4.11.09

Search Engine Results and the PDF USER TRAP



by: Craig Geis
Many major search engines (Google, Fast, Inktomi, MSN) now have the capability to index PDF files and return them in search results. If you are a Web site owner with PDF files on your site, this is good news. If you are an SEO, you also know that the new capability presents potential usability problems. And what exactly is the big deal? Let's find out. 
 
Searching for "blessing of a Christmas tree" on Google returns a link to a PDF file as the first result: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=BLESSING+OF+A+CHRISTMAS+TREE 
 
If searchers click on it, the link automatically opens a PDF file with no navigation back to the main site. Users are trapped! So, what's going on and, more importantly, how to do we fix it? Essentially, the PDF format is not the culprit; the real problem is the author's failure to create the files with Web users in mind. 
 
PDF authoring software, such as Adobe Acrobat 5.0, offers the ability to include both a navigational structure and hyperlinks on a PDF page. Ideally, the best solution is to create your pages in HTML, rather than PDF format. Depending on the purpose, however, a PDF format can be preferable. For example, PDF files offer better functionality for pages that are commonly printed, such as order forms and price lists. 
 
To avoid the PDF USER TRAP, you will have to republish your files, adding some type of navigation structure and/or link back your main Web site. This is the best option for SEO's, because it allows the pages to still be indexed. If this is not an option, the next best solution is to place all of your PDF files in a single folder and do a robots exclusion. 
 
About the author:
Craig Geis, SEO Technical Specialist, The Karcher Group. For more information on this topic, contact him at Craig@thekarchergroup.com or www.thekarchergroup.com.
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Search Engine Optimization Tips - Part 2



by: Niall Roche
Welcome to the second part of our series of articles on search engine optimization. In the previous article we discussed keywords, domain names, content and keyword density issues. This article moves past that to the nitty gritty of improving your web pages and website for better search engine rankings. 
 
Page Title
It's truly amazing how many people don't realize how critical the TITLE tag can be to the success or failure of your website. Your TITLE tag needs to have your most important keyword for that page included in it. This is for the benefit of the search engines. 
 
From a visitors point of view it also needs to entice them to click on your title tag when they see it in the search engine results. If your page is about PDA Accessories don't just use that phrase in the TITLE tag. 
 
Dress it up a bit. For example "PDA Accessories For The Busy Geek" or "Need Accessories for Your PDA? Come right in!" Those examples took me 10 seconds to come up with. You can do far better with a little more time and effort. 
 
META Keyword Tag
Anybody still using the Meta Keyword tag as their sole search engine optimization method please leave the room. Go on get out and don't come back. 
 
The Meta Keyword tag is all but dead to the search engines. When building your pages it's still worth including but simply put in the top 3 or 4 keywords that are relevant to your business and leave it at that. Do not spend hours coming up with hundreds of keywords to stuff into the Meta Keyword tag. It's a total waste of time and anybody who tells you different has no idea what they're talking about. 
 
META Description Tag
This still has some limited value for your SEO work. When Google or other search engines display search results they display the contents of the TITLE tag and your Meta Description tag (if present) or a random selection of text from the page. Your Meta Description tag will take priority if present.
The Meta Description tag is still worth using. Your most important keyword should be in there and again you need to work this keyword into an eye catching phrase or sentence. Don't just copy and paste the main keyword in there. 
 
If the Meta Description tag is used well, in conjunction with the TITLE tag, then it can make your displayed search result more inviting to the potential visitor. Again don't spend more than a few minutes on your Meta Description tag but do make sure that you include it on each page. One final note - make the Meta Description for each page different; don't just recycle the same one over and over. 
 
RSS
Stands for Really Simple Syndication and is probably something you've heard a lot about over the last few months. RSS allows you to display the news items and/or content from other sites on your website as part of a "news feed". This adds a huge amount of value to your site from a vistors point of view - they don't need to leave your site to get the latest news on a given topic. The other benefit is that search engines love seeing fresh content on websites. 
 
