Search Engine Basics Search Engines display different kinds of

listings in the Search Engine Results Pages(SERP).

Broadly there are two types of listings

Organic Search Results Sponsored Listings

Organic Search Results are the actual results which the Search Engines display as a result of the keywords the surfer keys in.(These listings are a result of SEO done on the sites listed)

Sponsored Listings are paid listings.So, this is advertising not SEO.

SEM & SEO

Search Engine Marketing(SEM) = Search Engine Optimization(SEO) + Paid Inclusions.

SEM is the total package -Advertising,SEO and every other element for the consequent success of the website.The sum total efforts to accomplish conversions and traffic.

Search Engine Optimization is the set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings.

SEO is a subset of SEM.

History

Webmasters and Content Providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid 1990’s.

Initially the webmasters had to just submit the URL to the search engines and then the search engines would send spiders to crawl that page and extract links to other pages and return information found on the page to be indexed.

SEO Techniques

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:- White Hat Techniques-Methods

which confirm to search engine guidelines and involves no deception.

Black Hat Techniques-Attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines.

White Hat Techniques-Methods which confirm to search engine guidelines and involves no deception.

Relevant Content (Content is King) Stay up-to-date Improve upon existing content Real Popularity Bloggers News Sites Social Media Sites

On-Page Optimization Factors

Title Tag

Description Tag

Keywords Tag

Title Tag

<TITLE>Search Engine Optimization|SEO |Web Hosting | WebDesigning </TITLE>

Description Tag

<META content ="WebPro is located in Gujarat in India and offers Services like SEO - Search Engine Optimization, Web Hosting, Domain Name Registration, Web Desigining, content Development and Web Marketing. " name=description>

Keyword Tag

<META content=

" SEO, Domain names, web hosting, web designing, search engine optimization , web, hosting, content development, web space, webpro, web technologies, web redesign, web, design , webpro, India, Gujarat" name=keywords>

Text Body Tag

Content is King

Keyword Use in Document Text Ensure that your target keyword appears in the

document text as many times as possible. But remember that no keyword should just be placed on an ad hoc basis — try to mention each key term in a natural way as you are writing, so that any sentence containing a keyword could actually make grammatical sense. Besides, the repetition should be such that your human visitors do not feel that you have deliberately repeated a particular phrase throughout the page. First of all, you make a website for your visitors, not for search engines

uniqueness of your webpage text You must never copy someone else's text on

your website! You shouldn't even use your own text if it has already been used somewhere else on your website.

A document's unique elements are what is generally looked at by the search engines and if the body text or content is an exact copy of another document (whether that document is on your site or on another), that page's value will often be deeply discounted or even removed from the listings.

Duplicating a large portion of a web site or page's content onto another page/site can be extremely harmful.

H1, Bold, Underline & Other Accent Tags

First of all you need to add a header tag (<H1>). Usually an <H1> header tag is used as a heading for whatever content you have on your page and is placed as far towards the top of the page as possible. The rules for the header tags are more or less the same as those for the title tag — it must be keyword reach and attractive to your visitors.

Text in Alt/Img Title Tags

Now it's time to add some SEO value to the pictures on your webpage. In most cases images take a lot of place, but don't add any extra value to search engines. It's high time to use images as one of our SEO tools.

As most of you might know, the <IMG> tag is used to incorporate in-line graphics into an HTML document.

<IMG SRC="URL of image" ALT="alternative text" TITLE="advisory text">

For SEO purposes you should describe images using your key terms and use this description as the ALT and TITLE parts of an <IMG> tag.

Keyword Use in Domain or Webpage URL

Using the keyword or related terms in the domain name of the site or in the actual URL of the webpage may be assigned some weight by Google, whether used in hyphenation or strung together. However, it has been noted that sometimes 2 or more hyphens in a domain name may indicate a lower-quality or spam-ridden site. This data may be used by Google and other search engines to reduce the rankings.

