Just a bit about SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
A word on SEM
The problem is most search engines keep changing what they want.
First they wanted to see tons of links then the say over 100 is spamming
links and they ignore you. Then they wanted content but then they only
looked at the first few paragraphs in the first column or top of the
html. At one time they wanted tons of keywords of the individual
page’s content and now they limit it to 25 even if your page may have
a hundred different items, and they wanted a description that captures
the essence of the page but limit you to 250 characters with spaces
which in most cases is not enough and they also want a title that
captures the page content but only allow 80 characters with spaces. To
top it all off they want your page content to be updated each time they
crawl your page and if it isn’t you get lower page ranks. Then there
is reciprocal links and inbound links from other sites and how are you
to get links when you don't have any PR?
What really ticks you off is you spend hours and days trying to
keep the pages fresh and new and do all the SEO to make Search happy and
when you search to see how you are doing you find that the top search
results pages are nothing more than links sites with “Sponsored
Links” and links to more pages with nothing but “Sponsored Links”.
There is absolutely no content and the only thing new is added links to
more links pages. This makes the owner of that site a lot of money but
how is a real site to compete with, as what we are told that search wants,
seems not to matter. The thing is the more hits a site gets the higher
it ranks so a site that is listed on the 1st page and near the top gets
more hits and therefore search thinks it is a more important site and so
rates it higher even though it has no real content.
One of the more important things that Search
looks at ( after
content) is how many
incoming links you have with no reciprocal
link. They figure if a site
is wanting to link to you without
a link back you must have a pretty
good or important site. Well that
isn’t always the case. Many places
you can purchase inbound links but
unless they are legitimate sites with
related content they count for very
little.
Some take it a step farther and give you an
inbound link from some obscure page of a one page no rank site and in
exchange they want you to link to their real site. They try to tell you
that you both benefit from one-way links but in reality only they benefit
as your inbound link is from a nothing site with one page that isn't even
listed.
The easiest way to get one way links to your site is to submit
Articles to those sites that allow them and have a link to your site in
the signature file. If you are reading this then you are on a site that
allows Articles. My site at http://www.tamicraft.com
. Because this is my site I allow myself to place self-serving links in
my Articles but for any others the self-serving link would be in the
signature file as it is with most sites that accept article submissions.
The benefit to you is a self-serving one way link to your site that
Search will notice. The benefit to me or other sites that allow Articles
is more content pages to place ads on and hopefully get some added
revenue. Your articles can be on most anything you want, as search does
not correlate your self-serving link to the article but just notices
that there is a link to your site and when it follows that link it does
not find a reciprocating link and if it finds related content to the
linked page that is even better. This boosts your page rank. Your
self-serving link can be to any page on your site so you can make any
page appear to be the most popular. Another is to post to forums with a
signature file self-serving link. However, Search will only recognize
one link to your site unless each link is to a different page within
your site. Search can distinguish Forums from content pages and they
will ignore multiple links to the same site from forums. But the benefit
to you in posting a lot to forums is that others may use your link to
see what you have to offer. This will increase your traffic if not your
SEO. I provide forums on some of my sites and again the benefit to you
is self-serving links and those occasional click throughs by users and
the benefit to the forums is more content and more ads and hopefully
more revenue.
If you do not have a high ranked page then most sites with high
ranked pages will not link to you as to do so might bring them down. And linking
to other low ranked sites does no good in making Search take notice. A
low ranked site linking to another low ranked site is like a waste of
time. Since high ranked sites will not dain to grace your site with a
link and none will link to your site without reciprocal links you have
not a chance in hell of getting to that top rank, especially when it
seems that the top ranked pages are anything but content laden. More
than likely they have paid for placement or have found a way to
undermine the process and fool the crawlers.
In either case your best bet to get traffic to your site is to
get those really hard to get links and have a site that draws thousands
of visitors. Well if you had thousands of visitors SEO would not be that
important to you and if you had a chance in hell of getting high ranked
pages to link to you or get non-reciprocating links you wouldn’t be
having to worry of SEO either. Then to top it off the Search Engines do
2 things that will really tick you off.
