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SEO Expert Guide - Keyword Analysis (part 3/10)
(Submited by: David Viney )

If you imagine that building an optimized site is like cooking a meal, then keywords are the essential ingredients. Would you attempt to cook a complex new dish without first referring to a recipe? Would you start before you had all the ... Read article

Content Management Systems Eyeball SEOs
(Submited by: Kevin Kantola )

Content Management Systems and search engine optimization (SEO) used to be mutually exclusive terms. But the SEO community has been driving the developers of Content Management Systems to integrate more SEO-friendly methodology within their ... Read article

Buzzwords vs Effective SEO Keywords
(Submited by: Daria Goetsch )

Ever see a website that seems to speak a foreign language...in English? We encounter many SEO client websites that rely on buzzwords in the page copy to get the word out about their product. The problem lies with visitors who may not be familiar ... Read article

Increase Your Page Rank Through SEO
(Submited by: Adam Waxler )

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) must be considered a process and over time you can build your ranking and traffic.Remember, Rome wasnt built in a day.This article provides 10 SEO tips that will build your search engine rank ... Read article

Picking Keywords for SEO A Different View
(Submited by: Halstatt Pires )

The first step to developing any search engine optimization effort is picking keywords. The general consensus is pick keywords with solid amounts of traffic and a minimum of competition. At the risk of being laughed off the Internet, heres a ... Read article

Sitemaps 101 - Back to SEO School
(Submited by: Niall Roche )

Sitemaps are without doubt one of the most often ignored and undervalued aspects of search engine optimization. You've probably spent a huge amount of time working on pages of original content, keyword density and getting incoming links but never ... Read article


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SEO Expert Guide - Proposition Development (part 2/10)
(Submited by: David Viney )

It is literally amazing how many people start their online business presence by buying a domain name (close to their business name) and building a brochure-ware page. Only later do they turn their mind to optimizing their site for (i) their ... Read article

SEO Success: Step Three is Creating Long-Term Popularity
(Submited by: Chesa Keane )

Finally, after the hard-core efforts that are directly related to generating traffic to your website, you next step is to develop a strategy that creates follow-on, long-term traffic. Several methods exist for this Tier III strategy:- ... Read article

Mindset from Yahoo!- Changing the SEO Game
(Submited by: Ross MacIver )

Yahoo! has a developed a new concept in search engine technology - "Intent Driven Search" - allowing you to sort search results according to their commercial or informational content.The beta version of ... Read article

DIY SEO
(Submited by: Mark White )

Part 1. Wordtracker for keywords.A problem for all new webmasters has always been SEO or search engine optimisation.The problem starts with the age-old question of how do I design my website so people can find it?Lets assume ... Read article

Top 10 Little Used SEO Strategies
(Submited by: Lewis Leake )

There are millions of web sites trying to get listed in the top 20 to 30 spots on the major search engines. That's a lot of competition! So if you're having a hard time getting those spots, maybe you should try some little used but effective seo ... Read article

Why You Need a SEO Maintenance Plan
(Submited by: Herman Drost )

A search engine optimization maintenance service plan will ensure that your site will continue to increase in its rankings, attract more visitors and make more sales. It's not enough to simply design your web site, have it optimized for the ... Read article


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An SEO Checklist
(Submited by: Jane McLain )

Search engine optimization is on every webmaster's mind these days. Achieving a favorable ranking for the right keywords can mean a steady stream of targeted traffic to your site, and all for free - that's hard to beat. The key to ... Read article

How To Really SEO Your Site
(Submited by: Matt Colyer )

Search engine optimization is one of most popular online marketing tool for any website. With more websites coming online every day the competition gets larger, so you have to make sure you can out SEO them before they out do you. In this article ... Read article

How to Top Google by Writing Articles
(Submited by: Glenn Murray )

Search engines determine their rankings based on two things: Is your site relevant? (Optimized for certain keywords) ... Read article

The Real Search Engine Optimization Guide
(Submited by: Ivan Juras )

