Monday, July 7, 2008

The content of your website is what really matters!


By Vishesh Srivastava
The basic objective SEO is to implement methods that would increase traffic to your website. To keep this traffic on your website and encourage visitors to make a purchase is often techniques designed Marketing personnel. However, content plays an important role in both these functions. Web pages with limited content, are often ineffective, both for SEO and for marketing as well.

Those who understand basics of SEO know that it had always been helpful to have quality content in the website to impress search engines. Creating quality content has become even more essential than ever. According to GoRank.com the first major difference that jumps out in the Yahoo results is the preference Yahoo's algorithm seems to have for more words on a page. The average number of words on a page for Google was 943 while Yahoo's average words per page in the top 10 was 1305.

Although the writing for the web keeping SEO in mind is little different as it requires to develop excellent marketing content, while blending in the fundamentals of SEO techniques, yet it is similar to general copy writing in the sense that, the more you do it, the better you will get. With practice we get, and experience our skills become stronger.

The content in your web page helps search engines to make proper hypertext matching. The more relevant your site appears to be, to the search requested, the HIGHER your visibility in search results. However its not that simple as it sounds to be. Google's search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), Google's technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. Google also analyzes the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query. - http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html

Now, many websites owners (read webmasters) would complain that they do not "content-based" website and they are therefore at a disadvantage. For example, the webmaster of a bathroom fittings store website may say that he does not have unique content to display except product specifications. Here, I would say that the webmaster is not being creative enough. Except in very rare cases you can add unique content to your site on almost any topic. If you sell bathroom fittings on your website, write pages of advice about how to choose bathroom fittings, care for it, remove stains, make minor repairs, etc. This may sound an unlikely recipe for attracting customers but you would be surprised at how much it can help.

Writing content for SEO is usually time consuming and hard work initially and slow to reap benefits (read profits). Not all website owners can create enough content to be effective. Even if they are capable, its not always possible to find time for it. In this case, it is advised to hire services of a professional content writer or a company. Remember, content-based SEO give you the best and most stable results. Click here to contact a Content Writer for your website.

Monday, May 12, 2008

How to Submit Your Website to DMOZ

By Vishesh Srivastava
With more and more webmasters getting aware of the importance of search engine promotion in order to stay visible online, the process of SEO has certainly become almost an art and science both. If you are a professional SEO, then you must be aware that how important it is to be indexed by DMOZ, or the Open Directory Project or ODP. However, it is not an easy task to impress the editors of DMOZ (it is not a a robot-driven crawler but rather a huge, human edited directory of websites). Most of the search engines including Google gives a significant boost to a website rankings if it is listed in DMOZ directory. Few important points discussed, here, shall take you ahead of others. We suggest you read the followings before you submit or resubmit your website to DMOZ:

Give Proper & Full Contact Address
Giving proper and full contact information on the site is imperative to give your site credibility and your visitors confidence, especially if you sell online or accept payments. Many ODP editors will ignore a site without address and contact info. Therefore, make sure that your full contact information is easily accessible, preferably with the help of a clearly identified contact button or text link from all pages of your website. An e-mail address is certainly not enough.

Add Original and Useful Content to Your Site
If your site does not have enough content of use and some interest, then you better add before submitting your site to DMOZ as the human editors are likly not to give importance to your website. The chances of your submission being rejected will be high if the site has only affiliate links or duplicate content or happens to be a "mirror-site" of other websites.
If you rely on affiliate links to get your website going, it is advised to add lots of relevant content on those pages. Tell DMOZ editors that though there are affiliate links yet your site has something original to offer.

Check Your Website for Spelling Errors or Typos
It is highly recommended to double check your website for spelling errors or typos. Remember, your site will be checked by human editors and its only human to be irritated by some typos or spelling mistakes. Don't ruin great content and presentation of your website by committing silly spelling mistakes.

Select the Proper Category
Unlike search engines, where their crawlers or "spiders" will visit and index your site automatically, the critical part submission process in DMOZ is choosing the right category. Before you submit your website, it is recommended to look where other websites similar to yours have been placed in the directory.

Do not Attempt to SPAM the Directory
Submit your site once and wait for at least two to three months. According to DMOZ rules and regulations, you are only allowed to submit to one category. However, if you are not listed even after this period, analysis your previous submission, identify and correct mistake (if any) and resubmit into most appropriate category again.

Focus on above points, follow DMOZ rules and regulations and you would find your site eventually being included.

Techmagnate can evaluate and submit your website for FREE in DMOZ. Email your website details to info@techmagnate.com with "Submit my website in DMOZ" in the subject line

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Search Engine Optimization Mistakes and Misconceptions

There is so much misconceptions and misinformatiom about search engine optimization that it is essential to discuss about the most common SEO mistakes and how to avoid or correct these mistakes so that your website will benefit in the search engine rankings.

