Doing regular usability testing with your website visitors is a best practice in managing your agency's website. In a typical approach, users one at a time or two working together use your website to perform tasks, while one or more people watch, listen, and take notes.

Usability testing allows you to measure of the quality of a user's experience when they interact with your website. It's one of the best ways to find out what is or isn't working on your site.

Millions of Web sites offer users information, goods, services, and entertainment. But many of these sites are difficult to use, don't work properly, and ultimately don't attract or keep users. By following a usability engineering process, user's abilities to find information and satisfaction with Web sites improve significantly.

posted by Alenjoe @ 10:28 AM permanent link   |

Building links is, without a hesitation, one of the most effective ways of ensuring a successful web site. The benefits of linking are multi-faceted and can answer in better search engine ranking, increased targeted traffic, and improved content value for your site visitors.

To achieve the objective of better SE ranking, however, your linking strategy must focus on setting up the correct structure while obtaining links from the "right" partners. That is the single, most effective policy for elevating a page's relevance - the key to top placement. Relevancy should be your most important principle in determining link partners.Since a search engine's primary task is to offer the most relevant search results for your search query, your inbound links from other sites must, or should, assist the engines in defining the content of your site.

Relative linking will provide your site with links from pages that are utilize some of the same keywords or key phrases. This will assist in your achieving top placement for those keywords and phrases. It will also help drive the kind of targeted traffic that is previously, potentially, pre-sold on buying what you have to offer.

posted by sarah @ 9:44 AM permanent link   |

There are different types of authority links like absolute authority links and relative authority links. Absolute links are divided into two different groups like informative authority links and navigational authority links. Informative authority domain like CNN News has trusted domains that provide more information. Certain websites like Yahoo directory are navigational authority domain because it has the ability to pass topical relevance. Relative authority links are obtained from sites which have information content, that focus on niche, as a result of which all the rest of the websites in your niche automatically accept that website as the ultimate authority in your niche. Such websites get lot of traffic. Technorati is one of the favorite sites when it comes to authority sites. Due to its reputation and traffic, it offers fresh and highly relevant results in its search functions.

posted by Skarmund @ 12:13 PM permanent link   |

Providing a search function is one of the requirements for managing your agency's website. A search engine will help the public find the government information and services available on your website.

In limited cases, such as small websites, a site map or subject index may be used as a substitute of a search function. The search purpose should allow visitors to:

• Search all files on the website that are anticipated for public use
• Display outcome in order of relevancy, based on search criterion
• Offer a timely reaction, comparable to industry best follow

posted by Alenjoe @ 10:21 AM permanent link   |

There are many different commercial web analytics products and tools used by government agencies. Key criteria for selecting products are:

• Price
• Training available for your web staff
• Ease of use
• Vendor viability
• Features and functionality
  

Because most leading metrics tools have similar features and functionality, you may find that other criteria such as vendor support and cost are more important.

posted by Alenjoe @ 1:02 PM permanent link   |

Links below site level two doesn't exist - Most search engines index only content in the top levels of your website. They have no idea that links exist beyond the secondary level simply because that they does not search beyond the secondary level. In other words, 5000 links pointing at your website, but all of them exist on pages beyond the second directory level, a search engine will determine that your website has zero links.
Email links can not be counted - Users have spend more time using email than they do surfing the web.
Free for Alls, Spoofers, and Link Schemes abound - Any time the search engine comes up with a new way to rank pages, someone has comes up with a way to trick the search engine.
Unauthorized URL has submitted to search engines - When the search engine folks first have decided to count links, I don't think that they ever thought it would inspire people to begin submitting more links than they ever had, including other people's pages.

posted by sarah @ 9:56 AM permanent link   |

Link popularity is a process of search engine optimization where you try to get a large number of links that point to your web site from other websites which have a very high page rank. It is the quality of links that really matter and not the quantity of the links that matter. Building quality links through reciprocal link exchanges is a simple but very powerful website promotion solution. Reciprocal link building will increase traffic, improve visibility, promotional resource, saves advertisement money, and saves time for your website. Links from anchor text is much more important than Google PageRank. Certain other features can increase link popularity for your site like directory links, press releases, news items and links. Increase in link popularity can benefit your business.

posted by Skarmund @ 4:00 PM permanent link   |

If you imagine that building an optimized site is like cooking a meal, then keywords are the essential ingredients. Would you attempt to cook a complex new dish without first referring to a recipe? Would you start before you had all the ingredients available and properly prepared?

In our analogy, key words are your ingredients and the rest of the guide (after this part) is your recipe. It is vital that you start by investing time in key word research. This may surprise you, but I would recommend you spend at least 25% of your time on this activity alone! That's 25% of all your time, including the time you spend designing your site, building it, optimising and promoting it! Quite an investment, eh? But believe me, if you din't get this part right your meal will not be a very satisfying one and no-one will want to eat it!

What are your 10 key words?

You may think you know straight off. You are likely to be right about most of them but you will almost certainly make three common mistakes. Firstly, you will tend to pick single words (rather than chains of words). Secondly, you will tend to pick the same words used by other people. Thirdly, you will compound this by overusing these key words on your site and underusing related key words. The result will be a poor finished product and sub-optimal ranking or traffic.

So please be patient and walk through the following steps. From part two , you will remember Doug (who sells antique doors, door handles, knockers, door bells or pulls and fitting services).

Like Doug, you should start with a visit to the Overture Keyword Selector Tool (which I recommend in preference to Wordtracker, which is a paid service, and the Google Adwords: Keyword Suggestion Tool, which does not indicate the popularity count of each search phrase). This tool allows you to check for recent word search combinations (and their derivatives) on the Overture search engine, returning search frequencies for each.

Doug enters "antique doors" and is surprized to find that "antique door knob" and "antique door hinge" score higher than "antique door knocker" (his best selling product in the high street store). But far higher still is the category level combination "antique door hardware". He had never guessed searchers could be so savvy.

Next he tries "antique door knocker" and finds a single derivative "antique brass door knocker". He had not thought seriously about making brass a keyword. Now it is pencilled in on his list.

Trying "antique door bell" and playing around, he discovers "antique door chime" is about as popular (reflecting a difference between UK and US english). This is also very enlightening, as he is hoping to sell to the US audience by mail order.

Perhaps you begin to see my point. As you will see later in the guide, I recommend a separate page for each product, service or information topic on your site. Through your Overture search, you should come up with an "A" list of about 10 key words for each page. At least four of them are likely to be site-wide in their applicability and common to each page. The remaining six will be page-specific. Put any left-over words onto a second page entitled "B" list.

In Doug's example, he decides he wants antique, door, brass and hardware on each page in the site. On the door knocker page, he wants (in addition) the key words knocker, iron, decorative, engraved, pineapple and lion.

You too should do the same. If you find this activity overly difficult, can I suggest you revisit your proposition? It is quite possible you have not yet properly thought that through!

Which key words do your competitors use?

Through searching for door knockers on Google and focusing on the top 15 results, Doug brings up their pages. He uses the menu option "view-source" in Internet Explorer to look at the key words used in the page metadata.

He is surpised to find some consistent themes. For example, almost all of the sites he finds whilst searching for "door knockers" also include "door knobs" in their metadata for that page. He also finds that several have used old as one of their kewords, in addition to antique.

