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Tag: search engine

  • A Link is a Link – Even NoFollows

    When we talk SEO with our clients or potential clients, the topic of link-building will undoubtedly come up. And this conversation always gets into “what is a good link.”

    There are plenty of other articles on what signifies a quality link (relevant website, high ranking pages, in-content links, etc.), but what a lot of people seem to throw in the mix is their disregard to attaining links on sites that place the “nofollow” tag on them.

    If you are unfamiliar with nofollow, it’s basically a tag a webmaster can place on a link to direct a search engine away from following it.

    This was originally designed for bloggers who wanted to control their comment spam from people/robots attempting to artificially increase inbound links to irrelevant, often illegible websites (think: Viagra and replica watches). The nofollow attribute eventually became a tool for SEOs to sculpt the link value flow on their own sites in an attempt to increase the value of each page while retaining the ability to link to other pages internally.

    So, by placing a nofollow attribute on a link, you are keeping the “link juice” from spreading to other pages/sites. Being that inbound links have such a determining factor on your search engine rankings, it became something of a turnoff for link-builders.

    But we don’t follow this same thought. If you think about it, links are supposed to provide more information on a topic, or point visitors to other sites that may be of use. If you set aside search engine rankings for a moment, and remember that the point is to increase traffic to your site, then there may be many sites out there from which a link would be of great value.

    So don’t discount an opportunity to gain a link from a site simply because it would be “nofollowed.” Before Google came along and we realized how important links were to our rankings, this is how we gianed traffic anyway.

    As long as the link is relevant and offers the searcher value in some way, we say get all the links you can. A qualified visitor from another website is just as important as that of a search engine.

  • RankQuest Meta Tag Analyzer

     
    Help
     
    • Meta Tags tell the Search Engine what your page is all about, they also play a crucial role in the SERP Rankings of your page.
    • The Meta Tag Analyzer examines the Meta information of the entered URL and lets you know if the content is Search Engine Friendly or not.

  • General Directories

    Jayde 2 – http://submit2.jayde.com/

    Jayde.com, the B2B Search Engine. All of your business search needs in one place. Whether it is a company name, product, service or other information, it can be found at the Jayde.com Business Directory.

  • SEO Factor Blog

    November 16, 2006 Yahoo! Google, and MSN will agree on the Sitemap protocol previously supported by Google alone. We all know what a sitemap is, and how it helps your site getting indexed. If not read here. The protocol is basically an XML file uploaded to your root directory, mapping your site and giving a little information on how often it changes, when it was last updated, etc. Though it will not improve rankings in a search engines, it will help with the search engine’s attempt at crawling your site, thus increasing it’s index potential.

    From sitemaps.org, the site released by all of the search engines:

    “Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

    Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.”

    This marks the second time that the three big guys teamed up for a common, and greater benefit to the online community. The first was with the recognizing of the ‘nofollow’ tag.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 Sitemaps are becoming ever important to a website’s success. Generally speaking, a sitemap is just that, a map of your site. Today I will shed a bit of light on what a sitemap is for, and what it should include. At a minimum, your sitemap should link to ever major page or section on your site, but preferably an all inclusive link list. This can get quite large, and a page with too many links can make a search engine crawler waiver just a bit, so keep the sitemap to a maximum of about 150 links. It serves 2 purposes really. One, for those surfers that prefer to navigate your site from one page. And two, recently really, for a search engine to better crawl your site. The larger your site gets, the more cumbersome the flow of navigation can become. If you have thousands of pages, it’s hard for a visitor to get to a specific page from the home page. The web savvy surfer knows to look for a sitemap link, so as to browse for the proper section he or she may be looking for. For ease of use, there should be link to the sitemap on every page of your site.

