transferred to the new page or site,
A simple way of creating a 301 redirect from a page to a new page is
redirect 301 / http://www.anysite.com”

since we cannot post the whole tip here due to server issues we are attaching it here Please read the 301 redirect tip in this text file

Search Engine Optimization Tip 9 – Writing articles an ultimate way of building free links, February 9th Wednesday 2005

Contents are called spider food, Search engines are basically blind browsers they dont see your flash , DHML, or fancy javascript they only see visible text, anchor text etc, Contents play a vital role for a site,

There are various ways to build free links, One best way is to write article about your industry, Bloggers, message boards forums etc pick well written articles, Also allowing articles to be republished with a back link is an other great way of link popularity, when you distribute an article make sure it reads well,

Use article submission softwares to submit your articles to various good resources,

wait for more tips tomorrow,

SEO Blog team,

Search Engine Optimization Tip 8 – Tips for buying text links, February 8th Tuesday 2005

Tips for buying text links, text links have become a vital part of off page search engine optimization when it comes to search engines, Google’s foundation algorithm was built around links, every search engine treats links as an important factor in ranking sites, Google relevant anchor text links from quality sites matters a lot in search engine ranking algorithms,

Now there are lot of link broker sites / link auction sites out there, textlinkbrokers.com , text-link-ads.com , textlinkbrokerage.com , linkage.com , easytools.org, linkworth.com etc, Though these company sells links on sites which are well established in business there are some drawbacks too, we have to be careful on what basis we buy links, here are some useful tips on link buying,

First check the URL of the site where your link will be placed see how good their site is where they get all their link popularity, whether that site is truly a valuable site for users or just a useless site, Check to make sure you will get some traffic from buying links from their site, Check their back links. Check to see how many pages they have indexed. Check the web archives pages and see how their site used to look and how they improved their business,

Always try buying relevant links, though search engines don’t have the capabilities now to relate the source of links to the target site in future we never know search engines might move more semantic and sophisticated and they will be capable in detecting relevancy in a much better was, so it is always good to buy relevant links, Also relevant links brings good targeted traffic which might in turn bring some good business for you,

Vary your anchor text in incoming links; having same anchor text in all inbound links will trigger some sort of penalty in search engines. Though search engines haven’t implemented any sort of filters like that, we might never know what future holds, so it is better to shuffle anchor in inbound links,

Don’t buy links based on Toolbar pagerank, Toolbar pagerank is not an absolute measure of the quality of a site, A sites quality is determined only by judging the value ability of the resource, A site can easily gain PR8 but that doesn’t mean that site is a quality site,

Track your paid links referrals and the impact on your anchor text popularity for your target term. If your link doesn’t send quality traffic and doesn’t work with search engines it is best to try an different anchor text on a different site, Best is to stop buying links on sites which doesn’t send any value when it comes to search engines and visitors,

Buying site wide links are good for traffic but not good for search engines, Search engines are not too comfortable when you get site wide links, Best option is to get links only from some pages of the linking site,

Avoid buying links from pages with too many outbound links to other sites, This type of tactic typically looks like a Link farm (Definition: A set of web pages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a web site. This is done in order to increase link popularity and search engine rankings. Link farms usually require a reciprocal link from sites seeking listings. Link farms are a known spam tactic and sites that participate in them are likely to be penalized or banned from the major search engines. ),

Avoid buying links from sites that link out to Viagra, spam pharmacy sites, porn sites, phentermine and spam drug sites,

Avoid buying links as a package from link brokers, usually packages has bad links packed within some good links, those bad links will never be sold and those brokers just include them as package, so beware of those scam tactics, If you want to buy a package make sure all sites listed in your package are legitimate sites and not sites built solely for selling links,

Hope the above tips will help in buying quality text links,

More to come, Keep visiting everyday,

SEO BLOG TEAM.

Search Engine Optimization Tip 7 – Why a Dmoz listing is important for a site??, February 7th Monday 2005

Dmoz.org as we all know the largest human edited directory on the web, There are more than 4 millions sites listed and more than 66,777 editors edit over 590,000 categories, Dmoz is really huge, Also Dmoz is an ultimate starting point of crawling for search engines like yahoo, MSN, google, Gigablast, exalead etc, These search engines like sites listed in dmoz and there is always a slight edge over the normal ranking in dmoz,

There are various good points to be listed in dmoz,

1. 100s of mirror sites use Dmoz RDF file to create their own directory, so one link from dmoz is equal to 1000 links from all the sites which use dmoz RDF including a link from the google directory which is a RDF dump of Dmoz,

2. Dmoz is called the best expert directory and yahoo has made it clear it definetely like sites listed in dmoz, Google also feels sites listed in dmoz as authority and gives a small plus for that site,

3. Dmoz data is used by the google directory and google directory is an important listing, google directory shows the pagerank display next to it and sites listed there can check their pagerank values and how their site is performing by checking the categories where their site is listed,