Don't read me wrong here. Metadata (particularly in isolation) is not the route to high search engine rankings (as you will see later). However, top 10 sites generally have done well with their optimization more generally (and their metadata is likely to reflect quality keyword analysis, repeated throughout the site in other ways).

Another key tool is the Google Smackdown, permitting you to compare the overall frequency of two competing keyword sets across the whole of Google's results. Doug compares "antique door knob" with "antique door knocker" and finds the former is hugely overrepresented on the web compared to the latter (with over 2,000 results vs. under 200). He knows that knob is not searched on ten times more (from his earlier work) so decides to concentrate on knocker as a word where he has less competition.

However, Doug confirms the effectiveness of all competitor combinations using the Overture tool and revises his list to include some of these new words, relegating "pineapple" and "lion" to his B-list, in favour of "old" and "knobs".

How many related keywords can you identify?

Now for an important third step. Navigate your browser to the GoRank Ontology Finder - Related Keywords Lookup Tool. Like Doug, try entering "antique door knocker" and look at the results. For "antique", the tool suggests related keywords of old, classic, antique, furniture, vintage, rare, victorian, antiques, collectible.

Hmmm. Now he can see why his competitors use old in their list! Doug runs these related words back through the Overture tool and finds that "Victorian door" yields some decent results, so adds Victorian and Edwardian to his B-list (something he had never thought of previously).

Imagine if Doug had started with victorian door knockers as his gane plan. The Ontology finder would have shown him that antique door knockers was a much more sensible combination. He would then have been changing his A-list.

As Search Engines move ever further towards the use of semantic intelligence in their ranking systems, the use of relared keywords will become ever more important. Make sure you future-proof your site through the liberal use of such words in page text content. More on this later in the guide.

Building key word chains

Perhaps it might surprise you to learn that (based on research by OneStat.com), 33% of all searches on Search Engines are for two word combinations, 26% for three words and 21% for four or more words. Just 20% search on single words! Why does it surprise you, though? Isn't that what you yourself do when you are searching? Even if you start with one word, the results you get are generally not specific enough (so you try adding further words to refine your search).

Bearing this in mind, it is vitally important to come up with 3-5 keyword chains for each separate page on your site. When you write your page copy later, you will need to ensure that these keyword chains appear with reasonable density in your overall text.

Like Doug, pay a visit to the ABAKUS Topword Keyword Check Tool. Put in your competitor sites one after another and check out the results (using the default search settings). Study closely the two-word and three-word combinations that come up most frequently for each of your key pages in turn.

Through Doug's exploration (for his door knockers page), he comes up with three favorite two-letter combinations: "door knockers", "antique door" and "antique hardware". For three-letter combinations, he settles on "house antique hardware" and "brass door knocker".

Doug is surprised to note that "door knockers" is more popular than "door knocker". He has learnt another key lesson; always pluralise your key words where you can. You will achieve higher traffic this way (becuase of the way search engines handle queries).

For a typical 10-page site, you should now have approximately 65-70 A-list words (with four of those being site wide) and perhaps as many as 200 B-list words (many of which will be related key words). You will have perhaps as many as 50 key word chains. Congratulations. You now have all the ingredients you need to get cooking.

posted by Horshan @ 11:27 AM permanent link   |

Reciprocal links catches on in popularity. It's a way of site owners to share each other's traffic, a simple "let's trade links" deal that can help to widen your web audience. Swapping link helps you with your search engine traffic. Some of the search engines calculate the number of links to your site from other sites and use it to determine your ranking.
Another way of reciprocal links can benefit you is by drawing repeat traffic back to your website. If you offer a high quality list of relevant links, visitors will return often because they know that they can quickly find that what they are looking for.
One of the way is approaching the reciprocal link is be proactive. Make sure that site owners may get several link requests everyday. Reciprocal linking is basically sit back and wait for others to approach or link to you. Reciprocal link is one of the way to steadily build targeted traffic and add value to your website.

posted by sarah @ 10:49 AM permanent link   |

Avoid duplicating or recreating content that already exists on your own or another federal public website. This is a best practice for managing your agency's website.

Your audience can become confused if they find overlapping or inconsistent information on the same subject, either on your own website or on another federal website. The best practice to ensure accurate and quality web content is to create it once by the organization having the greatest expertise and use it many times, through links. By focus your efforts on creating content related to your own mission and using links to related content you save time and resources. It normally takes much less effort to spend some time looking to see if content already exists than (re)creating it.

posted by Alenjoe @ 3:19 PM permanent link   |

You should have more links pointing to your site, but you are not sure that what is the best approach to pursue them. Many sites are competing with yours only for the search terms, not products and services.
You can take advantage of the high rankings of other sites. This technique is named as piggybacking. They have what you seek, a highly placed link for a specific search phrase so rather than try to unseat their ranking, which could take you months and never happen anyway, will do the next best thing is to pursue a link on the sites with the best rankings that wont compete with you.
Imagine that if you had links on every site that had a top 10 search result for phrases that you have to care about.
You might use this technique also, identify the good targets that you can advertise on. In other words, the websites have high rankings for terms that are important to you are natural places for you to buy banner or even text links on. You may get lucky and find they have a reciprocal links page.

posted by sarah @ 11:49 AM permanent link   |

Buying text links is of course a lawful marketing practice but such links should never be bought on the basis of PageRank score - its just not a useful metric for such a decision.

There is abundance of opportunities to buy text links - on portals, trade associations, ezines, even non-profit organizations.

If you are leaving to buy text links, then do so based on marketing decisions:

* Does the site serve your target markets and present potential for getting excellence traffic?
* Will your text link be easy to get to to search engines?
* Is the content of the site well-matched with the products or services that you present?
* Is the design of the site expert and do the companies who have already bought text links appear to be reputable?
* Do you have a budget and a target in mind? You will spend $x and wait for sales of at least $y in return.

posted by steve Sahale @ 11:19 AM permanent link   |

Link exchanges does two main things. First, it makes getting the links easier. Most of the webmasters are willing to help each other, so if you give them a link, most times they will return the favor.
Second, is by adding links to other quality websites, it augments the quality of your own website. Finally, you are providing the links to other websites for your visitors. Before worrying about getting those links, you need to create the quality content that will make people want to link to you.
Your website needs to be designed and optimized properly before you worry about links. The time spent to getting your website's overall design and content properly done will make your link popularity grows even faster later.If your website has been designed well and optimized do not fall for those "get link popularity quick schemes."
These are the links to bring you the traffic and potential customers you want and need. Link popularity can't be overlooked but as with any website promotional technique is to be effective and it has to be done properly.

posted by sarah @ 4:06 PM permanent link   |

It is literally amazing how many people start their online business presence by buying a domain name (close to their business name) and building a brochure-ware page. Only later do they turn their mind to optimizing their site for (i) their audience and (ii) the way their audience find them. Fewer still take a long, hard look at what their competitors are doing first.

Take it from me, the best way to succeed in search engine optimization is to build it into your business development strategy from the very outset. For this reason - before we turn to optimization techniques - my guide consides first those fundamental questions of what, who and where:

What are you selling?

The first and most obvious question in this sequence is whether you are selling a product or a service and the degree to which you can fulfill this online.

To illustrate the thinking involved, I will use (throughout the guide) the (mythical) example of Doug Chalmers, a purveyor of restored antique doors, brass door fittings and accessories, based in Windsor in the United Kingdom.

