INDUSTRY NEWS ARTICLE.....

Back-to-School for SEO

$e@rch engINe oPtimIZ@tIoN

Friday, July 31, 2009

Thursday, July 30, 2009

SEO And Web Design: Why Now Is The Right Time To Invest

The Creare Group analyse the economic, technological and commercial advantages of investing in website design and SEO

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

LEARN ABOUT S.E.O

Why Should You Learn About SEO?

The Basics: How Search Engines Work?

Your Job As a Search Engine Optimizer

Top 9 SEO Mistakes Made by Designers and Developers

General SEO Do’s and Don’ts

OPTIMIZATIONS

5 MYTHS ABOUT S.E.O

S.E.O CHAT

S.E.O AND WEB DESIGN

BRAFTON

S.E.O INDIA GETTING MOMENTUM

AROUND THE NET

CLICKZ WEB CASTS

1. Splash Page

3. Image and Flash Content

4. Overuse of Ajax

6. “Click Here” Link Anchor Text

Don’t Ignore Your Audience

SEO isn’t only for online marketers. As a web designer or frontend developer, most on-site SEO is your responsibility.
If your site is not search engine friendly, you might be losing a lot of traffic that you’re not even aware of. Remember, besides visitors typing in "www.yourwebsite.com" and backlink referrals; search engines are the only way people can find your site.
There are many benefits of getting a high ranking site. Let’s use ndesign-studio.com for example. I have, on average, about 14,000 visitors a day. About 40 - 45% of that traffic comes from search engines (about 6000+ referrals a day). Imagine, without search engine referrals, I would be losing thousands of visitors everyday. That means, I’m risking losing potential clients too.
SEO is also a value-added service. As a web designer/developer you can sell your SEO skills as an extended service.

First, let’s look at how crawler-based search engines work (both Google and Yahoo fall in this category). Each search engine has its own automated program called a "web spider" or "web crawler" that crawls the web. The main purpose of the spider is to crawl web pages, read and collect the content, and follow the links (both internal and external). The spider then deposits the information collected into the search engine’s database called the index.

When searchers enter a query in the search box of a search engine, the search engine’s job is to find the most relevant results to the query by matching the search query to the information in its index.

What makes or breaks a search engine is how well it answers your question when you perform a search. That’s based on what’s called the search engine algorithm which is basically a bunch of factors that the search engine uses to say “hey is this page RELEVANT or NOT?”. The higher your page ranks for these factors (yes some factors are more important than others) than the higher your page will get displayed in the search engine result pages.

SEO jobs

Each search engine has its own algorithm in ranking web pages. Understanding the general factors that influence the algorithm can affect your search result position, and this is what SEO experts are hired for. An SEO’s job has two aspects: On-Site and Off-Site.

On-Site SEO: are the things that you can do on your site, such as: HTML markups, target keywords, internal linking, site structure, etc.

Off-Site SEO: are the things that you have much less control of, such as: how many backlinks you get and how people link to your site.

This is a guide for designers and developers. The main concern is the On-Site aspects. Secretly though, if you do your job right… and design a beautiful site… and/or produce useful content… you’ll get Off-Site backlinks and social bookmarks without even lifting a finger.

Splash page

2. Non-spiderable Flash Menus

5. Versioning of Theme Design

7. Common Title Tag Mistakes

Same or similar title text:

Exceeding the 65 character limit:

Keyword stuffing the title:
Another common mistake people tend to make is overfilling the title tag with keywords. Saying the same thing 3 times doesn’t make you more relevant. Keyword stuffing in the Title Tag is looked at as search engine spam (not good). But it might be smart to repeat the same word in different ways:

8. Empty Image Alt Attribute9. Unfriendly URLs

Example of Friendly URL: domain.com/page-title
Example of Dynamic URL: domain.com/?p=12356

Let me tell you WHAT TO DO by telling you WHAT NOT TO DO:

Write about topics your audience cares about. Like what? Find out, by conducting a poll (like I did), scan some relevant bulletin boards or forums, look for common topics in customer emails, or do some keyword research. There are great free keyword tools like the Google Keyword Tool or SEO Book’s Keyword Tool and loads more. The plan is not to spend your life doing keyword research but just to get a general idea of what your visitors are interested in.

