Tuesday 26 March 2013

Get to know SEO – Boost your search engine ranking

If only we understand, that websites are for the website visitors not for the search engines – We can get the SEO ball rolling in our favor

It is about time that we should stop playing tricks with the search engine. It’s about time to play the ethical game and not to re-live our habit of thinking short term. Panda and Penguin have taught us the hard facts. Now we need to get more audience focused more than we have focused to connect with the search engines. We do connect with the search engine anyways, when we are starting off with our internet marketing strategy, of which, building and optimizing the website is the prime part.

We talk about getting visitors to our web pages. We forget that we have to make these pages useful for them. Get the juice to them so that they can hover around with more intent, but to make this happen, we actually need to:

Understand our customers: This is one of the toughest information to get. Many business entities lack the capabilities of research. We should:

Understand the web visitor’s nature (a) when he visits the web, (b) his search trends, (c) the search intent by way of queries, (d) what could trigger him to act, learn and buy, and (e) his needs and preferences.

About our business: We think we really know our business. How many actually do? First things have to be done first. We must understand our business. Create our unique selling proposition, the one that could make us stand out of the crowd and give us and our viewers a reason to interact. This is just not enough, we must get to know our competitors and study how they are different from us, what makes them unique and study how can be give them honest, hard time to compete.

The website: The Company’s website is the most important element of the web marketing strategy. While we are optimizing these web pages to appear in high search engine ranking, we must prepare them; dress them up well for the website visitors to get value once they arrive on the website.

Optimizing the web pages is ultimate goal behind the online marketing strategies, yet, providing purposeful valuable content that could help the website visitors to go through their learning curve, at the same time optimizing the website with the balanced approach, long term strategy would help you boost your website for search engine ranking.

Friday 22 March 2013

Penguin Proof SEO trick, best ways to get your website penalized

You can get there fast. Top search engine ranking guaranteed. We have the penguin proof tricks. Once we get it done, you are there. CRAP. Get penalized, guaranteed and get lost from the internet search. True once done, you are there. We come across several get rich fast deals, none of them work in the long term. You might get to see some real fast results, yet, eventually all that you have invested in the web marketing game and buying the Penguin Proof crap goes down the drain.

Let me tell you more about the Penguin Proof tricks that can help you get penalized by the search engines. Here it goes.

Penguin’s areas of focus – unnatural back links to perk up the site’s ranking. Search Spamming
Brother Panda is good for poor content sites, low quality stuff etc.

Both are out there watching what you are up to.

  • Great so why don’t you try to stuff keywords. Over optimization can help you get fast ranking and fast penalty. We have been taught to use keywords, the relevant ones to optimize. We have been using these, but now for the sake of being ethical we are cautioned not to overuse these. We are now taught to be natural and build a user friendly and human understandable text.
  • We need content on our web pages. It is one of the most difficult elements on the web page, so why not use some duplicate content. Though search engines hate copied or duplicate content, we can still use it and get penalized for our actions.
  • We need the strong hold on the search engine. Natural links are hard to come. We need faster results. Let’s buy them from link farms. Short term strategy, in long term, the website will get delisted.
  • Door way pages, Hidden Text etc are too the tools that can get the back lash from the search engines and are the right things to get penalized.

Friends, we are living with the world of the artificial intelligence, semantic search world of the web. Doing any of the above acts will help us in getting into trouble with the search engine’s BOTs, Can you afford it?

Thursday 21 March 2013

Meet the White Hat Guy – Thoughts on SEO 2013

With every search engine update the ranking falls or rises. It is time to collect piece and think where we went wrong. What did we do to deserve the penalty of lost rank? Did our links bust our secret? What went wrong and we had to face the no ranking penalty? It is hard for those who have tried not to cheat but have not been up to the mark. For those who copied the content, used spinned content, brought links, spammed blogging and social bookmarking sites know that they are in trouble.

My thoughts on SEO 2013

  • Watch every move you make
  • Be original
  • Be authentic
  • Build your content for the web visitors not for the search engines
  • Do not run after link building, let links come naturally
  • Be natural
  • Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – optimize for other search engines too.