Doug makes his money from selling doors (20% of total profit), selling door handles and knockers (25%), selling door bells or pulls (25%) and fitting services (30%). He has sold the bells, pulls, handles and knockers across the United Kingdom (and once or twice overseas, through word of mouth recommendation) but only does fitting within a 20 mile radius and rarely sells doors to people who are not local.

When forced to consider his proposition more carefully, Doug admits that he has no desire - or capability - to sell fitting services outside of his immediate locale (due to capacity and travel considerations). However, he can see a big market worldwide for his brass fittings and accessories.

I know what you are thinking, but don't laugh. Doug may well be right and (after all) knows his business better than you or I. He gets quite a lot of business from American and French tourists that drop into his shop after a visit to Windsor castle. Many take his business card. Initially, they almost always want to see brass door knockers, but often leave with several small items.

Doug has heard the stories about other local businesses who have been successful online. The Teddington Cheese, for example, sells British and European cheeses across the globe and was a winner of the UK eCommerce Awards in 1999. Who would have thought that cheese was a winner online? Well, Teddington Cheese did and have been reaping the rewards ever since!

There are actually a number of key things about Doug's proposition that we will revisit in subsequent parts of the guide. However, the key point for now is that simply putting up a brochure of all Doug's products and services is unlikely to be the best strategy. He has some specific and focused aims - and by thinking about them now (and refining them) he stands a much better chance of success online.

Who are your audience?

Segmenting your audience is a key part of any marketing or PR strategy and make no mistake, search engine optimization is essentially a marketing and PR activity (albeit somewhat different to some of the more traditional parts of this field).

Doug generally agrees that he is targeting socio-economic class A/B for his services. These people are typically affluent, professional, white-collar workers living in leafy suburbs. He is in luck there, as such people are disproportionately represented in internet usage worldwide!

Having thought about it, he can readily segment his customers into three types; (1) local-full-replacement, (2) diy-refurbishment and (3) fitted-refurbishment. The first group are local people, looking to replace a whole door which has broken or is drafty. They are generally cost-conscious on the overall package (comprised of products and fitting services). The second group are interested in specific product items (which they are happy to fit themselves). They want advice on how to fit it but don't want the labour costs. However, they are the least price sensitive group on the product cost and often buy the very best. The third group buy product but want it professionally fitted and finished. They are prepared to pay for quality but are more price sensitive than the DIYers. Where they are not local (which happens) they want a referral from him to someone who can fit locally in their area.

Doug makes the most revenue today (in order) from groups 1, 3, 2. However, he makes the biggest profit margin per sale (in order) from groups 2, 3, 1 - the exact reverse! His own time (and that of his fitters network) is the biggest constraint in his business. If only he could grow the DIY segment, he could substantially improve his overall business profitability.

Hopefully, the point here is obvious. At the very least, Doug's website should address (perhaps separately) the needs of these three different groups. Ideally, the site will focus it's firepower on that second group (where the opportunity for unconstrained growth is greatest). Finally, the site needs a local and a global face (to reflect the different geographies of his customers).

Where are your competitors?

No proposition development is complete without an honest assessment of what your competitors are up to. If you are in a locally-based mortar-and-clicks business like Doug, your assessment should take into account both your local and your global competition.

A useful tool to use is the so-called SWOT analysis, where you draw four boxes in a 2x2 table for each competitor. In the first box, you note the strengths of the competitor, in the second their weaknesses, in the third their opportunities and in the fourth their threats. Strengths and weakness are things inherent to their business as it operates today (and generally internal). Opportunities and threats are things external to the business and generally forward looking.

Look at each website objectively and minded like your customers. Consider whether the website was easy to find in the search engine. How many different search words did you try? Do you like the look of the website? Does it address each customer group separately, focus on
one segment or try to be all things at once? Was it easy to get information and do business?

Leave space in the boxes to return to later in the guide (as we will frequently refer back to what your competitors are doing right or wrong).

posted by Horshan @ 11:25 AM permanent link   |

Link renting is a means to "rent" the popularity and traffic flow of one more site - you pay a monthly fee in return for a text link pointing to your site. In doing so, you can directly and indirectly drive more targeted traffic in the direction of your website.

A lot of industries such as travel, pharmacy, pornography, and gaming have search results which are hyper competitive and need heavy advertising or aggressive SEO techniques. Some niche websites may observe an even greater ROI on smart link rentals since many of their competitors may not comprise link renting in their online marketing budgets.

Some rented links give great value in direct targeted traffic, while some other links give greater value from the effect they contain on search relevancy.

Most links are rented on a monthly basis with an option to renovate at the end of the month. Some link prices can be as low as a few dollars a month while some can cost thousands for each month.

There is no singular one-size-fits-all way to directly take for granted the value of a link. Most effectual marketing has risks linked with it, but you can minimize the risks and maximize your go back by breaking the value of the link downward into its elements:

* Direct traffic from link renting
* Viral effect of advertising
* Effects of link rentals on search relevancy.

posted by steve Sahale @ 2:53 PM permanent link   |

• Ensure your home page has at least 150 words of relevant, descriptive text about your products and services. Include the keywords your customers are most likely to type into a search engine when looking for your services.
• Stand firm and say no when your web designer insists on an animated "Flash" intro page to your site. Search engines disregard them and your customers have seen enough of them!
• Provide as much useful content as possible on your site.
• Create fact sheets and expand your existing content. Search engines view a 50 page site as more "important" than a five page site.
• Create a news section - It's a great way to have a continual stream of new, relevant content. Archive the articles even if they may seem out of date - search engines will love you!
  

posted by Alenjoe @ 9:56 AM permanent link   |

Link to appropriate cross-agency portals when applicable, to guide the public to additional resources that exist across the U.S. government. This is a best practice for managing your agency's website.

Links to cross-agency websites can supplement or eliminate the need to create information on your website. Links to other government information can guide visitors to additional resources to help them find what they need. This is especially important for federal public websites since many visitors do not know the organizational structure of the government and may need additional assistance to locate the information or service that best meets their needs.

Links to portals also help visitors get to the most authoritative, current source for the information. It's much more efficient for you to link to information that someone else is keeping current than to have to recreate that information and keep it up-to-date yourself.

posted by Alenjoe @ 11:40 AM permanent link   |

Before we explore the world of search engine optimization, it is vital that you know a little about how search engines work and their relative market shares. It will help you to prioritize your activities later!

What are Search Engines and who powers them?

There are essentially four different parts to a typical large search engine; the crawler, the directory, sponsored results and the search engine itself.

Crawlers (e.g. Google) automatically visit web pages to compile their listings, making use of a so-called robot or spider (eg. Googlebot), which follows links from one website to another, ultimately compiling an index of all the pages and sites on the internet. These crawlers provide an index, which can then searched by the search engine. You may find that several or all of the pages on your site are indexed in thisway. Some search engines have their own crawler and others buy-in crawler results from others.

Human-powered directories, such as the Open Directory, rely on submissions from the public, which are reviewed by editors for inlusion in the directory. If you get included in a directory, generally only one page from your site (usually your home - or index - page) will be listed.