4. Dmoz directory listings perform well in search engines, dmoz categories rank in various places so they get good search engine traffic and all those traffic are returned to the sites listed in that category, so a good top level category listing in dmoz will give good targeted traffic, Though the traffic is not huge it does drive some useful traffic,

5. Dmoz categories have good pagerank, Those pagerank is inherited from their root level pagerank, Dmoz usually has pagerank 9 and more of the top level categories have pagerank range from 4 to 8, Google whose foundation algorithm which was built around pagerank likes links from dmoz categories which has high pagerank,

6. Dmoz links are themed links, those links originate from relevant pages and it is very good when it comes to related pages,

7. Good anchor text from an expert/authority site, If you get a good anchor text when listed in dmoz it is a very good boost for that particular keyword or phrase,

Some draw backs with dmoz,

1. Takes any where between 2 weeks to 2 years for a listing,

2. Many categories dont have editors though higher level editors edit lower level categories it is a slow process,

3. Difficulty in finding status, Except resource-zone.com there are no good ways to find the status of your submission,

There are not many drawbacks with dmoz, A dmoz listing is very good for all sites, though it is not the only solution it is a vital solution for a site, So submit a good site and wait to get listed,

SEO Blog Team,

Brazilian Hackers hack into seorank.com an online search engine optimization and our rival,

Brazilian hackers hack into a search engine optimization site seorank.com, They replaced the homepage with their own version,

the following message was displayed on the screen,

Un-Root Acredita em um Mundo melhor. Ainda acreditamos que os verdadeiros valores da vida não foram perdidos.
Somos todos marionetes de um sistema que não deu certo, um sistema que mesmo todos sabendo que não é o certo, todos usamos. Desde pequeno somos influenciado por uma sociedade mesquinha e fútil. Não falo que o socialismo é completamente correto, e nem que o capitalismo é completamente errado. Falo sobre uma sociedade capitalista com influencia socialista, uma sociedade que absorva o melhor dos dois sistemas. Quando Karl Marx escreveu as bases do socialismo, ele não levou em conta que, quando o homem se sente forçado a fazer algo, ele não irá fazer direito. Mas o mais importante é, uma sociedade justa, uma sociedade onde não tenha pessoas passando fome, sofrendo maus tratos.
greetz for all friends: Fatal Error – h4ck3rsBr – r00ted – int3rc3pt0r – priv8crew – SimienS – F4kelive – Prime Suspectz -hax0rs Lab – Ka0tic Lab – Silentium of Anacron Group Italy – Command Tribulation – hack3rz – Smartboy_ – H4rD_L3v3L”MADE IN BRAZIL”
IRC.GIGACHAT.NET #UN-ROOT

English Translation of their hacked page: –

Un-Root Acredita a better World. Still we believe that the true values of the life n?foram lost.
We are all marionettes of a system that n?deu certain, a system that exactly all knowing that n? certain, all we use. Since small we are influenced by a stingy society and f?l. N?falo that the?ompletamentecorrect socialism, and nor that the capitalism?ompletamente missed. Ispeak on a capitalist society with influences socialist, a society that absorbs the best one of the two systems. When Karl Marx wrote the bases of the socialism, it n?levou in account that, when the man iffeels for?o to make something, it to n?ir?azer right. But mostimportant?uma society joust, a n?tenha society where people passinghunger, suffering maltreatment.

greetz will be all friends: Fatal Error – h4ck3rsBr – r00ted -int3rc3pt0r – priv8crew – SimienS – F4kelive – Prime Suspectz – hax0rsLab – Ka0tic Lab – Silentium of Anacron Group Italy – CommandTribulation – hack3rz – Smartboy _ – H4rD_L3v3L
“MADE IN BRAZIL”
IRC.GIGACHAT.NET # UN-ROOT

Screenshot:

Hacked site; www.seorank.com

Search Engine Optimization Tip 6 – MSN Search the new Player in town, February 6th Sunday 2005

MSN Search has officially come out of the beta version and is now available in search.msn.com main domain, So what type of seo works well for MSN search this has been a question that has been circulating a lot in forums, blogs, message boards etc,

We at Search Engine Genie has been doing testing in new MSN from the day it was launched as beta, MSN search Algorithm has not changed much from the beta launch, MSN search engine seems to be more loving to good number of links with relevant anchor text, Also they favor onpage factors too, There seem to be a balance needed for MSN when it comes to backlinks and onpage factors, Meta tags never matter for new msn search engine, they are just negligible factor,

Keyword in domain is also a negligible factor,

Important factors or the visible contents and good number of backlinks from many sites with proper anchor text,

MSN has still not sorted out with the duplicate pages, There are a lot of duplicate pages in MSN, so there is no dupe content penalty like google, Also MSN search crawles sites really deep so it is important to make sure the site has themed contents and all the pages have words which are in close proximity,

More to come in SEO blog tips on the new MSN, Keep visiting our site,

SEO Blog Team

Search Engine Optimization Tip 5 – Pagerank No more an important commodity, February 5th Saturday 2005

