Daily Updated Website Optimisation And Search Engine Marketing News

Yahoo is the number one website in the world. It is the number two search engine, and after Google, it is the next place you need to submit your website.

Although submitting to Yahoo is very similar to submitting to Google, there are also some differences. Yahoo doesn’t seem to spider sites as quickly as Google, so you definitely need to have some patience when submitting here.

Yahoo also offers different ways for you to get your site included, like Search Submit, Directory Listings, Product Submit, and Sponsored Search. These solutions are expensive, but they will get you into Yahoo quickly.

You may also submit other content like audio, video, and images using RSS. This service is free, and it will help you get that content indexed. (Yahoo does say on its website that 99 percent of the content that is included in its search engine is found through crawling the web.)

Like Google, the first thing you need to do is prepare your site by doing a keyword search for the appropriate keywords for your website. Optimize your website for the keywords your readers will be searching for.

Once you have optimized your site, the next step is to create a sitemap. If your site doesn’t automatically create one through the use of some type of script, then you will need to make one yourself and upload it to your website. (You’ll find plenty of free tools on the internet to help you with this.)

Once you have your sitemap in place, then it’s time to submit.

If you don’t already have an account with Yahoo, you need to sign up for one. It’s free. Once you have signed up for your account, go to the Yahoo search engine and search for “submit to Yahoo.” (Without the quotes)

The first result will be Yahoo! Submit Your Site. Click on this link and then you will be taken to a list of choices where you may choose how you want to submit, as well as what you want to submit. If you are only submitting your website, then click Submit Your Site for Free.

You may submit either a website or page, or you may submit your sitemap. Yahoo calls this a feed. (You will need to make sure you are logged into your account first before submitting. Otherwise, Yahoo won’t allow you to submit.)

When submitting your website, you will need to verify your site in the same way you verified your site with Google. You will either need to add a verification tag to the header of your index page or upload a verification file to your site through FTP.

Once you have submitted your site, you will want to check back periodically to make sure that your site is getting indexed. If it’s not, delete it and resubmit. Also use the Site Explorer to explore your site as this will help.

Finally, if you use RSS feeds on your website, you may choose to submit those feeds through your My Yahoo page. This will also help in getting your website indexed.

So you’ve built your website and put it up online for the world to see. You have put your sales information, made an exciting offer, you have nice graphics and are just waiting now for people to find your site and buy your products.

The problem is that they can’t find you. They may be looking for exactly what you have to offer them but how do they know you are even there?

Well, part of the puzzle is a small file you put on your website called a “sitemap”. Now before we go much further, let’s define what a sitemap actually is. First off, there are 2 different kinds of “sitemap”. One is an html page on your website that has links to all the other pages in your site. Visitors to your site might use this page to find various areas of information on your website. You might have links in there to your information page, your questions and answers page, your contact page and so on. Many people are familiar with this and may even have used a sitemap on another website before.

There is also another form of this sitemap that you need to have on your page. Simply put it serves the same function as the html sitemap but is directed specifically to the search engines. The file is in the xml format and lists all the pages on your site along with other information relevant to the search engines such as the relative importance of various pages on your site and how often your pages are updated.

So how do you create one of these files? Well there are a number of different tools you can use and they are easily found online. Simply search for “sitemap generator” or “create sitemap”. Some programs will run over the web and some are easily downloaded to your computer - this allows you to save and edit your sitemaps easily. In either case, the output of these programs should give you a file that has an .xml extension. You would typically name it sitemap.xml and then simply upload it to the root directory of your website.

After that, it is simply a matter of letting the search engines know that the file is there and they can start looking through it. Each of the search engines handles the sitemap submission a bit differently but they will all find the sitemap if you link to it in your robots.txt file.

In any case, be aware that you should have a sitemap.xml file on your website for the search engines. Now, this will not directly affect your rankings in the search engines but it will enable the search engines to index your entire site - without missing any pages. And, it will encourage them to do it sooner than later. That could affect your rankings.

