Archive for July, 2008
Next Entries »The Right Way to Submit Your Site.
Sunday, July 6th, 2008Are you going to submit your site to the search engines the right way or the wrong way? To do it right, you need to know what you’re doing, and your site needs to be optimized before you take it anywhere near a search engine.
How can you know if your site is ready? You consider these things before you submit. Have you included your keywords in your title tag, description, and content? Make sure you’re tightly focused on only one or two keywords. You should also check for broken links, as these can cause big problems with search engines’ spiders.
Once you’ve submitted your site, you need to be prepared to wait. The chances that you won't be added to any engine's database for at least a month.
The Rules of Submission.
1. There’s no need to submit more than once. Despite the hype, you should never resubmit your site unless it gets dropped entirely. This doesn’t apply to new pages, however. If you have created a few hundred pages in the last month or so and you don’t think that they will be indexed quickly enough via links to them it is a good idea to submit them manually rather than waiting for your site to be indexed again. If you are using a Google Site map, simply adding them to this document will get them indexed pretty quickly.
2. Do it right the first time: be thorough when submitting, especially to directories. Take the time to research and find the most appropriate category for your site. If your site would fit into multiple categories find out what the policy is on multiple submissions. Some directories want you to submit to every relevant category, others want no more than one submission or they reject all submissions. Some want every page, others (most) want your index page and nothing more.
3. Be brief when you describe your site: get right to the point in two short sentences. Most directories will actually restrict the number of characters that you can use. If they don’t it is still a good idea to try to wrap it up within twenty-five to thirty words. This is one of the largest differences between directory listings and search engine listings. In the directory you only get a short line to attract visitors; this is static for every visitor.
4. Be as accurate as you can. Don’t try to trick people into visiting your site, as it’ll only backfire. Most directories are actually monitored by a team of editors. These editors will visit your link and red flag you if you are trying to deceive visitors or if you are trying to cheat in any other way. When it comes to directory listings, there are even less avenues for cheaters than there are in search engine listings as directories are checked out by hand.
5) Make sure that all your information is relevant, and try to make it appealing to humans as well as dense with keywords. Directories don’t care about your key words very much. If your site isn’t attractive to human beings it will be listed poorly. When human beings edit, human beings rank, and human beings get what they want.
6) Be patient: good things come to those who wait. Let the search engines take their time.
7) Don’t submit any more than your homepage. The crawlers are quite capable of following your links and indexing your whole site from just your homepage’s URL.
If you’re submitting you site to the DMOZ directory, follow these steps. If one doesn’t work, wait a while and then do the next.
1. Submit your site.
2. Write a follow-up email to the category’s editor, explaining that you’ve been waiting and would like to know your site’s status.
3. Email the next category editor up, in case there’s a problem with your category’s editor.
4. Seek assistance at the Open Directory Project’s public forum.
5. Email DMOZ senior staff seeking help. This is pretty much the last resort.
Submissions can be time consuming at first, but you’ll quickly get it down to a science. If you work hard on your SEO before you submit your site then you can get to the top more quickly than you’d think.
The Meta Tag Myths.
Friday, July 4th, 20081. Add every meta tag that you can.
Take a look at the code of a few websites out there. Many sites have silly amounts of tags – far more than they need. Remember the old adage: keep it simple, stupid. Don’t add tags unless you know what you’re doing – and don’t make up your own tag names, because no-one’s paying any attention to them. Most of these tags are skipped over by most search engines anyway. The only crucial tags are the description tag and the keywords tag which are both utilized occasionally. Many other tags are there just for the sake of crediting the webmaster, author, etc. These kinds of tags are there mostly for the sake of other webmasters if they need to know who to contact about the page itself.
#2 Have lots of keywords.
Using the ‘keywords’ meta tag correctly is good, but don’t get too hung up on it. Many search engines now ignore it altogether, including Google and AltaVista. Remember that putting too much in this tag could be considered spamming – make sure you don’t put anything in more than three times, and keep the keywords related to your site. As previously stated, many of your meta tags will be skipped over anyway, but you should keep to your primary key words and not worry too much about assembling a gigantic list. Be descriptive, be honest, don’t be excessive.
#3 Keyword lists must have a formula.
People have a tendency to get very distracted by the keyword meta tag – you shouldn’t misuse it and you definitely shouldn’t expect miracles from it. It gets skipped more often than not; even it’s used it is used in company with the content on your page. If you want to obsess with optimizing something, optimize your content.
#4 The title tag doesn't really do much.
