What is SEO?
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is defined as the method of finding out the best keywords in order to optimize a web site along with other off-page work to ensure that web site attains a higher rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs) for your keywords.
All lot of calculations and algorithms are used by the search engines to ensure top rankings. Professional optimizers and webmasters employ various techniques backed by sound knowledge and observation to make a website more visible and arouse interest in visitors. SEO increases traffic to your website which can translate into online sales.
How do I find out the best keywords to target?
To ensure that you have used the "best" keyword depends on how much traffic it will generate, the profitability of that keyword and the difficulty of achieving a high ranking using your keywords. To determine how much traffic a keyword will generate on ecan employ a Keyword Suggestion Tool which combines the two most popular ways of judging popularity, Wordtracker and Overture. Moreover the tool also provides suggestions for related keywords and lists their traffic.
An ideal keyword is one that has a lot of searches but little SEO competition and easy to rank. The Keyword Difficulty Tool created by Rand Fishkin which will help one determine the amount of SEO work necessary to balance against the number of searches.
To evaluate the profitability of a keyword is to run an AdWords account. The amount of data you receive by starting a campaign can be very useful in establishing the conversion rate. The "perfect" keyword can be found by using a combination of these factors.
What are the most important things for on-page optimization?
On-page optimization is the part of SEO where you work on the pages itself as opposed to off-page optimization and keyword analysis.
On-page optimization comprises the following elements.
- Content
To have a successful web site it is imperative to add more good unique content on a regular basis. Moreover ensure that you have targeted keywords subtly included in the content on your web pages. It is better to write first and once you finish you can look over the text and add the keywords where they fit in. Always keep in mind that you are writing for visitors and not for search engines.
Also make sure that the content is original, duplicity can get web pages and even whole domains erased from the index.
- Weight factors
Placing your targetted keyword in places such as the title, H1 and H2, Strong tags and Emphasis tags you highlight those words making them relevant for search engines.
However overdoing it can cause you the over-optimization penalty which means that the search engines have figured that you tried to cheat them and as a result push you down the rankings.
- Navigation structure
Ensure that search engine spiders can follow the internal links on your site. If you have a site based on a database it is recommended that you use mod_rewrite to get the best benefit.
If you have lot of pages on your site and they are buried down in the navigation tree of 3 or more clicks away than it is advisable to use a sitemap and adding a link to it from each page of your site. A sitemap makes is easy for search engines to find all your pages and it can also be a great resource for your visitors to find a specific page quickly.
Having a link, "home", on each web page back to your home page is also useful for your visitors giving them more power to the home page and search engine rankings.
How is the best way to write titles?
The title is most ceratinly the single most important place to put your keyword.
Include the word in the beginning of the title and in the end experimenting with different forms as well.
Incase you want to brand your company name you must keep that name in the end.
Follow these steps but also make it look natural and appealing for visitors. Remember that this is what is most visible in the SERPs for the visitor.
What is the best way to write URL’s?
To wite URL’s for Google it has been declared by two of their staffs in the SEO department that the dashes (-) are better than underscores (_) when writing the URLs.
What is Pagerank and how does it work?
Search engines give weight to web pages based on how many other sites are linking to them.
PageRank is a system implemented by Google that measures a web page's significance only taking into account the links and links related factors. The fundamentals are that each web page is giving votes to the links on that page and the power of the vote is established by the number of links pointing to the page that gives the vote.
The votes are divided among the links on the page so the lesser number of links, the more share of the vote is given to each link. Internal links are given a higher share than external.
The scale is between 0-10 but in fact it has many decimals which we cannot see.
What is a Link Farm?
Link farm is referred to those website’s which have no real content, service, or purpose, instead just non-related reciprocal links to other places. By and large linkfarms are built in order to increase search engine rankings and gain profit. Link farms are also generally scattered with advertisements from affiliate programs the site owner has partnered with.
How do I create a Sitemap?
A sitemap provides links to all your pages. In case of numerous topics it is advisable to limit the number of links to under 100 per page by dividing sitemaps according to topics or alphabetically.
For content that is dynamically driven from a database it is recommended that you also create your sitemap from the same data.
How can we attract GoogleBot?
GoogleBot should find your page through links from other pages which are already indexed by Google. To ensure that GoogleBot visits your site repeatedly you should add fresh content frequently – by means of a blog.
What is Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a term used to define a free web-stats solution which reports all regular site stats integrating them directly with Google AdWords also providing webmasters an insight into the ROI of their pay-per-click ads. Google defines it as a solution which “tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site."
This technique allows Google access to your real web stats which will be far more accurate than those provided by Alexa. Moreover, Google's privacy statement says: "We may also use personal information for auditing, research and analysis to operate and improve Google technologies and services. As a result Google will use these statistics to help determine its rankings.
What are “Supplemental Results”in Google
Google's auxiliary index contains supplemental sites. There are fewer restrictions on sites that Google crawls for this supplemental index than on sites that are crawled for Google’s main index. For instance the number of parameters in a URL might leave out a site from being crawled and included in our main index; however, it could still be crawled and added to Google’s supplemental index.
The index in which a site is included is completely automated and allows no space for selecting or altering the index in which your site appears. Moreover, the index in which your site is included will not affect its PageRank.
What is TrustRank?
TrustRank is intended to assist in identifying pages and sites that are liable to be spammed or those that are likely to be reputable. The algorithm first selects a small seed set of pages which will be manually assessed by humans. In order to select the seed sites, they employ a form of Inverse PageRank, selecting sites that link out to many sites. Amongst those, many sites are removed that were not listed in major directories. The final set was condensed to include only selected sites with a strong authority such as a governmental or educational institution or company that managed the contents of the site. Once the seed set is determined each seed page is examined and rated as either spam or reputable. The algorithm can now take this reviewed set of seed pages and rate other pages based on their connectivity with the trusted seed pages.
The TrustRank method was established assuming that spam pages were designed to mislead search engines, rather than provide useful information. The farther away a page is from a trusted page (via link structure), it most likely will not trusted even if it is two or three steps away. The further the algorithm moves from the good seed pages trust is reduced. Various formulas are used to decide the amount of trust dampening or splitting to be assigned to each new page. Employing these formulas, some portion of the trust level of a page is passed along to other pages to which it links.
TrustRank may be used alone to filter the index, or in combination with PageRank to decide search engine rankings.
What is the sandbox?
The sandbox was designed to filter approximately 99% of all new sites it functions to push down new web sites in the SERPs.
In 2004 Google's implemented this as a solution to stop new spam sites that were created to rank high in the SERPs. However it took some time before the Google spiders could detect such as a site and ban or penalize it and by that time the creator probably made other new ones. In Google it is usually seen that new sites can rank unusually high in the Google SERPs for some weeks before the sandbox filter gets activated.
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