Content should be search engine friendly

Website designers tend to over design sites in order to make it attractive by using lot of graphics, flash and other bells and whistle. Search engines generally over look them. Since Search engines determine what content is of value per web page based on the text used on that page, it is recommended to have sufficient content relevant to that particular web page. A properly optimized web page should contain atleast 200 words of keyword-dense text. It is also very important for content to contain keywords that match the page title.

Consult a Search Engine Expert before design process begins

Even most experienced web designers make this mistake of designing first and optimizing later. It is highly recommended to hire the services of a search engine expert before design process for a website begins. A professional search engine optimization expert may expose flaws in your site's layout and suggest site map in advance. There is no point of spending huge money for a well "designed" web site if nobody ever visits it.

Defining purpose of the website

Most of the websites fail to clearly define thier objectives. What are the main goals of a site? Who will the primary audience be? What actions are desired of the site’s visitors? Answers to these questions must be looked at prior to designing a site so that it does not reflect a poor user experience in the final result.

Avoid splash pages

The index page of a web site is the one that search engines read first and give immense importance. Therfore, quality and relevant content is very important at this page. However, splash pages tell the user to "Enter", and are usually decorated with a flash animation or a large graphic. The only readable content on this type of page is a link that says, “skip intro" and usually "redirect" to the actual home page. Anyone who knows even little bit of search engine behaviour knows that they do not like redirects.

Frames are bad

search Engines find it difficult to index sites which uses frames. Since framed sites use many html files to display one page and this confuses the search engines and therefore web pages that have frames are either not indexed or partially read. Therefore, it is advisable to avoid frames.

Graphics used for text links

To make website look attractive, web designers use graphics for text links. Unfortunately search engines need to find words in plain text to understand what a link is truly pointing to. If using graphics for navigation becomes unavoidable it is recommended to include a set of plain text links somewhere on the web page, usually at the bottom of the page.

Other points one should keep in mind are to do proper keyword research and updates, build sufficient link popularity and not to rely too heavily on paid search advertising.

If you own a web site and wish to optimize it for Search Engines through SEO experts, click here.

Friday, April 4, 2008

How to optimize your website?

Search Engine Optimization has become complex over the years. With more and more webmasters realizing the importance of optimizing, it is becoming more difficult to reach at the top of search engines or maintaining top rankings. Optimizing website for search engine has, certainly, become so intricate, that one often feels lost. Has process of SEO changed? Well, answer is that it had never been 'constant' process. Search engines do evolve over the time and change their algorithms and behavior. Similarly, SEO is reviewed and reformed to match search engines changing methods. Having said all these, there are still steps which are fundamental to website promotion and shall remain relevant even in future, too. Here they are:

A website should have lots of relevant content

The more relevant content you have, the greater is the chance of getting ranked higher. If the quality content related to the subject of your website is present in your website, then the probability of getting linked to by other webmasters also increases considerably. The more they link to you, the greater is the frequency with which the search engines spider your various pages. Lots of content in a website also ensures that more pages of your website gets indexed which in turn helps people find your website through search engines. Also, adding fresh and relevant content to your website not only helps in maintaining top rankings but visitors, too, are tempted to visit the site more often.

The titles and headlines should be compelling

The search engines give importance to text in the title and headlines tags and actually the title of your web page prominently appears as a hyperlink on the search engine result pages. Your page title should truly represent the overall subject or theme of that individual web page. Similarly never use keywords in your title which does not appear in the body copy of the web page.

According to an observation, 8 out of 10 people will read your headlines but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest of the copy. Therefore, the search engines, too, pay close attention to what you say within your header tags.

Anchor texts are important

Anchor text (text between and ) tells the search engines as well as the visitors the nature of the web page being linked to. If your keyword appears with the link, it means you have more information/sources about that keyword.

Use proper ALT text with IMG tags

It is a good practice to provide proper ALT text with IMG tags. It informs the visitor about that image as well as search engines give importance to the image and also the web page.

Keep your website as text-friendly as possible

A text friendly website is more website accessible therefore keeping it as text-friendly as possible helps. As discussed, use proper ALT text with IMG tags. Keep the JavaScript and other bells and whistles to the minimum. Test your website with a text-only browser and see that none of your important messages are left out.

The above fundamental steps can take your website a long way in getting higher positions on the search engine result pages. However, remember that these are only basic steps and there are hundreds of things you can do to search engine optimize your website.

If you own a web site and wish to optimize it for Search Engines, contact SEO experts.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

How to Choose the Right SEO Company

It has been observed that webmasters with good knowledge of SEO fail to get a good ranking for their websites even after good period of time and promotion. The simple reason is that the site needs to be optimized & maintained on a regular basis. Search engine optimization is an ongoing process which requires a professional approach and lot of time. If this is the case with you, it is high time to hire professional SEO services for your website.

