Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization Strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization Strategy. Show all posts
Jan 11, 2010
Real Time Search - SEO experts, are you ready?
Social Media gains more weight in SEO. This video shows the value of Twitter posts in the search results page.
The event video:
Dec 9, 2009
Link building is not that easy anymore
You Should Have Seen it. The link building process becomes increasingly difficult. Most of the good, old strategies don’t work any more. You see your traffic going down and wonder what’s happening? Maybe all your SEO efforts are in vain?
Social bookmarking, is it still working?
Social bookmarking sites and web directories are main tools in link building campaigns. But lately, most of them add almost no value to my SEO campaigns. Yes, if you manage to land your article on the first page of the big guys like Digg, you will get a lot of visitors.
For a day or two. But that’s all folks.
Most of these sites use some sort of third party advertising to generate revenue. And most of these advertiser networks have strict rules against links to dangerous websites. The social bookmarking sites can’t afford to check every link because they receive thousands per day. Solution for them was to add nofollow to some or even all outgoing links. Some of them get even further with cloaking links. Now webmasters submit their links, visit the SB websites, link to them but in return, they get nothing. You can submit your article link to hundreds social bookmarking sites and get no visitors and no links at all.
Blog commenting?
With mass usage of nofollow, you’ll only lose your time.
Forum posting?
The same thing. Some forums don’t add nofollow, only until they get enough visitors.
Creating blogs or random pages on the net won’t help you, because they are pages with no value. You must work on any of them to become popular – does it worth its time?
What will be the next, successful SEO strategy?
I don't know. Do you?
Social bookmarking, is it still working?
Social bookmarking sites and web directories are main tools in link building campaigns. But lately, most of them add almost no value to my SEO campaigns. Yes, if you manage to land your article on the first page of the big guys like Digg, you will get a lot of visitors.
For a day or two. But that’s all folks.
Most of these sites use some sort of third party advertising to generate revenue. And most of these advertiser networks have strict rules against links to dangerous websites. The social bookmarking sites can’t afford to check every link because they receive thousands per day. Solution for them was to add nofollow to some or even all outgoing links. Some of them get even further with cloaking links. Now webmasters submit their links, visit the SB websites, link to them but in return, they get nothing. You can submit your article link to hundreds social bookmarking sites and get no visitors and no links at all.
Blog commenting?
With mass usage of nofollow, you’ll only lose your time.
Forum posting?
The same thing. Some forums don’t add nofollow, only until they get enough visitors.
Creating blogs or random pages on the net won’t help you, because they are pages with no value. You must work on any of them to become popular – does it worth its time?
What will be the next, successful SEO strategy?
I don't know. Do you?
Nov 17, 2009
Link building – how different link types can affect ranking
SEO optimization of a website consists of two main parts – on-site optimization and off-site optimization. On-site optimization is the process of improving your content and your site accessibility. Off site optimization is the process of link building, marketing and so on. They may seem not related but it is not exactly true.
Quality content can bring you a lot of good and high quality links. People will link naturally to your website and your inner pages. Off site optimization is the way to speed up this process. Doing SEO on a meaningless content is a waste of time.
How important are the quality links?
The links from a high traffic and trusted sites can bring you more value than a high number of low quality links. Links from authoritative sites in your niche are the best. The thought behind is that if a trusted site links to you, you must be a trusted site, too.
How important is the quantity of the links?
People tend to overestimate the value of the links but links from a website not related to your niche or with no search engine value won’t help you to rank well. They can even harm your ranking for a while. Even building them too fast can be suspicious and some of the search engines can mark you as a spammy content.
Relevant links
Links relevant to your site topics are better than ones that are not even if they are not high ranked. Unrelated sites won’t bring you targeted visitors or search engine ranking. There is no point of building them.
Link position
Links from the main page of a website have more value than links from the ‘Links’ or ‘Friends’ page. The number of links is also important for the value it ads to your site. If your link is at a position 100 in a list of links it won’t bring you much attention.
