Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

It is always a great struggle to play the balance in the optimization techniques that we use for Google and Yahoo. There are number of differences in the approach of Google and Yahoo. Since it is every webmaster’s concern that they get listed in these two major search engines we should know at least the basic differences between them.

To start with, Google is a totally free search engine and there are no paid submissions or inclusions and they are 100% organic. Secondly, the most widely spoken SEO concept, ‘pagerank’ belongs to Google and no other search engine except Google has this concept.

The next important factor is Meta Tags this was one of the popular concepts sometime ago and it is currently losing its importance as most search engines got more intelligent they can index the pages without the Meta tags. However, it is believed that Yahoo seems to value Meta Tags still. So if you are important in getting listed in Yahoo better pay attention to your meta tags because by adding them you will not do any harm to your Google optimization but by failing to add the meta tags you can lose the advantage that you could get from Yahoo.

Yahoo places great importance in On-page optimization; though on-page optimization is important for Google to achieve good ranking in Google, there are other factors that decide your site’s ranking. But with Yahoo, primary importance is placed on on-page optimization and this leads to unstable results in Yahoo because of the heavy competition. This often leaves webmasters complaining about their success and position in Yahoo. You cannot rely on the results as it fluctuates heavily based on what is happening around in the market.

On the other hand Google places greater importance to off-page optimization and all of know what attracts Google spiders – it is inbound links. If you want to win Google’s favor then you must work on acquiring as many inbound links as possible. All the inbound links that you obtain should be relevant links from quality sites.

You will have greater advantage by paying attention to both on-page and off-page optimization as Google also gives importance to the content in your web sites and on the keyword density. If you have keyword rich content then you can be sure of getting the attention of Google spiders.

When it comes to site submission, Google submissions are totally free as opposed to Yahoo which has both paid and unpaid submission. If you want to get indexed faster in Yahoo then you must go for paid submission. Though it is free, indexing in Google takes place much faster.

These are some of the differences that we can list between Google and Yahoo when it comes to SEO. There might be other finer differences but what we have discussed above are just the basic differences that all of us who should know so that we can employ the right optimization strategy to get listed in both Google and Yahoo.

Affiliate programs can help your site gain revenue. You agree to place a link on your site to send the affiliate traffic. The affiliate agrees to pay you for one or all of the following actions by the consumer who sees the link on your site.

This can involve a simple click on the link, sending the consumer to the affiliates site; an action such as filling out a questionnaire or profile on the affiliate site, signing the consumer up for marketing offers (this is called a lead); or a purchase by the consumer from the affiliate.

You will generally get more for a sale (pay per sale - commission) than you will for a lead (pay per lead), and more for a lead than a click( pay per click). You can also get payment sometimes for continued purchases from a previously referred consumer (residual) or for recruiting other sites to be affiliates (two-tier programs). Sometimes you see pay per view programs, which basically pay just for visitors coming to your own site and viewing the banner (pay per impression) but these are few and really more like an advertising agreement than being an affiliate.

Affiliates can be huge (like Amazon or eBay) and have their own affiliate program in house so to speak, or they can be part of a larger affiliate network. Networks can be all right if you are running a fairly generic site, but the key to making money with affiliates is to sign up for ones that have a greater relevance to your site. It wouldn’t help me much to sign with AutoZone if my website is PetStyles.

My main goal with affiliates is to encourage customers’ interest in them, so I personally don’t deal with any affiliates I wouldn’t personally use myself. If a customer buys a product from an affiliate after being directed there from my site, and then has a bad experience with the product or company, I don’t want that raining down on my head.

Since I actually believe in all my affiliates, I have no problem promoting their products on my site, so I can add some articles or content that nudges customers in that direction. If one of my affiliates is Cozy Cat Quarters, selling elaborate cat houses and hideaways it would behoove me to post a few cool pics and maybe an article - doesn’t have to be a sales pitch, it could as easily be a comic piece relating to the cats’ antics and mentioning in passing that the house is a Cozy Cat Quarters item.

The ad is displayed right there on your site, so the hope of course is that the laughing customer is intrigued and clicks for some more pics and info from the affiliate site. (You will want to make sure all of these open in a new window, so the consumer doesn’t leave you completely - gotta look out for number one!)

And of course, there is Ad Sense - which we will touch on tomorrow.

There is a lot of controversy around e-books. Some claim that they have made millions with their e-book; other insist that they are only good as a hook for a giveaway to draw people to your site.

Actually, both can be true. It depends on whether or nor your e-book is any good! I like to give away an e-book for a time, then if it enjoys huge success and I receive feedback that is positive and frequent I can write another to sell under the aegis of ‘If you liked xxxx you’ll love xxxxxxx!’

A free e-book is usually best received if it is a short one, with concise easy to follow tips, suggestions and possibly a little humor. These freebies can be easy read and digested, and can pave the way to sell your products, services or even a longer book.

For example, if I am in the gardening gadget business, I can publish an e-book of gardening tips, and sprinkle references to my gadgets throughout to encourage them to return to my site and purchase them.

If I actually market landscaping services, I can still give away a free e-book for ideas on designing different types of gardens, flowerbeds, etc, and still advertise my company’s services as many people will want to hire jobs of magnitude out to a professional.

