Biggest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Mistakes Expert Make
Search Engine Optimization is a very hot topic in the World Wide Web. After all, everybody wants to rank higher and come up on the first page of Google search and get more traffic. I have identified and made a list of top 15 SEO practices that I tend to forget quite often. These simple SEO techniques if practiced properly can make a significant difference as to how my pages are ranked in the Search Engine Queries.
1.Use rel=”nofollow” tag on low value links to not pass the page rank juice. For example ‘Read the rest of the entry’, ‘About’, ‘Contact’ etc.
2.Use proper anchor text for interlinks. Don’t use ‘here’ or ‘there’.
3.Optimize the images, always create alt tags and write description in the alt tag.
4.Use search engine friendly permalinks. Make sure the URLs do not have ‘&’, ‘?’, ‘!’ etc characters.
5.Use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability.
6.Do not use underscores (_), use hyphens (-) instead.
7.Do not use session id in URLs.
8.Use sticky posts.
9.Use tag clouds.
10.Have a category description paragraph.
11.Let the visitors subscribe to category specific RSS feed. (Use category specific RSS plugin for WordPress)
12.Use internal linking when possible and appropriate.
13.Use sub-directories rather than sub-domains when possible. Sub-domains do not share link love from the main domain as it is treated as a different domain.
14.Research the target audience and aim the site content appropriately.
15.Keep the content up to date. Visitors don’t like outdated content. Updating the content frequently also attracts the Search engines spiders to index the web pages frequently.
Have you identified any SEO mistakes that you commonly make?
Seo Tips for Launching a New Website
Basic Tips For Launching a New Website While Keeping SEO In Mind
Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have become intelligent in the past 4-5 years. It is very difficult to game search engines nowadays by manipulating tags and keyword stuffing. For a new site it may take 6 to 9 months to achieve competitive rankings at Google. From SEO point of view, I recommend the following steps for launching a new website.
i) Registering a domain name with similar Keywords
Pick a domain name which either has keywords associated with your product/service or your brand name. It is better to go for short domain names which are easy to remember. If your target market is global, go for a .com domain. If you are targeting a particular country or language, it is better to register a domain name in TLD of that country. For example, go for a .jp or .co.jp domain, if you are targeting Japan. I recommend you to register the domain for at least 2 years; more the better to gain the trust of search engines.
ii) Domain Hosting
Host your site with a reliable hosting company. Stay away from companies which allow hosting of pharmacy, gambling and adult sites, or have a history of serving spam. If you are targeting a particular country/language, it is advised to host your site in that country to boost your rankings in the local search engines for that country/language.
iii) Registering with Search Engines
Since search engines give important to domain aging and can track parameters like the registration date & first crawled date, you better register your site with search engines as early as possible. Even if your site is not fully ready, it is better to make a temporary one-two page site and register with the search engines at the earliest. Getting indexed in MSN may take only 3-4 days, whereas it may take 2-3 months to get indexed in Google and Yahoo. To speed up this process, you should build incoming links from authority websites. More the links a site receives, the less it is ignored by the search engines. It also reduces the Google sandboxing time for new sites. Submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Central also ensures that your site would get crawled and indexed regularly.
iv) Build trust with Search Engines
To build trust with the search engines, you should build your incoming links and content at a regular pace. Keep your content unique and relevant to your products/services. Building links from relevant websites will boost your rankings.
v) Have Web Analytics In Place; Monitor Results
The only way to know whether you are satisfying your goal (and delivering results to your business to make up for the investment!) is to track and monitor your increase in visitors and conversions. As a general rule, if your end result is too design focused, you’ll see fewer leads; If it’s too search focused, you’ll see fewer conversions. With balance in mind, results you will have…your boss will thank you for it!
