3 Common URL Problems

Three of the most common URL problems that I have seen on different websites. If your site has one or more of these problems, take a look at these solutions and get them fixed as soon as possible.

Problem #1: Non-www and www Versions of Site URLs

If your site has a non-www and www version of all your URLs, you’re going to be splitting link value for the same content between two URLs. Rather than capturing 100% of the link value on the page you want to rank in the search results, you could be doing a 50/50, 60/40, or some other kind of split between the two URLs.

The Fix

There are a couple of things you need to do to fix this:

• Decide which URL style you want to use, www or non-www.
• Set up a 301 redirect so that any links to your non-preferred URL style will go to the right style. This way you don’t waste link value by splitting it between two URLs.
• Set your preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools so your search result listings are consistent with your style preference.
• Make sure whenever you build links to your site that you use the preferred URL style.

Problem #2: Duplicate Home Page URLs

This is a close cousin to Problem #1, but is especially bad because it’s your home page.

It is possible to have a lot of different URLs that all go to your home page content, especially if you haven’t fixed your www and non-www duplication, which can result in a lot of unnecessary duplication. For example:

    http://www.mysite.com
    http://mysite.com
    http://www.mysite.com/index.html
    http://mysite.com/index.html

These URLs will all lead to the same content. If you have links going to all four of them you will see a four-way split in link value. There are a lot of sites out there that have fixed their non-www and www problems, but I can still find multiple versions of their home page.

I’ve even come across sites with different extensions (.php, .html, .htm, etc.) that bring up the same page as well. This leads to even more duplication and potentially wasted link value.

The Fix

The fix here is very similar to the first one. Here are a few tips:

• Set your main home page URL to be http://www.mysite.com. 301 redirect everything else to this URL since it is the most basic (If your preferred URL style is non-www, then do http://mysite.com)
• If you have to set up different versions for tracking purposes or some other reason, set a canonical tag to show the search engines which version you want showing up in the search results.
• Make sure when you build links to your home page that you link to the correct version.

Problem #3: Dynamic URLs

This is a fun one that a lot of not-so-SEO-friendly shopping cart programs run into. Once you start including all sorts of variables and parameters in your URLs, the opportunities for duplicate content and wasted link value are endless.

Allow me to illustrate. All of the following URLs could lead to the same content:

    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc
    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog
    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111
    http://www.mysite.com/somepage.html?param1=abc&dest=goog&camp=111&id=423

Now what if I start rearranging the parameters? Well, they’ll still show the same content. So, as you might imagine, this can create a lot of wasted link value.

There are other causes for the dynamic URL problem. A lot of companies use these parameter-based URLs for statistical purposes. We just want to make sure that you don’t shoot yourself in the foot from an SEO perspective.

This problem also happens with sites that give their affiliates a unique ID to use in their links. You could have 100 affiliates linking to the same page, but all of the URLs will be different because each affiliate has their own unique ID.

The Fix

• If possible, make sure that your site is using SEO-friendly base URLs. It’s better to have a base URL that will lead to the content rather than a URL that relies on a parameter. For example: http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html is much better than http://www.mysite.com/category.php?prod=123 where some generic category page is really the base URL.
• Set a canonical tag that tells the search engines to use the base version of the URL. That way you can still use parameter URLs like http://www.mysite.com/unique-product.html?param1=123&param2=423 to get your data, but the search engines will consider the basic version as the official one.
• An even better way to handle this is to capture the data on the server side and then redirect the visitor to the correct URL after you have captured your data. The visit basically goes like this: Visitor clicks on links with parameters -> Visitor goes to site, server records parameter data and 301 redirects them to the right landing page – >Visitor barely notices the switch because it happens fast.This way you can get all the data you need, make sure all of the link value goes to the right page, and your visitor still sees what they were after.

Keyword Analysis and Keyword Suggestion Tools

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Tips For Google Local Business Place

Google has recently relabeled Google Maps Local Business Listings into Google Places. Some site owners experienced changes in their business listing rankings while some lost several important reviews for their businesses listed in Google Places.

Here's my Tips for Google Places:

• Never let another person control your Google Places listing. If you hire a Google Places Expert, make sure he/she has no access to your Google Places account. He/She should only recommend the changes to your Google Places listing(s). The website owner should be the only one to have full access to a Google Places account.
• Report a duplicate listing to Google. You don't want a duplicate listing to share your user reviews. User reviews are factors for top rankings of your business listings.
• Optimize the CATEGORY types of your business listings using your target keywords. Use one target keyword or keyword variation per category and use all the allocated CATEGORY types using the "Add another category" link. A maximum of five category types are allowed as of October 2010.