Reciprocal links
Many search engine optimization experts think that the reciprocal links are ranked slightly lower than normal, one-way links but I haven’t seen a confirmation of this statement. Most of the sites with two-way linking strategies have a lot of outgoing and ingoing links and my personal opinion is that harms their ranking more than the two-way links.
Outgoing links
Outgoing links can help you rank better or can hurt your ranking badly. If you link to related, trusted websites in the niche of your articles you will gain only profit. In other hand if you link to a low quality websites – your ranking will go down. Also big number of outgoing links can rate down your website.
Quality content can bring you a lot of good and high quality links. People will link naturally to your website and your inner pages. Off site optimization is the way to speed up this process. Doing SEO on a meaningless content is a waste of time.
How important are the quality links?
The links from a high traffic and trusted sites can bring you more value than a high number of low quality links. Links from authoritative sites in your niche are the best. The thought behind is that if a trusted site links to you, you must be a trusted site, too.
How important is the quantity of the links?
People tend to overestimate the value of the links but links from a website not related to your niche or with no search engine value won’t help you to rank well. They can even harm your ranking for a while. Even building them too fast can be suspicious and some of the search engines can mark you as a spammy content.
Relevant links
Links relevant to your site topics are better than ones that are not even if they are not high ranked. Unrelated sites won’t bring you targeted visitors or search engine ranking. There is no point of building them.
Link position
Links from the main page of a website have more value than links from the ‘Links’ or ‘Friends’ page. The number of links is also important for the value it ads to your site. If your link is at a position 100 in a list of links it won’t bring you much attention.
Reciprocal links
Many search engine optimization experts think that the reciprocal links are ranked slightly lower than normal, one-way links but I haven’t seen a confirmation of this statement. Most of the sites with two-way linking strategies have a lot of outgoing and ingoing links and my personal opinion is that harms their ranking more than the two-way links.
Outgoing links
Outgoing links can help you rank better or can hurt your ranking badly. If you link to related, trusted websites in the niche of your articles you will gain only profit. In other hand if you link to a low quality websites – your ranking will go down. Also big number of outgoing links can rate down your website.
Oct 20, 2009
How to get traffic through forum posting
Maybe you have heard that forum posting can bring you traffic and you wonder if it is true. The answer is – yes, it is true for people who know what they are doing. Here is a simple tutorial on how to get targeted traffic from forums.
First things first – start with a plan. Examine your site and select few good looking pages for landing pages. Or create some. Landing pages are important because they create the first impression. If you want an action make sure your message is clear enough.
Next, find a list of forums in your niche. It would be best if they are sorted according to their page rank. Filter the ones who don’t allow forum signatures. In the matter of facts you can try them, create account and make few posts but you won’t get much traffic from them. Don’t forget to add your site in your profile details.
Now you must have a list of niche forums. It is not a problem if they don’t allow sig during the first few days or posts. Register in all of them and visit their hello section. Say hello and few details about yourself. For example if you have a gaming site and you are a girl don’t forget to mention it. Use humor, people like funny things.
Make a posting schedule. Try to post regularly and in all forum sections. When you have something like fifty posts – do your hit. For the time you spend on the corresponding forum you must know which topics are hot and create big buzz. Create a hot topic. You can use even a linkbait style. After few posts or pages submit this page to digg and some others social websites.
Continue to post even after the initial success. New posts will bring new visitors. And you get more incoming links. Keep up with your posting schedule or hire someone to do the work. If you use a freelancer to make forum posts for you – make sure the posts are quality enough. Just spamming will bring more harm than benefit.
Forum posting is an easy way to get targeted traffic, links and brand awareness. Forum can help your business grow but you must take the work seriously. Even if it looks like free time it is a job and you must do it careful and with a lot of thinking.