At the moment there's a huge upsurge in the use of RSS for search engine optimization. The question is does it work? Yes it does. Using RSS can most definitely encourage the search engines to come back to visit your site more often. How does it work? Well again that goes beyond the scope of this article so please refer to our site for more information. 
 
Blogs
Also called Web Logs are basically online diaries. For a long time these were used solely by... well.... geeks to record their thoughts and as a way of sharing information on Star Trek. Seriously though initially blogs were never seen as anything more than a curiousity. 
 
Recently with the increased visibility of RSS blogs have also seen their profile rise. Why? Well because many RSS feeds feature blog content. Which means what exactly? It means your blog could be included on and linked to from thousands of websites all over the world. Are you seeing the possiblities? There are some other nuances to consider but to mention them here would give the game away completely and certain ebook authors would put a price on my head for giving away their secrets. 

About the author:
This article was provided courtesy of Search Engine Fuel where you'll find tons of information on getting higher search engine placement and reviews of SEO ebooks and software. 
(c) Niall Roche - All Rights Reserved - continued in Part 3
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Search Engine Optimization - Site map Optimization Technique



by: daniel chow
Site Maps can be a great tool for making search engines crawl through your web site in a much more effective manner, thereby helping you get more pages indexed, and ultimately getting you more visitors. Most people know what site maps are, as they can be seen on many of the major websites, although for those who don't, a site map is a page which contains a list of all the links within a website, under different categories and headings, just like a table of contents of a book¨. 
 
Now when a search engine hits the site map page, it gets to see all the links within that website and this enables it to crawl through those pages. It¡¦s just like guiding search engines with the help of a map, in this large universe of internet. 
 
Site maps also help visitors to get an overview of the entire web site, and hence act as a great navigational tool. It helps visitors find specific pages through a single page, for which they might have had to follow several links to reach the desired page. Here are some examples of well designed site maps. 
 
http://www.google.com/sitemap.html
http://www.lycos.com/sitemap.asp 
 
This leads us to the next question, i.e. how should site maps be designed. Designing a site map can be as simple as designing any other static pages without any pictures, graphics, etc. But all effort should be made to keep the structure logical and simple. Its best to browse through the web, and check out a variety of site maps before you decide on what kind of structure you want to follow. 
 
Here are some things you should keep in mind, before designing a site map.

Homepage Link: It is important to give a prominent link from the homepage to the sitemap page, so that visitors and search bots can easily hit the site map page. In fact, preferably there should be a link to the site map page from every page of your website. 
 
Text Links: Plain text links should be used for all the links, as some search bots can have problems crawling through ¡§JavaScript¡¨. 
 
Categories: It is important to organise the contents into well defined categories, and even sub-categories for easy navigation of the user. Although this doesn¡¦t have direct SEO implications, it makes more sense to the user. 
 
Descriptive Content: It is ideal to add some content describing the links, as search engines tend to ignore pages, full of links. It is also important to use your targeted keywords in your descriptive content as well as in your anchor text. 
 
Anchor Text Link: It is important to use page titles as your anchor text, so that you can increase your anchor text back links. This is helpful for search engine optimization as it increases your link popularity. 
 
About the author:
Article by SEO Assistance
Search Engine Optimization Site map Optimization Technique
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Search engine optimization (SEO) is critical to the success of your website



by: Sharifah Hardie
Drive Visitors To Your Website And Increase Your Market Share.
SEO is the key to unlocking your website's full potential. Google handles over 200 million internet search requests each day, and people who search for information clearly express what they want. Imagine capturing a relevant stream of such web traffic. It's therefore important to optimize your web pages to improve search engine rankings using the most appropriate keywords describing the content of your site. 
 
The search engine optimization process begins before you start building your website, when you decide on the domain name to register. The process then continues on as long as your website remains online. 
 