SEO Tips for Your Own Profile

If you don’t have a Google Profile, my advice is to get one. If Google’s regular algorithm is any indication, profile longevity helps rank (important because only four profiles are given 1st page search result status). You can even get a vanity URL instead of the standard number string URL.

[A note about vanity URLs: you risk identifying your Gmail address to spammers as Gmail turns your e-mail prefix into your vanity URL. You can also sign up for a new Google Account using an alternate e-mail and select your own URL, which I recommend.]

Once you have your profile:

Add information. More “complete” profiles are more likely to make 1st page.

Verify your name/e-mail. Name verification requires a Knol account and a cell phone or credit card record (Google forgot about the small class of people like me who only use debit cards and tracfones). E-mail verification requires a closed e-mail, i.e., no Gmail or Hotmail.

Build links to your profile. I really only recommend this if you have stiff name competition.

Create a Google Profile for your business (Optional). Google Profiles are only meant for individuals, but that hasn’t stopped people from creating profiles for “Web Design” or “Cheap iPhone.” Doing so will only get you listed in Google Profile-specific search results or possibly organic rankings and not on the front page with the real names. Still, it can’t hurt.

Google Caffeine

Couple of months, a team of Google was working on a project that’s name is “Google Caffeine.” The main aim of Google Caffeine is to make Google search results more accurate, indexing speed, comprehensiveness and many other things.

Before some days Google launched Google Caffeine, a new trend of search. That is a new search technology which Google is discussing with developers and selecting their contribution to implement on new Google. Though there are not any major changes in the rankings but We may see minor fluctuations. Google gave the name “Caffeine” to this new technology.Google-Caffeine

Try the Google Caffeine in http://www2.sandbox.google.com

We expecting some reflects like

• URL is very important
• New Google is very fast
• Larger index volume
• Real-time search is inching closer
• Keywords are more important

Let wait for how its reflects to us

Six Simple Tips to Improve your Search Engine Ranking

Simple Six Tips To Improve Search Engine Ranking

There are some very simple SEO techniques available for you to improve your search engine ranking. In the course of my normal analysis of competitors’ websites, I find an amazing number that does not employ all of these techniques, yet every one can help you get closer to that coveted #1 position.

Using these will not in itself allow you reach the top position for your keyword, but they definitely help, and there is no single factor that will enable you to hit the top. A #1 position on Google is attained by a combination of many factors, such as internal and external linking strategies, relevance of your content to the keyword and the overall look and feel of your site. Plus those detailed below.

So let’s get started on these: these are the nuts and bolts of SEO, and if they are not right then you are starting off on the back foot. These are the essential SEO techniques that you must have as a minimum if you want to improve your search engine ranking, and although intended mainly for beginners, many established web pages do not contain every one of these.

I write ‘pages’ deliberately, because Google and the other main search engines list web pages, and not entire domains. That means that every single page in your website should be optimized in the same way: each should contain every single one of the SEO techniques listed below.

TITLE TAG

The title tag is contained within the ‘HEAD’ tags of your HTML, before the ‘BODY’ tags. This states the title of the page, and must contain the major keywords of the page. The contents of your title tag do not appear in the text of the page: its purpose is to inform the search engine spiders what the topic of your page is, and what words are important (i.e. your main page keyword). For example, the TITLE tag of a page based on this article would be “SEO Techniques - Improve your Search Engine Ranking”.

DESCRIPTION TAG

The description Meta tag is used by Google, and other search engines, in the search engine listings. I have tested this with them all and Google uses it as is, while Yahoo uses part of it. You should provide a description of what the web page is about, and a simple check of the descriptions in other sites using your keyword on Google will show you how many words you can use to have the whole description included. About 20 words are fine.

KEYWORD TAG

Search engines rarely use the keyword Meta tag: Google ignores it completely. However, it doesn’t hurt, and can help in a small way. Include your brand name and your own name. That way some engines might show your pages if somebody is looking for your name. The other Meta tags have no SEO value, and do not help to improve your search engine ranking whatsoever.

HEADING H TAGS

Heading tags (H1, H2, . . .) are used by Google to determine the importance of the text contained in your headings. Use H1 tags for the main title of your page (you also use it in the TITLE tag, but that isn’t seen by readers, only by the spiders). Put subtitles in H2 tags. You can change the font size of the text within these tags.