First things first – start with a plan. Examine your site and select few good looking pages for landing pages. Or create some. Landing pages are important because they create the first impression. If you want an action make sure your message is clear enough.
Next, find a list of forums in your niche. It would be best if they are sorted according to their page rank. Filter the ones who don’t allow forum signatures. In the matter of facts you can try them, create account and make few posts but you won’t get much traffic from them. Don’t forget to add your site in your profile details.
Now you must have a list of niche forums. It is not a problem if they don’t allow sig during the first few days or posts. Register in all of them and visit their hello section. Say hello and few details about yourself. For example if you have a gaming site and you are a girl don’t forget to mention it. Use humor, people like funny things.
Make a posting schedule. Try to post regularly and in all forum sections. When you have something like fifty posts – do your hit. For the time you spend on the corresponding forum you must know which topics are hot and create big buzz. Create a hot topic. You can use even a linkbait style. After few posts or pages submit this page to digg and some others social websites.
Continue to post even after the initial success. New posts will bring new visitors. And you get more incoming links. Keep up with your posting schedule or hire someone to do the work. If you use a freelancer to make forum posts for you – make sure the posts are quality enough. Just spamming will bring more harm than benefit.
Forum posting is an easy way to get targeted traffic, links and brand awareness. Forum can help your business grow but you must take the work seriously. Even if it looks like free time it is a job and you must do it careful and with a lot of thinking.
Dec 13, 2008
Blog planning – how to start a high-traffic, high-paying blog?
After reading about a SEO experiment in DP, I gave a serious thought about what is the best strategy to start a blog. What is the best planning? How to attract more visitors? How to get maximum revenue? How to make people remember you?
I am not exactly a SEO expert, it is more likely that I am a SEO enthusiast. I am not interested in making money from SEO, my money source is programming. But for the past two years I do (and experiment on) search engine optimization for some sites. It is not a complete service and only small part of them are mine. I have some sites in high competition niches and some in low ones. And I make tests on different types of blog/website monetizing.
So what I have learned till now. The basic is – you have no guarantee in anything related to search engines. Two websites with no duplicate content but identical in niche/ marketing/ optimizing will have very different performance. This is not a rule of course but it happens most of the time. And all of this is just my opinion and analysis, I don't pretend to be fully right in anything.
I’ll make a simple plan for starting a blog, according to what I have learned till now. I choose a blog, not a website because it is a little more complicated for a website.
I am not exactly a SEO expert, it is more likely that I am a SEO enthusiast. I am not interested in making money from SEO, my money source is programming. But for the past two years I do (and experiment on) search engine optimization for some sites. It is not a complete service and only small part of them are mine. I have some sites in high competition niches and some in low ones. And I make tests on different types of blog/website monetizing.
So what I have learned till now. The basic is – you have no guarantee in anything related to search engines. Two websites with no duplicate content but identical in niche/ marketing/ optimizing will have very different performance. This is not a rule of course but it happens most of the time. And all of this is just my opinion and analysis, I don't pretend to be fully right in anything.
I’ll make a simple plan for starting a blog, according to what I have learned till now. I choose a blog, not a website because it is a little more complicated for a website.
- Initialization
This is the research part. If you haven't selected a niche for your blog - now is the time to do so. You must select a niche where you can provide quality content. If you are not a pro in writing consider hiring a professional writer. Make a deep research on your target niche. Analyze your competitors, niche forums, social sites, trends, keywords, etc.
Spending a little more time on this first part will help you to solve many problems of the future.
- Actions - any of this step may be not appropriate for your niche, make the final decision what to do in a clear mind
- Make minimum 20 posts before doing anything else with your blog. Maybe this advice is not suitable only for political/ civil/ spicy blogs.
- Make gradual link building campaign – too fast link building may put you in a sandbox
- Make minimum 3-4 posts per week for the first 3 months
- Active membership to some related forums and communities – minimum 3-4 quality posts per forum per week
- Make 30 or more directory submissions per week – prefer high rank directories
- Make minimum 20 posts before doing anything else with your blog. Maybe this advice is not suitable only for political/ civil/ spicy blogs.
