Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

If Google doesn’t index you, you could have a major problem. If you have done everything right, you should be indexed rapidly and without a big delay, and any new pages you add should be indexed quickly as well. There are several reasons you could be passed over for indexing, so check these possibilities before you panic.

1. If you only submitted you site to Google for review, it might take some time for you to be indexed -up to a few weeks or even more. Be patient, and wait, or link into your site from somewhere you know is crawled regularly.

2. You might not realize or get notification when you are indexed by a search engine, so double check and make sure you really aren’t indexed before getting worried. There are several tools you can use to manually check if you are indexed or not.

3. Make sure that your pages are live and working before you submit them. If you submit before verifying that your pages exist, or mistype a url, you could go for a while before you come to realize your error - time you will still remain unindexed since Google can’t find your pages.

4. If you don’t have external links, you might stay unindexed until you get some, and you can even get indexed and later be dropped for lack of links. If this happens, simply resubmit after you manage to build up some solid external links.

5. Host on a isolated server if you can! Sometimes you can get banned just for being hosted on an IP that an already banned website is sharing. You get a bad taste that will make the search engines skip you.

6. Have clean urls. Several flags that can keep you from being indexed include ending your url in ‘.ext.’ or having ampersands or question marks in your url. These extensions can be assumed by Google to be binary and therefore Google will ignore them

7. Use a reliable hosting service that is up over 99% of the time. You could get yanked from the index just for not being up and running when the Googlebot visits and you are down.

8. Do NOT useblack hat SEO. Suspicious redirects make the engines suspect you of cloaking, and white on white text isa huge flag for spam. Either of these actions can lead to Google banning your entire site.

9. Don’t submit everything at once! Take it a day at a time, and submit the most important pages first. Otherwise the search engine may look at so many simultaneous submissions from the same domain as a different type of spam and ignore them.

10. If you have checked all the above, and your site is good to go, re-submit. Maybe the engine lost your submission. Technical ‘oops’ can happen even to the major search engines, so try, try again.

The most often seen reason sites and pages are not indexed on Google is ‘being evil’ and using wrong tactics in order to try and fool search engines into thinking you are more important than you are. If you are good, you should be indexed!

Online video content has increased rapidly in popularity, and users are now learning to conduct visual searches. Website owners can produce home based videos in order to reach their target audience; when marketed properly with correct SEO strategies then you will get quick results with such videos and jump to the top of these visual search engines (such as Viewzi)

Most search engines are designed to index text and assess web pages - they cannot read images or videos. Your answer? Place your video in the middle of the page, surrounded by as much text as possible. The text around the video should be keyword rich. This is the place to optimize your title and the transcript (some sites have flash based transcripts of the images or videos - this is bad when it comes to SEO. You should put the transcript in a format that can be ready by the search engines.

Now, this one may seem like a no-brainer - but when people search for videos they nearly always add the word video in their search. For example, ‘kitchen sink install video’ might be entered. The text that you are using around the video should contain this word as one of the main keywords, and you should also target it in your description, page title and keywords list in the meta data.

Point to your video with as many link as possible both internally from your website as well as other locations. Don’t forget to add a video sitemap so search engines know where to look for video content; this will get your videos indexed faster. Put the main keywords in the URL when you upload the video file, rather than using a random naming system - you don’t want ambiguous URLs. When you upload videos, store all video files in a single directory for speed and convenience for both you and the search engines

When you have your videos on a page with competing videos, include an attention getting thumbnail so that your video attracts the users. Allow users to add reviews about your video, comment on it and leave feedback. You should moderate the user feedback and reviews, and glean what info you can about the customer base. This also adds fresh content to your site!

Use videos wisely - they can be a powerful tool!

It shouldn’t be a dilemma. Writing for your visitors, supplying them with easy to read copy that convinces them support you or buy your product is just as important as generating keyword rich text to help you climb in the search engine rankings. What you have to learn is how to combine good, accessible copy with keyword optimization geared towards reaching high search engine rankings.