Search Engines like Google and Yahoo have become intelligent in the past 4-5 years. It is very difficult to game search engines nowadays by manipulating tags and keyword stuffing. For a new site it may take 6 to 9 months to achieve competitive rankings at Google. From SEO point of view, I recommend the following steps for launching a new website.
i) Registering a domain name with similar Keywords
Pick a domain name which either has keywords associated with your product/service or your brand name. It is better to go for short domain names which are easy to remember. If your target market is global, go for a .com domain. If you are targeting a particular country or language, it is better to register a domain name in TLD of that country. For example, go for a .jp or .co.jp domain, if you are targeting Japan. I recommend you to register the domain for at least 2 years; more the better to gain the trust of search engines.
ii) Domain Hosting
Host your site with a reliable hosting company. Stay away from companies which allow hosting of pharmacy, gambling and adult sites, or have a history of serving spam. If you are targeting a particular country/language, it is advised to host your site in that country to boost your rankings in the local search engines for that country/language.
iii) Registering with Search Engines
Since search engines give important to domain aging and can track parameters like the registration date & first crawled date, you better register your site with search engines as early as possible. Even if your site is not fully ready, it is better to make a temporary one-two page site and register with the search engines at the earliest. Getting indexed in MSN may take only 3-4 days, whereas it may take 2-3 months to get indexed in Google and Yahoo. To speed up this process, you should build incoming links from authority websites. More the links a site receives, the less it is ignored by the search engines. It also reduces the Google sandboxing time for new sites. Submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Central also ensures that your site would get crawled and indexed regularly.
iv) Build trust with Search Engines
To build trust with the search engines, you should build your incoming links and content at a regular pace. Keep your content unique and relevant to your products/services. Building links from relevant websites will boost your rankings.
v) Have Web Analytics In Place; Monitor Results
The only way to know whether you are satisfying your goal (and delivering results to your business to make up for the investment!) is to track and monitor your increase in visitors and conversions. As a general rule, if your end result is too design focused, you’ll see fewer leads; If it’s too search focused, you’ll see fewer conversions. With balance in mind, results you will have…your boss will thank you for it!
Building Backlinks through Forum Posting
Backlink Building through Forum Posting / How to Build Backlinks
There is no doubt that quality backlinks from relevant sites are important for SEO success. If a page has good content, other websites will start linking to it in a natural manner; this is the main hypothesis for including backlinks as part of the search engine ranking algorithms. Thus, a page with better content will naturally have more backlinks, and will rank better. However, in practice, one will have go for other ways of gaining relevant quality backlinks, as a part of his SEO strategy.
Getting listed in web directories, article directories, posting in forums, and blogs are some of the acceptable methods of acquiring quality backlinks. Generally, search engines index forums frequently, so posting in forums is a good way to gain quality backlinks with the anchor text of your choice. While submitting articles to directories can be a time consuming process, it does not require much effort and time to post in forums; however, one has to do his homework and take some precautions in order to be successful using forums for gaining backlinks.
You must do some research before joining any forum. You should join forums that are relevant to the sites you want to get backlinks for. You should only choose forums that are popular and active. Backlinks for high authority forums are very valuable. The number of active members and the Google PageRank of the forum can give you a good idea about its popularity. You should keep your signature short and link it to your main website. You should never create posts that sound like a propaganda or which are irrelevant to the post topic. You should pay attention to the TOS of the forum, or you will risk yourself of getting banned and losing all the backlinks you built.
If you post something which is important or useful to other readers, they will visit the site in your signature. Thus, posting in forums can give a significant traffic to your website, apart from building relevant backlinks. Forums are also good for creating your brand or image – Some of the best bloggers, Internet Marketers and SEOs spend a significant time posting on forums to increase their publicity. That is another benefit you may get from forum posting apart from using it for link development strategy.
There is no doubt that quality backlinks from relevant sites are important for SEO success. If a page has good content, other websites will start linking to it in a natural manner; this is the main hypothesis for including backlinks as part of the search engine ranking algorithms. Thus, a page with better content will naturally have more backlinks, and will rank better. However, in practice, one will have go for other ways of gaining relevant quality backlinks, as a part of his SEO strategy.
Getting listed in web directories, article directories, posting in forums, and blogs are some of the acceptable methods of acquiring quality backlinks. Generally, search engines index forums frequently, so posting in forums is a good way to gain quality backlinks with the anchor text of your choice. While submitting articles to directories can be a time consuming process, it does not require much effort and time to post in forums; however, one has to do his homework and take some precautions in order to be successful using forums for gaining backlinks.