Today the SEO has changed its face, or rather, we are forced to change the way we used to look at SEO. Our friends forgot that we had to optimize our website and build content to educate, inform and make the things interesting for the web visitors. The focus of SEO gurus turned to the search engine BOTs who made the website to please the crawling spiders and in the lust of top ranking, forgot the ethics. Such SEO gurus are on the run, yet still quite a few trying to figure out how to manipulate the current algo changes.

Fair practices, ethical optimization and white hat practices demand the optimizers to tweak their website with the white hat SEO techniques to rise in the organic SERP listings.

Piece of advice – Don’t fall for unethical SEO practices, more might be coming for Google as Penguin is out there looking at you. The tougher the competition gets, the more difficult it would become to rank higher on the search engines, optimizers who fall for black hat techniques will lose their ranking in the long term.

SEO is not getting any tougher, its getter simpler with the main ingredients like Keywords, density of keywords and naturally flowing content getting more weight and making the SEO game more purposeful.

Wednesday 13 March 2013

SEO Techniques: Review

People are changing their SEO techniques to fit the Google Updates. The changes are forced by the search engine to make the search results better and affective for the users of the web. We are here, in the middle of the controversy raised by some SEO experts where some say that the SEO is dead, while others claim to have reaped benefit from the search engine algorithm changes. Let’s review what HOT and what is working for the SEOs today.

I just came across a blogging site that told me that it has changed its approval system. It cautioned the bloggers not to upload spun content. Give them only original content. Be personal in approach, be natural. Simple, this means that people are adhering to the master search engine’s guidelines. Good for them and good for the bloggers who have serious intention of working with honesty.

What is HOT on the SEO front?

Low keyword density – Stuffing was the way to go earlier. Today, if you go slightly over board, your content will be categorized as keyword stuff content. We must give away content, text that is naturally flowing, understandable by the web visitors. The content must carry the intent and spell the purpose in front of the web visitors, thus helping them to learn when they arrive at a particular website. Keywords are still HOT, but the use has become more purposeful.

Content – Copying content is a big NO NO. It has always been but today, intelligent robots can make out which content is spun, which is artificially generated and which website content articles are originally developed. So make sure you make no mistakes. Someone is watching you and can spell your intent.

Buying links – People made millions out of selling links. Others had the easier way out. Buying links served their purpose as the search engines wanted more links pointing towards their websites. The quality and the relevance did not mean much. NOT today, the spiders crawl the web and are able to delist any illicit SEO activity. It is easy to smell the rat if the links are not naturally built. Making hard efforts to build links is the need of the day. Quality NOT quantity matters.

Thursday 7 March 2013

Penguin, Panda Updates: Not penalties but an attempt to achieve quality

Attempting to fight the spam and low quality content on the web, Google came up with the Penguin update. It not penalty, said Matt Cutts when he replied to a question concerning whether Penguin is a designed to penalize the websites. Penalty means “manual actions”. “Part of the reason why we do that breakdown is, how transparent can we be? We do monthly updates where we talk about changes, and in the past year, we’ve been more transparent about times when we take manual action. We send out alerts via Google Webmaster Tools,” was Matt Cutts reply to the question concerning Penguin Update and penalizing the website for low quality content and spam linking.

With the Penguin updates and the follow up by the Panda update, SEO has become more challenging. The word of advice from the horse’s mouth was not to attempt to buy links. The Google tools are good enough to detect or spot link spam. So if you think that you can buy links and use them without leaving any foot prints and not let Google find out, forget it.

Matt Cutts categorically said, “We’re always working on improving our tools. Some of the tools that we built, for example, to spot blog networks, can also be used to spot link buying. People need to realize that, as we build up new tools, paid links becomes a higher risk endeavor. We’ve said it for years, but we’re starting to enforce it more. Penguin showed that some stuff that may work short term won’t work in the long term.”

So my friends, the things are pretty clear from here on.

The search engine giant is serious from what we learn from the “You & A with Matt Cutts”. Google has shut down many domain involved in spam and would take action against those who continue with their black hat SEO practices.

We need not to take such risks. Good Luck.   