    When a crawler gets to your sitemap, it has a very easy time of getting to the other pages. So again, it’s best to have a link to every page on your sitemap. You will also want to make sure that the sitemap is crawler friendly in regards to simple code and preventing the robots.txt file from stopping the crawler. Google helps in a very cool fashion, by providing their own Google Sitemap. This is a neat tool that not only creates a sitemap, but will also allow for Google to give an amount of feedback clueing you in on guidelines that may not be met by your site. This will help in understanding why a page may not be indexed and sometimes ranking. It does require a bit of finesse as the sitemap tool is an XML based product, so try to be careful if you’re not experienced. In respect to coding as a whole, it’s really pretty simple, and the manual makes it almost dummy proof.

    You don’t need to have Google’s Sitemap if you don’t feel up to it. Just as long as you have a page dedicated to being a sitemap, you can submit that to the se’s and be OK. Just keep with Google’s, Yahoo!’s, and MSN’s guidelines during the creation, and be sure to name the page sitemap.html. If you do decide to go with the Google Sitemap, you can visit their official blog and group for specific help.

    A small disclaimer if I may. Having a good sitemap does not mean that you will rank higher. It only means that a search engine can crawl easier, and makes submissions a little quicker. There is a small debate on this, but no proof to show a difference.

    If you have any questions, same as always. Let me know.

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  • SEO-Factor: Search Engine Optimization, Website Promotion Services

    Business Growth With Ranking – Having a website in today’s business world is not a luxury, but a necessity. Even if you don’t plan to sell products on your site, there will be a need for a convenient central location of your business’ information. But, having a website is not good enough. If customers can’t find your site, then they can’t buy your product. That is where Search Engine Optimization comes in. SEO is the act of optimizing a website so that it will improve it’s potential to appear higher on the search engines, and it’s worth can mean the difference between succeeding in business and closing the doors for good.

    What SEO Factor Can Do For Your Business – By charging SEO Factor with the task of optimizing your site, you increase it’s potential for ranking and traffic, and thus the potential for increased income. Most small and medium-sized businesses already make use of a Pay-Per-Click option, not knowing that they can achieve a higher rate of success by exploiting the statistics that consumers are more likely to click on a site listed in the non-paid section of a search engine. This will not only promote a company’s growth, but will cost a lot less than paying for every click to their site. So, we can help your site work harder for your business, and save you money at the same time.

    Versatile Help For Any Budget – With a wide range of optimization and website promotion services, we can assist in the growth of any business with any marketing budget.

    Timing Is Everything – It takes time for search engines to crawl and rank a website, so don’t waste another minute. Let SEO Factor give your site the extra help it needs to work harder for you and your business.

  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 6, 2006 We have discussed meta tags and the such. Now we will discuss the content that is on your homepage. The content is in part how the search engines know what your site is all about. They can’t see pictures, so naturally they will have to read your site. I do want to point out, with saying that, a picture of words will not count. This is often done in Photoshop, Flash, or some other imaging software to create effects on a website. So be sure that the text on the site is “real” HTML text. There are a lot of debates about the number of words that should appear on the homepage. 250 words is thrown around a lot. Try to think of it like this. If you are an expert in an area, you’re probably gonna have a lot to say about a subject. So, if you have a lot to say about a subject, the search engines will feel that you are an expert in that area, and likely want to show you first. Google themselves said 500 words one time, but again, don’t do things for the search engines, do it for your customer(s). And you obviously want to educate your customers right. We like to throw out the 250 words number because it’s not a whole lot of work to get that much, and it will give ample opportunity to use the terms that you want to be found under. Now we come to density. You are proving to a search engine that you are relevant to a certain term. What better way than to use that term? Let’s stop for just a second. I’m gonna repeat something again. If I could, I would put a disclaimer between every single word I write so that it get hammered into your brain. You don’t want to do things for the search engines. You want to prove to them that you are relevant, not trick them into thinking so. There is a way of density known as “stuffing.” Basically this means that you are placing your terms all over the place to show your relevancy. Don’t get caught up in that mind set. Let us continue. This is why it’s a good idea to still have a keywords tag. You want to be mindful of the terms that you want to be found under. So try to use these terms at a minimum of one time each. Your title is the most important, so should contain at least five of your most important search terms. Yahoo! especially puts priority on the title tag. Don’t use more than 80 characters, some reports are saying 70. You will want to have a good percentage of density of your title words in your text. Try for around 5%, but don’t exceed 10%-12%. Too much looks like spam or stuffing. So, for all you 6th grade dropouts, that would be 5 times for every 100 words on the homepage. Reassure your customers, this sounds like a lot, but when you write out 100 words, 5 instances of a word is not a lot at all. You will likely use the word “the” 15-20 times.