GOOGLE OPTIMIZATION HELP.....
GOOGLE OPTIMIZATION TIPS.....
GOOGLE OPTIMIZATION TRICKS.....

Search engine giant Google came out of nowhere a few years ago to become the most-used search engine on the planet, thanks to algorithms that deliver highly relevant results. With the company’s constant tinkering to stay at the top of the game, it can be tricky to keep your site’s position in Google’s results. The articles in this section talk about handling Google’s requirements and keeping up with its changes.

MSN OPTIMIZATION HELP.....
MSN OPTIMIZATION TIPS.....

Created by Microsoft to make sure that the huge developing search engine field did not pass the company by, MSN has been through at least two major overhauls. The company has set its sights on catching and surpassing Google. This section keeps you abreast of what you need to know to score high in the rankings of this major player.

Date	Title	Author	Hits
05-18-09	SEO for Microsoft Live Search (MSN)	Ivan Strouchliak	8361
01-06-09	Microsoft`s Live Search Patents and Algorithms Related to Blogs	Ivan Strouchliak	9956
09-12-06	Using Freshness to Optimize for MSN	Akinola Akintomide	66037
06-13-06	MSN: Still Too Much Junk in the Trunk	Jonathan Caputo	54664
12-21-05	Search Engines and Algorithms: Optimizing for MSN’s RankNet Technology	Jennifer Sullivan ...	59588
12-20-04	MSN Search Engine Beta Optimization Techniques	Wayne Hurlbert	103590
08-16-04	Will Your Google Optimization Help with MSN?	Wayne Hurlbert	37316
08-02-04	Comparing MSN And Yahoo! Optimization	Wayne Hurlbert	45656
07-19-04	Getting High Rankings in MSN Search	Wayne Hurlbert	78267

When you size up the search marketing industry, you really have to marvel at all the different information sources, many of them conflicting, and how search marketers are able to stay on top of what’s current and relevant compared to noise and malarkey.

In the course of talking to prospective clients, prospective business partners, attending conferences and events, reading blogs, books, discussion threads, forums, newsletters and industry publications, you can get exposure to an amazing variety of observations about SEO. Many of them are spot-on. Some of them are tales of a mythical nature. A few are just plain bunk.

For some context on this post, I think it is important to note the distinction in intent for most search engine optimization efforts: SEO for publishers, blog networks and affiliates is a different thing than SEO for lead generation and on-site transactions/sales. Many tactics are the same, but the intentions and outcomes are very different.

The myths outlined below are more concerned with SEO for lead/sales generation that we work with at TopRank.

1. “Search Engine Optimization is a collection of tricks to fool search engines“.

If you’re “fooling” the search engines, then you’re probably fooling users too. Guess how well that kind of activity converts? “Real” SEO involves a lot more than optimizing content, getting links and using disposable marketing “tricks”. Tricks and tactics may be a matter of semantics depending on who you talk to, but many of the tactics we associate with productive and long term SEO include:

Search Marketing Strategy
Benchmarks
Competitive Analysis
Keyword Analysis
Creative Copy Writing
Web Design & User Experience
Information Architecture
Server Side Issues
Code Optimization
Other channel marketing that affects SEO (social media, news search, blog search, etc)
Ongoing Content Development
Ongoing Link Building
Web Analytics
Conversion Analysis

2. “People in our market don’t use search engines.”

I actually used to keep my laughter to myself when people would say this. You don’t have to do too much research to find out if a market is viable for marketing via search engines.

According to a study by comScore qSearch, there are 4.9 billion internet searches per month and 133 million unique searchers. Those numbers have actually gone up a bit since the study. It is certainly true that in some market categories in the developed world that search usage is minimal, but I have a hard time thinking of any.

A quick way to start investigating a market is to search and find out if how much relevant content is out there. If your market is brand new, then you may have an easier time dominating it on search engines by becoming an authority on the topic earlier than your competition.

3. “SEO is a single event”

This one is still pervasive and indicative of what search engine optimization used to be. Sort of like “SEO circa 1999″ when all you had to do was update Meta tags, add keywords to web pages and submit. Those are the Model T days of SEO.

