Why Do You Need SEO?

Wali — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:20:07 +0000

The need for the SEO is the most important thing for your website or blog, but it has to be done accurately to get the desired results. Have you ever imagined getting on the first page of main search engines? If you have an established business from years and you are loosing the sales against your competitor, it might be due to the way your competitor is doing the SEO and targeting the niche for different products.

The best SEO for your business is the use of good keywords and using the fresh and keyword rich content on website. SEO does not mean only the link building, if you focus on only few things you can achieve the first page rankings without generating too much back links. The main key to SEO is simplicity with good thinking, if you properly use your keyword for your each page would help you rank good in SERP. Don’t ignore the other pages of your website if you make separate title tags, descriptions; it will help you more in getting the desired results.

Everyone says that lots of quality back links will help you in good rankings; I would suggest good content without any back links can help you rank No.1 in Google or any other search engines. I have created several blogs on different niches, which have good competition, but they are ranking good just because of unique and fresh content.

When people say content is king I would not disagree with this statement, you can make a good content in a few hours by doing research on internet. You don’t need to hire the expensive writers to do the job for you. If you do research for your niche only for one hour, it will help you find the good information that will be enough to write the content of nearly 500 words.

Search Engine Optimization Mania

Every day so many people are getting into this field and I always see most of the people say they are expert in SEO by doing the SEO only for few months. The basic essence of SEO is simplicity and quality, back links can be acquired at any stage for your website, but the fresh content is hard to create time to time. Now the SEO mania is increasing day by day you need to stay ahead of the competition. When I say you don’t need to take some extra steps, if you stick to the simple steps and keep doing and generating the good content you will get the desired results within few months without any aggressive SEO. If you need an SEO on already established website, I would suggest to do the analysis of each page rather than hiring an SEO for link building.

Some of the people might not agree with my views, but it is my personal experience from years. What I see that most of the SEO companies are just selling the attractive packages to get the customers. It does not mean that you ignore SEO, but just need to focus on small fish rather than catching a Crocodile.

Best Way to Start Your SEO Campaign

Wali — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 19:39:21 +0000

I receive so many questions about how to start an SEO campaign? Where to start my SEO campaign? Some of the people already own a website and they wanted to start SEO campaign to get the desired results for their web business. You might get a lot of suggestions hire an SEO company or a freelancer to start. And if you have some knowledge about SEO and you want to do it yourself, just keep the simple points in your mind. Even you do not have to hire expensive SEO companies to do optimization on your websites, but if you have a good budget hire a good SEO.

Keep it Simple KISS SEO

When you start doing optimization do not go for big things, if you start with simple tasks first it would be very helpful. In other words, use the KISS formula to keep everything simple, some of the companies create some aggressive campaigns or some campaign which require extra; they are actually trying to get a customer.

Research Your Keywords

First of all research your keywords, what is your niche? If you have purchased the domain or you have a website already, look for your niche and keywords. Use some tools to research the keywords Google AdWords tools is best and you can also use Google Trends to see the search popularity. If you are purchasing a domain, go for keyword rich domain after defining your keywords.

Set 301 Permanent Redirect

If you are moving to a new domain set a 301 permanent redirect on your old domain, it will help you to keep the rankings. If you use 301 permanent redirect it is Google friendly and start link building on new domain. You can also set a 301 redirect on some of the keyword rich domains as well to get the advantage.

Set the Title and Description

If you have decided the keywords and domain name for your website, it is the time to set them properly on your website. The title of your website is the first thing that crawler read and it is the most important thing to rank good if you use keywords wisely. If you set up your home page title with your keywords it will help you rank good. For example, you can use “Primary Keyword – Your Company Name,” it will be a good combination.

The second most important part is the description of your website, Google show the description as a snippet in search results. Using a unique Meta description for each page can help you rank better in search engines. If you use the same keyword which was used in title can help you rank good.