Please note that optimizing your web pages to get high rankings takes time. Your rankings may start out low and slowly improve. Link popularity, i.e. the quantity and quality of external links to your web pages, greatly influences your rankings, and it takes time for your website to become popular in its niche. 
 
Every time you improve your site, you need to allow time for the full effect to show in search engine results. Don't tweak your web pages too frequently. The time and effort is better spent on adding high-quality contents to your site and building inbound links. 
 
Search Engines have computers and programs called "Spiders" that collect information about your web pages in an attempt to "figure out" what your pages are about. These spiders gather information from your pages and use these in factoring which sites get ranked higher than others. Search Engines analyze over 100 On-Page Factors when analyzing your web pages. 
 
About the author:
Sharifah Hardie is the founder of http://www.marketingonlinecrashcourse.comwebsite focusing on the Marketing Online, resources and articles. This site provides detailed information on SEO. For more info on SEO visit: http://www.marketingonlinecrashcourse.com
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Search Engine Optimization - Inside Google Page Rank



by: daniel chow
At present Google is the leading worldwide search engine, it supports multiple languages and has one of the most sophisticated search engine algorithms around. If you bear in mind Google's unprecedented popularity and simplicity you will see that your site needs to master its rankings for your particular key phrases, this will usual mean that other search engines catch on to your website with similiar positionings. It isnt easy to understand such a complex system but you need to master it to give your site an edge in an increasingly demanding market. 
 
Google is a mystery as far as search engine theories go, you essentially have to try and understand what makes one site rank better than another. Although the forementioned algorithms are constantly changing Google themselves have shown link backs play a large roll in a search engines view of any web page, in order to do well a website needs to have links from other sites directly to it. Not only that the websites that link to it are usually respected by search engines themselves. 
 
PageRank is google's own measure of a website, there is much speculation on how it is composed but a key factor is proven to be back links, below is a scale that is widely believed to be the backbone of how it judges your website. The amount of PageRank distributed around the internet is believed average at 1 for every website, thats why we begin this at PageRank 2.

PR 2 = 0-6 Link backs 
 
PR 3 = 6-60 Link backs 
 
PR 4 = 60-600 Link backs 
 
PR 5 = 600-6000 Link backs 
 
PR 6 = 6000-60000 Link backs 
 
PR 7 = 60000-600000 Link backs 
 
PR 8 = 600000-6000000 Link backs 
 
PR 9 = 6000000-60000000 Link backs 
 
PR 10 = 60000000-600000000 Link backs 
 
We used a base number of 6 for this example although it is disputed whether it could be 5 or lower. The amount of back links your website recieves plays a large role within your search engine positioning but a strong anchor text and title tag for your links is also key to success, you can see how to do this as demonstrated below. 
 
a href="http://www.linkhere" title="Keyword Title Text" Keyword Anchor Text 
 
PageRank analyses more than link backs. External links are known to "leak" page rank from your website, in simple terms - your website can cast one vote against each websites it links to, if these are external links it takes from a pool of PageRank that your website has to offer. It is recommended you either seek recipirocal links from websites you link to or use other methods like javascript to prevent your PageRank from being dispersed from your website. 
 
About the author:
Article by www.SEOAssistance.comSearch Engine Optimization Inside Google www.SEOAssistance.com
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Search Engine Optimization - Advice and Tactic



by: daniel chow

Unique content is King. Search engines love new, unique and updated content. If you produce new content at a rate of just one reasonably sized page per day and tied in with the other advice throughout the site, I can almost guarantee you will get good listings. Remember though, write for the visitors but cater for the search engines. If your field of expertise fits into a niche in the market, all the better for you but you must get unique content all you will fall behind. 
 
Page Structure. Search engine bots can sometimes get confused with poorly coded html, javascript and other web languages. If the bot has to wait too long or cannot decipher the web language then it will just abandon your site and move on to the next, even if it manages to get through the code it usually leads to poor search engine indexing of your website. You should also keep to widely used file extensions like .htm, .html, .php, .asp for your pages. 
 