Search engines like Google look at 100-200 factors or “signals” to determine relevancy and to decide how to sort search results. Add in the increasing numbers of competing documents from various media, blogs and web site along with more savvy search marketers and it’s easy to realize that effective SEO requires ongoing attention. “Attention to what?”, you might ask. How about: creative link building, creation and promotion of new content, integration with other online/offline marketing, social media, analytics and optimization refinements.

4. “SEO is a function of IT”

Search engine optimization started out in the cubicles of IT, but has moved it’s way into the executive offices for many companies. I believe the most recent SEMPO state of the search industry research shows that companies are no longer borrowing from other cost centers to fund their search marketing initiatives. It’s a business decision line item like any other marketing expenditure.

However, IT and Web Design/Development “buy-in” are critical for proper implementation and it’s important to understand that in larger organizations, SEO is multi-departmental. Marketing, IT, Public Relations, Legal, Creative and possibly operations might all be involved in some way with a strategic initiative to help reach business goals through improved organic search performance.

Regardless of the size of the company, SEO initiatives should be managed strategically by the business like any other major marketing initiative

5. “Our site doesn’t get a lot of visitors, so SEO wouldn’t work for us.”

With comments/myths like this, you must be wondering, “Who in the world is Lee talking to?” You would be surprised how many intelligent, accomplished corporate marketers have said the above. It appears to be the classic “chicken before the egg” type of thinking.

The reality is that comments like this are an indication of insecurity about search as a discipline or about search as a viable marketing channel for a particular business. Smart people say things like this because they are not confident about the solution being presented and want to get out of or avoid the conversation. Anyone else who uses such logic just doesn’t understand marketing.

Either way, I always recommend to companies that if they’re considering search engine optimization, regardless of who helps them, they need to look at it long term. SEO is not push button marketing and it is not for the impatient. The minimum amount of time we recommend is 6 months after implementation before evaluating whether SEO has promise as a profitable marketing channel. Anything less than that is not worth starting.

I can’t let you go without a few Bonus Myths:

Flash is bad – No, it’s the absence of text and complete reliance on Flash that is bad.
Database generated urls are bad – The major search engines are very good at indexing complex urls. Stay away from session ids though.
Keywords in meta tags is optimization – Just say no.
Extra domain names boost rankings – Pure malarkey. Make sure you redirect them properly. See Bruce Clay’s explanation on this.
Multiple copies of my site helps rankings – Can you say “duplicate content”? Don’t do it.
My competitors get away with spam techniques, so I can too – I can hear my mom now, “And if your friends told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?”. If a competitor is “getting away” with blatant search spam, you have a few decisions to make. One of them is how to be more creative and more aggressive (within guidelines) at becoming the authority for your category and topics.

Are there more myths and misconceptions, misunderstandings and pure bull$#@! out there about SEO? Sure there is. And the fact that, in some ways, keeping up to date with search marketing best practices is like putting a puzzle together when the picture likes to change from time to time, makes it even more challenging.

It’s all the more reason to find trusted resources that you can rely on and to build a network of people to bounce ideas off of so you can separate the facts from the myths. There is no substitute for firsthand experience

ARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION GOOGLE OPTIMIZATION.....

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

LEICESTERSHIRE, ENGLAND

SEO and Web Design are both booming industries – even in these troubled markets. There are many reasons; financial, commercial and technological, to illustrate why now is the perfect time for you and your business to invest. The Creare Group are capitalising on the current economic slump in the best way possible: to help optimise and future-proof businesses in an increasingly wide range of sectors.

To start with the basic financial implications of your investment, uncertain markets may mean unfortunate levels of hardship for some, but they also mean there are plenty of excellent bargains to be had. With increasing competition, similarly competitive pricing structures emerge, meaning that you can get quality ongoing internet marketing packages for a snip of the usual price. Moreover, in a recession, the need for a successful marketing strategy becomes all the more important.

The Creare Group realise that the internet is at the forefront of consumer attention with the publication of the Digital Britain report this week. The web is beginning to be thought of as a basic utility – a right, not a privilege – and the government has recommended all households have access to a connection of 2Mbps or more by 2012. With this rapid acceleration of internet access set to continue, ensuring that your site stands out and attracts plenty of business through both its Search Engine Optimisation and website design is crucial.