Are you curious about increasing traffic to your site using SEO web site development? You’ve come to the right place! Here are a few SEO tips to get you started on the path to increased traffic and higher profits.

First, make sure your website is user-friendly. If customers are having trouble with navigating your site or even with finding it, you’re going to run into a serious revenue problem. Combat that by creating a website that has very easy navigation. To get the most out of the search engine robots, design your site in such a way that it’s easy for them to “read”. At the very least, remember that search bots “crawl” your site from left to right, top to bottom. Position your most important information (keyword/keyword phrases) so that they are read both first and last, and are made prominent through headers, sub-headers and bolded text when practical.

Avoid flash movies if at all possible. If you do have them, make sure that your most vital information and messages are contained elsewhere on your site. Many customers have disabled flash on their computers, and so they will not see or hear the sleek message you put into that neat little box.

More tips for SEO web site development include using meta tags on each and every page. The search bots will look at every page of your site, unless of course you have included a “no-follow” rule in your code, so make it easy for them. Although Google doesn’t rely on keyword meta tags anymore to determine what your website is about, other search engines still do, so including keyword and descriptive meta tags can’t hurt and just might help you to rank better in the SERPS.

Are you finding that many of your customers hit the page once, then go away after a few seconds? You might have a page that is not user-friendly. To fix this problem, avoid splash pages if at all possible. The splash page is that pretty little page that says “click here to enter”. Do you really need it, and does it do anything for your business? The answers to that are No, and No. Write interesting and compelling copy that includes the keywords most relevant to your website, provide need-to-know information to your visitors clearly and succinctly, and guide them to the action that you want them to take, whether that action is signing up for a newsletter, completing a survey or making a product purchase.

Avoid banner advertisements. Avoid audio, too. Why? Customers don’t like it nearly as much as you might think they do. Enabling audio might mean a customer won’t come to your site when they are at a shared computer or at work. And banner advertisements should be used sparingly. Keep it sleek and simple, and keep it focused.

To that end, make sure your navigation is easy. It must work in all browsers, so test it in each one, and test it in different window sizes. Avoid drop-down menus and make exploring your site so simple, even a child could do it. One of the best ways to do this is to provide a navigation menu on one side of the screen, or near the top of your web page with very clear headings to direct the customer to wherever they want to go.

SEO web site development is not as hard as it sounds, but it does take some time and research. You can start working with your SEO web design right now by taking these tips to heart!

Your title is the most important aspect of on page website optimization; more important than anything else. Before a search engine spider even looks at your website it first analyzes your title tags. This means that if you do not have a unique title tag for each page than it is very likely that page could be considered duplicate content and not be indexed by each search engine.

There are many factors that need to be considered when optimising your title tags each of which if carefully researched will give you the edge over your current competition and will allow your customers to find you that bit easier. Read this. Learn it. Then implement it. Simple.

Keyword Research

First off you have to choose your keywords. But that’s not as easy as it sounds. Most people assume the moment they go online that they know exactly what keywords they want to be ranked for. Wrong. You need to test this. You really do. Use Google Adwords to actually test what traffic from which keywords converts best for you. After all there’s no point getting lots of traffic if it doesn’t convert. Also use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool to find derivatives of key phrases that work for you. Finally look into using Microsoft’s Commercial Intent tool to give you an idea of how well a keyword will convert (if you don’t fancy using Adwords)

Keyword Relevance

Once you know what keywords you want to be ranked for you have to decide which is most important. When a spider looks at your title tag it puts the most relevance on the keywords furthest to the left. So, before you go shoving your company name at the very beginning consider ordering your key phrases in dependent on what you want to be ranked for. Remember the majority of people aren’t going to be searching for your company name.

Title Tag Length

Now you know the ten thousand keywords you want to be ranked for. Well obviously they aren’t all going to fit. Limit your title tag to a maximum length of 70 characters. If you have too many key phrases to fit in each tag then vary the keywords you use, this will help to keep your tags unique whilst making sure you cover all the fields you require.

Separating Keywords

After much split testing we have found that bars | pipes are the best and most user friendly way of dividing keywords. They help to break up your keywords and draw more traffic from the search engines than any of the others.