Loading Speed. The loading speed of your website should be kept to a minimum, if it takes long than 5 seconds on 256kb+ connections then you lose visitors - both real and search engine bots. There are a variety of reasons why pages can load slowly, it may either be your web server, poorly coded server side code like php or client side code like javascript which can slow or even stop your page from loading. 
 
Visitor Navigation. This is more an aesthetic feature of your website focused at real visitors but you need to have some sort of standard navigation that is the same throughout your whole site. People can be put off and leave your website if they find it difficult to browse easily, search engine bots may also miss links if they can only be found deep within your site. Try to make as many internal links as possible available on each page. 
 
Site Hierarchy. Site hierachy can be great for adding keyword density to your web site. An example of site hierachy working effectively would be this page, seo-advice.php. The full link contains SEO twice - www.seoassistance.com/seo-advice.php which is very beneficial in the way search engines determine your sites relevance to a particular subject. Use your domain, folders and file names to your advantage. 
 
Avoid Blackhat SEO. Blackhat SEO is a vast topic that commands little respect from real webmasters as it means using underhand methods to gain search engine rankings, although the site is usually banned quickly. Blackhat SEO includes using link farms, search engine spamming, hidden or disguised text, fake meta tag data, using duplicate content and using doorway pages. I would recommend you stay away from tactics like this as you will end up losing out in the long run. 
 
Targeted Linkswaps. Link swaps are great but you must make them work for you. It does little good for you when your going for top search engine positions when your link swaps are untargeted. You should choose some specific keywords for both the link text and the link title text then make sure before you link swap that the other webmaster adds those specific keywords with the link. 
 
About the author:
Article by www.SEOAssistance.com
Search Engine Optimization Advice & Tactics, www.SEOAssistance.com
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Search Engine Metrics… Organic Search vs. Paid Placement



by: Lawrence Deon
Let me preface this report by citing advertisers in 2004 have spent 4 Billion dollars on search engine marketing according to (SEMPO) the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. 
 
Website marketers cited Search engine positioning was the top method to drive traffic to their sites (66%), followed by email marketing (54%). Source: Direct Marketing Association. Accordingly, the most cost effective way to market your web site online is to obtain several top 10-search engine rankings in the major search engines for your keywords. 
 
According to a recent Jupiter Research Survey, searching on the search engines is one of the main uses of the Internet among 79% of users. Source: September 2002 Jupiter Research Survey. So that being the case, whatever your promoting you’ll want to make sure it can be found on the first page of the search engines results page. 
 
The reason is numerically simple. An Iprospect Survey in 2002 reported that 78% of web users abandon their search if the first 3 pages don't provide an answer to their question, and 28% don’t scroll past the 2nd page of results. Source: Media Post article reporting results of Spring 2002 IProspect survey. 
 
Combine those facts with the Internets explosive growth rate of 1.8 Million people worldwide going online every week for the very first time, Source: Official Guide To Internet Promotion and you can soon appreciate what a top 10 ranking can mean to you. 
 
Google receives approximately 39.4% of all search engine traffic. Yahoo receives approximately 30.4%. They’re simply the largest search engines being utilized online today. 
 
Bringing up the rear is MSN at 29.6%, and AOL 15.5% then Ask Jeeves with 8.5%. Source: Nielsen//NetRatings January 2004 
 
How much traffic is that? Well, Google and its partner sites were reporting a whopping 250 million searches a day in February 2003. 
 
Overture and its partners were reporting over 167 million searches per day. Inktomi reported 80 million followed by LookSmart with 45 million per day. 
 
FindWhat reported 33 million while Ask Jeeves reported 20 million, Alta Vista reported 18 million and finally Fast reported 12 Million searches per day. Source: Searchenginewatch.com 2004. 
 
With all said, you can easily see how your search engine rankings are directly proportional to the traffic your web site receives, and your site traffic is directly related to your potential to profit online. 
 
