Posts Tagged Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO or Search Engine Optimization?

Search engine optimization has become almost an everyday word, as least for folks who work with websites and online business, it should be. I assume that you already know the answer to this question or you would not be here, but I will go ahead and give a quick rundown, for those who fell asleep at the wheel and accidentally clicked a link that brought them here.

What Is Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization or as it is more commonly referred to SEO is nothing more than a process that a webmaster or a seo specialist use to make their page more appealing to search engines.  There are many factors that come into play to make a we page or a web site optimized for a search engine to find, index and display a web page in favorable positioning on it’s search results page.

The process of doing all these mini tasks to get your page ranked well in search results, is called SEO.

Hope this has helped somebody, I know it is basic, but really it is!

The hard part is everything that comes after….

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

1 Comment

Search Engine Optimization and Authority Sites

authority_sitesThere are many ways to get ranked in search engine results and some methods like link building and writing quality content will give you lasting results.  Where as some other methods of getting into google and other search engines may only produce short term search standings.  One of the biggest things we have seen produce these “short term” seo results are linking on “Authority Sites” and we wanted to explain a couple of angles on this topic today.

What Is An Authority Site?

Authority sites are nothing more or less than sites that are so huge and so hugely popular that search engines simply consider then the authority on many subjects.  The lack of development of A.I. (artificial intelligence) or fuzzy logic for search results has driven many popular search engines to look for another method to bring in the “human” factor into search results to raise the quality and logic behind the results we see.

Examples of Authority sites are places like Youtube.com Twitter.com Facebook.com and the list goes on.  Not all authority sites are social sites, but many are!  There are niche authority sites in the search engines eyes, like news sites, amazon and yahoo discussion areas, and all sorts of “topical” sites like “Popular Science” will pull more weight with outgoing links about the topic science sites; “The American Kennel Association” website may have more pull than most others when it comes to pet links or web site promotion and others of the like.

How Do Authority Sites Help Me With Search Engine Optimization?

Authority sites, in most cases are social site with high PR or Page Rank.  Web sites like this carry more weight in search engines and can influence search results heavily!  This is because google and other search engines take into consideration, for example, if there is a link to your site on many of these “Authority Sites” and there are many people talking about this link to your site in context to a keyword or search term that is repeated, then the “human factor” must say that in fact this hyperlink is truly about what people are saying it is about.

I know that was a mouthful and the only point I was trying to get across is that blasting huge Social Media Sites(facebook, bebo, myspace), Social Video/Pic Sharing Networks(youtube, revver, flickr) and yes, of course Social Bookmarking Sites(digg, stumbleupon, mixx, reddit) with links and videos of your information, is great marketing and will get the word out, not only to people but search engines very fast!  Many times using Social Bookmarking Sites, you can effectively get your site on google within hours.

This is an amazing way to find the first page of google!

However, one must understand that these results are limited by time. These immediate results created by a “Social Blast” as I like to call it, are usually short lived in search results.  Google more than any other search engine has really started to display “recent” or “popular” search results higher in search standings.

Limited Time Results On Search Engine..How Do I keep My Google Search Standing?

This is a question that the answer has not changed to for many years and you may already know the answer to.  To stay on top, you need to keep producing quality content on your site, you need to keep growing in coming back links to your website and you also need to keep people talking about you on the authority site!

The rules of seo have really not changed, there are a couple extra pieces of flare that will make some flashy seo results,but still you need to build your web presence, build the value of the content on your site and build your viewership if you really want to stay on top!

To Success,

Nick Simpson

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

No Comments

Mixing Up Your Back Link Anchor Text

SEO is not easy and many times it really can be confusing.  There are many articles on search engine optimization out there that talk about how important it is to get back links pointing to your site with your keywords in them.  This is very important, but can also become a handicap to your site if you do not know how to do this correctly.

Most of the “gurus” will not go into detail on this topic, because it is what sets them aside from the average Joe when it comes to seo.

There are 2 different techniques that I want to cover in this quick article, but remember these are from our own experience and results from our efforts, so you don’t have to follow these to the “T” because we are sure that this is no perfect science.  You will have to play around a little, and found out which ones work the best for you.

1. Alternate Anchor Text

By anchor text, we are talking about the text of your link, some links have the web address as the text, but some links have actual words that are linked.  The later ones, are the ones that you are after.

We know that it is easiest to go out there and start building as many back links as you can and use the same text over and over, however this is  not the preferred method of Google’s to rank you so, Mix It Up!

For example  you may use the anchor text “Buy New Golf Clubs” for some of your links, but then you may also use “Buy Golf Clubs”, “How To Buy New Golf Clubs”, “New Golf Clubs, Buy Now” and so  on.  These are some example of how you may mix up your anchor text, of course you will have to do the keyword research and find your own keyword sets to work with, but you get the idea.

The concept behind this is that Google knows that sites all across the internet are not going to find your site and decide to link to it with the same text every time, they know that the links are not “organic” if you use the same text over and over.  By mixing your anchor text up, your site will appear popular and organic, thus you will be rewarded with more organic search results!

2.Alternate Deep Links and Home Page Links

This is not only a great way to get some page rank on your website spread through out your pages, but is also a good way to boost your websites overall popularity with the most used search engines on the net.  You may want to make a text file to keep all your linking texts in, because you may have a lot of links to use for this one.

The concept of “deep linking” is nothing more than linking to webpages within your website instead of the home page.  Meaning http://yoursite.com/tools/webmaster/LinkChecker.html instead of http://yoursite.com

Again, this method does not make a Search Engine Optimization specialists job any easier, but it will produce favorable results in the search engines.  We suggest deep links about 70% of the time and only 30% linking directly to your web sites home page.  This ratio is not a perfect number, but as a rule of thumb, this is what you want.

Hope that this helps in your seo efforts online and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to let me know!

To Success,

Nick Simpson

, , , , ,

5 Comments

SEO Web Discussion

If you are new to search engine optimization and search engine methodology then you may not know that the rules are always changing. If you have been around for a while you have seen the Google algorithm change more times than you have changed shirts.

Yes, I have a point, I am getting to it. The point is, that many sites have old information and you can only trust the most recent data about search engines. So make the most of your seo efforts and stay in contact with the seo community!

Here is a great place to do that, check out the SEO Chat Forums!

, , , ,

No Comments