Title Tag Format

Don’t create your title tag using all upper or lower case. Also don’t capitalize letters in the middle of words. We would recommend Camel Case which is capitalizing the first word of every letter.

Don’t Duplicate Keywords

Just because you offer Deals, you do not need to include that phrase after every single key phrase. Make sure that every keyword included in your title tag is there for a reason. It is also worth doing some research into stop words. Stop words are common English words that search engines discount because they are unimportant. Make sure your title tag does not include common English words such as then and when we who how etc.

Content Matching

Make sure that any keywords used within your title tags are also used within the content of that page. You are much less likely to get well ranked if the page contains no content that you are attempting to rank for. Google frowns upon this.

One of the most problematic and confusing issues most webmasters have with Google concerns linking. How your links are ranked? How you should link out? How you should construct your internal links? How you should get more inbound links? How many links should you have on a page?
And the list of questions goes on…

Perhaps, the most annoying aspect for the struggling webmaster, has been Google’s secrecy in how it actually ranks links and pages. Google’s whole PageRank and Ranking Algorithm is so complex that no one can fully boast they understand how the whole system works.

Google’s ranking secrecy and complexity has probably been well-planned mainly because there are millions of webmasters who would like to “game” the Google Algorithm and achieve high keyword rankings through manipulation with so-called “black-hat” SEO techniques and reverse engineering.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this whole secrecy and complexity is more of a smokescreen rather than an actual deception on Google’s part. What if the keys to the kingdom are actually yours for the taking? What if the solution is hiding in plain sight for everyone to see? What if the secret to high rankings in Google is not a secret at all? Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

Actually, that’s not a far-fetched assumption to make, mainly because many of Google’s linking policies and recommendations are freely given by Google. Whether you can believe Google is actually giving you the goods is another issue that will be put on the back-burner for another day; but for now, Google’s advice on link building is rather generous and informative.

As a part of Links Week held recently, Google’s Maile Ohye gave some pointers on what Google is looking for and how it does its index ranking. No big surprise that content and inbound links are the two most important factors. This is what most SEO experts have been saying for years.

A site’s content is one of the main factors. Therefore, you should have a compelling site with interesting information and/or offer quality products, entertainment, opinions…

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

“One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.”

“Given the user’s query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site’s content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.”

“As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service.”

(End Quote)

Then Maile Ohye explained further how to create unique and compelling content for your site:

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

– Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.

– Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.

– Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.

– Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they’re more likely to link to you.

(End Quote)

SEO experts have been telling webmasters for years that creating valuable, unique, relevant useful content is one of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked in Google. If you create valuable content then other sites will want to link to you naturally.

Linking out to other sites should be done in a “common sense” manner and it’s a way of offering value to your visitor’s experience. We expect helpful relevant links when we visit other sites since it’s a natural way a good quality site should work; so be careful of linking out to spammy sites that only offer pages of links with very little or no unique content.

There are several things every prudent webmaster should be checking like making sure your site hasn’t been hacked and hidden links placed on your site without your knowledge; those with WordPress blogs should be installing the latest security measures and updates. Make sure you keep checking all your outbound links regularly since you may initially link out to a valuable resource, but over time this page may be closed or replaced with one of those spammy-links-holding pages. It can happen to the best of us.

What has confused things lately is all the “link buying” which Google greatly discourages and has shown its displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size of your “wallet” shouldn’t be the determining factor in how pages and content are ranked. If you’re selling a link, it should have the “no-follow” tag so that it doesn’t pass PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding what is or what is not a “paid link” has become a major problem for the search engines, including Google.

You should not have more than “100 links on a page” as this can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site’s “linking architecture” should be natural and easy for both your visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

As to interior linking, the two main points being: Intuitive Navigation for your visitors and Crawlable Text Links for the search engine robots. Use descriptive anchor text links that explain your content to your visitors. The anchor text is the underlined clickable part of the link and many SEO experts suggest you place your keywords or variations of them in your anchor text.