Use Unique and Fresh Content

Search engines love unique and fresh content, if you want to rank high always use good content for your website. Your home page should have the relevant content and it should be 500 words long. If your content is too short, it might not be attractive do not use too long or too short content on each page.

Start Getting Good Back Links

When you start your link building campaign try to build links on good websites with high page rank. If you get a link back from a high pr page it will be good, but make sure all links are do follow. Use your keywords wisely in anchor text while doing link building, so that you get rankings with those keywords.

Set Robots.txt File

It is not necessary to have robots.txt file, but if you set up a robots.txt file it will help the old crawlers to search your website. Check for any errors in the file before you upload it your server; it will help you get more crawlers on your website.

Monitor Website and Rankings

After setting up all the things, install Google Analytics or any other tracking tool to monitor your website statistics and rankings. You can focus on things where you are getting most of your traffic. If you do everything right you will get the good rankings in a few months.

These tips will surely help you in starting your own SEO campaign if you do all the things step-by-step and keeping in mind the KISS formula, you will get good rankings. You do not need to go ahead on something else if you follow proper guidelines.

Targeting The Long Tail Keywords

Wali — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:23:05 +0000

The idea of getting the keywords rank higher in search engines came into everyone minds. Number of people demand that they want their website to be on no one page of Google. However, they ask for very competitive keywords which are very high to rank and sometimes it takes a lot of time and aggressive SEO to do so. Some of the people who do not know about SEO usually want their website keywords very short and easy one to rank. The most of the new websites are difficult to rank with short keywords as compare to long ones. What is the short keyword? If you want to rank the keyword “SEO” to be top in the search engines; it might be very difficult. There are so many websites which are already on top and they have done good optimization for that particular keyword. If you are looking for some SEO company or services, you might type “SEO Services” this is also a short keyword. If you look for “Cheap SEO Services” or “Affordable SEO Services” that is the long keyword with less competition and focusing on niche market of SEO. There is a lot of difference in the short and long tail keywords; usually single word keyword is hard to rank in search engines because if you type a single word in search engines it show’s definitions and information about that particular phrase or keyword.

Long tail keywords have less competition as people don’t consider it well enough to rank, but it is lot easier to target and always bring in good traffic. If we take an example of the keyword “Advertising services” it might be very specific looking, but if we compare it with “professional advertising services USA” it is giving more information and more specific. There might be big competition with this long tail keyword, but it is lot easier to target rather than short tailed keywords. Most of the people target short keywords and ignore the potential of long tail keywords. If you define a particular niche with long tail keyword it is much easier to target and it will bring more traffic as your website will show up on first page of search engines. If you use keyword suggestion tool to get your keywords try using the long tail keywords. And if you are checking the monthly search for the long tailed keyword it might be very low, but you can get high ranking with that particular keyword.

I have a question, how many times do you type short generic keywords in search engines while searching? I never use one word or two words keywords in search engines. The other day I was looking for wordpress themes, I can just type in “wordpress themes” in Google to see the results, but I was more specific like “premium adsense wordpress themes” there is a lot of difference in both of the keywords. If you consider global searches, there are more number of searches with long tailed keywords as compare to short keywords. If you target a more specific niche and using all the keyword tools for generating keyword ideas, it will surely help you more. The best keyword suggestion tool is Google AdWords tool that is free and you can also use Google trends to check in which region there are more searches with that keyword. So which keyword are you going to target for your website?

Link Wheel is it Worth Trying?

Wali — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 17:15:40 +0000

These days many people are looking for more and more new methods to do SEO and there are so many discussions about Link Wheels as well. Mostly people are interested in creating a link wheel or want to hire an SEO to create a link wheel for them. I have made an article few months back how to create link wheel. There is one more thing which need yet to be clarified, is it worth trying? If you consider the true concept of link wheel and if you make it the original way, then it is worth trying. If you are just making to place your links on the web 2.0 properties then you should avoid link wheel. And there is one more debate that is link wheel white hat or black hat. If you do link wheel in suspicious way like copy pasting the same content on each of the web 2.0 properties used for link wheeling, it makes search engine bots alert. As I said if you consider the true concept, then it is good otherwise you might end up in loosing the rankings. Most of the SEO providers what I’ve seen create link wheels with same content and building links to the original website that is not good. If you don’t know how to deal with link wheels do not enter into this continue with other link building techniques that are useful.