Nowadays, there is so much talk about SEO (search engine optimization) that it has become an industry of its own. Still, 90% of webmasters don`t know how to achieve high search engine positions. In this article, you`ll learn what the 90% doesn`t. ... Read article

Forget SEO Its All About Conversion!
(Submited by: Stephen Munday )

Which SEO hat do you wear? Is it white or black? Or perhaps its a subtle shade of gray. Well, wherever you are on this spectrum, if you are like 99% of the SEO-fixated webmasters out there, you are doing all you can to get visitors to your site. ... Read article

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design
(Submited by: Chesa Keane )

Creating a well-designed website is the first step in your internet marketing strategy. Once the website has been created and optimized, there are further techniques to employ that will drive traffic to your website for successful, long-term ... Read article


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Are Your SEO Efforts Going To Waste?

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Are Your SEO Efforts Going To Waste?


Search engine optimization (SEO) is a long and complicated process that can be highly rewarding if done correctly. SEO is not a waste of time, but can be if your site doesnt appeal to visitors or function properly. Your potential customer will be turned off if your site lacks trustworthiness, an eye pleasing color scheme and easy to use navigation. Why lose visitors and possible sales because of a small design flaw or unappealing color scheme? Those visitors could have resulted in sales if those small imperfections were fixed.

As I arrive from your high position in the search engines looking for your product, I want to be able to trust the company I am buying from. People are very leery with making purchases on the Internet, and even more so from sites they dont know a great deal about. You want to gain trust from the visitor with guarantees, a professional design and color scheme, testimonials and by any other way. If your site doesnt boast its trustworthiness and make me feel secure, do you think I will purchase your product? No. Visitors are especially leery when they are required to give credit card information. Make them feel protected, boast about your privacy policy, encrypted servers and whatever else you have set up. Be enthusiastic about your sites security.

I need to be able to find what I want and navigate to where I need to go FAST after I arrive at your site via the search engines. Some visitors get lost and frustrated with poor navigation and will leave your site without a second thought. Do not leave your visitor with a bad taste in their mouth! Allow them to flow through your site with ease and comfort. If your navigation is confusing your potential customer will likely leave and travel to one of the other three billion web sites on the Internet. Speed is also a factor in navigation. Visitors dont want to sit there for twenty or thirty seconds while your page loads. Dont make them wait. Cut down on the size of your pages and graphics.

The colors you choose for your site also impact on whether the visitor will make a purchase. A color scheme that hurts the eye will turn visitors off which will lead to lost sales. Visitors may also question how accountable your site is. You cannot have a black background with white, yellow or neon green text. It hurts the eyes. Color schemes such as that scare visitors away. With professional colors visitors will likely feel more secure and relaxed while surfing your site, which will lead to more sales.

A top position in the search engines can provide huge amounts of sales, if your site can be trusted and appeal to visitors. With a defective design and color scheme, slow loading pages or lack of trustworthiness all of the time spent performing SEO could go to waste. So get out, fix those flaws and discover more sales!

About The Author

Derek Croote is a SEO, web design and usability enthusiast. He practices ethical search engine optimization and strives to make sites across the web better for visitors. Derek is the webmaster of the http://www.saratogalakesideacresassociation.org/, a small homeowners association. You can reach him at dcroote@gmail.com.

Related Links:

Forget SEO Its All About Conversion!

SEO Success: Step One is Good Web Design

SEO Expert Guide - Proposition Development (part 2/10)

Are You Making These Deadly SEO Mistakes?

SEO Resources Site

SEO Articles

Are You Making These Deadly SEO Mistakes?


Black Hat SEO: Web Spamming and Linking to Bad Neighborhoods

So you want to exchange links with other web sites in order to get higher search engine rankings?

So you want to create hundreds of auto-generated, keyword rich pages for your site?

Before you go and link to every website that is willing to exchange links, it would be a good idea to know where not to link to. Sometimes it can mean not linking to your own sites.

Firstly, lets take a look at the Google webmaster guidelines page which states:

"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or "bad neighborhoods" on the web as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links."