Sitemap Page

Yes, existence or non-existence of a properly formed sitemap page on your website is also a part of SEO that may boost the crawling speed and influence ranking effectiveness of pages at your website. As always, make sure that links to your pages contain keyword terms or phrases.

Invalid HTML Code and Broken Links

The use of code which may not be readable or spiderable to search engine bots may directly decrease your website's rankings, or may cause losing pages from a search engine index at all. So you should carefully validate your HTML code.

Header Tags

Add h1 and h2 Header Tags

When Google reads a webpage, it views the text from the top left hand side of the page to the

bottom right hand side of the page.

Off-Page Optimization

Off Page Factors are equally important as On Page Factors For SEO

Off-Page Optimization How many websites are linking to you

Which sites are linking to you

What is the page title of the website linking to you

What is the Google PageRank of these sites

Off-Page Optimization Anchor Text

Anchor text is the actual text used within an <a> tag:

<a href="http://www.somesite.com">Anchor Text Goes Here</a>

This is extremely important to use the right anchor text, with the most important keywords for your site there, as it is one of the largest factors taken into account by the major search engines for ranking. Specific anchor text links help a site to rank better for that particular term/phrase at Google and other search engines.

Hence, you should obtain links with your keyword phrases in the anchor text.

Off-Page Optimization

Link Popularity of a Link Partner's Website

Off-Page Optimization Popularity of Site in Topical Community

Topical communities are measured by the search engines as groups of websites who interlink to and with one another frequently and carry a similar topic or theme. Since topical communities are relevant and "on-topic", the links from them carry great weight. A site that is included in a topical community by way of links from many other members may be considered more relevant and authoritative on the community's subject matter.

From this we can make a conclusion that you mainly have to find websites that are related to the topic of your own websites. One of the fast ways to find a right website is to examine its title. Does it contain your keyword? If so, you should approach those websites and try to get them to link to your website.

Off-Page Optimization

Page Rank Page Rank is the actual Google

PageRank of the webpage linking to your website. Again, you should be looking for link partners which PageRank is higher than yours.

The Robots Tag

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">

Other Tags

<META content="WebPro Technologies" name=“Author”>

<META content="home page" name=“CATEGORY”>

<META content=“all” name=“Robots”>

<META content=“Global” name=“Distribution”>

Other Tags

<META content="Webpro technologies" name=“Publisher”>

<META content="Bharati Ahuja" name=“Author”>

<META content=“English name=“language”>

<META content="Webpro Technologies" name=“Copyright”>

Other Tags

<META content=“General” name=“Rating”>

<META content=“All” name=“Audience”>

<META content="Web Page" name=“Doc-Type”>

<META content=“bharati@webpro.in” name=“Reply-To”>

SEO TOOLS

XENU Linkvendor.com Submitexpress.com

SearchEngineRelationshipChart…

What's the difference between a web directory and a search engine? You might often hear the terms "web

directory" and "search engine" used interchangeably, but there is a difference. Yahoo! Kids is an example of a web directory: all of the sites in it are evaluated and categorized by actual people, which means that we can make categories that you—the user—can browse through. Thus, you can look for information on Yahoo! Kids either browsing the categories, or searching with a keyword.

A search engine uses a computer program called a robot (or just "bot") to look for any or all of the words you type into the search box. The answers aren't organized by category, and you sometimes have to look through a bunch of them to find what you're looking for.

Why should I submit my site to web directories? To get your website indexed Search engines like Google and Yahoo

send out crawlers (spiders) to search the web for new sites that come up everyday. If you have a new site and you want search engines to know of its existence, then there couldn’t be an easier and better way to let a search engine know than having it find your site through links in various directories.

One way links - Improvement in Search Engine Rankings Most directories provide one way links,

which is beneficial from the SEO aspect of your site. Search engines give importance to the number of inbound links to your site when ranking it for a given position during search and one way links are thought to be valued more than reciprocal links (links exchanged with other sites). Thus, directory links can help give a boost to your SEO efforts.