Crawled results are combined with sponsored results, supplied by pay-per-click (PPC) advertisers, and the results from human-maintained directories to complete the search engine index. Check out the Search Engine Reationship Chart at Bruce Clay inc. for the latest picture on who powers whom. You will note a couple of things right away. Firstly, the dominance of the Google and Yahoo! crawlers and secondly the importance of DMOZ directory results as a back-door for many search engines.

How do Search Engines find and rank sites?

Search engines do not really search the web directly, but rather an index database of the full text of web pages, which itself is drawn from the billions of web pages on the internet's servers. Search engine databases are selected and built by computer robot programs called spiders.

If a web page is never linked to by any other page, spiders cannot find it, unless the (usually new) site is submitted manually by a human at the search engine's "add URL" page. All search engine companies offer ways to do this.

After spiders find pages, they pass them on to another computer program for "indexing." This program uses an "algorithm" to assess the text, links, and other content in the page for "key words" that might be searched on at the engine. This allows the search engine to order results served by their "relevancy" to the search terms used. As each search engine has a different algorithm, it will index sites in a different way and thus serve up different relevant results.

Some types of pages and links are excluded from most search engines by policy. Others are excluded because search engine spiders cannot access them. Generally, the use of frames, flash graphics and dynamic URLs all get in the way of effective spidering and should thus be avoided.

In addition to indexing pages, most algorithms seek to establish the "authority" of a site. A site which is linked to by many other sites (using keyword-rich anchor text) is assumed to be of greater merit than one with no links at all. This activity is called "ranking" and helps search engines to sort otherwise similar results into ever-more relevant and authoratative results.

Which Search Engines are the most popular?

Based on US analysis in January 2005, the top search engines (by share of total searches at home and work) are as follows:

Google Search - 47%
Yahoo! Search - 21%
MSN Search - 13%
All Others - 19%

These shocking figures do not convey the true dominance of the top players, as you have seen from the interdependence of search provision in section (a) above. You could be searching at AOL (part of the "other" 19%) and viewing Google results, for example.

There is also strong anecdotal evidence that Yahoo! and MSN tend to send more searchers through to their sponsored (or paid) results than do Google (due to the prominence of these results on their results pages). As such, for a typical small webmaster who does not use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, they might get up to 80% of all their traffic from Google's various sites across the world.

Now you understand the market a little better, you will perhaps understand the obsession many webmasters have with Google! A top-10 position at Google for your key search terms can make your online business fly. If you drop out of that top-10, your business can literally collapse overnight!

posted by Horshan @ 11:23 AM permanent link   |

1. Check your referrer logs for websites that already link to you and transport you traffic. Drop a line to the webmasters (or better still phone!), thank them for what they've done already and ask them if they could give a number of deep links.

2. Look for reciprocal article opportunities. Carefully select target sites and present to publish one of their articles in go back for them publishing one of yours - you will of course be able to manage any linking text and URL you decide.

3. Look for top travel ezines and present your articles. Imagine not just about one article but a sequence of articles that could become a usual feature.

4. Publish collection of your articles in PDF format - these could be cyclic or location specific. Issue them on the pages to which you want to draw inbound links.

5. Deal out press releases using services such as PRWeb.com - you'll be able to control which pages your let go links to.

posted by steve Sahale @ 3:23 PM permanent link   |

When getting a request for a link exchange with a website, look carefully over the website first. The general layout is the main thing to look at. Sites with topics that are related to be your main link partners for getting traffic.

A well-designed and organized website might be look good but if it does not deliver anything of value, it will not be successful. Whatever subject matter you have on your website, you make sure that you have something interest and importance to add to your subject, if you do and you promote it well, you will be successful.

So content is the main thing to develop the websites. Any websites to be popular, it need the links and to get the links, it needs to show the other webmasters that is worthy of a link.

posted by sarah @ 11:14 AM permanent link   |

NASA built its own community building, collaborative workspace site. NASA's CoLab program develops and supports online and offline communities collaborating with NASA. With the involvement of many NASA centers, CoLab provides frameworks for partnership projects between the nation's space program and talented, creative, tech-savvy communities. In addition to getting people more interested and involved with the space program, CoLab provides a way for individuals to actually contribute to NASA.

Many government agency networks and groups have sprung up on sites like Facebook. EPA's facebook network, for example, has over 750 members anyone with an EPA email address can become a member of the group. There are similar examples for most agencies.

USA.gov started a Facebook USAgov page in March 2008, for RSS feeds, videos, photos, and other news. The public is invited to become a "fan" of that page.

The CIA has used Facebook to invite students to apply to work at the agency.

posted by Alenjoe @ 10:15 AM permanent link   |

Search Engine Optimization is a pretty new conception in the world of web design, but if you want a winning, profitable website, it's something you cannot ignore. Rivalry for rankings on popular search engines like Google is fierce, and without Search engine optimization, your website is at a huge drawback. So when closely, in the process of setting up your new website, should you seek an SEO professional.

Preferably, you should consult with an SEO skilled before you meet with your web designer, since your idea or vision of what you want in your website might not be SEO friendly at all. Reviewing the basics with a search engine optimization company early on can save you never-ending heartache and expense down the road.

After that - when presenting your thoughts to a designer, you should also include your SEO practiced. If it is not sufficient to all meet in person, a phone consultation can easily be arranged. Some designers might try to induce you that they are search engine optimization knowledgeable, but it is actually better to hire a part company to handle search engine optimization matters, as it is very doubtful that web designers have the time to reside up to date on the frequently changing details of the search engine optimization world.

posted by Skarmund @ 6:45 PM permanent link   |

The best way to discover how people are finding your web site is to examine your site's activity logs, a topic which is covered in depth on the Keywords Used to Find Your Web Site page obtainable to Search Engine Watch members.

Those not capable to analyze their logs can use search engines to path down referral links. In exacting, this method gives you an idea of how "popular" a search engine believes your site to be. That's important because all main search engines consider a site's link popularity in their ranking algorithm.

The information below describes how link popularity is deliberate at popular crawler-based search engines.

Be conscious that "popularity" is only one part of the link analysis systems that search engines such as Google use to rank web pages. The excellence and context of links is also taken into account, quite than sheer numbers.

posted by steve Sahale @ 2:41 PM permanent link   |

This is part 1 of a 7 part series that examines the 7 factors of incoming links that Google considers when choosing a spot for your website in it's SERP's.

Why incoming links? First because these are what Google places the highest value on. But, all incoming links are NOT created equal. This 7 part course looks at the kinds of links Google values when "rating" your website in the SERP's. Each type of link discussed is important to your overall link strategy and consequently your free traffic levels.

The first factor is of course the anchor text used in your incoming links. The importance of the keywords used to link to your website are more important to Google than the content that is actually on your page. You can generally use anchor link text with your keywords and not even have the keywords on the page and still get a good ranking in Google for that term if enough incoming links have that keyword pharse in them.

If you've heard of the phrase "Google Bombing" then you know what I'm talking about. Basically it's when a set of webmasters or blog owners decide to get a page ranked for a certain term and all leave links back to the selected site with the keyword phrase that they want that page to rank for.

The most notorious example of this is the "bombing" done by several blog owners to the George W Bush biograpby page. Several bloggers left links to the page containing the keyword text "miserable failure" and consequently this page turns up as the number 1 result in Google for the term, even though the words don't appear anywhere on the page.

