SEO For Bing and Google

November 18, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment 

Bing is the latest search engine platform by Microsoft. MSN or LIVE is history. Today, Bing has gained quite a number of new followers when compared its predecessors. If you log on to Bing, you can see that it is trying to differentiate itself from Google. It claims to be the first decision engine as compared to others.

I tried searching on Bing and found that it delivers either highly relevant results or something less. I believe Microsoft has really spent the resource and effort on their search algorithms. If they want to be in the search business, they must start delivering relevant results.

So for us search engine optimizers, what lies in the future when it comes to SEO for Bing and Google? In early June, Microsoft releases a statement stating that SEO is still SEO and Bing does not want to change that. Although the design of the engine is very different from others, I believe the foundation of ranking high on Bing is pretty much the same as what we used to know. SEO is about making your pages as relevant to what the searchers are looking for. So if we bear this in mind, we can definitely score well on Bing.

The team from Bing also emphasizes that good content and website design is the key to rank well on Bing. This means that what applies to Google also applies to Bing too. Recently, Microsoft announces that they have merged with Yahoo and from 2010 onward, Yahoo search will be powered by Bing. So instead of optimizing for 3 different engines, we are now focusing on Google and Bing + Yahoo. After I did a check on some of my rankings on Yahoo, they are ranking well on Bing too. This is definitely good news to us.

Although the Bing team does not reveal much other than empathizing on content and website design, I believe link building still plays a very important role when it comes to Bing SEO. So no matter what, do continue to build links consistently.

It is still early to say that Bing will become a strong number 2 in the search engine world. They need to produce relevant search results in order to avoid turning off searchers. Although Bing has captured a substantial number of traffic since its launch, the rest remains to be seen. So now is the time to find out more about Bing optimization and prepare your website for the future.

Learn how to generate income from home using Bing Click Here For More Info More and more people are cashing on Bing very fast so Cash in on Bing

These 10 SEO Tactics Bring Me Over 2000 Visitors Daily

November 5, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment 

Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins

No matter how hard some people try to mystify SEO, it is not as complicated as many would lead you to believe. Despite all the techno jargon that many in the field will throw at you: SERPs, SEM, PageRank, Keyword Density, Vertical Search, Algorithms… SEO is really simple to do if you understand some basic concepts and follow some easy steps.

Search Engine Optimization is getting your content listed in all the top positions in Google, Yahoo and MSN for your targeted keywords. When someone does a keyword search in a search engine for your particular subject or niche – you want your site or content to be at the top of the list.

Here are 10 SEO tactics that have worked and are working for me at this moment in time.

1. Quality Content is and always will be your number one factor for getting high rankings and keeping them. You must understand search engines are simply businesses who supply a product like any other company. That product is information. They must offer quality results to anyone using their service to solve a problem, answer a question or to buy a product. The more relevant, the more targeted the search solution they return, the higher the overall quality of their product and the more popular their search engine will become. Providing quality content is vital for SEO success.

2. Keywords are your number one tools for achieving high rankings. You must understand keywords and how they work on the web. You must know how many searches are made each day for your chosen keywords. Sites like Wordtracker and Seobook will give you a rudimentary number of searches. Design your pages around your targeted keywords and don’t forget to do some deep-linking to these pages on your site. Find and build backlinks to these interior keyword pages and not just to your home page or domain URL. Picking keywords with medium to low competition has worked out well for me. So too has using the more targeted and higher converting “long-tail” keywords been very beneficial for me.

3. Onpage Factors and site design will play a major role in the spidering and indexing of your site/content. Make sure all your pages are SEO friendly, made sure all your pages can be reached from your homepage and no pages should be no more than three levels away from it – keeping a sitemap listing all your major pages makes the search engines happy. Make sure you have all your meta tags such as title, description, keywords… are all optimized. (Title = around 65 characters, Description = around 160 characters) Remember, your title and description should not only be keyword targeted but these are the first contact/impression anyone will see of your site – make sure you use them to draw and entice interested visitors to your site and content. Also make sure your title and URL are keyword matched for maximum effect. Having your major keyword in your Domain Name also helps, using a pike | to separate different elements of your title has helped my rankings, so too does having your keyword in the first and last 25 words on your pages.