Oh, and in case your wondering how much money is spent online; a recent Forrester Research Report indicated that online spending reached $95,700,000,000 million in 2003! That's a cool 95.7 billion dollars. Projected online spending is estimated to grow to $229 billion in 2008! A whopping 139% increase in online spending! Source: Forrester Research 
 
Now with these facts in mind I’m confident you can clearly see what a top 10-search engine ranking can mean for your bottom line. Although it does leave a question unanswered in my mind, what has a higher ROI… organic search engine optimization or paid search? 
 
According to SEMPO’s key analysis, the U.S. & Canadian SEM Industry Size Estimate by tactic in 2004, organic SEO accounted for 12% of the market share or $492,057,200 while Paid Placement accounted for $3,341,878,176 or 81.8%. 
 
Interestingly, 9 out of 10 respondents are actively engaged in organic SEM marketing programs accounting for 89% of the respondent advertisers. This trend can be contributed to the average cost of popular keywords continuing to escalate. 
 
If the escalation continues to rise it could make paid search engine advertising exponentially cost prohibitive for all but the largest advertisers… the 900lb gorillas! 
 
Simply put, ROI is outpacing inflation: SEMPO’s key analysis indicates advertisers could afford to pay on average 33% more for their keywords and remain profitable, while they say prices have gone up 26% on average in the last 12 months. That’s leaves a 7% advertising margin to maintain current profits for 2005! 
 
SEMPO’s data also noted that advertisers will get smarter about managing their paid placement programs before they cut back on spending. This is also consistent with a report released by Nielsen/NetRatings indicating that the growing demand for search engine advertising is outstripping the supply of currently available advertising space. 
 
These findings seem to indicate the inventory of keywords is approaching a critical demand problem however; most advertisers felt they still have some degree of price flexibility in their paid placement programs before they will reach the threshold of diminishing returns. 
 
Is there any wonder why organic search engine positioning has gained popularity for online marketers in 2004? Could it be higher (ROI) return on investments? 
 
SEMPO also cites that 43% of advertiser respondents have shifted their budgets away from other marketing programs for Organic SEO. So what does it all mean? Let the numbers speak for themselves. Organic SEO is undeniably gaining favor over the lower ROI paid advertising. This is evidenced by virtue of the fact that paid advertising is becoming less profitable. 
 
Although paid advertising will continue to hold a large portion of the market share, as paid advertising returns diminish and keyword costs soar my early 2005 forecast is for the materialization of a progressive organic SEO market trend to facilitate the need for advertising space. 
 
About the author:
Lawrence Deon is an SEO/SEM Consultant and author of the popular search engine optimization and marketing model Ranking Your Way To The Bank. http://www.rankingyourwaytothebank.com
Please feel free to reprint this article. An active link back to http://www.rankingyourwaytothebank.comis required. Publishers not linking back will be asked to remove this article from their site.
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Search Engine Copywriting Explained



by: Daniel Chow
Copywriting in the world of marketing has always been an expensive process and the main aim of the copy is to attract the reader attention and lure him into buying a product or using a particular service. Copywriting in the online world has pretty much the same meaning, but I believe it is slightly difficult, as here the main aim is to not only grab the readers attention but in order to make it more effective, it is also important to make the copy rank well in the search engines, so that the targeted audience actually get to read it. 
 
Search engine copywriting refers to the process, where a copy is written in a way, where it not only reads well to the reader, but also repeats specific target “keywords?within the text, in order for that copy (webpage) to rank well in search engines for those keywords. 
 
Copywriting experts believe it is ideal to have around 300 words on a page with one or two targeted search terms cleverly placed within the text a few times. Along with the text, it is also important to optimize other elements on the page such as the title text, headings, description and keyword tags, and alt text. 
 
