Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

Link building is no longer a simple task; Google has continuously made changes to its search engine algorithms making it difficult to predict with certainty, which links will be useful and which ones will not be picked up by Google. Earlier, link building involved finding high PageRank links and then getting those pages to link to a website. However, with Google’s recent crackdown on paid links and with LSI implementation, link building is no longer a ‘search and register’ exercise. Today, it requires expertise and experience to find relevant links for a website and not all webmasters have the luxury of spending months to find out if their link building exercise has been successful or not.

Google currently takes 3-4 months to calculate the PageRank of a website, this means that a webmaster has to wait 3-4 months before he knows if his link building exercise was successful or not. As mentioned earlier, sometimes 6-8 months can make all the difference between a hotly sought after product and an obsolete product. For example, a new mobile phone is only sought after for a few months, and a website that has the right mix of content and SEO can maximise search traffic only if the webpage for the mobile phone has proper PageRank and incoming links. If the link building is not effective, by the time the webmaster manages to get enough incoming links, the mobile phone will probably be obsolete.

Apart from loosing business, an effective link building campaign is also essential for maintaining the popularity of a website. There has been considerable debate if PageRank plays a role in ranking or not, but the truth is very few PageRank zero sites beat high PageRank sites in Google or any other search engine. Effective link building is a must for any website, and frequent changes in Google’s algorithms have made it very difficult for webmasters to keep up with the latest in link building and search engine optimization.

Link building has become such a specialised and time consuming task that many experienced search engine optimizers prefer hiring SEO firms just for their link building exercise. Google has recently started blacklisting and penalizing sites for buying incoming links to their website, this has made link building a complicated and tricky task. One of the safest link building sources are web directories, however not all web directories are considered ‘relevant’ by Google and search engine optimizers are constantly updating their directories almanac to keep in tune with latest search engine changes.

In essence, link building is not a simple task, and common sense is no longer the only thing that can help webmasters carry out link building. Even experienced search engine optimizers are beginning to utilise the services of specialised directory submission services or firms. Carrying out link building is best left to professionals and if you are not sure where to begin your link building exercise, or you do not want to risk wasting months in link building use a professional submission service.

Rishi Modi
Certified SEO Professional
SubmitEdge

Directory submission is one of the most important aspects of link building today. Search engines have constantly improved their linking algorithms making it almost impossible to rely on paid and hidden links. Directories are the safest bet when it comes to link building and choosing the right directory to submit a site with is not an easy task. There is no dearth of websites posing as ‘quality directories’ but, what differentiates a good search engine optimizer from a great one is his ability to find the right directories for submission.

The process of short listing directories is often tedious, and the first step is finding directories with suitable PageRank. It is important to remember that submissions are not always top level and it is vital to look at the PageRank of the category and not that of the home page of the directory. For example, a website dealing in SEO and internet marketing will probably be part of the business or internet marketing section of a directory. A directory might have a PageRank of 5 but the business section will probably only have a PageRank of 2. It is important to look at the PageRank of the exact page where a website’s link will appear and not that of the directory’s home page.

Another important factor to keep in mind is how often the directory is being indexed and cached. A directory that is frequently crawled and indexed will add to the PageRank of a website much faster. Search engine optimizers can more often than not, judge the popularity of a directory by how often it is indexed and cached by Google. The last known cache of any page or website can be seen by typing in cache: www..com in Google search. Ideally, directories should be based on simple HTML (static) pages; static pages are easily indexed and guarantee quality incoming links. However, this does not meant that directories with dynamic pages are inferior to static pages based directories. In either case, it is important to check to see if pages from a directory are being indexed by search engines.

Some directories use complicated design elements like iframes to disguise the PageRank of pages. What fake directories actually do is display pages as frames. This means, although Google toolbar might display a high PageRank, the links page has a lower PageRank or sometimes no PageRank at all. It is important to keep a look out for fake websites posing as directories. In addition, it is also important to remember that some paid directories are a must to achieve effective PageRank. The most important directories today are DMOZ, Yahoo Directory and Business.com (for commercial/e-commerce websites). DMOZ was the first human edited directory on the internet, and its search results are used by all major search engines including Google.

In conclusion, directory submission is an integral and vital part of any search engine optimization exercise. It is important to keep the various factors mentioned above in mind to ensure effective link building.

Rishi Modi
Certified SEO Professional

Keyword analysis is one of the most important steps of search engine optimization. Search engine optimizers start search engine optimization by doing a keyword analysis and then move on to other aspects. To understand how keyword analysis affects search engine optimization, it is important to understand what is keyword analysis? And how is keyword analysis carried out?

All natural searches on Google are triggered by keywords. When a user enters a specific search query each relevant word in the query is referred to as a Keyword. For example, all three words in “Cheap cars US” form a single keyword, in addition the phrase ‘Cheap cars’ is also a keyword. In essence, a website has to be optimized for a set of keywords; the choice of keywords to be targeted is influenced by doing a keyword analysis. Google has a tool known as the Google Sandbox or Google AdWords keyword tool which is used for keyword analysis. The Google keyword tool is just one of the software used to generate a comprehensive report on each keyword. A typical keyword analysis will include the popularity of a keyword, the number of search queries for the keyword and also a complete record of the keyword’s search history.

A search engine optimizer basis his choice of keywords not just on statistics, some times a statistically unpopular keyword (known as a niche keyword) can also help increase traffic to a website. For example, a copywriter’s website should be optimized for keywords like “Ghostwriting services”, but a smart search engine optimizer will also optimize a website for “Ghostwriting firm” because people from different parts of the world use the term ‘firm’ as well. In essence, keyword selection is not just based on stats and figures; there is a lot of smart work involved in selecting a keyword.