4. Google will send you the most qualified traffic so concentrate the majority of your SEO efforts on Google. Don’t ignore Yahoo! or MSN but Google is king of search so give it the respect it deserves. With its new browser, Google’s influence will only grow stronger so you must optimize your pages for Google. Use Google’s Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics to fine-tune your pages/content for Google. I also use Google Alerts to keep up on my niche keywords and for comment link-building on the newly created pages Google is indexing.

5. Link Building is still the most effective way to boost your search rankings. Make sure you get backlinks from relevant sites related to your niche market and make sure the ‘anchor text’ is related to your keywords but don’t ignore the text and overall quality of the content linking to you. The anchor text is the underlined/clickable portion of a link. Don’t forget linking is a two-way street, make sure you link out to high quality, high ranked relevant sites in your niche.

6. Article Marketing is a well established method of getting quality backlinks and it still works. Writing short 500 – 700 word informative helpful articles with your backlinks in the resource box is still very effective for getting targeted traffic and backlinks. Longer articles have also worked for me and I use an extensive network of distribution including SubmitYourArticle, Isnare, Thephantomwriters… plus other major online sites. Don’t forget the whole element of blogging and RSS feeds in your article distribution. And always remember you’re also using these articles to pre-sale your content or products. Don’t forget to leverage sites like Squidoo, Hubpages… to increase your rankings and traffic.

7. Onsite Traffic Hubs have worked extremely well for me. These traffic hubs are whole sections of your site devoted to one sub-division of your major theme. For example, if you have a site on Gifts, then wedding gifts could be a separate section. This would be fully fleshed out with extensive pages covering everything dealing with wedding gifts – a self-contained keyword rich portion of your site on wedding gifts. Works similar as a sub-domain but I prefer using a directory to divide it up, such as yourdomain/wedding_gifts. (Most experts suggest always using a hyphen in your urls but underscores have worked fine for me.) Search engines love these keyword/content rich hubs but keep in mind you’re creating content to first satisfy your visitors.

8. WordPress blog software is extremely effective for SEO purposes. WordPress software is easy to install on your site even if you have no experience with installing server-side scripts. Besides search engines love these highly SEO friendly blogs with their well structured content and keyword tagging. I have at least one of these on all my sites to draw in the search engines and get my content indexed and ranked. I also use Blogger (owned by Google), Bloglines and other free blogs to help distribute my content.

9. Social Bookmark/Media Sites are becoming very important on the web. These include a whole range of social sites like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter… media news sites like Digg, SlashDot, Technorati… you must get your content into this whole mix if you want to take full SEO advantage of Web 2.0 sites. You should be joining these sites and using them. It’s time consuming but it will keep you in the swing of things. One simple thing you must do is to put social bookmark buttons on all your pages so that your visitors can easily bookmark your content for you. You can use a WordPress plug-in or I like using a simple free site/service from Addthis.com which gives me a simple button to put on all my content.

10. Masterplan! Many webmasters and site owners forget to develop or have an overall masterplan/strategy when it comes to SEO. You must have an understanding of what SEO is and what it can do for you and your site. More importantly, you just don’t want SEO – you want effective SEO. In order to achieve effective SEO you must have three things: Relevance, Authority and Conversions.

First, your content/site must be relevant to the topic or niche area you’re pursuing – your content must fit in and be related to all the other sites in your niche. That’s why closely themed sites do so well in the search engines, they give only relevant content to what’s been searched for or discussed.

Second, your content/site must be perceived as an authority site on your subject or niche. Establish this authority position and the search engines will love you and your content. One way is to develop this authority, besides offering superior content, is to form links/partnerships with other perceived authority sites in your field. Always strive to make your site an authority site – tops in your niche – the one site everyone has to check before drawing or forming a conclusion.

Third, conversions should be your main goal of any SEO efforts because you want to convert your targeted traffic into site members, subscribers, buyers or just repeat visitors. If you’re into online marketing, conversions will be the most important element of the whole SEO process because you want buyers, not just visitors coming to your site.

Most of all, you must convince yourself Search Engine Optimization is not difficult, nor is it the equivalent of the online bogeyman as many would like you to believe. Used effectively, SEO can give you the targeted traffic you’re seeking, just follow some of the outlined steps/tactics listed above and you will have SEO working for you and your site in no time at all.