Within this increased focus on the internet as a whole, a lot of specific interest surrounds search engines. Also this week, Yahoo and Microsoft have finally made their long awaited announcement of a partnership, with Microsoft’s Bing search engine powering the Yahoo website and Yahoo in turn becoming the advertising sales team for Microsoft’s product. This has been designed as a challenge to Google, meaning that where your site ranks in search listings is going to be more important.

The Creare Group are aware of the technological implications of these recent developments, and understand that high rankings generate more traffic and, from there, more business – it is their top priority to make sure this happens for your site. As a company with a multimillion pound annual turnover in an intensely competitive market, they are expertly qualified to solve all your SEO and design problems. The very fact that their competitive keywords rank so highly seems to prove their worth.

Creare also pride themselves not only on their technological ability, but their consistently outstanding customer service. Much of SEO is an ongoing, organic process, as this tends to yield the best long term results, and any company choosing to make this investment needs regular contact and updates, a service Creare are proud to offer. They give frequent updates as to your SEO, both internal and external, analytics, and even your ecommerce site if you have an online shopping facility.

“With so many companies rightly deciding that now is the perfect time to invest in an effective online marketing campaign and efficient brand management, Creare are doing their best to help individuals in all sectors”. Mike McKinlay, MD.

Creare’s SEO specialists and web designers understand that just because the internet is becoming to best place to launch and continue successful marketing campaigns, not all individuals or companies are aware of the underlying strategies involved in this. Most people need a helping hand, as using Google everyday differs greatly from making sure your business is using it efficiently. So as the net moves further towards its predicted future status as a utility, it is crucial to ensure your business also moves with these changes.

YAHOO/MICROSOFT DEAL MAY CHANGE FUTURE OF SEO

The Microsoft deal with Yahoo may change the face of SEO

Yesterday it was announced that Yahoo and Microsoft reached a deal that could give Microsoft almost 30 percent of the search engine market, and according to at least one expert, this will change the search engine optimization (SEO) landscape.

While the deal still has to meet approval and will likely take some time before Microsoft is handling all of Yahoo's searches, SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin says the deal will have some positive and negative effects on both Yahoo and Microsoft in regards to search engine optimization (SEO).

For one thing, businesses should put at least some effort into search engine optimization (SEO) for Microsoft's Bing as it is likely to have at least a 15 percent share of the search engine market, according to Fishkin.

Fishkin writes that implementing a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy for Bing would be a good idea because of the increased "richness" of its results.

"Bing's results are, by default, 'richer' than those of Yahoo and Google. Although Yahoo will be controlling the user interface on their end, it's likely much of that 'richness' will make its way into the Bing results inside Yahoo," he wrote. "Bing also surfaces only the top five results for many queries, meaning a higher concentration of clicks on those top results."

Although Microsoft and Yahoo say they expect the deal to be completed early next year, there still may be some hurdles the companies need to pass as many in the industry expect the Department of Justice to take a hard look at the agreement.

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING.....
S.E.O INDIA MOMENTUM.....

In this article I will try to explain the importance of search engine optimization services in India – for the Indians and the people arcoss the globe.

The short terms for this buzz word is “SEO India”. SEO in India is gaining momentum day by day and lot of seo company in India are propelling tons of online business in getting on top of search engines.

SEO india is worthwhile due number of factors.

• SEO in India is Cheap and most affordable for small and medium scale businesses
• SEO’s in india are extremely professional. This is what we say about SEO professional in great demand.
• SEO’s India are to some extend abundant,
• SEO in India keep themselves updated with the latest trends and techniques in search engine optimization industry.
• SEO in India is reliable because we have most white hat SEO professionals.
• SEO in India is now several millions dollar industry and SEO outsourcing is one of the key factor behind that.
• Big corporates who even have inhouse team for marketing are outsourcing SEO work in India due to cheap and quality manpower once again.

SEO India though gaining momentum day by day but still it needs to be properly explored in India itself.

There are thousands of seo companies in india where are themselves working for clients abroad but they donot entertain the clients from India due to several reasons including - Indian clients want a more cheaper cost and they still believe that traditional marketing is better rather than online ventures.