You must do some research before joining any forum. You should join forums that are relevant to the sites you want to get backlinks for. You should only choose forums that are popular and active. Backlinks for high authority forums are very valuable. The number of active members and the Google PageRank of the forum can give you a good idea about its popularity. You should keep your signature short and link it to your main website. You should never create posts that sound like a propaganda or which are irrelevant to the post topic. You should pay attention to the TOS of the forum, or you will risk yourself of getting banned and losing all the backlinks you built.
If you post something which is important or useful to other readers, they will visit the site in your signature. Thus, posting in forums can give a significant traffic to your website, apart from building relevant backlinks. Forums are also good for creating your brand or image – Some of the best bloggers, Internet Marketers and SEOs spend a significant time posting on forums to increase their publicity. That is another benefit you may get from forum posting apart from using it for link development strategy.
Changing Title Meta Tag Hurts Google Rankings
Does change of Meta Description affect Google Ranking?
It is no secret that the title meta-tag is one of the most important factors when it comes to on-page search engine optimization. Search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN give quite a bit of importance to the title and description metatags in their algorithms. What many people, however, do not know that the same title tag could actually hurt your rankings, if you try to change it abruptly with a hope to improve your search engine rankings.
If you are currently ranking well with your page title, you should not risk with changing it to improve your rankings. You may often see your current Google rankings go down with such a change. I myself have experienced negative results when I tried to change the title tag for a site which was already ranking well. In fact, Google slammed the site with a -950 penalty.
Your page title is the main entry gate of search engines. Changing the title meta-tag could easily make your Google rankings fluctuate. If you change your title, Google and other search engines will take some time to reflect rankings for new titles. Especially, it would definitely look suspicious in the eyes of Google and other search engines if you have made the changes in the main title and description tags after a long time.
In short, changing the main title of your site, although it’s already ranking well is not a good idea. Instead of changing the page title to try to have improvements on certain keywords, it is better to work on adding content about those keyword phrases on your page, and add links with appropriate anchor text from sites with relevant content. Google always penalized over-optimization. Now it seems as if it frowns normal search engine optimization too. So the best policy is to optimize the website at the time of creation - Do it once, and do it right !
It is no secret that the title meta-tag is one of the most important factors when it comes to on-page search engine optimization. Search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN give quite a bit of importance to the title and description metatags in their algorithms. What many people, however, do not know that the same title tag could actually hurt your rankings, if you try to change it abruptly with a hope to improve your search engine rankings.
If you are currently ranking well with your page title, you should not risk with changing it to improve your rankings. You may often see your current Google rankings go down with such a change. I myself have experienced negative results when I tried to change the title tag for a site which was already ranking well. In fact, Google slammed the site with a -950 penalty.
Your page title is the main entry gate of search engines. Changing the title meta-tag could easily make your Google rankings fluctuate. If you change your title, Google and other search engines will take some time to reflect rankings for new titles. Especially, it would definitely look suspicious in the eyes of Google and other search engines if you have made the changes in the main title and description tags after a long time.
In short, changing the main title of your site, although it’s already ranking well is not a good idea. Instead of changing the page title to try to have improvements on certain keywords, it is better to work on adding content about those keyword phrases on your page, and add links with appropriate anchor text from sites with relevant content. Google always penalized over-optimization. Now it seems as if it frowns normal search engine optimization too. So the best policy is to optimize the website at the time of creation - Do it once, and do it right !
Google Page Rank Updates : Last Google PR Update
It looks like Google is rolling out a PageRank update. I woke up this morning and some of my sites were getting a new PR.
Are you guys seeing the changes too? Let me know how your PR fluctuated.
It looks like Google is getting a regular schedule for the PageRank updated again though. The last one happened at 29/30 October 2009 , so that is more or less one PR update every three/ four months or so. It would be good if they kept that pace constant.
When’s the Next Google PR update?