TEXT FORMATTING

Text in bold, italics and underscored are seen by the search engines as having greater weight, and so will be used in determining the relevance of your site. Always bolden your titles, and it also helps to underline it if it doesn’t make it look out of place.

WRITING STYLE and CONTENT

Do not write for algorithms (spiders): write for your readers. Always write for humans and you won’t go wrong. If your page content reads well, and has good vocabulary relating to the topic, then it will have a better chance of a higher listing than if you stuffed it full of keywords. I rarely use more than 1.5% - the keyword densities of the terms ‘SEO’, SEO techniques’ and ’search engine ranking’ (the main keywords) of this article are 1.5, 0.87 and 0.87 respectively. Too many keywords is bad SEO, and could result in a poor listing for your page - if it is listed at all.

So there you are: six simple SEO techniques to improve your search engine ranking. It is surprising how many experienced webmasters fail to apply all of these: there is no excuse, and they are failing to get the nuts and bolts properly fitted and tightened on their web pages.

Apply these to every page and not only will you improve your SEO, but also your chances of a good search engine ranking. It is amazing how many web pages lack these basic SEO techniques.

Black Hat Techniques

Black Hat Techniques

In an attempt to improve visibility Black Hat Techniques is used by some webmasters. Black Hat SEO is a different practice of Search Engine Optimization. Some of the Black Hat techniques use to be ok, but people took advantage of a good thing and now those techniques are red flag, therefore, breaking the rules of search engines guidelines.

Some of These Black Hat Techniques Are:

Invisible Tex

Keywords and keyword Sentences in the same color as the background where the viewer doesn’t see the text but search engine does. 

Keyword Stuffing

As it’s easy to be carried away, Keyword stuffing a web page is one mistake people do. The rule is that more than 7% of chosen keywords on a web page is to push you luck. 

Doorway Pages

Doorway pages are stuffed with keywords and key sentences. Webmasters creates doorway page strictly for search engines. When you arrive on one of those doorways webpage’s immediately, you are redirect to another website, very often not related to your search. 

Cloaking

Another Black Hat Technique shows the viewers one page whiles search engines read a completely different text. In other words for example when a search engine crawls a website it reads a html text specifically written for search engines while you the viewers are viewing a different page that could be pictures or animation. Therefore, the webpage was altered to deceive search engines. 

Link Farms

Buying links to achieve higher ranking or owning a certain amounts of site all linking to your main sitemight show you are important but again a Black Hat Technique and deceiving to search engines and viewers alike. Links needs to be relevant to your website services, therefore, the more relevancy the better for your website.

Note

Webmaster employs Black Hat SEO Techniques trying to increase search engines visibility and increase traffic whiles they hope to deceive search engines without being caught. These Black Hat practice may work for a while, but eventually search engines will catch-up and the webmaster will face unhappy subsequence's.

When you see websites that employs Black Hat SEO practice, you should report them to your search engine webmaster.

Site Submission

Submission means filling out a form on a search engine's site to invite them to add your site to their index. What many people don't realize is that this is unnecessary. Engines find what's on the web by following links. As long as there's a link to your site from any site that's already in the search engines, the engines will find your site. If you don't have any incoming links you're not going to rank well anyway.

Once your site is listed in an engine you're in for good (unless you get kicked out for trying to fool them, as covered below under Black Hat SEO). There's never any reason to resubmit your site once it's already in. Resubmission is a waste of time.

The overwhelming majority of search traffic comes from the top five or so search engines. Some companies will offer to submit your site to "thousands" of search engines. This is a waste of money. If your site is linked to from anywhere, you'll get in all the search engines that matter, automatically, for free.

Search engines use automated robots to follow the links around the web and grab the content from the web pages they find. The robots are calledspiders, and when they follow links they're crawling the web (also calledspidering). Google's spider is called Googlebot, and you'll see it listed as the user agent in your server logs. Once a search engine has gathered a site's data and analyzed it the site is said to be indexed. To see whether your site is in the Google index, search Google for site:yourdomain.com.

New sites don't always get listed right away. In some cases it can take several months for a new site to show up in the SERPS. Even when a site gets in the index, Many believe that Google puts new sites "in the sandbox" and won't let them rank well for the initial few months. Jennifer Laycock has a better explanation: New sites can rank fine if there's not much competition for that topic, but Google will assume that a new site in an established, competitive market isn't any better than the tons of sites already there, unless that site proves itself to be superior. The sandbox issue has been discussed on Webmaster World ad nauseum. (Searching WebmasterWorld for all pages mentioning the sandbox results in nearly 1000 hits at present.)