    It’s also a good idea to give weight to your title words. The H1 tag has the most weight, bolding words is a good idea and bold internal links to a page that is about that term is great. Your main search terms should also be as close, if not at the top of your text, and should all be in close proximity of each other if at all possible. Again, you hear to place the exact title on the top of your site. Think about this. If my title is “funny, stupid, mean, crazy, offensive, shirts, Jacksonville, fl,” how is that gonna look on your site. Not very good I say. Just be sure to show weight and importance to these terms. Don’t overdue it. Remember, you want your site to look good for your customer at the same time revealing what your site is all about to the search engines.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 In my position as a consultant on SEO, I seem to be getting an increase in the amount of customers asking why their designer had not considered the changes I suggest. Some of these questions are usually followed by “that jerk. I’ve been dealing with his crap for too long.” So are there really that many bad designers out there? I say no. Here’s why… SEO is a very analytical and tedious process, and in most cases deals solely with black and white. Most SEO specialist care not for the aesthetics of a site, giving only worry to how well it is written and how it functions on a search engine. I seem to have grown into this position because of it’s appeal to the nerd in me. I was great at math growing up, and I became a programmer in low level compile languages at an early age. My brain seems to like things that can be measured and assigned a number. I can give you all sorts of neat little formulas on finding the weight and height of a dog. But please don’t ask me to draw one. One of my best friends and co-workers is a website designer. He can do some really neat things with animation and design programs, and implement them into a site making some of the nicest pages I get to see online. He grew up in a very artistic environment, learning to play multiple musical instruments at an early age, and becoming a painter later in his life. He could create on canvas the most beautiful landscape, but when we argue on politics and I give him the middle finger as I walk away, I can almost see him trying to count. So what does this mean? Who is a better person to employ with your website? Should you fire the designer that didn’t do a good job on getting your site seen? My answer is this. If you are number 1 on Google under a specified search term, but your site looks like a 3 year old drew it with a crayon and scanned it into the computer, how well do you think your sales will be? And if have you the best looking site on the Internet, but nobody even sees it, what then? You need to have a touch of both. There are designers out there that do have a mind for SEO, and vice versa for SEO Specialists, but in order to get the best out of your online investment, you will really need to implement the workings of both. In a perfect world, you cold get both in the same step, and some companies offer this, but can get a little costly. Usually you already have a site and need someone to optimize it, working with your current designer. The nice thing about our industry (that of creating an online presence) is that there is usually a mutual respect, and to work with a designer is usually not a difficult task. There are some that feel threatened one a client introduces someone into an already established relationship, but that usually fades once it is made clear on what you are hired to do.

    So to all you out there that have a site designed, and a designer on call, and call me wanting to know why your site is not doing well in respect to traffic and should you fire your designer, realize what you hired that designer for in the first place.

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 In creating a website we try to desperately to make something aesthetically pleasing, and there are so many methods to that madness. But the prettier the page, often means the more code we have to implement. More code equals less SEO friendly. Some things, in fact, will create a page that is not “crawler friendly,” and thus create problems when trying to get a site indexed or ranked. You want the crawlers (robots, spiders, se’s, whatever) to have as easy a time as possible. So let’s touch on a few things that will make a world of difference.