One is that they allow people to pay for top placement. Now that
wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t also consider the more valuable or
number ranked site as the one that gets the most traffic. Now I don’t
know about you but when I do a search I expect that the closest match is
going to be in the top page and usually in the top three sites that come
up. Well by clicking on these sites you only confirm to Search that they
are the most heavily trafficked sites and so they remain in the top
positions. I may on occasion click a first page result because I really
feel it has the information I need but since finding this out I more
often than not now look at the 2nd and 3rd pages
to see if any they might have what I want. This is my way of protesting
how Search lists their top pages. I usually find what I want on the 2nd
page and by clicking on them I am helping to elevate them and lower
those who have the top spots. If everyone did the same we would have
more relevant links on the top page and get those paid and just link
sites off the top page. We would also confuse Search and make it a bit
harder for them to discriminate against good sites in favor of paid
sites or their own unjust use of hits to keep sites in the top 10.
So how important is SEO to your site?
Extremely, if you want that top page listing in search, but you
have to constantly work at it. You have to continue to tweak your
keywords and description and content to make the page fresh and have
keyword, description and title that reflects that page. You should try
to find one or two keywords or phrases that are not widely used. You also have to
try to get one way links to your site from top ranked sites and when you
do reciprocal links you need to try and get links from top sites as
well. If you ever get on that top page you have to continue to keep
doing your best to stay there. I have a top page and it usually comes
in the top five listings of the search results.
The page is about dating vintage
clothing and is on my site http://www.vintageslips4u.com
. It is a content page on a sales
site and having a top rank it allowed
me to get traffic and some of that
traffic went to my sales pages to see
what I had available and some sales
may have been a result. Some may
have left the site by clicking on
a PPC ad and this too would be revenue creation
for me though not so much. So having that
page rank in
the top 5 was definitely a boon to
my site. When I had that page in the
top 3 I was getting 500+ hits a day
from new users now that I am #5 I get less than 200 hits a day.
What you would prefer is to have
several pages listed in the top ten for
your site thereby creating a much
larger volume of traffic and more
revenue. If you can get your site
into the tens of thousands of hits a
day you can make a respectable living
off ads alone. I know of one site
that gets about 50,000 hits a day
and makes about $4,000.00 a month just
on ads. To top it off the advertisers
come to her not the other way
round.
Keeping a site or a page in the top ten is a matter of constantly
tweaking it to satisfy Search. The problem is that Search keeps changing
their requirements and they stack the deck against you. Still, you can
keep that top page ranking if you spend the time to correct for their
subjective analysis. This however takes considerable time and for most
of us we have many other things to do. A top page rank will get you more
hits and therefore more revenue but it will also take a lot of your time
and effort. I for one have decided that I would rather spend my time in
making my sites the best they can be and when I have accomplished that
and have no more demands on my time I will entertain the idea of doing
the SEO I must to get the sites noticed. Till then I will put my efforts
into making sites that are informative and of value to the user. Search
can continue to post just link sites on the top listings as I no longer
concern myself with SEO for the sake of top listings in Search. I lose
traffic and revenue but most of my sites are not about revenue. Sure I
would like to make some money off them but the real reason I have
websites is I enjoy time spent on the computer and providing useful
information to my readers. My apathy is my choice and if you choose to
work for that top page rank then there is much to do.
Another thing you must take into account is that not all the
pages in your site will be ranked. In fact if you have a site with 100
pages, be happy if 5 are actually ranked. Search will allow you to
submit a sitemap with all your pages but to rank all is not possible.
They will choose those they feel best suits their requirements and rank
only those pages. So when creating pages decide which are most important
to you and try to focus on getting these up to par as to the standards
that Search is looking for. You want these pages to be your most desired
to get ranked and you of course want links to all your other pages from
these so users may navigate your entire site once they have landed on
one of these pages. Your index page may not be ranked but you may have a
page within your site that pulls a top page rank. The problem is that
page may not be the one that you want all the traffic sent to. Now you
have to find a way to ‘redirect’ that traffic to your other pages.
If you use a redirect link search will drop your page. You do not want
to use any redirect URL’s. What you want to do is get the interest of
the user to focus on other pages. You do not want to jeopardize your
high page rank on this particular page but you want users to know there
is more to be had on other pages. Try simply telling users of these
other pages or prominently display links and if you fear Search will see
these links and lower your page rank make the links unseen to search by
using image links without ALT=
tags.