If you ask me about link wheels I would never suggest that you go for a link wheel, but there are some clients which ask for link wheels because they have heard it boosts search engine rankings. Mostly SEO service providing companies has made it so much famous that people think it is worth trying. In real they are finding new ways to attract customers to hire them for their services. I regularly update myself with SEO and I have subscribed to Grey Wolf Blog, Matt Cutts Blog; they never mentioned link wheels. If you are a webmaster just follow the proper guidelines given to you by Google and other search engines to build links. If you don’t know about SEO and you always hire someone for the services then do not get attracted by these salesy kinds of SEO techniques. Usually SEO companies always make something new which attracts the webmasters.

If you are very much attracted by link wheel I would suggest always look for that if you are creating a link wheel or hired the services, are they making original unique content on each of the web 2.0 properties. When we create a new page or blog on these web 2.0 properties they always have 0 PR, as you know links from high PR counts much more than low PR. Always make sure after creating a link wheel do regular SEO of those pages to gain some page rank. Personally I would suggest do not go for a link wheel because it is just a waste of time and it is also not White Hat.

Value of EDU GOV and Authority Sites Links

Wali — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 19:48:03 +0000

This has been a big issue with so many webmasters; they always demand to get links from EDU or GOV websites. I have seen so many clients arguing over that try to build links from those websites which are from gov or edu. I have lost one job for that reason as well, client was asking for links from gov and edu websites I have told him that it does not matter whether the links are from edu or gov; however, he thought I am not good in SEO and he just finished the project. The thing which matters when you are placing a link is website worth and page rank only. Google treats all the links the same way, whether they are from gov edu twitter or facebook. The thing which matter is repute of the website, you might have seen few results when checking backlinks for a website they showed on first page. I have some back links from reputable websites like v7n forums and blog catalog; they are shown on Google first page when you do a back link check. Now there is one thing that it might be useful to build on gov edu websites because their page rank is usually high. There is another issue which has been resolved now that creating links from wordpress, squidoo and other web 2.0 properties carries more weight. The only thing, which is going to be considered, is page rank of the website, which will help you rank better. Thanks to Matt Cutts latest video which has cleared this thing, now you can show anyone that only reputes of the website matters in good rankings in search results. There are so many people thinking about getting links from twitter and facebook, the big issue with facebook is that most of the groups and profiles are hidden and Google cannot grab the information from them. You won’t get any back link from them, Google do index links from facebook which are placed on those pages or groups which allows search engines and which are public. Now you don’t need to worry about getting links from authority sites, if you plan a good SEO campaign to get back links from high page rank and old websites, it will help you rank high in search engines rather than specific links.

Twitter SEO Tips – Twitter Era

Wali — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 19:51:43 +0000

If we call 2009 Twitter year then it is not wrong, many companies and even Google has start considering twitter as next big thing. However, twitter is currently a big thing to focus on. Many people have benefited from twitter, now they don’t have to rely on search engines for traffic and getting famous. They don’t need to wait for long procedure of SEO and hiring services of SEO company. Google has offered real time search and they will be indexing tweets as well. Google is focusing on real time search results; they are focusing on latest news and updates. For SEO service providers it is a tough task how to tackle all these changes. I would say it is not so difficult if you know how to handle a twitter account. There are so many people who are tired of twitter because that just didn’t work for them or maybe they don’t know how to use it properly. I have gathered few SEO tips for twitter that will surely help out SEO services providers.