The "Google Bombing" was done by at most a few hundred links with this link text pointing to the page. Though more links would probably be necissary for a more competative term. Still, it goes to show how important link text is to the rankings of a page.

Google Bombing is nothing new. But what many people don't realize is that Google places more relevance on the anchor link text that it finds when it first discovers a link to your website. Each consequent link either adds value to that first impression or subtracts from it.

Many times you can control which link google finds first just by knowing where google goes regularly (like on a daily basis) and effectively placing your link in it's path. This is called "baiting" the google bot to visit your website through this link.

Each link you place after this initial link should further show google that their first impression (or the first keywords it discovered that linked to your website) was and still is correct. Each subsiquent link is a "vote" so to speak to validate Google's original impression of what your website is about.

Placing that first link to be found by Google is only the first step, but a very important one. Choose your anchor text keywords carefully. Each incoming link you place after this one should serve to validate this first impression. Part 2 will discuss the appearance and disappearance of links over time and how they effect your traffic and search engine placement.

posted by Horshan @ 11:20 AM permanent link   |

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (among other things). It is a web content format which, when used with an RSS aggregator, can allow you to alert users to new or exciting content on your website. These news feeds enable users to avoid the conventional methods of browsing or searching for information on websites. Now the content they want is delivered directly to them.

RSS feeds are commonly used on weblogs (blogs), news web sites and other places with frequently updated content. Once users subscribe to an RSS feed, they can gather material from web sites of their choosing. It's a very convenient format because it allows users to view all the new content from multiple sources in one location on their desktop.

posted by Alenjoe @ 10:47 AM permanent link   |

Inbound links play an important role in search engine marketing. Inbound links can improve page rank and search engine rankings. It also improves traffic in your site. Inbound links tells the search engine that your site is reliable and trustworthy. This depends on the page rank that every search maintains. The more inbound links that you get in your page the more the page rank will improve to your page. But these inbound links must come from those sites which have some good page rank. The inbound links should improve slowly in your page. If you start building links rapidly in your site the search engine may think that your page is spam and put your page in sand box. To improve your inbound link then buying links from other sites can improve your page rank. If your site has good content then other sites may offer exchange links with you. Both inbound links and outbound links influence each other. Certain factors that you need to consider in inbound links are - number of links, authority of site, anchor text of link, age of links, link velocity, age of site, links in content and one way links.

posted by Skarmund @ 2:58 PM permanent link   |

Create a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post frequently and post great content. Good implementation is what gets the links. Give link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

Main tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Main tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.

posted by sarah @ 12:48 PM permanent link   |

Link building is a time consuming and original endeavor. In the long run, some links pass value more than others, which is why diversity is the key to creating a stable and dependable link profile for your website.

First, a brief synopsis of the additional common types of links and link building that one classically pursues, then, a few non traditional unique alternatives will be obtainable.

Editorial links - take weight but have more value for flash in the pan promotions or to draw attention to an interesting event.

Social media links - such as Mixx or Stumbleupon have a first spike and the end result is classically site-wide links across numerous categories if the story goes hot and gets assign of notice.

Directories and article marketing - motionless work, however their technique is best used as a increasing tactic coupled with other link building methods to understand their effects, as articles are archived after 30 days and directories take time to improve a link profile.

Contextual Link building - uses blogs and other websites and uses the basis of content and then provides a link to the aspire site with a relevant wikipedia style link to the site with the perfect keyword, to the ideal page. Excellent technique, but very time consuming and link and IP diversity are vital for maximum impact. It is better to not build links extremely from one site or same block of IP addresses. In other words, the more site that link to you with faith, the more trust and significance your sites reputation becomes (diversity is essential).

posted by steve Sahale @ 11:20 AM permanent link   |

Google has permeated into almost every aspect of life on this planet and beyond. It has become a mainstream fixture for computer and Internet users around the globe. All the while, cementing its position as the only real facilitator of the world's collective intelligence.

Can you remember a day when you have not Googled?

But Google's reach doesn't stop with the mouse or the cursor. It has moved beyond the computer screen, snapping up resources, sites, and people at a frighteningly steady pace. Perhaps, the first indication Google wasn't just satisfied with staying within the wired confines of the world wide web was when it partnered with universities such as Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and others, to scan and index the contents of their libraries -- then making this material accessible through Google Print.

Then it casted its aspirations heavenward with the introduction of Google Maps and Google Earth. Mapping services that bring the world's geographic information into view, it is as if Google had literally ascended, watching us from far and near, tracking our every move as well as our every keystroke. Even using satellite imagery to provide it with eyes in the sky; leading one to wonder, from those lofty heights can divinity be far behind?

All kidding aside, Google, whether it wants to or not, is developing a god-like reverence in the eyes of many. But is this such a leap of faith? Is the idea of Google as a god-like force in our lives so preposterous? so ludicrous? so sacrilegious?

In prehistoric times, pagans used to worship the sun gods. Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all had their gods who satisfied the basic human need we have to believe in a superior being or force. They even raised ordinary humans who displayed unusual courage or bravery up to a god-like status. Are we now entering into a new post-modern pagan era -- will we be worshipping at the feet of Google?

Not really, we treat all our knowledge givers with respect, some even reach a god-like status. We raise them up above the crowd, give them special meaning or reverence in our lives. Humans have been doing this since we stood upright and walked on the plains of Africa. The shaman or high priest of ancient times -- holders of the secret rites, holders of a group's history or knowledge; we show these people respect and we elevate them to a higher status.

Google falls into this category.

And Google does deserve some respect, as far as the search engine market goes, whether it's wearing a halo or a cursor -- Google is still the only game in town. According to Alexa, a company that tracks web traffic, the top three sites on the Web are 1. Yahoo, 2. MSN, and 3. Google. However, when you compare where people go on these sites -- search.yahoo.com accounts for only 9% of Yahoo's traffic and search.msn.com only 7% of MSN's total traffic; whereas most of Google's traffic is search traffic. This is a big distinction.

And what about the purchasing power of these search engines; latest data presented by Score Networks, Inc. shows MSN searchers at 48%, Google searchers at 42% and Yahoo at 31%. That is Google searchers were 42% more likely to purchase online than the regular Internet user.

Another aspect of Google's commercial might is its online advertising system. Through its Adsense and Adword programs, Google has commercialize and monetized most of the web's free content. Depending on your opinions or stand, this may be good or bad. Regardless of viewpoints, Google has been more than generous with sharing this ad

revenue with all concerned parties

-- content providers, web writers and journalists, professional bloggers, ordinary webmasters and marketers -- all have reaped the benefits of these programs.

If you feed it with fresh high quality content

-- Google will take good care of you! In many cases, it can be argued that Google is subsidizing or facilitating the creation of quality content on the Net through its Adsense program.

Google's dominance of all aspects of the Internet is also taking on a god-like force. It is acquiring and building at an almost god-like speed. Google Acquisitions include: Outride, Blogger, Neotonic Software, Applied Semantics, Ignite Logic, Genius Labs, Picasa, Keyhole, Urchin software... how did all this madness start?

Initially called BackRub, referring to the way it back linked to web sites, Google was founded by Stanford graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google, the name itself is a play on the word googol, and refers to the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros... opened its doors on Sept. 7, 1998, in Menlo Park, California. It had a corporate staff of three. In 2004 Google offered its IPO with a price per share at $85. By June 7, 2005, Google was worth $80 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies.