But SEO in India will prevail internally as we are seeing small and medium scale business getting seo for their small sites usually microsites and with the launch of Google India Pvt. Ltd in India and their press releasing saying about 1 billion searches a month proves the potential of SEO India.

There are several challenges which the seo india industry is facing but they all will be overcome as the people who are driving the seo industry are worthwhile.

Similarly Uniqueweb Technologies helps a lot of business both SME’s and big corporates in their seo. The company is based in India and provides SEO services to the clients across the world including India.

AROUND THE NET IN SEARCH MARKETING.....

LEE ODDEN TALKS S.E.O.....
Marty Weintraub asks Lee Odden -- described as a "thought leader" -- to describe his vision of the intersection of SEO and social media, and what successful holistic integration looks like.

Weintraub also digs for the answers on Odden's search marketing core values. He asks, have they changed during the years? Other topics discussed include SEO training, as well as common client-integration barriers and what steps to take to maximize the potential for success.

1. Microsoft Now To 'Buy' Yahoo Search?
2. Starcom: Mobile Data Users Connecting To Ads In Other Media
3. Study: Online and Offline Behavior Meshing
4. Study Finds U.S. Market For Cars From India, China
5. Consumers Consolidating Travel Loyalty Memberships

TAGS: Search

By P.J. Fusco, ClickZ, Jul 29, 2009

The back-to-school shopping season can provide an extremely important sales burst for retailers. Sometimes getting that first dorm room set up just right results in sales that are second only to -- or in some cases, depending on the lines carried, even bigger than -- the holidays.

Yet sluggish sales performances have already claimed several retailers in the past year, including Linen 'n Things, and Steve & Barry's. While the government's economic stimulus checks may have helped to provide a fleeting upturn in retail sales for May and June, consumer spending is expected to remain unseasonably slow in the back-to-school months.

The National Retail Federation predicts that sales will grow slower than inflation -- a paltry 1.6 percent this year -- following a less-than-stellar 2.9 percent increase in 2008. So with sales lagging and money belts tightening, what online marketing venue are retailers turning to this year? Every marketer's darling, of course: social media marketing.

It will be interesting to see which retailers capture the tween market for the back-to-school season this year, and whose marketing budgets could have been better spent on good, old-fashioned SEO (define).

Mother and Child Reunion

J.C. Penney, for example, is launching five new exclusive clothing brands this year and a new "Dorm Life" brand that will include bedding and bath items, and desks and shelving units for those heading off to college. Meanwhile, J.C. Penney's Web site, jcp.com/teen, is the new home for its consolidated "microsites" it already had for brands like Decree and Arizona.

I'm not a huge fan of microsites. Certainly, breaking up a series of brands into a succession of retail sites can be successful. It's just highly uncommon for an online retailer to get it right.

Retailers usually end up with a shallow site that presents a doorway page to another destination. Or worse yet, they duplicate their own content and fragment link building to such an extent that they hamper each other's search engine positioning.

For many retailers, investments made in building microsites never seem to add up to be the sum of their parts. If they had invested similar sums in optimizing one parent site, the returns would have ended up greater. So it's at least good to see that J.C. Penney's new brands, like RS by skateboarder Ryan Sheckler, will be complemented by positioning within JCP Teen on Facebook, not a microsite.

Too bad the catchy jcp.com/teen landing page presents search engines with a temporary redirect (302 header response code) to a category within the parent site. So all the press releases about the new brands that could spur link building to an optimal URL are lost, showing that no matter how big or successful the retailer is, it still doesn't get the fundamentals of basic SEO.

At least the Facebook page is getting the conversation started. Too bad it's not well positioned to cast a few lines for some link bait: "JCP Teen does not have any upcoming events."

Perhaps it's not too late for J.C. Penney to make a better mix of things for the other new brands the retailer intends to launch during the back-to-school season. Especially since J.C. Penney is going after the market with initiatives on Twitter and YouTube. Now if they could only get everything bound together with a blog...

Advanced Traffic Analysis Techniques with Google Analytics in Google Optimization

Rating: / 3
2009-07-29

Google Analytics is free, highly reliable and provides a lot of information about your website traffic or website visitors' behavior. You probably know this already. Today we're going to show you some interesting ways to use that data that you may not have known. Discuss (2)