1. Selecting a Account Name

There are many people when they come to know about twitter they make an account and choose a name without thinking and start tweeting sharing links. In the end they say it didn’t work out well. When you are making twitter account choose your name wisely, it should reflect what brand you are dealing. It can be your website or brand name to promote or your own name, you can use Google adwords for checking the monthly volume of famous keyword you are going to use.

2. Choose an Impressive Bio

There is an option to add a bio to twitter account; it is short information about you or your brand name or company. Write comprehensively with 160 characters limit and add details in your bio because it is get indexed in Google

3. Put Your URL

Always put your URL in the profile option, Google index that URL. When you are promoting your company or brand put the same brand, company or your own blog.

4. Use Keyword rich Tweets

When it comes to tweeting remember that always share good information and enter the targeted keywords in tweets. Your first few letters in tweets matter a lot because they going to be indexed in Google, So use them wisely.

5. Who You Follow Matters

Now there is a common perception that the number of followers you have the more exposure you going to get. It does not matter how many people are following you, but it does matter who you follow. There are lots of people who going to follow you when you follow them and they are using auto tweeting spamming software’s. Always follow those people who are of common interest, like I am following Matt Cutts, Gray Wolf etc. I have to look for SEO news and latest updates. Look for quality followers rather than spammy and salesy looking followers.

6. Use Twitter Functions Properly

When you start tweeting make yourself comfortable with twitter, get to know about all the commands. The proper use of # and RT for re-tweeting, you can add keywords by using the # sign. Get to know about the latest news and updates, so when you tweet about them everyone look at it.

These are the few twitter seo tips, I will add up more later on, Happy Tweeting.

Dealing with Personalized Search Results

Wali — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 07:44:32 +0000

Recently Google has implemented the policy that they will show the search results based on your previous search history. The page you have visited in past will show up on first page. In terms of SEO this thing is little disturbing, because it is not going to show you the exact results. Google is just showing personalized search results that’s what they call it. Now how to deal to deal with Google personalized search results, mostly people don’t know because now Google has turned it on by default. You can make this feature off simply to view the accurate results of your keywords in Google.

Now you can see when you search for some specific keyword in Google, it shows different results and at the top right there is an option Web History. Click on that option underlined by red mark. Currently the personalized results are turned on and Google is showing the results based on your previous search history.

Now you can see there is an option Disable customization based on search activity. Click on it to turn off the personalized search results. Go back to Google and search again, you will see now there are different results. You can also turn it off without logging into your account. If you still did not show actual results, try to clear your cache and cookies. This will help in getting the exact results and rankings in search engines. Google stores a cookie in your browser to get these customized results; you can disable this option to get SEO advantage. If you haven’t turned this option off, then your SEO campaign might not be accurate. Keep this SEO tip to get better search results and view the exact rankings.

How to Optimize Blog or Website

Wali — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 09:54:10 +0000

The need for optimization of blog or website is increasing day by day, as the competition increasing search engines prefer those website which are optimized. It does not mean only search engine optimization, with Google new policy of ranking a website with loading time matters in search engines. Optimizing a website or blog means you are polishing your website to make it look attractive to visitors and search engines.

Use only White Hat SEO

It is mentioned so many times by lot of people that use white hat SEO, sometimes people does not know they are doing White Hat SEO or not. If you hire or start doing SEO, make sure you follow the Google guidelines or your website/blog gets penalized by Google. There are so many newbie’s and web developers who do not know what exactly white hat SEO is, before you plan to optimize your website make sure you have made list of things to do and ask the experts in forums. When I say experts it does not mean every other person in a forum, you will get lot of people answering your questions. The first step starts from deign of your website, properly used HTML and CSS to optimize your website is very helpful. Then look for the niche you are serving, choose proper keywords in title and description meta tags and do not make them more than 66 characters long. And do not use all keywords in title, use just primary and secondary keywords. If you are planning to hire the SEO Services always interview and ask many questions related to white hat SEO.