Perhaps, one of Google's most brilliant (some believe absurd) moves, happened just recently. It has applied (via Nelson Minar, a Google Engineer), for patent rights to transmit ads through RSS feeds. Few people know, even more won't believe, but the Internet has undergone a fundamental shift in how information is exchanged on the web. RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and was first popularized by blogs because blogs use XML and RSS feeds to syndicate their content.

Don't come to us, we will deliver. People can view a site's contents through RSS readers or an RSS equipped browser without actually going to the sites.

RSS will revolutionize the Internet. Microsoft in its Longhorn Statement has announced the next version of Windows will have RSS integrated into its Operating System. RSS applications, under the Creative Commons license, will change the way we use our computers and the Internet.

Google, if it is successful with this patent application will build on its already god-like status. The stakes are enormous and Google knows it. This patent could put Google directly into the mix, but the rewards are beyond belief! And that's not all, there are rumors Google may be developing its own RSS powered operating system and browser. Why not, it has the resources and financial clout to easily carry out such an undertaking. Google is already the owner of the domain name "gbrowser.com"!

One can only wonder, is Google positioning itself to not only be the brains of the Internet but also placing itself into the very core of the nasty beast? Does it desire not only to be a mega hub, but also to be an innate part of the whole structure? Positioning itself, in essence, to becoming the web's nervous system.

Any movement of data, information, or commerce on the Internet will have to pass through and be affected by the Google Factor. More or less, cementing Google's influence on the whole scheme of things. And in the process, further weaving Google into the very fabric of our lives.

posted by Horshan @ 8:50 AM permanent link   |

Writing blogs can be time consuming and can take time to succeed. Building credibility and trust takes time. So don't expect that, if and when you launch a blog, that it will be an overnight success. Blogging is a form of publishing and most publications that do succeed generally take a long time to build up a sustainable readership. You must be willing to put in quality blogging time week in, week out. A good idea might take up one paragraph, but could have taken a day or more to research and think through.

You need to consider issues of proprietary or confidential information, and how to handle potential defamatory language. These should be policies that your agency already has in place for other forms of communication.

In government, we must adhere to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Some government blogs such as USA.gov's Gov Gab state that it is unable to post comments from children under the age of 13, and invites children to email them rather than post public comments.

The emergence of blogging has brought a range of legal liabilities. Employers have fired their employees who maintain personal blogs that discuss their employers.

As informal as blogs are meant to be, if they're appearing on a government domain, they're official government communications. They're on the record and fair game for being picked up in the mainstream media. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have a blog you just need to think carefully about how to use it as an effective communications tool that can benefit both your agency and the public.

posted by Alenjoe @ 2:03 PM permanent link   |

Outbound link is a key element in search engine marketing. Outbound links are composed in HTML code. An outbound link is defined as a link that directs users to another site. E.g. when site A links to site B, site A has an outbound link and site B has an inbound link. Outbound link send visitors away from your website. Some site owners still link freely. Some refuse to link at all, and some provide links that open in a new browser window. Outbound links can add value to your site by providing useful information to users without you having to create the content. The number and quality of the outbound links is of great importance. What is more important when creating outbound links is the quality of the site that is linked? Fewer high quality links are much more valuable than numerous low quality links. There are several items to consider when determining the quality of a link. First, links that have been for a longer time and have a good standing with search engines are looked upon with more favor. Another important thing that determines the credibility is the domain name extension. Links with extensions like .gov, .edu, and .org have more credibility because of their content. Links like .info and .biz has less credibility. Links are the skeletal system of the web, without them, it cannot stand.

posted by Skarmund @ 1:53 PM permanent link   |

Social Media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and content creation. Social media use the "wisdom of crowds" to connect information in a collaborative manner online. Through social media, individuals or collaborations of individuals create web content, organize content, edit or comment on content, combine content, and share content. Social media uses many technologies and forms, including RSS and other syndicated web feeds, blogs, wikis, photo-sharing, video-sharing, podcasts, social networking, social bookmarking, mashups, widgets, virtual worlds, micro-blogs, and more.

Some Forms of Social Media

• Blogs
• Microblogging
• Podcasting
• RSS Feeds
• Social Networks and Government
• Wikis
• Virtual Worlds

posted by Alenjoe @ 10:50 AM permanent link   |

1 .In the first paragraph obviously state what the article is about. In standard journalism you would tell who, what, why, when and where an event is occurrence.

2. Organize your material in a point-wise fashion. Before you start writing think of the points that your article is leaving to cover.

3. Place the reader at ease. You are not writing for a scientific or literary society, but to your peers on the Internet. Write in an easy style and if you bring in new terms, describe them for your readers.

4. Explain your points in little paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier for the reader to follow. No one likes to appear at a long block of solid text. Three, four or five sentences are typically enough for one paragraph.

5. Dont be afraid to fall all the beans! Tell your deal secrets!

6. Give real examples and personal experiences to back up your points

7. Emphasize the benefits of your product or service. When it comes to selling, it is the benefits that sell, quite than the features.

8. Give resource in arrange to your readers. Give the addresses of websites where your readers can obtain more information on the subject that you are talking about.

9. Get another view on your article. Demonstrate it to your friends and colleagues, and dont worry if they disapprove of you, it is better that your friends find the mistakes than your customers. Always remember, a good editor is a writers best friend

10. Keep your most significant information near the beginning of the article and summarize what you want to say at the ending. Editors typically cut things near the end, so keep your most important points and ideas in the beginning of the article. At the very end of the article you can summarize what you set out to achieve in your opening paragraph.

posted by steve Sahale @ 10:39 AM permanent link   |

Heres a rough set of criteria for you.

• Your site is indexed and appears with the proper title, snippet, and url (www, or no www whichever you picked) type site:www.yoursite.com into Google to check this.
• Your site has PageRank (use the google toolbar, or nichebot.com to find this)
• It is regularly crawled, and the cache dates are newer than 10 days
• On your keyword, you rank in the top 20 for allinanchor, allintext, and allintitle. To check this, type, e.g. allinanchor: and see if you're in the top 20.
• You do not rank within the first 1000 places for the keyword the site was designed for

Does the Sandbox Really Exist, or is it Just the Google Algorithm?

This is a big controversy. Everyone has a different opinions.

Don't listen to guys who handle bluechip companies - they optimize older, high PR sites. It's your everyday mainly-new-sites webmaster who knows this problem intimately. In fact, all the big sites need to do is place the keyword in the title and they're on the first page. This gives them an unfair advantage not unlike what the media elite has enjoyed for decades.

Regardless of whether the sandbox is a separate phenomenon from the algorithm, the degree of prejudice against new sites has hurt quality of Google's search results. This is especially true with products and topics both new and urgent. The bigger sites may not be covering it, but searchers end up there without high quality answers.

The common wisdom now is that if you're looking for new websites, go to MSN or Yahoo instead. Neither of these sites is using this kind of filter. Many websites rank in the top 10 (for their targeted keywords) on these two search engines, yet are nowhere to be found in Google.

Why Would Google Do This?

Google frowns upon SEOs who try to overly influence ranking, so they needed to find a way around SEO factors to deliver quality results. So they'd look for signs of SEO in websites, e.g. how consistent the addition of backlinks is, and how repetitive (vs. natural) the anchor text of backlinks is, and they consider the age of the site and its backlinks.