Let’s see if in the middle of January/ February 2010 we will get another update.
Dates of Previous Pagerank i.e PR Upadates:
Last Confirmed - 30 October 2009
Confirmed - 27/28 May 2009
Confirmed – 1 / 2 April 2009
Confirmed – 30-31 December 2008
Confirmed – 27 September 2008
Confirmed – 26 July 2008
Confirmed – 29 April 2008
Confirmed – 9,10,11,12 January 2008
Confirmed – 26 October 2007
Confirmed – 28 April 2007
Are you guys seeing the changes too? Let me know how your PR fluctuated.
It looks like Google is getting a regular schedule for the PageRank updated again though. The last one happened at 29/30 October 2009 , so that is more or less one PR update every three/ four months or so. It would be good if they kept that pace constant.
When’s the Next Google PR update?
Let’s see if in the middle of January/ February 2010 we will get another update.
Dates of Previous Pagerank i.e PR Upadates:
Last Confirmed - 30 October 2009
Confirmed - 27/28 May 2009
Confirmed – 1 / 2 April 2009
Confirmed – 30-31 December 2008
Confirmed – 27 September 2008
Confirmed – 26 July 2008
Confirmed – 29 April 2008
Confirmed – 9,10,11,12 January 2008
Confirmed – 26 October 2007
Confirmed – 28 April 2007
How to Make Mozilla Firefox Load Faster
How to make a Website load faster in Mozilla Firefox
Firefox may run quickly but it loads slowly; here's how to fix it.
(Note : This tip is are for experienced computer users only.)
You can slash Firefox's slow load time by compressing the DLLs and executables. There are many choices for compression but I suggest you use UPX which is free, efficient and time proven.
1. Download UPX from http://upx.sourceforge.net/#download
2. Unzip upx.exe into your Firefox installation folder which is normally C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox.
3. Make sure Firefox is not running then shell to a command prompt in the Firefox installation directory.
4. Type in the following command in a single line and hit return:
for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\%v"
5. If on some later occasion you want to unpack the files, just type in the command above but add the decompression switch "-d" after "do upx."
That's it; enjoy the difference!
Firefox may run quickly but it loads slowly; here's how to fix it.
(Note : This tip is are for experienced computer users only.)
You can slash Firefox's slow load time by compressing the DLLs and executables. There are many choices for compression but I suggest you use UPX which is free, efficient and time proven.
1. Download UPX from http://upx.sourceforge.net/#download
2. Unzip upx.exe into your Firefox installation folder which is normally C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox.
3. Make sure Firefox is not running then shell to a command prompt in the Firefox installation directory.
4. Type in the following command in a single line and hit return:
for %v in (*.exe *.dll components\*.dll plugins\*.dll) do upx "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\%v"
5. If on some later occasion you want to unpack the files, just type in the command above but add the decompression switch "-d" after "do upx."
That's it; enjoy the difference!
How to Check if Your Website is Penalized by Google
How to Check if a Website is Penalized by Google
There are always a question asked by all webmasters that how to check whether your website is being penalized by Google or not?
Here are few points to let you verify that your website is a victim of Google penalization or not.
Keyword Rankings:
You were top on result for some of your keywords and you see a major and sudden drop in all those keywords. This indicates that your website is probably being penalized by Google because your Google SERP is very down.
Number of Page Index:
Large numbers of pages from your website were there in Google before when check using site: operator and now when you use site: operator, you are seeing very few pages. Most of your pages are no more in Google index. This major de-index also indicate that your website is in trouble.
Page Weight Loss:
If you see that your pages are there in Google when you use site: operator. Next thing to check is the weight of these pages. Even if these pages are there in Google index. They are not appearing in search results or appearing very last in results when you give complete post title plus your blog or website name.
For ex. Secret of Google + GoogleTips, where "Secret of Google" is the keyword you are searching for and "GoogleTips" is the name of your blog or website.
Google Cache:
Google Cache is another way to find if your website is being penalized by Google or not. Normally Google put every website on internet to its cache and this cache updates depend on many factor related to a website. Normally for popular websites like CNN, Washington Post, TechCrunch, you will find the date of last cache is current date or just one day back.