There used to be overwhelming obsession about google technology PAGERANK, Pagerank is google’s way of measuring a page’s value based on Links, Pagerank of a page can be viewed on the google toolbar or using online pagerank checker,

Measuring links based on pagerank was an important way of google judging the value of a page, Now pagerank is no more a priority, google uses various other ways in judging the value of a link, Especially google likes links originating within an authority site, Any good relevant page on Microsoft.com and Google.com domain will rank, So there are lots of new factors involved in measuring the quality of links than pagerank alone, So we recommend anyone not to worry about your Pagerank any more, Keep building links regardless of the pagerank of the linking page,

Now toolbar pagerank updates happen only once in 3 months, So google itself is not worried about pagerank much, So we recommend not to focus on pagerank of the site and never watch pagerank updates eagerly to see what your new pagerank is,

SEO Blog Team,

Search Engine Optimization Tip 4 – Effective Search engine friendly Title tags, February 4th Friday 2005

Title tags are the most important tag when it comes to onpage search engine optimization, Search engines uses title tags as the title for their search engine results,

Also during Query time in search engines, They have a split of a second to crawl through billions of documents to find an exact match, So search engine engineers mostly design their query time algorithm to fetch matches from quality sites title tags first, if the match is not found they move into content and then title and content of lower level pages,

So if you run a good quality site with lots of backlinks and if the search engines consider your site to be an authority it is important every page of your site has an effective good title tag,

When it comes to google they virtually show only the first 64 characters of a title in their SERPs ( search engine result pages ) , But our experiments show they read more than 120 characters, we added some bizarre words after the first 64 characters and google did find those words matching for the query, So google reads long titles to,

We recommend writing titles of around 12 words or 100 to 130 characters, Some search engines like yahoo, MSN etc tend to show even long title in their search engine results so long title never hurts,

Some SEO experts predict that long titles dilute the effect of a title tag, But there is no evidence to this theory, it is fact that the first 3 to 6 words are the most important words in the title tag, but that doesn’t mean words after the first 6 words or ignored or they dilute the power of the words occuring first,

Our basic recommendation

1. write titles which are related to the page,

2. write titles that are unique, don’t just copy and paste the same title on all the pages, this is especially important when you have different pages targeting different information, title tags are the gateway to that page and if the title tag is not written properly for a targeted page you will loose google targeted traffic for that page,

3. Commas and spaces in title tag are same, But spaces look better than commas so use spaces between phrases,

4. Don’t just load all the keywords on the title just target 2 to 4 phrases per page and add upto 2 phrases with good keyword combination in the title,

5. when you are targeted a particularly competitive keyword, use both singular version and the plural version of that keyword,

6. make sure the title tag syntax is proper, Title tag should be placed in the head section of an html page, Also make sure you close the title tag,

If the above guide lines is followed effective title tags will be got and they will be a powerful onpage optimization effort for your site,

Comeback for tomorrow’s tip on search engine optimization from the SEO Blog Team,

Search Engine Optimization Tip 3 – Google sandbox does it exist??? February 3rd Wednesday 2005

As everyone is aware of there exist some sort of filter in google’s algorithm which prevents new sites from ranking even if the site is well optimized and has numorous number of backlinks, So what causes this google lag,

We at Search Engine Genie conducted Numerous tests on why this lag exists for new sites and some new pages, We cannot conclude what causes this effect,

Questions which were unsolved in this test

1. Does it affect only new sites or even existing sites??/

2. Does it pertain only to links or it is caused by onpage factors,

3. Does it relate only to certain type of links like forum links/blog links/guest book links/site wide links etc???

4. Does it affect all sites or only certain type of sites??/

5. What type of algorithm triggers this type of filter??/

6. Will ever sites come out of the sandbox algorithm??/

All the above questions were unanswered when it comes to this google lag on new sites,

But we do have some tips which worked for some phrases for certain sites, Though our tests didnt bring any site out of the sandbox algorithm on the whole it did make those sites rank for some low competitive phrases which has been a small source of traffic for our client sites,

Atleast those tactics helped bring some smile in our client’s face,

Tips,

1. Avoid getting links from guestbook, spam sites etc,

2. Avoid site wide links from unrelated sites,

3. Dont have duplicate contents on your site, Means dont have contents that are copied and manipulated from other sites, have unique contents,

4. Get links for your inner pages, Dont get all links directly to your homepage, Links to your inner pages matters, It you have pages talking about particular widge say green widgets get links to those pages with anchor text as “green widgets” don’t just all anchor text to your homepage,

5. Get as much natural links as possible, write articles, testimonials, press releases, reviews etc and gain natural back links,

6. Target lots of related phrases for your site, Targeting some phrases wont bring traffic if your site is caught in the sandbox algorithm, adding numerous number of phrases will give lots of keyword combos and with bring good targeted traffic,

Hope the above SEO tips help your site from getting traffic from google even if the site is caught in the sandbox algorithm,