Redesign Penalties

Similarly, websites that have made the mistake of too comprehensively redesigning their look, content, or navigation have been shocked to find that they get penalized for this updating. Google seems to prefer a frozen in time or moving like molasses kind of internet. But to be fair, this is something that had to be included to beat spammers who were buying old websites and refueling them with keyword spam.

Why Do You Get Sandboxed?

Some sites have gotten out of the sandbox in a week, while others can take up to a year or more. No one knows if any one contributing factor gets you out sooner rather than later. Some point to the age of inbound links, or the frequency with which your site acquires them. Some say that getting too many inbound links too quickly appears artificial, and is flagged as spam. But others argue that Google can't know how fast a site should acquire links. A website that received national news coverage, for example, could acquire hundreds or thousands of links in a day.

It's likely that no one outside of Google fully understands how the sandbox works. The problem has been noticed and discussed for nearly 2 years, and no one has given a satisfactory answer. What's crystal clear is that Google has made it so complex that it cannot be reverse engineered.

How Long Will You Be Making Sand Castles?

The delay seems to vary anywhere from four to 11 months. Since we don't know exactly upon what and to what degree the filter depends, it's likely a different magic combination for every site- and this fits with webmasters experience. So keep your head down, develop content, get inbound links, and eventually you'll get out.

Some suggest that when you come out of the sandbox, you are not fully free. They notice a rationing or gradual increase in traffic from Google. In the meantime, older sites may rank better than you, regardless of the quality of their look, feel, and content. Deal with it. Keep your head down and keep working.

Another wrinkle: some webmasters suggest that sandboxing can occur at the page level, not simply at the site level, and that it is the bigger money/traffic keywords that get sandboxed. Again, this could simply be due to the level of competition on that keyword, as the entire site is not sandboxed if you're getting rankings and traffic from other keywords.

Is There a Way to Trick the Sandbox Filter?

Some webmasters have talked about finding cracks in the algorithm¦ and they mainly involve backlinks. For a while, there was a lot of linkspam on blogs, but everyone Google, bloggers, and blog providers have cracked down on that exploit.

The real sandbox solution is not a trick - unless you define everything done by the SEO-aware as tricky. The answer is to grow your content and backlinks naturally over time. Don't look for the quick buck, the quick ranking, or the easy way out. Go back to basics and build websites that people can use and enjoy. Exchange links with quality websites.

To avoid frustration, I'd suggest, if web building is what you do full time, that you begin a new site every month or two eventually, if you've worked consistently on all of them, you'll have one after another emerging from purgatory and flourishing in the rankings.

posted by Horshan @ 8:46 AM permanent link   |

Link building is one of the popular SEO solutions, which helps in providing higher page ranks. It is the backbone of the SEO operations and it helps in attracting quality traffic. It is important that while choosing a SEO company you ensure that they are offering quality web development services and quality write ups that generate one way links. Smooth web traffic is ensured by quality content management solutions which gives a professional look to your website and even user friendly features.

Link building benefits can be acquired by generating quality and keyword rich back links. Once your bank links are ready you can submit them to some of the good directories lie Digg, Sphinn, Reddit, Ezine and Yahoo! and many others.

You can also use some of the link building strategies like URL links, text links, image links and dynamic links. It is to be kept in mind that back links are crawled by the spiders. So incase you want to attract the spiders then one sure short way is the well written professional write ups rich in articles. This will definitely facilitate both one way as well as two way links.

posted by sarah @ 7:12 PM permanent link   |

Trust, timing and power are three metrics that crash the aim site for building links. Sites that rank at the helm of search engines do so because of fundamental characteristics communal across multiple industries, websites and topics.

Sites ranking in the top 10 are there because they (1) either started previous to others realized the potential for those keywords and contain an advantage of time to market / indexing diffusion (2) because they appreciate link popularity and contain built a plethora of links from a diversity of sites or (3) because they understand the value of a good domain, site structural design and on page optimization.

Not to say that this is the simply way, but we are only focusing on three metrics for the sake of argument. I have mentioned before that chronology begets power, in layman’s terms, if you in progress years ago optimizing, cleansing and grooming your site for senior search engine visibility, you understand the layers concerned in producing high ranking search engine consequence pages.

posted by steve Sahale @ 2:09 PM permanent link   |

• Ensure your home page has at least 150 words of relevant, descriptive text about your products and services. Include the keywords your customers are most likely to type into a search engine when looking for your services.
• Stand firm and say NO when your web designer insists on an animated "Flash" intro page to your site. Search engines disregard them and your customers have seen enough of them!
• Provide as much useful content as possible on your site.
• Create fact sheets and expand your existing content. Search engines view a 50 page site as more "important" than a five page site.
• Create a news section - it's a great way to have a continual stream of new, relevant content.
• Archive the articles even if they may seem out of date search engines will love you!
  

posted by Alenjoe @ 2:06 PM permanent link   |

Page rank: Every site is given a page rank from zero to ten. The basic rule that can increase a page rank is to get links from other websites and limit the number of links going out to other sites.

Incoming links:
The quality of links is an important factor. Google looks for sites that have natural link popularity. It means that a variety if sites have to be linked and not just one type. Also link text is important. Relevance of the links is also important

Page titles:
This is one of the most important factors of the page that the algorithm looks at.

Keyword density:
If keywords are used too many times then it is a sign of spam to Google and will actually hurt the sites ranking. A good idea is to keep keywords density lower and instead use related keywords.

Age of domain:
The age of a domain can be a friend or enemy for SEO. Newer domains are difficult to be ranked but domains that are two years old are much easier.

posted by Skarmund @ 1:48 PM permanent link   |

Having your website rank well in the major search engines is crucial to a successful Internet business. However, the information on doing so, which abounds on the Internet, can be perceived as complex and contradictive. Many website owners end up overwhelmed by all the data and simply quit and move on to other areas of promotion. By following the handful of steps presented in this article you will be well on your way to solid rankings.

Primer

Each webpage is its own unit, which has its own title and theme. A theme is most commonly referred to as keywords or a keyword phrase. The theme should be based on the most dominant data for that webpage. Therefore, if you have a webpage that lists ten types of coffee cups, â€Å"coffee cups would be the likely choice for the theme. However, if the theme is too general then you should work to compact it as there will be far too many results in the search engine to contend with. Perhaps your webpage lists ten types of coffee cups which all have American symbols on them. Two of the various possible themes would then be American coffee cups and patriotic coffee cups.

To determine if a theme might be too broad, search for the theme at a popular search engine and see how many results come up. It is typical to see up to a few million results for any theme. However, one hundred million results would be extremely high and a different theme should be chosen.

Step One:

The title of your webpage means a lot. A website should never have a loose and thoughtless title. The title should be clear, compact, and related directly to the main theme of the webpage. Let us look at three title examples for a webpage that sells different types of red coffee cups.

• Bad Title: Welcome to Joes!
• Better Title: Joes red coffee cups.
• Best Title: Red coffee cups.

Notice how we trimmed the title down to simply the main theme. In the bad example, the title does nothing to describe the products offered on the webpage and therefore will end up hurting the search engine rankings for this webpage.

Step Two: Use the H1 tag.