For those of you who desire top page listings there are some
things you can do that are not that time consuming. You can create a
really good content site and submit it to http://dmoz.org
. This is a Human edited Directory and if you are accepted on here you
will likely place well in search as most all Search engines will rank
sites listed here better that those they find doing a crawl.
You can do a search for the most popular keywords and build those
into your site or just look at the “view source” of the top pages
and see what they are using as keywords and description. If you are
blocked from a right click ‘view source’ then try clicking the page
‘view source’ on your keyboard. It is usually the 3rd key
to the right of the space bar and most have the picture of a page on it.
This will bypass most simple javascript blocking view source scripts.
Some scripts are more functional and you will not be able to get in to
view source without some hacking experience.
Another way to find
keywords is to go to Google keyword tool here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Play around with it
and try to find keyword phrases that are unique and really say what is
on that page.
You can try to make your Title incorporate some keywords,
description and content.
These are the easiest ways to get a
higher page rank. You could also
pay for a better position but that
defeats the purpose as when you stop
paying you go back to a low ranking
though perhaps not quite as low as
you were cause you have a high hit
count but as time goes by your hit
count will diminish and so will your
page rank.
Some of the more time consuming
things you can do is try to get reciprocal
links from highly ranked
sites. You will need to write individual
letters to each site
complimenting them on certain aspects
of the site you found to be
informative or useful and asking
for a reciprocal link, as you would
like to be associated with a site
that brings so much information and
content to the user. In other words
you need to kiss ass. A form letter
sent to hundreds of sites will be
rejected out of hand. Many of your
specifically tailored letters will
likewise be rejected because you do
not have a high page rank. If you
can get just one of your pages ranked
high in search you can exploit this
to your benefit and get many other
high ranked sites to reciprocate
links. Keep the number of linked sites
to fewer than 100 and have them related
to the content of your site.
See my article on Link Exchanges
here:
http://www.tamicraft.com/articles_link_exchanges_robertt1.htm
To see what is required for better SEO.
Note the ads that Google places on
your site if you have Googles adsence.
If you want the ads
generated to be about your article
or page you have to make sure the
predominant theme in the first column
or top of the html is about
whatever it is you are writing of.
Even though keywords, description
, title and content is about
a particular subject if you start
your intro to your page with some
other material the ads will not
correspond to your subject matter
but rather what search sees at the
beginning of the html. You have the
option of having google disregard
certain information on a page and
you can find how to do this through
googles web help pages.
Do not use javascript based link exchanges, as most Search
Engines do not read javascript or any script so these links are useless
to any outside the link exchange network. They do nothing for you in
terms of SEO. One comes to mind but there are literally thousands of
others and I do not single this one from the rest out of any bias, it is
just that I was once a part of this one so know how it works.
Trafficswarm.com is the one I was once a member of. It uses Script to
direct links or ads or search within their listings to your site. The
problem is two fold. One and most important is that Search Engines
don’t give it a second glance in fact, as it is in Script, they
don’t give it a first glance. And two is that the only users that see
your link are other Trafficswarm users who are themselves trying to sell
or get people interested in their offerings that are similar to yours.
You get no benefit for your SEO and you may be giving up customers at
the same time. If your site is the better you may gain customers but you
still derive no SEO benefit.
You can ‘attempt’ to get one way links to your site by
posting a link you have for your site on a page and asking that any who
would like to link to you use that link. A few might do so rather than
make their own pages as the link would benefit their readers and give
them a possible boost in return users who know they have links of value.
I would not expect much to come of this, as many do not give away links
without expecting something in return. In order for others to even contemplate a
one way link to your site you need exceptional content that they can’t
duplicate easily. Do not pay for a list of one way links as most of
these will not be relevant to your site and so virtually useless in
convincing Search to take notice and second Search is getting more
sophisticated and knows what links are likely to be paid links and so
does not even count them. Do not go overboard and place thousands of
links as Search considers this LINK SPAMMING and will reject them out of
hand. Keep all your links relevant to your site or page and keep them
under 100…50 if possible and really good links.
I could write a book on SEO and some have. The thing is, if you
really need to have that top ranked page you will need to work at it
very hard and you will need to continue working at it to keep it there.