If I simply have written several more e-books on cultivating particular plants, flowers or shrubs, I can issue a generic informational e-book and let the reader order the paid e-book once they have decided what specialty they are interested in.

E-books can also be utilized in other ways. Say you write a twenty chapter e-book - wow, that could easily be turned into twenty articles. All you have to do is take each chapter, turn it into a stand alone article by rewriting the content, and hey presto you have twenty articles ready for publication as a series on a blog or for distribution to directories or how-to sites.

You can use e-books to generate interest in almost anything (did you know there are even e-book directories?) and people enjoy the easy to read format and brevity of a well done e-book.

Remember, format your e-book so it looks professional. No-one likes to receive something and find it difficult to read and hard to understand! Make each chapter clear and compelling, present it in an easily downloadable or e-mail format, and do check it out in various formats to be sure most people will be able to view it easily.

A good way to keep interest engaged is to provide a helpful tip or an activity suggestion at the end of each chapter of your book. This can be simple - just an idea for a project, a chart or graph to track progress or a planning guide.

Don’t be afraid to include things in your e-book like step by step guides or top ten lists. These can provide whole chapters of helpful information and your readers will appreciate the layout if you use your bullet points appropriately.

A well thought out e-book, whether it is a giveaway or a sales item, will engage and retain the consumer’s attention from cover to cover and leave them wanting more.

Most of us sign up for our blogs with a great enthusiasm because it is absolutely free and also that you get an easy to use content editor to write and publish your posts. All our enthusiasm vanish within a short period of time as things don’t go as per our expectation. Our blog does not seem to get indexed and we don’t seem to get any visitor traffic. Though some of us create our blogs just for the sake of hobby and to share our views on a specific topic, most of us maintain blogs to generate some secondary income through Google Adsense or other similar programs. If we don’t get any visitors there is no great fun in maintaining a blog.

One of the problems most of us face is the misconception that when you want to optimize your blog for search engines you cannot write something that is still interesting to human readers. This is not true and this need not be the case. You can come up with interesting blog content which is at the same time search engine friendly. Though there is no marked difference between writing for human readers and for search engines one needs to pay attention to details such as keyword density. While writing for human readers, you must incorporate the required keywords in a balanced way. As we use more of an informal style of writing when we write our posts it is rather easy to incorporate the keywords without making the text look artificial.

Moreover, only when your blog is interesting other bloggers will link to your blog which is one of the important factors that contribute to the success of your blog. When you want to get inbound links for your website make sure you get quality links. One of the ways of getting links is to notify other bloggers who have similar blogs. However make sure that you don’t start spamming them with your link building mails.

Don’t forget the simple and regular ritual of submission to link directories and to start with you can just submit to free directories. If you have more than one blog you can create an effective network by linking your own blogs; you will be able to see greater benefits if you have your blogs hosted in different servers. Many people do buy links but unless you see a great advantage in terms of revenue generation through your blogs it is not required to buy links you can try every thing that comes for free first before you move on to investing money on your blog promotion.

When you are posting on your blogs use titles with keywords. You can try making your keywords in the blog content bold. If you are using images in your blogs make sure that you use alt tags with keywords in them. Make your blog focus on one aspect or a single theme and be faithful to add content to your blog so that search engines will consider you as a rich source of quality content.

Lot of us optimize our own websites by learning the basic optimization tips from various online resources. Some of them do manage to get good results out of their own efforts and be encouraged to concentrate more on their website optimization. This applies to most website owners who have static HTML websites. However, when it comes to dynamic websites it is a different story all together. Lot of people are not sure how to optimize the dynamic pages of their websites.

Dynamic web pages are those pages that are not permanent but pages that are created on the fly based on user input such as a search page. The search page where the user makes his or her search will be a permanent page but the results page is only a temporary page and they are not stored in the servers. If you have observed the dynamic URLs closely they are very long and they change based on the user request. Search engines cannot spider through these pages and indexing is almost impossible as the session id keeps changing. Google indexes dynamic pages but to save the servers from overloading and strain they limit the number of dynamic pages that they will index per website.

In order to have all your dynamic pages indexed you can use tools that will convert your dynamic pages to static ones by replacing the “?” with a “/”. Some webmasters also use CGI/PERL scripts to generate the URLs. You can also try to reconfigure your server to apache server with the help of your hosting company as this is not something that is pre-installed.

Certain approaches will be suitable for a small websites and if you have thousands of pages or products that you sell through your online store then the following may not be an efficient solution. What needs to be done is to create static pages that correspond to each of your dynamic pages and optimize those static pages as you would normally optimize other pages and submit it to the search engines along with the other pages. As you can see that it may not be an efficient approach for huge websites. So you need to adapt to an approach that is suitable for your website and should not try to implement all that you read online because all SEO strategies do not suit all types of websites.

When it is a complex website it is always wiser to employ a reliable search engine optimization company to get the optimization done so that you will not be overly distracted with the optimization part losing concentration on your core business. This will bring better returns on your investments. What many people do not take into consideration is the amount of time that they spend to resolve an issue that they are not familiar with; so it is always advisable to seek for professional help. Moreover, by trying it implement various strategies ourselves we will lose a lot of Internet time while our competitors march a head.

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