Targeting specific keywords / phrases Most directories allow you to provide a

link with keywords describing your site. It’s not easy getting links to your site with the keywords you want and directories serve as the easiest medium for getting such links. Getting links with targeted keywords / phrases can have search engines favoring your site over others when ranking for the given terms.

Traffic (not such a benefit with most directories) There aren’t many directories that

could boast of providing your site with traffic that would number in the hundreds per day but there are a few directories that are known to give some traffic (albeit very little) to sites in certain categories.

Most directories are free to submit to Given the benefits and most

directories being free to submit to, it makes business sense to having your site listed in as many SEO friendly directories as possible. After all, you don’t lose anything for doing so.

Reference Sites

http://www.dirstats.com/ http://www.dirstats.com/directorylis

t.php

Major Search Engines&

Web Directories

Web Directories Dmoz.org (Open Directory Project)

Free. Yahoo Directory (Paid $299 p.a))

How To Submit in http://www.Dmoz.org

How To Submit in http://dir.yahoo.com

Major Search Engines

1)www.lycos.com 2)www.ask.com 3)www.hotbot.com 4)www.iwon.com 5)www.google.com 6)www.msnsearch.com 7)www.aolsearch.com 8)www.netscape.com 9)www.yahoo.com 10)www.altavista.com

Web Master Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Yahoo Webmaster Tools

Msn Live Search Tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Google webmaster tools are an easy way for you to submit all your URLs to the Google index and get detailed reports about the visibility of your pages on Google. To get started, simply add the URL of your site. You'll start to see information about your site right away.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) The DMCA is a United States copyright law

which implements two 1996 WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) treaties. It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services that are used to circumvent measures that control access to copyrighted works (commonly known as DRM) and criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself. It also heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.

DRM

Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term that refers to access control technologies used by publishers and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices. It may also refer to restrictions associated with specific instances of digital works or devices. To some extent, DRM overlaps with copy protection, but DRM is usually applied to creative media (music, films, etc.) whereas copy protection typically refers to software.

Dynamic Content

This is a webpage that changes its content depending on database information or user settings. A scripting language such as PHP or ASP is usually used to bring about such a result. Search engines are now advanced enough to index such pages

Dynamic webpages simplify content management, streamline website generation and provide personalization features that cannot be replicated with purely static webpages. However, for years, search engine spiders were unable to index dynamic pages reliably. Thankfully, search engine technology has advanced and even complex dynamic URLs are appearing in the SERPs now. Still, in order for a search engine to successfully index your dynamic page, it needs three basic things:

The ability to process your URL. Search engine technology is improving daily; however, search engine representatives still recommend restricting dynamic URLs to two parameters or less.

The ability to access your content. Search engine spiders cannot enter values into forms, so any content that is accessible only through a form on your site is just one more part of the invisible web.

The ability to return to your page. Session IDs are great for human vistors, but spiders encounter problems if they cache a dynamic URL with a session ID. If that session ID times out, the indexed page will most likely point any search engine referrer to an error page and the search engine spider will be unable to return to your page for further spidering. For that reason, most search engine spiders do not cache dynamic URLs with session IDs.

The terms dynamic URL and dynamic content are frequently used interchangeably. However, this can lead to confusion because they are two separate, but related, terms. A URL is not content - a URL is the address of some content.

Dynamic content is information that is delivered to the Web browser in a different form than it exists on the server. It is usually pulled from a database and created on the fly at the server level through CGI programming, ASP, PHP, or by a content management system

Dynamic URLs, on the other hand, are simply Web site addresses that contain a question mark (?).

In contrast, static content is stored on the Web server in the same format that is delivered to the Web browser. And static URLs do not contain question marks.

In general, dynamic URLs are addresses of dynamic content, and static URLs are addresses of static content. However, this need not be the case, as we shall see later.

When the same core content is at different URLs, a small site can appear to be very large because an unlimited number of URLs can be used to provide essentially the same content. Spiders can fall into "dynamic spider traps," crawling through thousands of URLs when only a few really needed to be crawled.