I know that Google is not responsible for all search engine traffic, but it is a good guide to follow because other engines seem to be following along the same lines.

So what is a web spammer?

A web spammer is someone who creates hundreds or thousands of keyword rich pages in order to create the illusion of a themed site with related pages. These sites can be composed of sneaky redirect pages, doorway pages, gateway pages and now the latest craze seems to be auto generated directories. SEO circles call these types of pages "search engine clutter".

The Professional Web Spammer

The aware, professional web spammer places the search engine clutter on a secondary domain and looks for link partners. If you exchange links with these webmasters, you will be at risk of getting a penalty if one of those sites gets banned.

These sites are created on disposable (secondary) domains and they all link or redirect to a main selling website which does not link back to the spam pages. Usually, all the secondary domains link to each other too.

This professional knows all about not using the standard web page templates that come with the auto directory generation software. This webmaster is clever enough to realize that common templates will be easy to detect by search engines which means that the web spam site will get banned very quickly. This webmaster will rebuild the pages from scratch which is usually a good way to avoid detection.

The Amateur Web Spammer

The amateur web spammer, hungry for high search engine rankings will purchase software which creates search engine clutter and make the mistake of not creating a disposable domain to serve these new pages and they will use the basic easily detected templates to generate the web site.

They upload these pages to their main site and link to them. The problem with this is that if a search engine perceives these auto-generated pages as spam, it will penalize, the site that links to them as well as remove the clutter from the index.

Sometimes these sites do not get detected straight away which means that they could have a decent amount of Page Rank, but is it worth taking that chance? Your biggest challenge will be to develop the ability to detect these types of pages with the naked eye.

One Linking Myth Exploded

Please understand that you will not receive a penalty if web spam or a bad neighborhood links to your site. It is the other way around. It is only if you link to web spam or a bad neighborhood that you risk getting penalized.

There is much misunderstanding regarding this issue. Look at it from a logical point of view. If this were true that you would get a penalty, all you would have to do to eliminate all your competition would be to create some web spam and link to your competitors. So it is plain to realize that you cannot get a penalty if web spam links to you. It's the other way around.

So what is a bad neighborhood?

I do not know how exactly to define a bad neighborhood because a bad neighborhood is not a bad neighborhood until it gets defined as such by a search engine. Examples include Free For All Links pages (FFA s), Link Farms and useless directories designed to do nothing more than create the illusion of a themed web site.

A good guide to follow would be not to link to any site which does not contain useful information or relevant content. More info about bad neighborhoods here: http://www.v7n.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11376

The Obsessive Compulsive SEO practitioner

The obsessive compulsive SEO practitioner will go to any length to get top search engine rankings quickly. It is sort of like gold fever. The bug bites and it becomes difficult to let go of the insanity.

This webmaster is always looking for the easier softer way. The delusion is strong. The insanity has got a grip of the obsessive compulsive SEO. In the end, when they get sick and tired of getting banned, they swear off Internet Marketing altogether claiming that everybody in the industry is a rip off artist.

The problem is that they got exposed to rubbish before they discovered the good stuff. They have been permission marketed by someone they trusted and ended up wasting a lot of time. (and I do mean a lot of time)

Why not create a legitimate web directory?

Here is some good stuff. In the long run, it seems to me to be a lot easier to go to a script archive like hotscripts.com or scriptsearch.com and search for terms like "toplist", "directory" "community" and "portal". These single one word search terms will produce many results which contain scripts which will do a much better job of creating a directory than the latest auto-directory generation software sold by Internet marketers who own big mailing lists of newbies.

Many of these scripts are free and there is some really excellent ones you can buy. The point here is that you can create a useful web site with these scripts which you will be proud to link to.

Copyright 2004 Ed Zivkovic

About The Author

The author, Ed Zivkovic owns his own website which contains articles, tips, tricks, free downloads and more. Here is the site: http://www.ezau.com.

Related Links:

Mindset from Yahoo!- Changing the SEO Game

DIY SEO

Top 10 Little Used SEO Strategies