Out of all the tags, this one is the most important when it’s used correctly. Just like with your site’s content, write your title tag for your audience first and the search engines second. Think about your site’s branding and navigation issues as you create your title tags. Your title should be relatively long. A seven to ten word title is not out of the question. The title is the first thing that a search engine really cares about and it should be the most common thing that you want your visitors to find you for. Your most important key words should all be worked into your title.
#5 If I copy my competitor's keywords I will do just as well.
You need to understand tags and the details of search engine optimization in general. What works for one site doesn’t necessarily work for another! You do not have identical sites so you cannot work with identical keywords. Aside from this detail, a site that has been around longer is more likely to have success from its key words than a new site. If you are trying to take over a small niche, you have to expand and do something that your competitor hasn’t done yet.
#6 If I repeat my keywords in a comment tag I will rank better.
There was a time long ago when this was true, but it was a really long time ago. Search engines are all wise to this trick nowadays.
#7 We need to have as many different keywords as possible throughout our site
This is an SEO nightmare. Your pages need to be focused, not always trying to cover all basis. Limit your keywords.
#8 Anyone can write a website’s tags.
SEO calls for copywriting and marketing talent: writing good tags that can attract both humans and search engine spiders isn’t easy.
#9 Google doesn't rank me by the description tag, so why should I use it?
Google does still use the description tag from your site – it displays it to its users in the results. If there’s no description tag, they’ll just see a nonsense excerpt from your site, which is bad. Don’t forget that there are still plenty of uses for the description tag. Make the title and the description complement each other, as they will often be displayed together.
The Good and Bad News About Reciprocal link Exchanges.
Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008Reciprocal linking is a topic that generates a lot of discussion: everyone wants to know how to get it to work for them. Much of this discussion involves link trading, or linking together their own websites, and whether it’s going to get you in trouble or not. They invariably fear that they will run into problems with search engines who may consider it cheating. Many of them have heard horror stories about Linking Farms which often get banned from Google along with every page associated with them. This fear is justified by the obvious disasters that link farms can ensue upon a web site. There are very few webmasters who are willing to take the risk and rightfully so.
Misunderstandings cloud the debate on reciprocal links on both sides. Reciprocal links deserve a fair hearing, because some are bad for a website, but most aren’t. In the beginning, almost all sites had plenty of reciprocal links (the tradition of the ‘links’ page), and they worked exactly as intended. Links brought in additional traffic, and affiliate links let people make money. These ‘links’ pages are less and less common now, but seem to be making a slight come back during this period in which SEO work has become a phenomena and a hobby for many web masters.
The fact that SEO work is so common now will inherently lead to answers to questions which have been guarded for years. These answers will help people decide if the old fashioned ‘links’ pages are worth having or not.
Most people see nothing wrong with good, old-fashioned link trading, but swapping links is only one aspect of reciprocal linking. These link swaps are allowed and, in many cases, considered beneficial. Link trades are great for web sites because they allow them to communicate a greater amount of information to their visitors. These link swaps are only beneficial, however, if they link to pages that are somehow relevant. Links to completely random pages that visitors will not find interesting are useless and could be considered fraudulent exchanges.
There are also automatic link exchanges on the good side of things, and link farms on the bad one. Link exchanges can be extremely beneficial, but before you allow yourself to get roped into this kind of situation, make sure that it pans out as a legitimate source of traffic. If you subscribe to a link exchange, the links should be hand made by you. They should not be kept in a gigantic database on the middle man’s server. They should also be done upon request rather than automatically. You should be able to look through each link and view each page to insure quality.
Reciprocal links are popular because of the good things they give you: they act as ads for your site as well as increasing your search engine rankings. Some people, however, say that you shouldn’t link to other websites as it decreases your own link popularity – they don’t realize that you need to give a little to get a little.
Third Party Link Sites.
These sites allow anyone to join, like a club – but they don’t usually work to your advantage. They say they’re going to make it easier to find sites that will exchange links with you, but in reality you often won’t get the kind of link quality you were expecting. It’s a bad idea to use one of these ‘link agencies’, as many of them lack basic linking knowledge and have no idea of the best link strategies.
There are some rules that you should follow when you agree to link to another site, and some rules that you should expect the other sites to follow. Many webmasters don’t know how to trade links effectively – you need to teach them. There’s a right way and a wrong way to manage links – always remember that quality is more important than quantity. FFAs with hundreds or thousands of links are completely useless, and no search engine wants them in their index. Many have been banned from the search engines.
The abuse of linking going on today is proof of the ignorance that surrounds link trading – just look at an FFA if you don’t believe me. Trading links has been going on since the beginning of the web, but all it would take for it to lose its popularity is for the search engines to start paying less attention to it, as they will soon be forced to do.