Since a dynamic URL usually indicates dynamic content, the simplest way for a search engine to avoid these spider traps is to avoid dynamic URLs altogether. Remember, search engines want to index any given core content just once.

Now let's consider different core content at the same URL. There are a number of ways in which this might happen. For example, a site may have content that may be viewed at the same URL in multiple languages depending on the browser settings. Another example would be content that gets updated every few minutes or so.

search engines typically index only one copy of a specific URL once every few weeks or so. Therefore, if a search engine indexes your English content at a given URL, the same search engine will not index your Spanish content at the same URL (during the same indexing period). And if your content is frequently updated, the search engine's copy of your content will not be fresh. A search engine prefers that the visitors to a particular URL see the same content its spider saw.

If a search engine sees a static URL, it is more likely to index the content at that URL than if it found the same content under a dynamic URL. Therefore, you can turn your dynamic URLs into static URLs despite the fact that you are serving dynamic content. There are a number of ways of achieving this, and your method will vary depending upon your server and other factors.

Today's search engines generally have no problem with dynamically generated pages. They don't scurry away as fast as they can when they see a .php or an .asp or a .cfm extension in a URL. They don't even flee when they see parameters in the URLs. Question marks and equal signs have no spider-repelling powers anymore. While I don't understand all the programming behind it, I do know for a fact that the search engines definitely index *most* dynamic-looking URLs just fine.

Some believe that if you have more than 3 parameters in the URL, you may have less of a chance at getting those URLs indexed. I've seen some of those in the search engines' databases, however, so it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

Some believe that if you have more than 3 parameters in the URL, you may have less of a chance at getting those URLs indexed.

Another problem for the search engines is when you require session IDs in your URL. The engines still try to avoid this type of URL because every spider visit to the site might create a completely different ID number and thus a new URL. The engines still prefer to keep hundreds of the same page out of their databases, so they have learned to look for the telltale signs of session-ID URLs in order to avoid indexing them. Because of this you should avoid using "SID=whatever" in your URLs if you want your pages indexed. Plus, Google has stated on their FAQ page for webmasters that they don't index URLs that have "&id" in them, so definitely stay away from those as well.

AltaVista, Ask Jeeves/TEOMA, FAST and Inktomi offer one or more means of paying for individual URLs to be spidered. You can use these paid-inclusion programs to get your dynamic URLs indexed. Paid-inclusion programs only affect inclusion and do not influence ranking, so it is still important to make sure your dynamic content is well optimized. For more details see the Add-URL pages of the respective search engines.

SEO FRIENDLY DESIGN

Planning Analysis Design Implementation Testing Maintenance

SEO & WEB DESIGN

designing an award winning website is not enough. The site needs to be placed in front of potential visitors or they will not know you exist. It is the integration of web design, development, and internet marketing with focused traffic-generation tactics that is vital to the success of your site. Without smart marketing any great website will fail.

Before you begin to build your website, you need to decide what it is you want your site to accomplish. You must establish what your internet marketing strategy will be.

There are two basic kinds of users on the web, those interested in researching a topic and shoppers who have finished their research and are ready to act.

Your site should be built to satisfy whichever of these types of searchers you are looking to attract.

Determine before you begin if you are going to be selling something or if you are going to be providing information.

Knowing your niche is critical to the success of your design project.

Once you have determined what your site is going to be about and who it's going to target, you need to analyze your competition.

How are they accomplishing their goals, can you improve on what they are doing, and can you offer something more?

What is going to set you apart from them, and more importantly, put you above them?

The first step to take when identifying your competition is to determine what keywords are being targeted for your industry .

Identify Your Competition Use Link Tracking Identify Keywords

While it is the job of your search engine optimization specialist to make the most of your web pages there are several things that you should consider during the

SEO DESIGN PHASESEO DESIGN PHASE What type of architecture are you going to

use for your site? How will the navigation put in place for your

users affect navigation for the Search Engines?

What do the search engines want to see and what will they reward vs. penalize?

Do you already have content that you can use or will you have to have it written?