- Goals
Define your goals depending on the niche popularity in a monthly rate:
- Unique visitors expectations
- Performance
- Revenue
Keep in mind that in a high competition niche your blog will need more time and efforts to become popular.
I usually start to monetize my blogs after 3 months starting period. It is better to set goals according to the niche for the expecting revenue. Don’t aim too high because one disappointment at the beginning may be critical.
Selecting the type of revenue program is also a very complex task. I’ll live it for another post.
May 24, 2008
SEO campaign
First thing to do is to clearly define your business goals. Why are you doing a SEO campaign? What do you want to achieve? How to do it? What tools or services to use? Isn’t it better to hire a specialist or a company?
Try to write down these questions and expand them in a way that is most relevant to your web site or service. This article will try to clear the overall concept of a SEO campaign and find some answers.
Steps in doing our campaign:
First and one of the most important: keyword research.
The basic of all search engines are the keywords. Also main part in target advertising and Pay-per-click campaigns are the keywords. People enter keywords in search engines in order to get necessary information. Choose the keywords that will bring the right type of visitors in your website. There are two methods of approach in selecting keywords. First one is a broad approach. Imagine that you run an e-commerce web site. Here the most obvious keyword is “buy online”. Disadvantages of this keyword are apparent – very high competition and not targeting at all. Google will return millions results for this term. The effort for rank good for this keyword would be enormous and don’t worth it at all.
In other hand you can choose more relevant and describing term for your service or website. It will bring more exactly targeted traffic to your site and eventually more customers.
The basic tool to consider in this part of the campaign is Google keyword tool. Be careful to balance well between the popularity, relevance and competitiveness of your keywords.
On-Site optimization
Carefully review your site and map out a simple plan for basic changes. The first thing to consider here is the question - is the site search engine friendly? Avoid flash website without any html content. It may look cool but search engine crawlers are not friendly with the flash content. Also avoid using flash or javascript for web site navigation. Anchor is the best choice for a menu.
Website usability – consider that the main part in all this is the visitor. Make sure that every necessary part is easy to reach. Ensure enough time for planning site navigation and modules. Read different search engine guidelines and make your plans according to them. Pay special attention to the images – well described images can drive a lot new traffic through image searches.
Content
Content is the part that needs great attention. First thing is to check for and remove duplicate content. Avoid using duplicate content. Make a plan for regular updating and basic content suggestions.
Users Involvement
Plan a way to involve the visitors in your site growth. Polls, Competitions, Comments, Forum, User-created-content, Awards, Voting system can be weapons for this cause.
Off-Site optimization
Link building
Link building is the basic part of the off-site optimization. Search engines prefer and give more value to a natural linking. So give a reason to your visitors to link and promote your site.
Directory submission is a valuable way for link building, but using blindly won’t be in much use. Make a list of the best directories and plan dates for submitting. Consider to grow your links gradually, avoid automatic submissions and pay special attention to directories related to the search engines. Good thing to keep in mind that geographically related directories and listings can get you more targeted traffic than global services.
Article submission also deserves its time (but not much). Choosing few of the best article directories will add more value rather than spamming all the article directories over and over again.
Social bookmark and network services also need careful planning. Choose few more relevant to your niche and go for good rating in them. Selecting good content to share is very hard task. Ever wonder why some articles gets thousands votes and other hardly get less than ten? Good and spicy page can bring in a lot of visitors.
Search Engine Optimization campaign planning and realization is a time and effort consuming process but don’t forget that it is not the only way for promoting your site. Internet marketing is a lot broader field and the successful profit sits on the top of a selection of SEO, Pay-Per-Click, Affiliate and many other campaigns.
Try to write down these questions and expand them in a way that is most relevant to your web site or service. This article will try to clear the overall concept of a SEO campaign and find some answers.