Black Hat SEO Penalties

Black Hat SEO Penalties

Google makes it clear that it disapproves of certain SEO tactics, such as hiding keywords with invisible text, or showing one page to Google's spider and another to actual human visitors. (See what Google recommends and what they don't.) Methods that conform to what the search engines like are called White Hat SEO, and disapproved methods are called Black Hat SEO. There is a lot of controversy about whether Black Hat SEO is really "bad" in the ethical sense. White Hatters say that Black Hatters are unfairly trying to manipulate the SERPs. Black Hatters counter, "What constitutes 'fair'? Isn't any change you make to your page for SEO purposes an attempt to influence rankings? Why is one method less pure than another when we're all just trying to get our pages to rank higher? Further, if an engine is ranking a bunch of irrelevant sites above mine, what's so wrong about using any method at my disposal to get my relevant site ranked above them? Doing so doesn't benefit just me, it benefits the searchers because it gives them what they're searching for. And it also benefits the engine, because searchers will think better of the engine for giving them more relevant results than it would have otherwise."

Adding to the controversy about Black Hat SEO is the fact Google does allow a certain select few sites to operate contrary to its own stated policies. Danny Sullivan complains that Google's cloaking policy is inconsistent (more on cloaking below), and that the policy wording should be updated. He further notes that the reason Google allows some cloaking is that it improves searching rather than hinders it, and that it's therefore inappropriate to think of cloaking as synonymous with "bad".

Personally I think that what's good or bad is not the methods you use, but whether you're trying to get a ranking you deserve. If your site is really one of the best about, say, the history of baseball, then it doesn't really matter to me how it gets to the top of the SERPs for a search on that phrase. What's annoying to me, and to millions of people around the world, is when a crappy, useless site tricks its way to the top of the SERPs, usually in an attempt to get more visitors to there so they'll click on the ads there and make money for the webmaster. So to me it's not how you get to the top, but whether you should be at the top in the first place.

Whether you think Black Hat SEO is bad or not you should avoid it anway, because it can get you banned from the search engines, or at least reduce your ranking. Google has been known to remove sites it felt weren't playing fair. Granted, this isn't likely, but why take that risk? Also, much Black Hat SEO involves some fairly technical work. If this article is your introduction to SEO, you likely don't have the skills to be a successful Black Hatter anyway -- at least one who doesn't get caught.

If you want to stay on Google's good side, here are some things to avoid:

• Invisible text. Don't put white text on a white background. In fact, don't put even very light yellow on a white background. The engines aren't stupid; just because the colors aren't exactly the same doesn't mean they can't figure out there's no contrast. Yes, there are clever ways to try to fool Google about what the background color actually is, but Google is probably aware of most of them anyway, and I won't cover them besides.
• Cloaking. Google knows what's on your site because periodically its automated robot called Googlebot visits all the pages in its index, and grabs all the page content so it can analyze it later. Cloaking means showing one page to Googlebot and a completely different page to real human visitors. Google despises this aplenty.
• Keyword Stuffing. The engines want your pages to be natural. Finding every place to cram your keywords onto your pages -- or worse, including a "paragraph" of nothing but keywords, especially if they're repeated ad nauseum -- is a big no-no. Do you consider pages with lists of keywords to be high quality? Neither does Google.
• Doorway pages. A doorway page is a page built specifically for the purpose of ranking well in the search engines and without any real content of its own, and which then links to the "real" destination page, or automatically redirects there. Doorway pages are a popular choice of some SEO firms, although Google has cracked down on this and many webmasters saw their pages disappear from the index. Some SEO firms call their doorway pages something else, in an effort to fool potential customers who know enough to know that they should avoid doorway pages. But a doorway page is still a doorway page even if you call it something else. Some engines may decide that an orphaned page is a doorway page, and if so then the page or the site might suffer a penalty.
• Spam. Spam has a special meaning with regards to SEO: worthless pages with no content, created specifically for the purpose of ranking well in the engines. You think they have what you're looking for, but when you get there it's just a bunch of ads or listings of other sites. The webmaster is either getting paid by the advertisers, or the page is a doorway page, with the webmaster hoping that you'll click over to the page s/he really wants you to go to.