Optimize Website to Load Faster

Recently Google has implemented that they will give weightage to those websites and blogs which loads faster. They want to make browsing as fast as like turning the pages of magazine. If your website is taking up to 5 seconds then it does not make any affect but it takes to long to load than Google will think about it. People do not like to wait for the website or blog to load up slowly, they prefer fast loading websites. If you are looking for regular visitors and more traffic try to optimize your website to load up fast. There are number of reasons that makes your website slow, avoid using the GIF, PNG images. If you use JPG images and resize them according to the website, it will load up faster rather than a big sized image. Use of images on Blog makes your blog attractive and it is necessary to use images, but always use small images. Always specify the dimensions (height and width) of images. Another reason that makes a website slow is use of java script in websites; these days’ people use java scripts to place advertisements from different networks. When browser sent a request to visit your website it also makes a request to third party website which is providing java script. It makes the website or blog slower, try to compress java script and avoid using java script codes and files again and again codes and files. I have made few changes in blog to speed up the blog by removing flash and java scripts files, now the load time is improved.

Future of SEO – What Search Engines Demand?

Wali — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:31:04 +0000

There are so many questions about future of SEO? What will happen when Google changes all its policies? So many bloggers are writing that SEO has no future and it is useless to do SEO in future as search engines are changing there policies. Lot of people saying Bing don’t consider SEO techniques. I would say mostly people are just guessing and trying to make there blogs famous by creating wrong guesses. If you can see Bing does offer webmaster tools which are useful, and you can notice those websites are on No.1 position which are doing SEO the right way. Now coming to Google, people are saying Google has changes there policies. Google always look for unique and quality content, if you do SEO the right way you will get the credit from Google. And as far as future of SEO is concerned in Google; they are providing 20 pages pdf guide for SEO. If there is no importance why would they offer SEO guide? I was reading on very famous blog that SEO has no future and in the end writer said I am not SEO expert I am just telling my views, How would you believe on that? There are so many people who are just creating rumors to get famous. I have seen a video from Matt Cutts (Google Employee) in which he has answered what is the future of SEO in 5 years? If you consider Google, Bing and Yahoo they look for quality content. If your website or blog has quality content you will get the benefit from search engines.

I would suggest avoid the rumors from the people just keep doing the White hat methods which are defined by Google and followed by famous SEO providers. When there will be new update Google, Bing and Yahoo will announce and we will all know through different channels. There will be something relating to brand that Google will focus, keep your self updated with Google blog and avoid the self promotion news from different people.

Value of Forum Signatures in Google

Wali — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 07:17:22 +0000

Most of the people think that forums are useless and building links from them does not affect rankings. Forums signature can be useful only if they are from PR page, I have noticed Google or any other search engine gives very less value to signatures. Have you ever tried to check your back links? You will notice that none of forum signature will be showed up in results. However, forum signatures do counted as back links but only useful when thread gets older and it gets some PR. I have seen that if you place your link in post not in signature, search engines will count as good back link. Sometimes No Follow links are showed in Google results as a back link when I placed the link in posts. Recently I was assigned to do 1000 forum posting on high PR forums. I have learned many things from that project; we can target the keywords through forum signatures. My client was asking to place the link on those pages which have gone through Google last PR update and it worked out pretty well. When I made posts on those pages they already have some PR3 to 4, some of the pages have low PR but it is also useful. When I completed the 500 forums postings with signature links I have seen the keyword I was targeting comes up in Google search on first page after 1 month.

There is one thing you should keep in mind never use same anchor text on too many forums, like if you have used the anchor text in 200 forums then change it for other forums because it might look like auto postings or submissions. Forums signatures are good for traffic as well; if you have something useful in your anchor text people will visit your website. Forums signatures are counted as only 1 back link, if you have made 500 posts in forum and you are a regular member, it does not mean you have 500 back links only 1 link will be counted as back link. Usually forums are good for traffic rather than back links, there is also one more thing only do follow forums will give you benefit of back link. If you have joined no follow forums then there is no value of signatures other than traffic you get from your signatures.