On the top of your webpage put the main theme in a H1 tag. This will help establish what the webpage is about and Google will take the data enclosed in the H1 tag more seriously which helps boost the overall theme in its ranking algorithm. This should be at the very top of the webpage if possible and include only the main theme. Using our title example above, you would insert the following on top of the webpage:

Red coffee cups

Step Three: Utilize the written word properly.

The main keyword phrase (theme) must be printed on your webpage multiple times. It must appear natural in the flow of writing and not just thrown on the webpage somewhere a few times. After massaging your keyword phrase into the copy, bold one instance, underline one instance, and italicize one instance.

Again, basing this example from the one above:

• Bold One Instance: My name is Joe and I sell red coffee cups.
• Italicize One Instance: Our red coffee cups ship directly to your front door.
• Underline One Instance: Order today and receive free shipping on all red coffee cups!

By doing this you will help enforce the theme of the webpage and achieve better search rankings.

Step Four: Establish incoming links.

Before going any further, I recommend you visit google.com and install the Google toolbar. This will allow you to see what is called PR (page rank). Knowing a websites PR is extremely helpful, and basically mandatory, for this step. It is more important to have links today than ever. To rank high in the search engines, you must have people linking to you. Failure to acquire incoming links results in low or non-existing rankings. Here are some techniques to build up incoming links:

• Submit your website to directories. Once listed, directories, such as the ODP (dmoz.org) and business.com, will increase your incoming links. When viewing a directory, check to see if they have PR. The higher the number the better.
• Purchase text links. Many websites today sell text links at varied rates. Purchasing a text link can help you gain traffic and will increase your incoming links. Text links must be purchased or placed only on websites that have either the same or related theme as yours. If your website is all about coffee a link from a website about oil changes is not going to help you much and could actually harm your website rankings in the future.
• Link Research. Find out who is linking to top ranked websites under your keyword phrase (theme) and try to get listed on them. The idea here is to not reinvent the wheel, rather do what already works. To find out who is linking to top websites, visit Google and type the following text in the search box: link:site.com where site.com is the website URL.

Step Five: Work to ensure anchor text from incoming links contains your main theme.

When other websites link to you, try to get them to use the keyword phrase for the webpage they are linking to as the anchor text. This is not always possible and that is ok. You simply want to try and get as many links on target as possible. Not all links need to go to your homepage because having incoming links to a webpage within the website is beneficial also.

posted by Horshan @ 8:44 AM permanent link   |

A top task is any action that

1. A large number of people need to complete online
2. Is essential for people to accomplish quickly and easily
   

• People come to your website with a specific task in mind. If your website doesn't help them complete that task, they'll leave.
• Identify the mission the purpose of your website, to help you clarify the No1 top task your website should help people accomplish.
• Don't yet have a mission statement for your website? Now is a great time to write one!

posted by Alenjoe @ 10:25 AM permanent link   |

Building Link Popularity is extremely important, first of all stay away from link farms, free for all links and like schemes. They don't assist you with your Page Rank. You have a bigger alter that your site get banned from the search engines than that you take delivery of a Page Rank boost.

* Get scheduled in the internet directories (Yahoo, DMoz). Submission to DMOZ is the most important thing that you are listed in Open Directory Projects.

* Inquire additional website owners to link to you. A huge way to find other website owners who are maybe keen to link to you is to do a link popularity make sure on one of your competitors. These sites are most of the time in the similar tropic as you.

posted by steve Sahale @ 10:21 AM permanent link   |

search engine optimization is a widely misunderstood industry. Many webmasters, including myself, have been mislead by industry forums, and Internet "chatter". Having tried many different approaches, starting in 1996: It is ironic that the methods I used back then, still hold true today, to a great extent.

Today's article is on the infamous Title tag. Often overlooked, occasionally abused, but still effective.

What belongs in this Title? Quite simply: Your strongest Keyword, or Keyword Phrase - usually followed by your business name or personal name, seperated by a comma or dash.

You will notice that when you search for pages at Yahoo^(TM) or Google^(TM), you will often see the very words you used to search with, at the beginning of the result. These words are bolded, signifying relevance.

The truth is, the day and age of Meta Tags is nearly dead. What is not dead, however are the Title and Meta Description tags.

What is the best way to use the Title Tag?

Arguments will vary, but my approach follows this example: * the symbols <> have been replaced with [ and ].

[title]Widgets, John Smith[/title]

Perhaps, ultimately, only your main KeyWord, or Keyword Phrase should be present in this tag; however, it is customary to include your name, or business name. When deciding which link to follow, the end user is given more information when you include a business name.

Mathematically, the KeyWord weight of your Title tag is calculated as follows:

KeyWord Characters = K

Total Characters in Title Tag = T

Keyword Weight = K/T

In our example above, "Widgets" is the Keyword Phrase, and is a total of 7 characters(K). The total number of characters in the tag is 19(T).

K/T = 7/19 = .368 or 37%

35-50% Keyword Weight is about ideal. Repetition of Keywords in the Title used to a good technique, but I highly discourage it now. Make sure you research your Keywords well! Having problems with your dynamic (.asp .php) documents not being indexed. Make sure your code includes the ability to produce unique Title and Meta Description tags for each page. Meta Keyword tags, are, for most part useless and necessary. Title and Meta Description however are still crucial!

posted by Horshan @ 8:42 AM permanent link   |

To get started, be sure to get your site listed in the following directories that are crawled by the search engines:

• Open Directory Project or DMOZ
• Yahoo! Directory
  

When you are submitting to directories, be sure to take the time to find the best category for your site and read the submission guidelines provided by each directory. By following their guidelines, you will improve your chances of being listed and decrease the amount of time it takes to get listed.

There are many more directories where you can submit your site. Don't forget to find local or thematic directories that are relevant to the topic of your site. You will be able to find many in our list of search engines and directories.

It will take time for the search engines to index your site after it has been listed in the major directories. So, be patient and expect to wait at least a couple more months before your site starts appearing in the index of the major search engines.

posted by Alenjoe @ 4:23 PM permanent link   |

Links are a main source of generating high traffic on your website. There would be many changes in the search engines ranking procedure but one thing which would never change is the importance of links. In order to combat the changes in the search engine rankings procedure you must be able to get the links from many sites so that virtually you can have links in every site. Another move which has to be taken is the formulation of a multi marketing strategy and the usage of a host of publicity tactics so that you can generate more traffic on to your traffic and ultimately generate more revenues. It is not a good tactic that you rely on a single marketing strategy; in order to get long term stability you need to host a multiple marketing strategy.

Another important tactic of generating high traffic is that of the article publication. The logic behind the article submission is that if quality work is submitted to the different directories, it would attract many links and this is not only a one time phenomenon, people would repeatedly read the other articles and you can be sure of the repeated references. So it is important that the concept of article submission is not misused and one notable point is that if the articles are not good they would definitely not facilitate the goal of the strategy.

posted by sarah @ 2:00 PM permanent link   |

Now these days, inbounds links are the one of most significant factor for getting a elevated keyword ranking, the most search engines are ranking their search consequence on the link popularity from your site. Not the quantity from the links, but the excellence of those links is important. It's also important that the inbound links are in the similar tropic. Remember one good link can be more important than hundred bad links. Not only the search engines page ranking is important, good links creates also extra traffic to your website.

posted by steve Sahale @ 10:29 AM permanent link   |