Penalties

It's important to distinguish between the two punishments from search engines since they're entirely different. Being banned means your site is removed from the index completely. This is pretty rare; most people who think they've been banned are actually still in the index. It's easy to tell whether you've been banned by Google. Assuming your site was in the index to begin with, search Google forsite:yourdomain.com. If you get any results, your site hasn't been banned.

Being penalized means having your rank reduced. Unfortunately I know of no way to test for this. I do think that most of the time a webmaster thinks they've been penalized they're wrong. Rankings change, sites drop -- it's all part of the way the search engines work. But often many people take it personally and feel they're being victimized.

Webmaster World has a good checklist for dealing with a potentially dropped site.

The Necessity Of Search Engine Optimisation

The majority of businesses now understand that search engine optimisation or SEO is becoming an important part of any online business strategy. Today it is only the most backward thinking companies that have dismissed the benefits of search engine optimisation, or have not even heard of it.

The emphasis of search engine optimisation is to increase web traffic to a website through the search medium. The process involves changing various elements of the website so that it is more visible to search engines and easier to operate for users.

Currently the market is saturated with so called SEO specialists who are simply jumping on a band wagon that started rolling over ten years ago. Hence it is imperative to have a detailed research process before entering into a contract with any SEO company. Ideally a company that can prove its worth, prove the success of it methods and its time in the industry should be found.

It is advisable, before employing a SEO company to gain an understanding of how the search engine process is conducted. Fortunately the internet has thousands of websites dedicated to the subject of website optimisation. While the worth of these websites is somewhat questionable, they do at least give an idea of the sorts of strategies the SEO company should be presenting.

As with the procurement of nearly any service it is important to gain a number of quotes from different companies. All firms will charge different rates for their services and hence looking at the quotes and assessing the value of the service is essential.

Remember that the cheapest company should not always be chosen. Like most things in life a cheaper price does not necessarily mean a good service, in some cases it may be worth paying that little bit extra for a better level of service.

One of the best strategies to help choose an SEO company is to simply type a related term into a search engine. For instance by taking terms such as 'search engine optimisation' and entering this into Google it is possible to see numerous sites that offer SEO service. Understandably, by using one of the sites in the top five listings you are given a form of guarantee that they know what they are doing, after all, if a company cannot rank highly for terms related to their own industry it is doubtful they will be able to help other companies.

It is also worth avoiding companies that promise page one, or even position one rankings. Nobody outside of the Google corporation can guarantee such positions, it is doubtful even Google employees can. Search engine algorithms are extremely complex and it takes real experts to work within these algorithms to improve the rankings of a site. Any company that has the short sightedness to guarantee position one listings is probably not worth using.

It is hoped that this article has given businesses and business owners an idea of how search engine optimisation can help their company to secure more online business and trade. In terms of searching for a company the search engine method is worthwhile but also beneficial can be personal recommendations.

If another company gives you information on a company that helped them improve their online profile and profits it is likely that this reference is trustworthy and could result in further profits for your own company. With the right SEO company increased online revenue and trade is a real and attainable possibility.

Why SEO is important for your web site?

What is SEO? It is an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. What exactly does SEO do? It is the method of analyzing and constructing individual web pages, as well as entire sites, so that they can be discovered, analyzed, and then indexed by various search engines.

SEO can make the content of your web pages more relevant, more attractive, and more easily read by search engines and their crawling and indexing software.

Why would this be of great importance to you? Would it be important to you if customers were unable to find your telephone number or find the address of your business? I do not think that many businesses could survive for very long in this situation.

This situation could apply to a web site. Can potential customers locate your current web site easily? Traffic to your web site could be extremely low. Potential customers might not even know that your site exists.

"Wait a minute!" you say. "We have a beautiful web site, and we include the web site address in all advertising campaigns. Why would people be unable to find our site?"

Of course, your current customers and persons already acquainted with your business would be likely to find your web site without difficulty. Wouldn’t they?

Are you absolutely sure that your advertising has reached enough potential customers? Did you consider that some people simply do not read the newspapers? How about people who didn’t get the issue of the magazine where you placed an expensive ad?

Did these people hear the WABC radio broadcast when your commercial aired? Were they watching channel 44 during the news hour? Were they on the direct mail list for which you paid thousands of dollars?

So how about those search engines that everyone uses? Potential customers will type a word or two into the box, hit ’Enter’, and immediately find a listing for your company’s web site. One more click and you have another visitor. Search engines sure are great, aren’t they?

Yes, they certainly are great, and the ’type-and-click’ scenario above does happen. More often than not, however, it doesn’t happen without a little work. Search Engine Optimization is that work.