Readability and ability to engage and convince the consumer added to search engine optimization equals complete online success, so obviously you should do apply both concepts to your copy; not so hard a thing to do when you realize that true SEO and letting a person having what they need aren’t exactly mutually exclusive. This is because search engines need text that tells them what the post, page or article is about, with words that will be searched by regular readers. These are the words the readers use for queris, and are words they know and understand.

The web readers of today are very impatient and will leave your site within a few seconds if they don’t immediately grasp what it is about. The headline, the title and the first couple of paragraphs must be completely focused on the main message: “We have what you need!”

Interwoven in that message is the one to the search engines: Here, this is what this page is about, and these are the keyword phrases your human users are likely to search for.

The top things to remember when writing web content are these:

• Avoid clichés and worn out ways to hook attention.
• Use bulleted lists to add white space and help people’s eyes focus.
• Don’t stuff too much copy on a page, or too many keywords in your content.
• State benefits first and foremost. Then let the customer know what else they get if they buy now - the sense of urgency is what you want to instill.
• Use headings and sub headings to break up the page - again, white space!
• Make your site laid out for easy navigation and then test how people are using your site to see if you can make it even better.
• Use online tools for keyword research, as well as brainstorming.
• Make sure you have good “About Us” and FAQ pages - these can become highly searched in their own right.
• Be fairly informal for general topics, and more professional only when you are addressing a professional group. Remember who your target demographic is and what you can do to interest and attract them.

If you follow these rules, you should have readable, SEO friendly copy!

Content needs to be added to your site on a regular basis – the more and the more often the better, but only if it is high quality.

Look at it this way. Would you rather visit a site that has links to 100 paid survey sites, of which 95 are scams, or a site with 5 links, all of which are good paying survey sites?

You don’t want to get so caught up in quantity that you leave quality behind. Making sure that every bit of content you have on your site is valuable to the user will help you over time as Google continues to take user experience into account in their ranking algorithm. Some people do click on the up and down arrows beside Google results, and trust me you want good reports that your site is navigable, easy to use and had the information that they were looking for.

Good rules of thumb:

Figure out how much content you can produce / afford per month.

Post the content at equal intervals. If you have thirty new pages a month, post one per day. If you have one hundred twenty, post four per day. If you have ten, post every three days. If you have four, post once a week.

Make sense?

Also make sure all your content is optimized for Search Engines like Google and Yahoo and MS LiveSearch, but be sure it is relevant and valuable to your customers as well. Don’t just put up pages designed only to be stuffed with keywords – that is spamming your own site! How much sense does that make?!

You got it. Zero.

Make sure the content on your site is consistently posted and consistently high quality, and you will be fine.

There are a series of things you can do with your content to make your site more search engine friendly. Don’t ever sacrifice user friendliness, but do find ways to combine visitor helpfulness with search engine accessibility.

1.Research your keywords and develop a niche market. Targeting your audience is half the battle.

2.Write landing page copy that reminds visitors of their problem, offers a solution and presents a call to action. That is the other half of the battle.

3.Provide helpful, to the point information that is on topic and that will generate interest in the rest of your site as well.

4.Use keywords naturally in your text – if you can, pinpoint one primary (to be used in the title, the first and the last paragraph) and several secondary phrases (to be sprinkled in where appropriate and unobtrusive).

5.Add content often. You can get indexed more often if you add content more often.

6.Make sure your content is readable, and doesn’t contain too much flash. High concentrations of textual content help the spiders know what your site is about.

7.Share your content, and become an expert. Be helpful to people, and your site will become viewed as helpful.

8.Spread content across the web, through articles sites, blogs, Squidoo lenses, etc.

9.Remember that content does no-one any good if no-one sees it. Publicize yourself and people will read your content.

10.Content is King. Content is information. That is what the Internet is – the information superhighway. Never forget that your content is for people to search for and benefit from.

Do a good job optimizing your content, and people will start regarding your site as a wealth of information!

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