However, choosing a right SEO company is not a easy task as there are many search engine optimization companies. I would suggest to consider following points while choosing the SEO company for your website:

  • A good and professional SEO company will always provide an analysis report for your website. They will study your website, check functionality, page design & its content and suggest what all needs to be done.
  • The most important step is keyword analysis. The right SEO company will always discuss with you the nature of your business, areas where you want your product or services to be promoted and also the pages which are to given special emphasis. Once this is understood the SEO company will research and find most relevant keywords so that you are not flooded with unqualified traffic.
  • A professional SEO company may suggest re-indexing and or redesigning of your website. They would take you in confidence before they rewrite or update content of your website.
  • Back links are very important for successful search engine optimization. The SEO company with a professional approach will always rely on quality back links from relevant sites instead of irrelevant quantity of back links.
  • Since search engine optimization is an ongoing process, no ethical SEO company will give you a time limit. They will explain to you that search engine optimization is not time bound and therefore suggest a regular maintenance service. As technology changes constantly, the constant updating is required. No SEO company can guarantee you of no. 1 ranking in Google or any other search engine. Even Google has clearly stated to beware of such companies in their search engine optimization guidelines.
  • A good SEO company will always give the costing after carefully analyzing your website and the work involved.
  • Always avoid SEO companies that indulge in spam advertising to promote your site. Spamming is an unethical practice and generally used by small time SEO companies for their short term gain. Many search engines penalize these sites and remove them from their indexing.

Get familiar with some knowledge on search engine optimization so that you can choose a right search engine company for your website. You may also contact us for effective, ethical and efficient SEO of your website.

Friday, March 14, 2008

Link Exchange for Search Engine Optimization

Link Exchange is a process where two different web sites link to each other. Also, popular as reciprocal links, these kind of links are important to get better rankings and visibility in the search engines. Therefore, it is a linking process where a site exchanges links with a high ranking site (typically with something in common, such as both being real estate sites) as a way to improve visibility in the search engines and increase page rank. It is also essential to understand Inbound and Outbound links. Inbound links means other web sites are pointing to your web site. Outbound means your web site is pointing to others. Link exchange.

Reciprocal links or link exchange is considered and is the most effective way to increase traffic to your site. Some of the most important benifits of Link Exchange are:

- is the best way to achieve a first-page search engine listing.
- increased link popularity means increased search engine ranking.
- traffic from your reciprocal links on other sites.
- high-value links translate to market share and more profits.
- swap links and build partnership with other webmasters.

Professional link exchange vendors can increase a company's PageRank and also enhance the number of targeted visitors. Poor link exchanges ("link farms" where a company promises to link your site to thousands of others) can actually harm the web site positioning.

The exchanging links or link building process is a very time consuming and tiring job. Since you would rather concentrate on you core business, the smart decision would be to outsource the link-building activity to a professional Search Engine Optimization company like Techmagnate. If you own a web site and wish to benefit from link exchange click here.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Importance of Directory Submissions

By Vishesh Srivastava

To increase visibility online is the objective of every search engine promotion campagin and Internet marketing strategy. Driving traffic to your website and getting noticed by search engines takes a lot of time and effort. Submitting your link to directories is an excellent way to attract search engines and improve search engine rankings by building your web site's link popularity.

A directory is a web site that contains a categorized listing of links from around the web. There are many directories ranging from the general to the specific and each with their own link submission processes but they all aid surfers to locate the most relevant and informative links for a particular category. For example a category may be called 'Gifts' and in this category there may be list of links about gifts according to occasion and gifts according to the recipient. Directories consist of a collection of categories into which links are seperated. The categories are. often, sub-categoried to make the division of links more specific. Therfore, one should prepare keyphrase-rich text that accurately describes your web site. also, choose the most appropriate category for your web site before submitting to avoid rejection.

Online directories help a surfer to find exactly what he is looking for. This is achieved by providing links to various sites categorized under relevant topics. Some directories even feed their databases to search engines and other directories. ‘Links’ play a major role in determining your ranking position on the most of the search engines. (Much earlier, directories were the primary source for web users to find websites on different topics. Though, search engines have taken over but directories have not lost their importance yet) Obtaining inbound links or back links in quantity and quality can influence your search engine rank immensely and the simple way to obtain one way back links is to submit your link to directories. Since, search engines depends on directories in judging a website’s popularity and relevance to some extent and therefore “directory submission” is a website optimization strategy that no webmaster should ignore. The quality of the directory and the number of back links your website have actually help search engines to determine your relevance and rank your website.

Every directory has its own process. Some directories require a fee but most do not. A lot of directories offer a mixture between free and paid listing. Generally, paid submissions get included faster while free submissions can take anywhere from a week to several months to add your link, and also there is no guarantee that the link will be added.

Submitting to directories requires a little effort and a lot of patience. They are an excellent source of inbound, one-way links, which are the most powerful types of links to help build link popularity. If you own a website and wish to submit them to some of the most powerful and effective directories through a professional company, click here.

If you are an SEO professional or a Search Engine Optimization Company or any way related to Internet or computer business, then click here to submit your website in Techmagnate Directory.