Additionally, customers also have a set of keywords they want their website to be optimized for. Search engine optimizers usually base their keyword selection on more than one criterion, and an effective keyword analysis is essential for effective search engine optimization. A typical keyword analysis also takes into account the advertising competition for a keyword. Google allows webmasters to promote their website for keywords, the higher the advertising competition the more competitive a keyword usually is.

It is important to understand that search engine optimizers usually avoid going for highly competitive keywords as optimizing a website for competitive keywords can take years. For example, the first few websites that come up for the keyword “laptop” have a PageRank of 7-8 and are virtually unbeatable, it would make more sense to target a keyword like “cheap laptops” or “cheap laptops US”.

In essence, an effective keyword analysis takes into account the number of searches, the advertising competition, and the feasibility of the keyword along with other criterion. Search engine optimization is carried out purely based on the keywords that are being targeted, if a search engine optimizer chooses the wrong set of keywords to target then the search engine optimization will yield nothing.

Rishi Modi
Certified SEO Professional

Although XML validation is by no means a mandatory requirement for search engine optimization, sites that are XHTML compliant have certain advantages over sites that are not XHTML compliant. To understand the importance of XHTML compliance it is important to first understand what is XHTML? XHTML was designed to act as an improvement over HTML, with devices other than computers accessing the internet, it was important to develop a language that could ensure pages and sites were viewable across devices. In a nutshell, an XHTML compliant website is cross device compatible and handles errors more robustly.

Getting back to the topic, what does XHTML compliance have to do with SEO? XHTML compliance ensures easy accessibility by Google bots. Pages that are XHTML compliant are usually indexed much faster by Google and other search engines. Since XHTML code is also easier to ‘understand’, Google bots and other search engine bots have no trouble in accessing and downloading content on a regular basis. Apart from XHTML compliance, newer websites are also attempting to become HTML 4.01 compliant. News is, sites that are HMTL 4.01 compliant stand a better chance of frequent indexing and caching of pages. As it stands today, Google takes a very long time to index pages, pages that are XHTML compliant are usually given the option to be indexed faster by the Google Webmasters tool.

HTML 4.01 and XTHML were suffering from a little bit of an identity crisis; both were created and then left to fend for themselves. Google in particular has given the concepts of XHTML and HTML 4.01 a fresh lease of life by encouraging people to make their websites and web pages XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliant. XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliance alone cannot ensure better search engine ranking, there are numerous websites that are neither XHTML nor HTML 4.01 compliant but are ranking well with search engines.

What compliance with W3C standards ensures is that websites are ready for future changes in SEO and it also ensures that websites are easily accessible by various search engines. What is equally important to note is that there is a definite correlation between XHTML compliance and the rate at which sites are indexed and cached by Google. In addition, making pages XHTML compliant is also believed to protect pages from the dreaded Google 950 penalty. XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliant sites are also supposed to be protected against problems like the Google Supplement.

In conclusion, there is considerable speculation if XHTML and HMTL 4.01 compliance is important or not, but as is the case with most search engine optimization principles, there is no way to know for sure if a site that is XHTML compliant performs better than a site that is not XHTML compliant or not. Search engine optimization is not governed by a single factor like XTHML compliance or effective link building. It is therefore important to keep an eye out for various factors that might help improve the ranking of a website, XHTML and HTML 4.01 compliance is just one such thing.

Rishi Modi
Certified SEO Professional

Search engine optimizers have to upgrade themselves continuously to keep in tune with the latest SEO developments. The problem with search engine optimization is that there is no way for search engine optimizers to know for sure if the latest change in algorithm requires retraining, or if it is just an enhancement to an existing algorithm. Keyword density is just one of the many changing aspects of search engine optimization.

To understand the concept of keyword density, it is important to understand the term keyword density. Lets take an example: “There is no dearth of used cars in the market, what makes our used cars sought after is their quality and cars used by individuals..”. In 25 words ‘used cars’ has appeared twice, this means the keyword density of used cars is 2/25 * 100 or 8%. What is interesting to note is that the term ‘cars used’ has also appeared in the sentence, however this will not contribute to the keyword density of ‘used cars’. It is essential to understand that the keyword density of a webpage is not just affected by the content present on the page. Footers, headers, and other text elements with the keywords too contribute to the keyword density.

There is considerable speculation in SEO circles as to what the ideal keyword density of a web page should be for high ranking. Before Google began making changes to its algorithm, it was believed the higher the keyword density the better. However, Google has constantly improved its search engine algorithms and pages that have been over optimized for content usually yield nothing. The ideal keyword density seems to be close to 2.5%, ideally less than 3.5%. Although 3.5% may not seem much of a keyword density to maintain, even 3.5% is considered the upper limit; this means a webpage with more than 3.5% keyword density stands to loose more than gain anything.

There is no ready reference when it comes to search engine optimization. Search engine optimizers have to observe trends and make their own conclusions. Search engines are not willing to disclose the internal criteria that determine a web page’s ranking (there has been considerable abuse of internal know how in the past). It is important to remember that not all keywords require a 3.5% keyword density, sometimes if a keyword is not extremely competitive a keyword density of close to 2.5% will suffice. The most important thing to remember about keyword density is that keyword density alone cannot ensure high ranking.

Search engine optimization is more than just packing keywords into content, or carrying out link building. An ideal search engine optimization process involves both on page and off page optimization. It is equally important to understand that keyword density is an extremely volatile concept; it does not take much for search engines to change their algorithms for keyword density. To make the most of keyword density, it is important to analyze the content of competing websites and get a better idea of what keyword density your site requires.

Rishi Modi
Certified SEO Professional
seo@submitedge.com
http://www.submitedge.com

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