    Robots tag vs. Robots.txt file

    The robots.txt file is used in regard to directing a search engine. Not so much on where to go, as where not to go. You can use it to tell a search engine not to index a certain page or pages, or not to follow certain links. This is usually the case where there is confidential information you wouldn’t want a search engine to index, but can sometimes inadvertently cause a page to not be crawled at all. You will want to be careful in your robots.txt creation to avoid preventing a crawler on your site. This has, many times, been the cause for a site not being indexed. The same holds true for the robots tag. The robots tag is a little less customizable, and is rarely needed because most people put it on “index, follow” which is the default anyway.

    JavaScript

    A lot of cool functions and graphics can be achieved with the use of JavaScript. The problem is that sometimes the use requires a lot of code to be placed in the HEAD of the site. Though the code is ignored by the search engines, they still have to drudge through all of it to get to the readable code. Some search engines have a timeout or a maximum character read before they will just leave and move to the next site. It’s best to call the JavaScript from an outside file if at all possible. Also, be mindful that an error in JavaScript can cause a crawler to stop completely, again, moving to the next site. So, just be mindful of the extra stuff you put on your site. Try to keep the code clean and prevent a possible problem. Just remember that the crawler for a search engines has a great deal of work to do. It has to be fast, efficient, and simple. This simplicity means that it’s not going to work too hard to get what it needs before it gives up.

    Thank you, Mr. Roboto. (I really couldn’t resist)

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  • SEO Factor Blog

    October 9, 2006 Optimizing a website is only part of the SEO / SEM process. Once a site is optimized for the search engines, you still have to consider “old-fashioned” ways of marketing your product or service. Before the Internet, we used magazines, billboards, T.V. commercials and endorsements, among other creative ways to advertise. The Internet is no different. You have to get your name out there and bring hits to your site. Let’s check one of these methods. Banner Ads If the Internet is the “information super highway,” then banners would be our billboards. Basically, banners will be a small picture or animation placed on other websites that, when clicked, would lead to your website. You can see an example by going to MSN.com in the upper right corner of the search engine. There is always an advertisement there. Most sites implement banners in much the same way, setting up a specified space for banners. This creates an advertising space, providing the ad to a potential customer, yet preventing an annoyance that would be created with pop-ups. I won’t name any specifics (Mostly because I don’t like banners myself. Hated billboards…hate these. But hey, they work and we use what works), but there are a number of banner services out there to get you started. You can find every service from the creation of a banner, online editors for those do-it-yourselfers, the promotions of an already created banner, and everything in between. Now, if you go to MSN and see a banner, then go back 5 minutes later, you will see a different banner ad. They rotate, giving MSN the power to provide banner space for more than one customer. Most services that offer the promotion of a banner advertisement, do it in one of two ways. You can purchase “impressions,” which means that if your banner is shown to a website’s visitor, regardless of a click through or not, that counts as 1 impression. Usually these impressions are purchased in large blocks, sometimes in the tens of thousands. The second way is a purchase of an amount of clicks. This means that your banner is shown as many times as is necessary to use up the determined amount of down payment you provide to the service, much in the same way a Pay-Per-Click service is handled. Google (I know I know. I said I wouldn’t promote any, but I like Google) provides a banner service in this way with their Adwords program. There are other service methods, like trading banner clicks, in where if you show a banner, and it gets a click, your banner will be shown somewhere for the same amount of clicks, but the first 2 are the most popular.

    I said that I don’t like banners. But that wasn’t because they don’t work. It’s really just one of the many ticks I have. Banners do indeed work…greatly. If you have a well designed and worded banner, and the service you use, you can get a good amount of relevant traffic, for a fairly low price. Like every form of marketing out there, you have to play with it though. Sometimes you may not get a click through for something so simple as a bad color or too many/ too few words. Find out what works for you, and you could be a very happy banner….ummm…person.

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