The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: www.bizwaremagic.com If you liked the SEO tips above, why not try this Free 7 Day Traffic Course here: www.marketingtoolguide.com 2008 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Link building SEO tips: are you in a good link neighborhood?

November 4, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment 

As the saying goes, tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are. You’re probably wondering what it has to do with the search engines and SEO? Well, since we’re still living in an era when AI still has a long way to go before it deserves being called intellect, search engines cannot really determine relevance of a web page by just looking at the content. They have to examine external factors in order to rank a webpage. By external factors I mean what other pages link to it or in other words in what neighborhood your page stands.

Suppose you run a sports related website. How does Google know the topic of your site? Sure it can decipher the theme of your site from the content on your webpages. But then again there are millions of sites with similar content (I mean they all are about sports). So how does the search engine determine which ones are most relevant to a users query? Right, it looks at what other sites link to it.

Now if you’re linked to from sports related websites, especially the ones that are considered authority in the niche, you’ll score more ‘relevance points’ and will rank higher in the search engines for specific keywords. To be more exact you’ll rank well for the keywords used in the anchor texts of incoming links pointing at your site. If a lot of websites link to you with ‘football news’ in the anchor text you’ll rank high for ‘football news’, if there are a lot of links with ‘baseball teams’ you’ll rank for that keyword as well.

Although it’s an oversimplified interpretation and search engine algorithms are much more complicated, basically this is how the whole thing works. The more links you get the higher you rank as long as the sites linking to you are relevant to your niche. If you start getting links from gambling or adult sites this is where the search engines raise a red flag.

That’s what link neighbourhood is all about. If the sites linking to you are related quality resources you get a boost in your rankings. If you’re linked to from dubious resources this may hurt your rankings. Obviously you can’t prevent websites from linking to you if they want to, but you can at least stay away from bad neighborhoods when building links.

The other side of your linking neighborhood is the sites that you link out to from your web pages. This is also taken into account by the search engines and if you link out to quality established resources this should give you some weight in the search results. This is an arguable point like many other things in SEO but it makes perfect sense from a purely logical point of view. Anyway whether you decide to link out to your niche authorities or not you should certainly avoid linking to poor quality or unrelated websites or sites that are themselves linked to or from dubious resources. This way you’ll avoid trouble from Google bans and penalties and will ensure good standing and high search engine rankings of your website.

Check your link neighborhood with quality SEO tools, get in-depth SEO”>http://www.link-assistant.com/seo-software/compare-seo-tools.html”>SEO software reviews and detailed comparisons of the most popular SEO toolkits on the market, read fresh SEO tips and increase your search engine rankings.

Some of the Common Myths Related to Top SEO Companies

October 29, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment 

These days, virtually all the online marketers are gearing up to hire the services of top SEO companies for successful online marketing campaigns. But, unfortunately, there are still several myths associated with SEO and SEO service providers that are influencing the decision of online marketers about selecting the best SEO company.

In-House SEO is Cheaper than Hiring SEO services
It is true that the prices of top SEO companies differ on the basis of the services that they provide to their customers. However, many business owners think that creating an in-house SEO department can be cost-effective. Ironically, the SEO service providers can use their experience and expertise to develop strategic marketing approaches for their clients at a reasonable price saving the resources of the online marketers.

Top SEO companies Can Guarantee #1 Search Engine Ranking
No one can guarantee #1 ranking in search engines. The search engine algorithms are changing frequently and their ranking techniques are also evolving to produce the best results for the user. It is difficult, even for the top SEO companies, to guarantee top rankings on the SERPs. However, hiring an efficient SEO service provider can help you boost your websites ranking in search engines and increase its visibility. Hence while selecting your SEO service provider try to about its success in handling other projects.

No SEO is Required Once High Ranking are Achieved
SEO is an ongoing process and it is really essential that the process should be continued even after your website ranks high in search engines. The time taken for websites to achieve top rankings on the SERPs varies depending on so many factors such as their designing, theme of the website, strategies developed for SEO, etc. The top SEO companies that are experienced in this field know that there are millions of websites competing for top rankings and anyone of them can take your position with better optimization techniques. But the continuous SEO process is essential to retain the position and increase it further.