Steps in doing our campaign:
First and one of the most important: keyword research.
The basic of all search engines are the keywords. Also main part in target advertising and Pay-per-click campaigns are the keywords. People enter keywords in search engines in order to get necessary information. Choose the keywords that will bring the right type of visitors in your website. There are two methods of approach in selecting keywords. First one is a broad approach. Imagine that you run an e-commerce web site. Here the most obvious keyword is “buy online”. Disadvantages of this keyword are apparent – very high competition and not targeting at all. Google will return millions results for this term. The effort for rank good for this keyword would be enormous and don’t worth it at all.
In other hand you can choose more relevant and describing term for your service or website. It will bring more exactly targeted traffic to your site and eventually more customers.
The basic tool to consider in this part of the campaign is Google keyword tool. Be careful to balance well between the popularity, relevance and competitiveness of your keywords.
On-Site optimization
Carefully review your site and map out a simple plan for basic changes. The first thing to consider here is the question - is the site search engine friendly? Avoid flash website without any html content. It may look cool but search engine crawlers are not friendly with the flash content. Also avoid using flash or javascript for web site navigation. Anchor is the best choice for a menu.
Website usability – consider that the main part in all this is the visitor. Make sure that every necessary part is easy to reach. Ensure enough time for planning site navigation and modules. Read different search engine guidelines and make your plans according to them. Pay special attention to the images – well described images can drive a lot new traffic through image searches.
Content
Content is the part that needs great attention. First thing is to check for and remove duplicate content. Avoid using duplicate content. Make a plan for regular updating and basic content suggestions.
Users Involvement
Plan a way to involve the visitors in your site growth. Polls, Competitions, Comments, Forum, User-created-content, Awards, Voting system can be weapons for this cause.
Off-Site optimization
Link building
Link building is the basic part of the off-site optimization. Search engines prefer and give more value to a natural linking. So give a reason to your visitors to link and promote your site.
Directory submission is a valuable way for link building, but using blindly won’t be in much use. Make a list of the best directories and plan dates for submitting. Consider to grow your links gradually, avoid automatic submissions and pay special attention to directories related to the search engines. Good thing to keep in mind that geographically related directories and listings can get you more targeted traffic than global services.
Article submission also deserves its time (but not much). Choosing few of the best article directories will add more value rather than spamming all the article directories over and over again.
Social bookmark and network services also need careful planning. Choose few more relevant to your niche and go for good rating in them. Selecting good content to share is very hard task. Ever wonder why some articles gets thousands votes and other hardly get less than ten? Good and spicy page can bring in a lot of visitors.
Search Engine Optimization campaign planning and realization is a time and effort consuming process but don’t forget that it is not the only way for promoting your site. Internet marketing is a lot broader field and the successful profit sits on the top of a selection of SEO, Pay-Per-Click, Affiliate and many other campaigns.
May 5, 2008
Social Media Optimization (SMO) and Marketing (SMM) or how to get even more traffic?
First of all what is Social Media Optimization?
Social Media Optimization is a way to generate publicity through social websites and communities. SMO includes:
Social Media Optimization parts in depth:
Social Blogging. You can host your blog alone or use a service like blogger. In either way it can contribute great to increasing your traffic. First blogs attracts great number of readers, and thus engages readers to your site or product. Also good blogs have regular updated content and are indexed faster from the search engines, which helps to rang better on SERP.
RSS Feeds. Publishing your RSS Feeds can help you get even more fans.
Social Networks are a great way to popularize your web site, service or product.
Social Bookmarking is a way people to bookmark, share and vote something that they like in internet. Also it is an effective way for website or blog promotion. In a SEO aspect it is a way to get more quality backlinks.
Video and Photo public sharing is a fast way to spread your ads.
Don't forget that in the social media field users a the contributors of the content. Encourage the other people to contribute to your idea and goal. Be social! Just advertising won't help you much so be creative!
