Webmaster help videos : a must watch:

http://www.youtube.com/GoogleWebmasterHelp

Site: operator reporting lesser number of pages.

I am sure if you run a website and actively monitor it you will be aware that sometimes site: operator reports lesser number of results. Site: operator is used to find the number of pages indexed for a particular website for example: site:www.searchenginegenie.com will reveal all the pages that Google indexed for the website searchenginegenie.com .
Few of our clients and some of our external users have reported that site: operator sometimes report lesser number of pages than it usually used to show for their website. Some of the people who come to us with this question are also concerned that this could be another penalty. Ok, from our experience there is no reason to worry if site: operator reports lesser number of pages. This has always been the case Google has 1000s of clusters of computers spread throughout the world in different data centers they have, and not all the datacenters are update some of them have old data some have standard data and some have very fresh data. So when you make a query you tend to hit different datacenters and this will result in you hitting different results so if you see that your indexed pages are showing different don’t worry about that it should just be that you are seeing a different set of results.
But you should be worried in one case if you see consistent drop of your indexed pages over a period of time then there is something you definitely need to worry. See if there is something wrong with your site and in case your site disappears after consistent drop in indexed pages 90% it’s a penalty check for potential penalty in Google webmaster tools. If you find your site is penalized submit for reinclusion. Other than that there is nothing to worry about site: operator.

Is SEO dead?

When I was going through webmaster world I came across an interesting featured post where the author says SEO is dead and it has been completely replaced by PPC, Social Media Marketing and Link building. Well running an SEO company for more than 5 years I am well aware that SEO has slowed down a bit. But the truth SEO is never dead or no where near to be in death bed. I am sure it will go on for at least 10 more years to come.

Yes I agree that traditional SEO is not there anymore. Now people are more SEO savvy and they are more educated than before. But better education and understanding is actually good for ethical SEO companies like us. We don’t have to explain the whole process of SEO to them. Most client come to us by word of mouth referral and they are still coming because we did a good job for our current and past clients. Traditional SEO is dead for sure people don’t seek us to write meta, title tags or rewrite URLs etc we are doing work completely different from what we used to do before. We are more concentrating of setting up one way links which is the most difficult part of SEO. Its not easy to get free one way links these days so we need to invent new innovative ideas to get one way back links. Though this is a difficult part we are able to find some really quality ways. Especially we were able to get a lot of success for our clients by widget optimization, social media optimization etc. I want to remind the author of the thread that SMO, link building has always been part of SEO. In fact SEO is the mother of all new innovative tactics that come online now. SEO will never die at least for another 10 years but it will keep evolving like the way we see the world. Its not the same world that we saw 10 years back and it’s the same case with SEO 10 years down the road you will see stuff which you never had seen before.

Is it necessary to look at competitors while implementing SEO?

All the growing businesses all over the world discover that search engine optimization help them gain a competitive edge. But the marketing experts say that it is also equally important to know what the competitors are doing to achieve the goal.

It is possible for any one to develop the SEO strategy without knowing about the competition taking place around you. But it is always better to have the information of the competitors in order to perform better from their rivals. Before implementing any strategy it is better to do some researches on the search engine optimization, so that they can learn more about themselves as well as the competitor?

This research will give you an idea about the competitors like who are they, where are they, what are they doing, what is right or wrong about their campaign, is their campaign effective. These ideas if taken in to consideration will help you to develop better search engine optimization. Which will help you perform better than your competitor and will lead you to success.

So it is always better to look at competitor and their strategy to for implementing better SEO.

Ten important myths for search engine optimization

1) All the Meta tags are equally important.
2) There should be a timely submission of new post in order to drive traffic to your site.
3) SEO involves less expenditure when compare to the PPC as SEO clicks are free. It is always more cost effective than sponsored or banner advertising. You just need to pay page set up and monitoring charges.
4) SEO is better than PPC for long term. Because in PPC you are visible in search page for short period of time but if you get good ranking in organic SEO. You will definitely drive good traffic to your web site.
5) Always try to hire SEO firm than in house SEO as it involve lots of other expenditure. Hiring a SEO firm provides you with different specialists writing, submitting, redesigning, and posting your site by just paying certain amount.
6) You should optimize all the pages of your website with keywords.
7) Content plays a major role for ranking the site high. You need to implement off site and on the site SEO to get better search engine optimization.
8) Always try to target competitive keywords in order to improve your site ranking.
9) Lots of SEO firm guarantee ranking and optimization but in reality no firm can guarantee ranking in any search engines.
10) Most of SEO firm also demand commitment but you should not rely or agree on any long term commitment. Just tie up yourself only with monthly commitments unless or otherwise you are satisfied with firm and its progress.

Using Keywords to Achieve Search Engine Optimization

What are Keywords?

A keyword is a word that forms all or part of a search engine query—the word or phrase that Internet user’s type in a search box when they are seeking information in a search engine.
Keyword phrases must be carefully selected and placed strategically throughout your web pages to draw users to your content. Search engines don’t pay a lot of attention to these fields, although sometimes they are used in site descriptions.

General Best Practices

• Search engines prefer pages with at least 250 characters.
• Use the keywords a user will use to find your website or web pages, not the keywords you want your content to be found on. Use words on your page that resonate with your target audience and are descriptive of your site. For example, consider using the search term “car sales” rather than “vehicle auctions.” Get inside the mind of the user.
• Map keywords and phrases to their implicit intent.

How are the keywords related to how the visitor is trying to solve their problem?
How do the keywords and phrases relate to what stage visitors are in their seeking process?
What would the visitor consider a success based upon the keyword?
Use these keywords to plan internal hyperlinks that provide the most relevant and persuasive content.