Websites Should be Optimized when They are Designed or Developed
It is true that website designing is one of the major aspects of SEO and a properly developed website can create a lot of difference in obtaining visibility, driving traffic and increasing the conversion rate. However, most of the optimization processes of the website are done after the designing. The top SEO companies strategize the SEO campaign and accordingly, do research for the key phrases, optimize each page of the website with their target keywords and create inbound links for the website. Websites also need to be optimized in a later period in case there is a change in the existing keywords or new keywords are added to the website.

More Number of Links Means High Search Engine Rankings
It is a misconception that quantity of links decides the rankings of a webpage on SERPs. The search engines are growing smarter and the major search engines like Google are giving more importance to quality of the links rather than the quantity. Hence, the top SEO companies, these days, are assuring more about the quality of the links.

These are the common myths that still make the difficult for the online marketers to select from the top SEO companies.

Bergstrom-seo.com is an emerging SEO Company that delivers exceptional search engine visibility through its new Top SEO companies to its clients who are located around the world. Its services entail keyword-based content development, website optimization, strategic link building, and social media optimization.

The Do’s That You Should Do in Starting an SEO Campaign

October 27, 2009 by IBI · Leave a Comment 

 

In internet marketing, Search Engine Optimization or commonly known as SEO is among of the rising trends in internet marketing. SEO makes use of search engine algorithms for targeted keywords to raise the rank of a web site. This in turn, generates higher volume and quality of traffic in a web site. But because of SEO’s popularity in internet marketing, many have decided to employ its advantages in marketing, which in turn makes SEO efforts a lot more complicated.

More and more, big and small businesses are starting to use SEO strategies and techniques to improve their marketing efforts on the internet. And some are searching for a proper way to use SEO in their campaign. Here is a short list of Do’s that one should do in an SEO campaign.

The First DO: Do a Commitment and Patience Check

SEO is like getting married, you must be fully committed before starting an SEO campaign. One of the main reasons is that search engine algorithms constantly changes, which means tactics or techniques used in last month’s SEO campaign may not be enough to make the cut for the top 10 SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) this month. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.

A patience check is also important before starting an SEO campaign. Patience is important in this type internet marketing campaign because of the long wait that you have experience before actually getting results. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

The Second DO: Do Your Study on an SEO Company

Now before you hire yourself an SEO Philippines, you should first check on the tactics and techniques that the SEO Company uses in their SEO efforts. You should ask for the specifics and risks involved in an SEO campaign. It’s also necessary that you should do your own research about the company (has it been in operation for more than a year now or has a good record in providing SEO services on their previous clients) and learn about their SEO processes.

It is also important that you should do your own research about SEO efforts. You’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can about SEO processes and campaigns. Luckily, there are several sites such as Optimind Technology Solutions, which provides some information about SEO campaigns.

The Third DO: Do Your Website

Now if your site did show up ranking number one in any search engines, but your website looks as if it needs to be analyzed by those guys on extreme makeover, then your SEO efforts will be for nothing. Just think, is this site really appropriate to belong to the world’s Top 10 in this topic?

If ever you’re targeting the highest of all ranks on a specific topic, you should be able to provide the users with an appropriate design of a website that really reflects the information the user wants.

Site maps are also important in an SEO campaign. A site map will help spiders find all the important pages on your site, and help the spider understand your site’s hierarchy. This is especially helpful if your site has a hard-to-crawl navigation menu. If your site is large, make several site map pages. Keep each one to less than 100 links.

It is also important that your URL is SEO friendly. This is done by using your selected keywords in your URLs and some images and files. But don’t overdo it, though. A file may be “very” SEO-friendly, but a file that has 3 or more hyphens tends to look spammy and users may be hesitant to click on it.

Another thing about your website is the title of the page. The page title is the single most important on-page SEO factor. The meta description tag in your page title won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so you should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written so as to encourage searchers to click on your listing.

Check out what the SEO Philippinesof Optimind Technology Solutions has to offer about your website being an SEO-friendly website.