Tuesday 5 March 2013

Keyword Stuffing: Phone Numbers back lashed by Google

Considering what’s new and hot in SEO, there is a lot to look at. New and hot news in SEO?, certainly but if we are about to talk about breaking the bearers, forget it. The good old days, when the SEOs promised top search engine ranking with the blink of an eye, are no more. No more you can buy links and create authority. Google is watching your every move. We are hearing about frequent unannounced Penguin updates. Watch out, you would only come to know about it when your links disappear from the search engine scene.

To remain within the scene of the search engine search results, do what the search giant tells you to do. Don’t budge an inch. Act smart and find yourself in the deep manhole you dig for yourself.

SEOs have tried to and have succeeded in getting top ranking by playing with the phone numbers. Stuffing numbers got them to the top. People talked about it and many did complain about getting no news worthy stuff. Matt Cutts said that Google received complaints and hence, the numbers stuffed on a web page, actually not giving out any valuable information would be considered spam and could be taken off. “Pages with the list of phone numbers add little or no value” is the call.

The news now is – get straight up with your content. Give quality, be natural. Do use keywords but make sure you do not over use these. Using variations intelligently to craft a meaningful text, readable and understandable by the web visitors will do the job for you.

Monday 4 March 2013

Reviewing Businesses Online: Stringent Measures enforced by Search Engine

Google is now going to mind your business. Beware; do not write any fake reviews. The bad habit, in which most of the businesses have jumped into, will now be watched by the search engine. We could say that Google is going to mind your business to keep its business straight. The viewers or the web visitors have always been the focus of the search engine leader, I think that is why they call Google the search engine giant. The search engine never lets is users feel bad about using the search engine and keeps occupying the giant share in the search world.

Quality – relevance – honesty will help in building better customer relationship. Google’s focus – the search engine users get value for their time spent and are not misled by any fake reviews and ratings.

If you are writing for your current employer, just stop doing so. If you have been promised by your SEO consultants for getting your reviews faked up, just ask them not to. We are now being watch. Instead of reputation building by forced reviews, or leading your customers to get gifts in return of good reviews, you might lose reputation. Those who have placed tabs and computers for their customers to leave reviews, better take them off. Google is watching you and has just launched a change in the algorithm for detecting spam and fake reviews on Google+ pages.

Those who had fun time doing this have forced the change. Enough playing around Google’s soft corner for reviews. Google says it will remain committed to quality. It remains committed to people to help them find reviews, rating and recommendations that are honest and trust worthy. The relevant and helpful reviews are what will count.

SEOs are cautioned by Google not to digitize reviews and rating left by the customers on site of business. The search engine has also warned against posting reviews on behalf of others.

This takes us to real time work. The businesses can drop in an email to their customers thanking them for their visit and request them to leaving reviews online, but not tempt them for favorable reviews only. The negative reviews have their own rating and the business people are expected to handle their negative reviews prudently.

Friday 1 March 2013

Driving Traffic to your website: The road map

Getting a website made and hosting it is not a big deal. The real juice is when people find your website on the search engines and visit our web page to learn what you and your company are doing. Out of many thousands of visitors, a few would actually stick and interact. How to compel the visitors to stay on the web page and how to compel them to buy, is out of the preview of the article. We are here to learn how could be build traffic to our website.

Search engine marketing does the trick, but to begin with we will look at the SEO and learn what does SEO do for our visibility.

SEO deals with the search engine friendliness of the website and makes it easier for the website to rank on the first pages of the SERPs (Search engine results pages). This quick fix of the web page elements to make the web spiders spot the web page and index helps a lot in the long run. Be sure that SEO takes time to mature, enough time that would make you excited enough to make you give up on the SEO tricks. Hold you guns, there are more than one ways of getting people interested in your website. Especially those who are already searching for the products and services you are dealing in.

Blogging – the sure fire way of getting people interested. If you are selling jeans, talk a lot about them. Tell the people about different brands and tell them why your brand is better than the other, Talk to your followers and force them to comment, from their lead them to your website.

Press Release Distribution – Use the power of the news. Shoot breaking news about the launch of your brand. About the stuff that arrives in your web space. Give them the reason to visit your site. Tell them that something interesting is waiting for them there. You can leverage a lot through press releases and drive unlimited qualified web traffic to your website.

We cannot forget the social media. The gang bang where millions of nosey people are online 24/7. Give them the news, show them your product and lead them to your web space by giving them offers. Create events for them and let them have fun when they buy your products.