• On your home page, select phrases that describe the general theme of the site, but don’t try to cover everything on your home page.
• For your site’s internal pages, identify the most important subject of that page and pick words that are specific to that subject.

How to Determine the Best Keywords

Look at Your Log Files-: Log files can be a good way to determine what your audience is searching for and what keywords you should use to draw users to your content.
Log files:

• Capture the “exact phrase” that searchers entered.
• Give insight into the number of words searchers are using.
• Provide a rich source of keyword data.

Remember, log files only show the keywords that have brought users to our site. They don’t show you the unsuccessful keywords that didn’t bring users to your site.

Target Variations of Your Keywords-:
Be sure you target your content to address the following:

• Variant spellings
• Slang, acronyms, and abbreviations
• Plurals
• Synonyms

Evaluate Your Keywords. Keywords may have multiple meanings. “Accessibility” might mean “handicapped access” or “website monitoring.” “Chips” may refer to the snack food or computer part.
Pay attention to keywords used alone or combined with another word. For example, “passport” by itself is likely a search for information; “passport” searched with a location is likely a search for services. Keep this in mind when choosing keywords for a page.

Use Keyword Tracking Tools: use keyword tracking tool to keep a check on it. Some of the keyword tracking tools are-

• Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Word tracker
• Google Adwords
• Snap

Some good reason to choose SEO as career

As the sites began to grow and make money, it became more reasonable to hire a dedicated SEO specialist than to have the webmaster do it. The demand for good and expertise SEO is on rise. There are many people who have made successful SEO career in this business.

Choosing SEO as a career is worth as compensation for SEO is equal to or even higher than that of developers, designers and marketers. This type of profession can be practiced while working for company or as a solo practitioner. As a solo practitioner you can earn even more money. If you are confident and more familiar with SEO then you can even start your own company.

But when you decide to start up a company then you need to be good at both designing and SEO because when the client hire some one to make their site, they expect their site to be SEO friendly. By providing such service you will be the most valuable professional.

Someone who comes from designing, developing or web administration, SEO might look very non-technical and boring which makes you feel that you are downgrading yourself. Being designer or developer as profession and selecting SEO as a career will upgrade your skill package. This will help you better than before. So never hesitate choose SEO as a career if you are designer by profession.

I hope by now you would have understood that SEO is always a great career for every one.

Will unpopular keywords help SEO

With so much content on the internet, it becomes so difficult for us to differentiate each one and get attention towards one content. In order to get attention one way is through using less popular keywords.

Most of the companies today are using same type of keywords for their search engine optimization. This increases competition among them and even ranking become difficult. The best way to attract more viewers to your site is to use less popular or non-commercial keywords.

Use of less popular keywords will not be the short term money maker but there would be less competition which would help you to be placed better in search engine. As you rank for related keywords that build a traffic stream that has the potential to convert or to link at your website.

As such use of less popular keywords will help you to boost traffic to your site and will also build the overall authority of a site. And by posting some good useful content will also help in getting your less popular keyword more popular.

Therefore, with the help of less popular keywords, “slowly but steadily you can win the race.”

What will happen to SEO in 2009?

What will happen to SEO world in 2009 is guessing about what the engineers and product developer at Google have been working for last so many months or year. According to me, I feel that paid link war have not really come good in the 2008 but let’s hope better for 2009.

Google is maturing fast so we can tell that any changes that are decided to be made are tested for long internally before it get released in the market for external testing. The hot news in 2008 was that Google did not do much in penalizing link buyers and sellers. PageRank penalties are very scary tactics and most of the site has reduced their traffic due to their links being penalized for buying and selling.

We all are aware of the fact that Google has spent the last 12 months working on the pattern matching algorithms to detect and devalue paid links. This means very little to the link seller because it doesn’t mater them whether the links they sell pass weight or not.

The link acquisition strategy that was working for past so many years will not continue further once the Google perfect this algorithm. Most of the blatant link buying we see in the UK comes from in-house SEO teams rather than SEO Company. These in-house SEO team realized that all the SEO Company are buying links. These SEO in-house teams don’t keep latest SEO trends and waste thousands of pounds in buying useless links.

Another big issue that came up was how to handle link acquisition for new clients. Google has to cleverly watch all links buying pattern so that the link that is bought is not devalued. However if the link is spread out over few months with lot of natural link built in then Google would never be able to detect a link pattern and link would be highly valuable.

Article marketing, Article submission, Article directories for SEO increases traffic to your site

Article writing gives you an opportunity to increase the page rank of your website. The only thing you need to do is to spend little time to write informative articles that is useful to others. Articles tat you write can be submitted to best articles directories such as Articledashboard.com, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, isnare.com, and articlealley.com.

Article marketing is the best way to promote your business or website and also to increase traffic to your site. In simple terms SEO uses some keyword optimization to achieve better place or rank in search engine which result in more visitor to your site which in turn results in sales for your business. Google offers a site ranking system known as page rank. Good page rank to your site is given on basis of quality of your website content and number of back links to your site. A website with more and more back links hold better position in the search engine.

Once you have completed your article, make a list of article directories where you wish to submit your articles. Then create a free account before you submit the article. Then make your submissions. Articles directories must approve your submitted articles before it get added to the article directory.

Try to make your article interesting and factual. While writing articles make sure that you describe the content of the articles and also it contains all the keyword associated to your subject. Do not bunch the article together in single paragraph, layout it in short paragraph so that it is easier for the visitor to read it because they rarely read the large section of the text.

While article submission most of the article directories provides you with the resource box in which you can actually place your name and little information about yourself, this is a hyperlink to your money making opportunity. This link help to create back link your site which will increase both visitors and search engine placement. Make sure you don’t link directly to affiliate site they may decline, instead link to your own site and add your affiliate link there.