If you check your website with cache: operator in Google and find the date of last cached is too old, it means Google is not showing interest in your website anymore. Most likely it's a penalization.
Complete De-index:
This is the simplest way to check for Google penalization. When your site is completely de-indexed by Google and it's no more in Google either with info: operator or with site: operator.
Number of Backlinks:
Few days back, when you checked your website, Google was showing thousands of backlinks of your website and now link: operator is showing a huge drop in number of backlinks. If this is the case, then it's the possibility of Google penalization.
Index Time:
Index time is another factor by which you can check for penalization. Before penalization, new posts from your website were getting indexed in hours and now they are taking a week to get indexed. This is a clear sign of Google penalization or Google is getting in trouble indexing your website.
Google PageRank:
Google PageRank is a value attached to your website. You may see a drop in your PageRank value if Google has penalized you for any reason. Before few days, if your PageRank value was say 4 and now it’s become 2. It’s very obvious that Google has penalized your website.
Wait for Google Mail:
Google always send mail when it finds something harmful in your website. Google will de-index all those pages which are having problem and will inform you to fix the problem. Once you fix the problem, you can easily come back in Google search index.
Important words used in this article-
link: operator - If used with your website, provide you the number of backlinks to your website.
info: operator - If used with your website, provide you the information of your website in Google.
site: operator - If used with your website, provide you the number of pages indexed in Google search from your website.
There are always a question asked by all webmasters that how to check whether your website is being penalized by Google or not?
Here are few points to let you verify that your website is a victim of Google penalization or not.
Keyword Rankings:
You were top on result for some of your keywords and you see a major and sudden drop in all those keywords. This indicates that your website is probably being penalized by Google because your Google SERP is very down.
Number of Page Index:
Large numbers of pages from your website were there in Google before when check using site: operator and now when you use site: operator, you are seeing very few pages. Most of your pages are no more in Google index. This major de-index also indicate that your website is in trouble.
Page Weight Loss:
If you see that your pages are there in Google when you use site: operator. Next thing to check is the weight of these pages. Even if these pages are there in Google index. They are not appearing in search results or appearing very last in results when you give complete post title plus your blog or website name.
For ex. Secret of Google + GoogleTips, where "Secret of Google" is the keyword you are searching for and "GoogleTips" is the name of your blog or website.
Google Cache:
Google Cache is another way to find if your website is being penalized by Google or not. Normally Google put every website on internet to its cache and this cache updates depend on many factor related to a website. Normally for popular websites like CNN, Washington Post, TechCrunch, you will find the date of last cache is current date or just one day back.
If you check your website with cache: operator in Google and find the date of last cached is too old, it means Google is not showing interest in your website anymore. Most likely it's a penalization.
Complete De-index:
This is the simplest way to check for Google penalization. When your site is completely de-indexed by Google and it's no more in Google either with info: operator or with site: operator.
Number of Backlinks:
Few days back, when you checked your website, Google was showing thousands of backlinks of your website and now link: operator is showing a huge drop in number of backlinks. If this is the case, then it's the possibility of Google penalization.
Index Time:
Index time is another factor by which you can check for penalization. Before penalization, new posts from your website were getting indexed in hours and now they are taking a week to get indexed. This is a clear sign of Google penalization or Google is getting in trouble indexing your website.
Google PageRank:
Google PageRank is a value attached to your website. You may see a drop in your PageRank value if Google has penalized you for any reason. Before few days, if your PageRank value was say 4 and now it’s become 2. It’s very obvious that Google has penalized your website.
Wait for Google Mail:
Google always send mail when it finds something harmful in your website. Google will de-index all those pages which are having problem and will inform you to fix the problem. Once you fix the problem, you can easily come back in Google search index.
Important words used in this article-
link: operator - If used with your website, provide you the number of backlinks to your website.
info: operator - If used with your website, provide you the information of your website in Google.
site: operator - If used with your website, provide you the number of pages indexed in Google search from your website.
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