What about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), JavaScript, and being W3C compliant?

Besides using straight HTML for coding your web site, there are other options that you can use for building your web site. Some of the most popular are Flash, Ajax, ASP and PHP.

Like all technologies there may be benefits and drawbacks to implementing them but they are definitely worth looking into.

Flash has become a popular tool in internet marketing and is now widely used across the web. However, there can be drawbacks to it, so you need to carefully determine whether or not your site will benefit from its use. One of the benefits of using Flash is the visual appeal of it. You can use it with your navigation add interesting visual graphics …

SEO & WEB DESIGN

Basically the page to be optimized should have a proper balance of images, Flash animation and relevant text.

The page should be informative and most important have content which is updated and latest.

Never use Frames.

As we all know - the biggest disadvantage of flash websites is that Google (and other search engines) can’t read them, so they are very difficult to promote via Search Engines.

HTML will always be better for SEM (Search Engines Marketing), but there is a method to make .swf files readable and indexable for Search Engines.

SWFObject is a small Javascript file used for embedding Adobe Flash content. The script can detect the Flash plug-in in all major web browsers (on Mac and PC) and is designed to make embedding Flash movies as easy as possible.

http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/

Website Maintenance

Once your site has been launched and submitted to the search engines you need to decide, if you haven't already, who will be responsible for updating and maintaining your site. If you used an in-house team, then most likely they will be able to continue with the maintenance of the site. You also need to figure out who's going to keep an eye on your competitors and continue to SEO your site.

In a nutshell, the SEO design includes Site Architecture Graphic Design (site look and feel, navigation) Template Building Content Writing Code Generation (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP,

etc.) Search Engine Optimization

Keyword Research SEO Training SEO Tools

Search Engine Ranking Monitoring

We are planning to relaunch our website with a new design at the same domain name. How do we get the search engines to reassess us for the new site?

First, redesigning your site periodically over time is a good idea. Times change, and with the changing times, new expectations are set for design and interactivity of sites. Redesigning gives you a chance to address all the issues that you've been stewing over since your original design. It also communicates to the search engines that your site is active and up to date. If done well and according to a few simple rules, a redesign can give your site a substantial boost in the search engine results, even if you basically ignore search engine optimization. Again, a redesign in and of itself should give your site a boost.

There are 2 basic rules that should be followed when redesigning or rebuilding a site.

First, keep your domain name. Changing your domain name erases the search engine footprint you have spent years to grow. It also breaks the hundreds or thousands of backlinks from other websites to yours, destroying your link popularity.

Second, keep your individual file names. For the same reasons that you should keep your domain name, you should keep every single file name intact as well. By file name, we mean file extension as well. If you have a product description page on your site located at http://www.yoursite.com/productdescription-1.html, when you rebuild your site, you should either keep that product at that file, or put a new product at that file. Whatever you do, don't just delete that file. Update it. If you no longer sell that product, put your newest product information in that file. Don't change it to /productdescription-1.php or /productdescription-1.asp either.

Organizations redesign and rebuild their sites, and in the process erase their entire web footprints by changing their file extensions from .html to .asp, .php, or .jsp.

Unless you absolutely have to change your file extensions, don't do it. If you're thinking that you just have to update the site using ASP, that's no problem. Just configure your server so that HTML files are processed as ASP files, and you can have ASP code in your comfortable old HTML files

If you still are convinced that you absolutely have to change the domain name or file names on your site, then you need to do some workarounds.

1) Changing your domain name but keeping your file names:

This is the simplest change to make. Over time, you may discover that the perfect domain name you've always wanted has become available as a result of the bursting of the Internet bubble, or you may buy or sell a company and need to change the domain name to update your identity on the Web. If that is the case, you simply need to permanently redirect the old domain name (or domain names in the case of acquisitions) to the new domain name. Permanently redirecting the domain name to the new one will tell Google, in a language that Google can understand, to update all its listings from the old domain name to the new one.