Social Media Optimization is a way to generate publicity through social websites and communities. SMO includes:
- Blogging
- RSS Feeds
- Social Networks
- Social Bookmarking (SB)
- Video and Photo public sharing
- Increase your in-links
- Facilitates tagging, bookmarking, voting
- Makes easier the content sharing
Social Media Optimization parts in depth:
Social Blogging. You can host your blog alone or use a service like blogger. In either way it can contribute great to increasing your traffic. First blogs attracts great number of readers, and thus engages readers to your site or product. Also good blogs have regular updated content and are indexed faster from the search engines, which helps to rang better on SERP.
RSS Feeds. Publishing your RSS Feeds can help you get even more fans.
Social Networks are a great way to popularize your web site, service or product.
Social Bookmarking is a way people to bookmark, share and vote something that they like in internet. Also it is an effective way for website or blog promotion. In a SEO aspect it is a way to get more quality backlinks.
Video and Photo public sharing is a fast way to spread your ads.
Don't forget that in the social media field users a the contributors of the content. Encourage the other people to contribute to your idea and goal. Be social! Just advertising won't help you much so be creative!
May 4, 2008
Link building strategy
When your site is ready and on-site optimized it is a time for link building. It is one of the most important parts of one Search Engine Optimization campaign. Making an error here can slow down your success a lot.
So what are the basic steps to advertise your web site?
1. First and most important add it to the search engines:
http://www.google.com/addurl/
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
2. Submit your site to dmoz.org
3. Start submitting your site url to the web directories. Prefer directories with high PageRank. Always have in mind that few quality links can rank you higher than tons of low rate ones. Also pay special attention to directories that allow deep link submission.
4. Submit your RSS Feed to Feed directories.
5. If your site is with static content start a blog for it. Search Engines prefer fresh content and blogging is the ideal way to ensure it.
6. Add your content to social bookmark services like digg, stumbleupon, etc. Prefer links to articles or categories rather than just adding the whole site once. Consider some of the digg clones - there are some that perform very well for me.
7. Create accounts on social networks like myspace, facebook and so on. Careful friend network management can contribute great to your goal. Make friends and start marketing.
8. Add your site to your forum signatures. Choose your anchor text to be related to your keywords, not just “click here”.
9. Start to post comments on popular blogs. Just say your opinion and leave your link there. It is a good way to create fast contacts. Be careful and think what you are posting. High quality comments tend to bring more traffic than spammy ones.
10. Start submitting articles to article directories. Select several article directories with high page rank and post your information there.
Create a habit to work on your web site daily. After some time it will pay you well!
So what are the basic steps to advertise your web site?
1. First and most important add it to the search engines:
http://www.google.com/addurl/
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit
http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
2. Submit your site to dmoz.org
3. Start submitting your site url to the web directories. Prefer directories with high PageRank. Always have in mind that few quality links can rank you higher than tons of low rate ones. Also pay special attention to directories that allow deep link submission.
4. Submit your RSS Feed to Feed directories.
5. If your site is with static content start a blog for it. Search Engines prefer fresh content and blogging is the ideal way to ensure it.
6. Add your content to social bookmark services like digg, stumbleupon, etc. Prefer links to articles or categories rather than just adding the whole site once. Consider some of the digg clones - there are some that perform very well for me.
7. Create accounts on social networks like myspace, facebook and so on. Careful friend network management can contribute great to your goal. Make friends and start marketing.
8. Add your site to your forum signatures. Choose your anchor text to be related to your keywords, not just “click here”.
9. Start to post comments on popular blogs. Just say your opinion and leave your link there. It is a good way to create fast contacts. Be careful and think what you are posting. High quality comments tend to bring more traffic than spammy ones.
10. Start submitting articles to article directories. Select several article directories with high page rank and post your information there.
Create a habit to work on your web site daily. After some time it will pay you well!
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