Advantages and Disadvantages of SEO Copywriting 
 
Advantages
Long term Rankings: It is believed that this method helps in maintaining SEO rankings for much longer as compared to other optimization techniques, even when search engines change their algorithms. Although many search engine optimization experts believe that this is a myth. 
 
Quality Content: It not only helps in the optimization process, but also helps to have quality and well written content on your website, which is likely to get you returned visitors or referrals.

Disadvantages
Works for Less Competitive Search Terms: It is believed that this technique works best for less competitive search terms. Competitive search terms refer to highly searched keywords such as sex, insurance, credit cards, cars, etc. Although this can aid the optimization process for highly competitive search terms too, but to be competitive other more robust optimization techniques will also be needed. 
 
Does not work for all Sites: Many sites cannot accommodate enough text on them, for e.g. it can be difficult to optimize certain pages/sites which have too many graphics, flash, etc. and little space for content. Many webmasters are not willing to alter the text, as it may affect the aesthetic appeal of the site. 
 
Expensive Process: Search engine copywriters are expensive people, and hence this whole process can be very expensive. They usually charge on per page basis, and the total expense largely depends on how many pages are to be optimized and the number of keywords being targeted. 
 
Another reason why it can be expensive is that you have to depend on the copywriter for all further changes to that page, and hence it can become a permanent expense. Making alterations to that page yourself, unless you know exactly what you are doing, can ruin the optimization of that particular page.

About the author:
Article by SEO Assistance
Search Engine Copywriting Explained ? SEOAssistance.com .

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Press ReleasePromote Your Website in Google Absolutely Free



by: Aaron Wall
Free SEO help. The SEO Book helps charities promote their websites in Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and other major search engines. The recently updated number one ranking SEO Book is now available to charities free of charge.


Hiring a quality search engine optimization firm can often cost thousands and thousands of dollars, which is well beyond the budget of many charities. Without proper placement in search engines people who want to help your charity may not be able to find you.
 
The SEO Book is a simple and straightforward guide which helps even the most novice webmaster learn how to promote their website.
 
"In a field like Internet marketing, where so much nonsense dispensed by self-proclaimed experts passes for decent advice, it is refreshing to find a talent as down-to-earth and unpretentious as Aaron, who just seems to get a kick out of being honest and helping other people avoid the traps and dead ends set by the hype-meisters and snake oil salesmen."

- Mario Sanchez, "The Internet Digest"
 
Search engine optimization is a complicated industry filled with confusion and error. Much of the applicable information changes from month to month or year to year and much of the available information on the web is outdated or absolutely incorrect. The SEO Book is published in ebook format so that it is constantly revised to keep current with the ever changing SEO field.
 
If you are the webmaster of a charity, church, or educational institution feel free to inquire about acquiring your complimentary copy of The SEO Book today at http://www.seobook.com/charities.

In addition you may direct your questions directly to Aaron via email at seobook@gmail.com
 
About the SEO Book:

SEO Book is a major industry hub of the SEO community. SEO Book is a search engine news blog which offers free SEO tips, SEO news, and a current guide to search engine optimization. 
 
Aaron Wall wrote the SEO Book to help businesses lower the cost of entry into the web and to help charities spread their messages. For more information about obtaining a complimentary copy of the SEO Book please visit our charities page at http://www.seobook.com/charities. For more information about the SEO Book website visit http://www.seobook.com.
 
About Aaron Wall:

Aaron Wall is a search engine optimization expert and an internet entrepreneur. His goals on the web are to help businesses effectively market their websites and help charities spread their messages. He maintains his blog as well as numerous other websites including http://www.search-marketing.info, http://www.blackhatseo.com, and http://www.directoryarchives.com. Aaron is also a moderator at the SearchGuild SEO Forums (http://www.searchguild.com) and at the V7N web development community (http://www.v7n.com).
 
About the author:

State College, PA July 20, 2004 -- Aaron Wall has made his recently revised best selling SEO Book available to charities free of charge.. Circulated by Article Emporium
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