2) Keeping your domain name but changing your file names:

If you are changing your file names but keeping your domain name, then every file that will be renamed or deleted needs to be permanently redirected to the corresponding (or closest) new file. So, if you're moving http://www.yoursite.com/productdescription-1.html to http://www.yoursite.com/product-1.php, then /productdescription-1.html needs to be permanently redirected to /product-1.php. If the product line is being removed and the content no longer exists, then redirect the file to another product. That way all the incoming traffic will be automatically forwarded to the appropriate new file, and that includes search engine spiders.

Major SEO Benefit of an old site Don't look upon a site's age as all bad,

however. Sure, a site that hasn't been redesigned in a long time looks old, but it has something a newer site doesn't: trust. Google and the other search engines look at a site that's been around for several years in the same way that a bank looks at a customer with a very good credit history built up over time. When you combine that status with a great site redesign, you can achieve excellent results.

Here are some quick and easy modifications and ad-ons you can make to your website to become “Web 2.0”

What exactly is web 2.0 ? The term “Web 2.0” can be defined as

the new emergence of the web since the last boom of the .com’s (new web based sites/applications/technology- i.e., Adsense, Wikipedia, Blogging), and the way websites are now being designed/programmed in terms of user interaction and web-based interaction.

Image Source :Oreillynet.com

Web 2.0 isn’t dead but Web 3.0 is bubbling

Web 3.0 is associated with semantic Web .

The Semantic Web is a set of technologies which are designed to enable a particular vision for the future of the Web – a future in which all knowledge exists on the Web in a format that software applications can understand and reason about. By making knowledge more accessible to software, software will essentially become able to understand knowledge, think about knowledge, and create new knowledge. In other words, software will be able to be more intelligent – not as intelligent as humans perhaps, but more intelligent than say, your word processor is today.

The classic example of the Web 2.0 era is the “mash-up” — for example, connecting a rental-housing Web site with Google Maps to create a new, more useful service that automatically shows the location of each rental listing.

In contrast, the challenge for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.”

The Semantic Web does not only exist on Web pages.Web 3.0 works inside of applications and databases, not just on Web pages. Calling it a "Web" is a misnomer of sorts — it's not just about the Web, it's about all information, data and applications.

RSS Feeds: Feeds have become great assets

to websites. The user now has the option to receive all you’re websites updated information without actually having to visit your website. RSS Feeds have greatly improved repeat visitors and readership/subscriptions across the board.

Blogs: Blogs have personalized

companies/products with consumers. Users want to feel like they buy (either product or information) from a trusted source and someone they know. Blogs have personalized this relationship between the companies and users. Start a blog on your business (service or product) to better inform the customer and that will also keep them coming back, asking questions, etc.

Bookmark Submission Buttons: Any site you have that can provide

information to a user should have Bookmark submission buttons. If one person is interested in what you are saying, there is a chance another million are as well. These button will facilitate and better expose your information to the masses on pages such as Digg.com, Stumbleupon.com, Netscape.com, and others. They are not only great traffic drivers but link builders as well.

User Interaction: This is the most important tool you can

implement on your website today (if possible). User’s want to interact with what they are looking at or reading, its human nature. We have opinions, we like to share. Over 80+ million people share their lives over their profile on Myspace, Over 2 million people are now sharing websites they think others will find interesting on Stumbleupon.com, and Over a million people are sharing stories they think others will enjoy on Digg.com, and in all these together, many more millions of people place comments. Make sure that your user can be hands-on if possible with your website, and interact with your company.

http://www.seroundtable.com/ http://www.seoinc.com

WEB ANALYTICS Web Analytics is the study of the

behaviour of websites visitors. In a commercial context, web analytics especially refers to the use of data collected from a website to determine which aspects of the website work towards the business objectives.

The basic tool to calculate ROI.

Google Analytics(GA)

GA is a free service offered by Google . GA generate detailed statistics about the

visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a webmaster

can optimize his/her AdWords advertisement and marketing campaigns through the use of GA’s analysis of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on their website and their geographical location.