Number in the first 3 listed or even on the first page and you will
increase your hits and if you are selling or trying to get ad revenue
then it might be worth the effort. Keep in mind Search will usually only
rank about 5 pages MAX in any site so you want to concentrate on those you
really want to see listed in the top rankings. Since you do not know
what pages Search is going to rank when you begin you need to do your
best on all pages. After a page is ranked you can narrow your focus. Try
looking at several Search Engines to see how you place. Google is
perhaps the one you want to concentrate on as it is the mother of all
Search Engines but if you have another page ranked high in Bing or
Altavista or Yahoo or any of thousands of Search Engines then you may
want to stay on top of those pages as well.
Here is a bit about another item
related to SEO and that is SEM. Ok if SEO is Search Engine Optimization
what is SEM?
SEM is Search Engine Marketing.
Now what is that? OK. As simply put as I can make it.
SEO
is designing a site or entry page to capture the largest audience
possible and still get a high page rank. Your site may have a hundred
different items or content sections but what you are trying to do is get
the highest page rank to get the most people to your entry page or a
page you think significant. The main goal is to get the traffic and
ranking and that means tagging the page in broad terms, keywords, description,
title, content, that will get the
most results in search while still trying to get a high page rank.
SEM on the other hand is all
about the page or the item you are selling or the content you are
providing. In SEM you are trying to target your audience. If your page
is about one particular subject and/ or item then all your efforts are
to get the traffic interested in that particular subject or item. All
your keywords, description, title and content is all about that subject
or item and you do not place any links on the left nav-bar or elsewhere
that do not lead back to the landing page or home page or are in a .gif
and so unrecognizable to Search. You want any who type a specific term
or phrase to get your specific page in their search results. You are not
that concerned with the amount of traffic but the quality of traffic.
You want those interested in what you have to offer on that specific
page or pages not necessarily what you have to offer on the entire site.
With SEO you are trying to
optimize your entire site, one page at a time to get the most traffic
possible. With SEM you are trying to optimize a particular page or pages
to get the most directed and focused traffic to those pages for the
greatest return on investment.
Take for example my site at www.vintageslips4u.com . Here
I sell ladies Lingerie, Shoes, Purses, and other Clothing including kids
and designer clothing. I also have a few pages devoted to everything
else I have for sale. I have some pages devoted to the wife and dating
vintage clothing. This site has a lot to offer so with SEO I will try to
get the most traffic I can so I list a lot of differing keywords and a
broader description for the entry page and those pages that do not have
specific items on them but on those pages that are specific to an item
like panties or shoes or handbags I restrict my keywords, description,
title and content to just that particular item. This is SEM in that I am
targeting a specific audience. When a person searches for shoes I want
my sites page on shoes to appear. Since I am competing with huge shoe
stores online I will never get to number on the first page but perhaps I
might get to three or four. If I narrow it further and only have a page
for ladies sandals made by Birkenstock. I would only have those terms in
my keyword and description and content and title and any who search for
Birkenstock sandals will likely see me on that first page just under the
Birkenstock Company and possibly even before as I have a narrow search
for sandals and no other shoes and so a search for Birkenstock sandals
would likely place me number one. I give up on volume or traffic to get
a targeted audience for that particular item or content. The more
you focus the page on a particular item or subject the more focused your
audience. You give up hit volume in favor of a more focused audience and
possibly one more likely to purchase from or use your site or page.
Another part of SEM is actually
paying for traffic. Using adwords or other similar advertising to get people
to your page so that you can sell your items. You definitely want
to target your ads to specific items to narrow those who use the ppc ad
to get to your site. If I place an ad for women's shoes I may get
thousands of hits and no purchases as I have not narrowed my audience to
that which is in search of what I have. If, however , I place and ad for
women's Birkenstock sandals, I will have a
more targeted audience and more likely have sales. SEM is marketing your
wares or your site on the web, whereas SEO is trying to get higher page
rank PR to increase traffic to your site.
You have to decide just how
varied your pages are going to be and if you are going after SEO or SEM
or both. I would try to get that SEO for the traffic it can bring to
your site but separate out some of your more popular content or items to
individual pages and go for SEM on those to get that target audience.