The Fourth DO: Do a Copy That Sells

Now before you make a web copy, you should first do a keyword research on what keywords you would like to include in your copy. There is a lot of paid internet software that can make it easier for you to choose your keywords. But if you’re on a tight budget, there are also some free versions of Keyword Discovery or WordTracker that you can use. Both of which also have more powerful paid versions.

Now that you have your keywords, you or your hired SEO Company should get started in making a great and unique content different from your rivals. You should first make an observation about your competitors. If you’re selling the same widget that 100 other retailers are selling, and everyone is using same the boilerplate descriptions from the manufacturer, then this is a great opportunity for you to make your own unique copy of that same widget. Using the keyword research I talked to you about to target actual words searchers use, and make product pages that blow the competition away. Plus, retailer or not, great content is a great way to get inbound links.

But before you start your web copy, you should always remember that humans are the one that will read your copy, not the search engine robots. It may be very helpful if you stuff a lot of keywords in a single web copy, but this could make it less readable for humans, which will then loose their interest in reading more about the article.

Check out what the SEO Philippines of Optimind Technology Solutions has to offer about creating SEO-friendly web copies.

The Fifth DO: Optional: Do a PPC Campaign

Doing a PPC or a Pay Per Click campaign in an SEO campaign is an optional choice. But if you have the budget for it, then this is a great way to get actual search volume for your keywords. It’s also the solution if you didn’t like to wait for too long.

The Sixth DO: Do Your Link Building Wisely

In building your link partners, it’s important that you choose where you want to put your link. Trusted directories such as Yahoo, DMOZ, Business.com, Aviva, and Best of the web are among of the most popular link partners that any websites would have. Seek links from authority sites in your industry. If local search matters to you, seek links from trusted sites in your geographic area, such as the Chamber of Commerce, etc. You should also analyze the inbound links to your competitors that you can also use to be your link partner.

Check out what the SEO Philippines of Optimind Technology Solutions has to offer about link building.

The Seventh DO: Do Press Releases and Blog Participation

One of the most important parts of an SEO campaign is through building a relationship with a media that covers most of your industry. Setting up some Press Releases on this media can be a great source for your exposure, including getting links from trusted media web sites. Distributing releases online can also be an effective link building tactic, and opens the door for exposure in news search sites.

Starting up blogs is also an important part in an SEO campaign. Search engines such as Google love to crawl on blogs for its fresh content and highly-structured data. And beyond that, joining discussions on a blog can really provide the exposure that you really want, and the opportunity to build a community about your industry. Reading and commenting on other blogs can increase your exposure and help you acquire new links.

Check out what the SEO Philippines of Optimind Technology Solutions has to offer about press releases and blog marketing.

The Eighth DO: Do a Social Media Campaign

If you have some photos on your business, you should join communities such as Flickr to talk about things about your industry. If you’re a service-oriented business, use Yahoo Answers to position yourself as an expert in your industry. But whatever you do, don’t “SPAM” on them. Be an active, contributing member of the site. The idea is to interact with potential customers, not annoy them.

The Ninth DO: Do Take advantage on Opportunities

People researching for offline buying is a growing trend nowadays. This is a perfect opportunity to make your “physical” business known. Optimize your site to catch local traffic by showing your address and local phone number prominently. It’s highly preferred if you write a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in the page text. Write a detailed Directions/Location page using neighborhoods and landmarks in the page text. You should also encourage those that visited your site to leave reviews of your business on these sites.

There are also some tools that search engines give you to learn how search engines work on finding your site. Tools such as Google’s webmaster Central and Yahoo’s Site Explorer are a good example. This is to learn more about how the search engines see your site, including how many inbound links they’re aware of.

The Tenth DO: Do a Flexibility Check

As I said before, search engine algorithms constantly changes, which means tactics or techniques used yesterday may not work today. You must be flexible enough to get things around and stay at the top. Other strategies such as Newsletters and other subscriber-based content can help you hold on to traffic/customers no matter what the search engines do.

In fact, some of the things I said to you (creating great content, starting a blog, using social media and local search) are ways not only to improve the traffic of users to your site, but also a way for your rank to stay always on the top ranks. This will also help you grow an audience of loyal prospects and customers that may help you survive the whims of search engines.

If you want to get on an SEO campaign, then visit SEO Philippines of Optimind Technology Solutions at www.myoptimind.com for more details.