Make sure your site is transparent. Do not use “link cloaking” on your site. Make sure what your visitor sees is what the robots are indexing. Use a 301 Redirect if you have permanently moved any webpages. Again, there is stressed the need for a sitemap as this can be very helpful for both your visitors and robots to see and find all your valuable content. Make sure you have a sitemap and all your important pages are listed on it.

One final note, many professional webmasters and marketers don’t worry about PageRank as much as they are concerned with SERPs. Getting those top rankings for their sites in the search engine results is what really matters. Again, quality content and building quality links play an important
role in achieving those top spots and maybe Google has already given you the formula for getting them. Maybe, maybe not.

If you are someone who is looking to grow your own business online, you will find that an SEO consultant (someone who understands search engine optimisation and how search engines work), can make an invaluable addition to your website. Making sure that the search engines notice you is part and parcel of getting on top in the world of internet business, so make sure that you follow these basic steps when you are looking to find a good SEO consultant.

1. Get references

Have your friends worked with anyone that they would recommend? What about your business associates? Today, you’ll find that even if word of mouth is transmitted by e-mail, it will still go a long way towards getting you the consultant that you need.

2. Hit the directories

Many excellent SEO consultants will make sure that they are listed in the various industry-specific directories on the web, so make sure that you give yourself some time to browse and to find the person who will best suit your needs.

3. Read their testimonials

Many SEO consultants will have a list of testimonials up on their page, talking about what they have done in the past. Read these testimonials and see if you can get a sense from them regarding how the consultant works and what his or her strengths are when it comes to customer service.

4. Speak with them personally

It is increasingly easier to do business without ever meeting anyone face to face, but you’ll find that actually getting some information without the benefit of obfuscating text is quite important. Even if it is just a quick phone call, you can learn a great deal just by hearing someone talk and thinking about what you learn.

5. How long does it take to get back to you?

If you have sent them an email, how long does it take for them to return your enquiry? You’ll find that if you are waiting more than 24 hours, you might not want to wait any longer. Most SEO consultants will have auto responders, and while this is a good solution, see how long it takes before you get a human to respond to you.

6. Google them

Get on a search engine and try a few searches to see how long it takes for them to show up under terms such as “SEO Consultant” and “SEO Specialist” as if they can’t get themselves the top spots you stand less of a chance.

7. Have a few companies in mind

You’ll find that plenty of companies will have just one or two different points that will keep them from being perfect, so take some time to make sure that you have a few to choose from.

8. Ask to see their work

What companies have they worked with in the past? How long does it take for you to find them using Google? You can see what kind of work they do best by heading right over to check it out.

9. Are they ethical?

Getting involved with a company that will do anything black hat such as hiding links and using keyword stuffing, will be a mistake that you pay for with very poor rankings and unhappy visitors, you may even get banned!

10. Think about how they make you feel.

At the end of the day, how comfortable do you feel when you work with them? You’ll find that because they are connected intimately with your business that you will want to see how comfortably you can work together.

If you are going to get involved in Search Engine Optimisation make sure your get involved with a search engine ranking specialist.

A discussion of black hat and white hat SEO is as pointless as a discussion of the difference between black and white witchcraft. In witchcraft, the minute a technique is used to control the outcome of a situation it is known as black magic. The same can be said of SEO. A technique used to manipulate the search engines is known as black hat SEO. The problem is that white hat SEO does precisely the same thing so it is not any less “dirty” than black hat in some ways

An SEO tactic, technique or method is considered “White hat” if it conforms to the search engines’ guidelines and does not attempt to deceive it. White Hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White Hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then make that content easily accessible to their spiders. It is more about user friendliness and accessibility rather than about tilting the odds seriously in one’s favor.

Black hat” SEO employs more deceptive methods to try to improve search engine rankings. The search engines usually disapprove these methods. This can range from text that is “hidden”, either as text colored similar to the background or by redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly. As a general rule, a method that sends a user to a page that was different to the page described in the search is called Black hat. Search engines can and do penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines’ algorithms, or by a manual review of a site.