The more you can narrow the subject, content, item etc the more you can
dial in on the keywords, description and title and the more you can
target an audience. If you can hide all reference to other items or
content you have a lock on numbering high for that page in a directed
search. You can place links in buttons that will not affect the targeted
audience but will allow them to traverse your site if they so chose. I
should practice what I preach more often as though I do some SEM I do
not hide the links I do not generally place them on the right side of
the page and I do not break it all down to a single item or unit of
content so I do not get the SEO nor the SEM prize. You however may
choose to do so, and wind up a winner on both counts.
Do not expect overnight results
but if you have done your work properly your site or page will begin to
creep into that number 1 slot in time. But you will constantly have to
be aware of the competition and what search is looking for and make
changes as needed. Try to get those one way links or highly ranked
reciprocal links. Hide from search what you think will lower your PR and
try to make more prominent that which you think will enhance your PR.
You can post an article here and on many other sites for one way links
to your site as well as posting to forums and placing ads. You need to
keep ahead of the competition and go over your meta tags as often as
necessary to keep your site or page a high PR.
There are many other things you
can do to raise your PR for SEO and SEM but these few will most likely
keep you busy for quite some time. I will look into writing an article
of advanced SEO and SEM techniques when I have time. For now just get
those links and put that content out there and work on your meta keywords
and description.
Good luck
Robert Taormina
http://cpfsn.org
Cerebral Palsy Family Support Network
http://vintageslips4u.com
Ladies Lingerie and so much more
http://tamicraft.com
Small Business, Computer Tips, Gardening,
Crafts, Patterns, Articles…
A hodgepodge of just about everything
and anything.
And yes too many self serving links for just
anybody
but I own this site and so I give
myself permission.
If you have an article you
would like to post related to any subject we have here on the
Tamicraft.com website; use the contact us page to submit your Article.
ALSO we accept Articles of subjects that are not related to
Tamicraft.com. If you are a writer and want a place to post your work
you may do so here. We accept many various articles so long as they
adhere to the "Guidelines for
submitting Articles" We will create a new category if one does
not now exist. Posting of Articles has several benefits over posting in
the forums. The fact that an Article once accepted will generally be up
forever vs. a forum post which may be pruned occasionally is perhaps the
best reason to post articles instead of to the forums.
1. You are allowed to post a
signature file with up to 3 URL's to your own websites or emails. (So
long as they are compliant with the ("Guidelines for Submitting
Articles")) This will give you an opportunity to reach a larger
audience who may use your links to visit your site, resulting in
increased traffic and perhaps increased sales.
2. Those self serving links in
your signature file are one way links to your site which may improve your PR (Page
Rank) in
your SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
attempts. Both 1. and 2. are
excellent reasons to submit articles
if your desire is to increase your
sites visibility and traffic.
3. Your article is open to
search engines which may pick them up and rank them. If any search for
keywords contained within your supplied 'keyword',
'description', 'title' and 'article' content you will benefit from the
traffic it produces.
4. For those of you who do not
have a web presence but wish to share your knowledge of a particular
subject , you may do so here. This will give you the opportunity to
reach many people and share your tips, tricks, ideas, stories and other
knowledge you may want to impart to others without having to purchase
webspace. In lieu of a web address you may post an email or a physical
address and phone # to contact you for more information. This is not
required to be in the posted Article If you prefer to remain anonymous.
Though your information must accompany any article as you are
responsible for the content.
I do not post everything I receive and you
need to be in compliance with the TOS and Agree to the Guidelines to
have an Article even considered for posting. Those that pass the
litmus test, I'll try to post as I can. Your ability to post
self-serving links will be allowed in the signature file only and must
be in compliance with the TOS and Guidelines as posted. Please
include Name, City and State when submitting a post. No anonymous
articles will be posted. Though yu may post under a pen-name your real
name must accompany any submission. If submitting a picture(s), have it as an
attachment, not in the email. It would also be helpful if you indicate
where what picture goes . Ex: (pic 1 here), (pic 2 here) and so forth. Thank you.
To view the entire list of current
categories go here:
Categories
Once you have chosen a
category (bold) you will see a list of sub-categories and by clicking on
a sub-category you will be directed to a page where you will find a list
of articles in that category and a summary of the article. (max
250 / character and spaces). By clicking the article you will be
directed to the page in which the entire article can be viewed.
Articles
must be a minimum of 250 words up to a maximum of 5000 words. Articles
longer than 5000 words will be rejected unless you can provide a good
reason why the article must run longer and should be published.
| 
2007 -2010