Siam Communications » SEO

Immediate Ranking on Page One of Google Search Results

ErBuc — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:11:34 +0000

I just read a post from Hub Spot on “Using Twitter to Ranking #1 on Google in less than 5 minutes“. At first I thought it was a hoax.

But the news was even better.

Based on the information in the article, I did a search for a post made on Monday on our own blog. None of my Tweets made ranked number 1 in Google, but the actual blog post featured on page one of the Google results for latest results. The posts ahead of me were taken by Nation Multimedia, one of the largest publishing organizations in Thailand.

I was happy being listed among the largest in the nation.

I was also amazed to see that my post had been tagged as being published about “20 hours ago”. So within a very short period of time, almost immediately, one of my blog posts gained instant page one status with the Google search engines.

The lesson learned here is this:

Keep your content fresh
Maintain consistency and posts often, but not too often
Use your keywords and phrases properly

This is probably old news for so many people out there. But by keeping these few points in mind, you can continue to enjoy Internet fame with good search engine rankings.

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Search Engine Ranking and Domain Names

ErBuc — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:00:48 +0000

I see many questions in forums and social networks about the effect a domain name has on the search engine ranking of a website. The most common questions I have seen relate to:

Using hyphens between words of a domain name
Including primary keywords in a domain name
The TLD of a domain name(i.e. – .com, .net, .us, etc.)

Based on feedback from the experts, and reference materials from Google, we will summarize the answers to these issues.

Hyphenation in a Domain Name

Most experts were pretty sure that hyphen between words of a domain name had no effect on the search engine ranking of a website. Search Engines like Google can recognize keyword patterns in a domain name without the need to break the domain name apart. Hyphens were helpful for people though. Some tend to hyphenate words when searching for a specific domain, but the numbers are very low.

Primary Keywords in a Domain Name

Most experts agree that having one or more primary keywords in a domain name was an important factor to good search engine ranking. But the benefit was only realized when primary keywords were also used well in the title, headings and content of a web page.

TLD of a Domain Name

The TLD, or Top Level Domain such as “.com” or “.net” seems to have little or no effect on search engine placement according to Google experts. However, if a business was local the TLD had some effect. For instance, using “.ca” or “.us” to indicate the country demographic for the website, might increase search engine placement for that site in local results.

Google tends to determine a web users location whenever their Search Engine is used. Google blogs indicated that results that were local to the users location were considered more relevant in some cases. But again, much of this depends on primary keyword usage in other key areas of a web page.

Of course we will never know for sure how the search engines make all of their calculations. But these guidelines will help in choosing a domain name that adds value to your websites search engine ranking.

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Website Planning – Site Structure and Navigation

ErBuc — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:00:54 +0000

There have been many debates in past years about how links and the overall structure of a website affects the search engine ranking. Using Google as an example, we will explain how authority of a page is affected and provide some practical suggestions for the structure of a site.

A good website structure is important for several reasons:

It allows a web page to focus it’s message – keyword usage and terms
Control the flow of navigation when a Visitors come to the site
Dictates how a search engine will crawl and index the pages of the site

Focus Your Website’s Message

One of the primary steps to creating content for a website is with keyword research. This is very important when considering the structure of your site as well. Let’s examine how a website designer might do this:

Examine competitors sites for keywords and site structure
Evaluate keywords and select the one that best suit your message
Add the keywords to the page title, keywords, description and content
Setup navigation links to meet keyword criteria

To ensure that a search engine ranks your page well, it is important that the primary keywords are used, not only in the title, keyword, description and content areas. But also use keywords in the file name of the web page and the directory structure of the website add importance to a web page as well.

Website Directory Structure

The best way to demonstrate how the directory structure can be optimized is to examine how WordPress uses what they call “Permalinks”.

I remember setting up my first directory structure to include the year and month of a post for easy archiving. But I realized I was setting a structure that worked best for me and not my visitors. So I changed the directory structure to include a topic or category in addition to the post name. Here are the two methods:

Date method – http://www.siamcomm.com/2010/05/the-name-of-the-post/
Topic method – http://www.siamcomm.com/seo/the-name-of-the-post/

By using a primary keyword in my directory structure, I have increased the importance of that post in relationship to “SEO”.

Another advantage to using this method is that now my directory structure isn’t as deep as before (2 levels instead of 3). For search engines, the home page is considered the web page with the highest level of authority on the website. The further away a page is from the home page the lower the authority it has in search engine ranking.

I have increased the importance of that web page by moving it up a level in the directory structure.

This applies to navigation as well. If a search engine needs to visit two or three links before getting to a web page, the importance of that content is diluted because of the distance it is from the homepage. If your visitors need to go through the same process, chances are they won’t stick around to click through to the content you really want them to visit.

The guidelines to use are:

Design a directory structure that keeps the important content close to the home page
Design a navigation scheme that keeps the number of clicks to a minimum for important content

Link Spamming

Does this mean that you should put a link on the home page to every web page on your site?

Absolutely not!

This used to be a common practice with some web designers as they thought this was better for search engine rankings. However, the more links you have on a web page, the more a sub-pages importance is diluted by the search engines. It also makes it more difficult for visitors to determine what pages you intended them to visit.

Too many choices? Visitors will probably move on to a competitors site.

This reminds me of an example that was given in a management seminar years ago. The speaker was asking the audience why Joe Montana was a better (American football) Quarter Back than some one like John Elway. The San Francisco 49ers seemed as if they could go years on their winning streak compared to many other teams like the Denver Broncos.

The speaker explained that it was because his manager, Joe Walsh, ensured that Joe had only 3 choices to make at every play. If Option 1 couldn’t be done, try Option 2. If that wasn’t going to work, throw the ball into the ground and stop play. Whereas John Elway had many more choices at every play. This made it difficult to prioritize which action should take precedence over another.

This example can be used to describe the way the structure of a website should be planned.

Use a simple directory structure and page navigation
Offer the minimum number of choices
Use proper and specific direction to the content where you want your visitors

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Does bad code hurt search engine ranking?

ErBuc — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 05:47:42 +0000

A website’s technical implementation, or coding, is an important part of search engine optimization. For example: if the foundation of a new house is of poor quality then it’s harder to build a good house on top of it.

The same goes for a website.

A website with a good, solid technical foundation has a better chance of ranking high in search results. This allows the on-page text or content of a technically good website to be properly indexed by search engines. This, in turn, increases the site’s quality in the eye of those search engines and visitors to the website.

Things to consider when examining the technical quality of a website include:

The overall structure of the website
Indexability – the ability to follow links included in the content and navigation
META tag information
Design practices used on each web page
Text and Content
Hosting consideration

Each of these points can be expanded upon considerably in relationship to the technical quality of a website. But we will leave that for future posts.

Pre-register for our Online SEO Course

Soon we will be offering a course to teach website owners how to do search engine optimization on their own websites. To pre-register for this course, enter your details in the form below.

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10 Search Engine Optimization Myths

ErBuc — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:04:22 +0000

One reason that many individuals and organizations are reluctant to start an SEO project is lack of knowledge. Some are even reluctant to approach an SEO Service firm for fear of being “ripped off” or misdirected about the search engine requirements of their website.

It is always good to get as much knowledge about a topic before undertaking the project.

We understand that there are many myths about search engine optimization (SEO). This article will clarify the ten most common search engine optimization myths and misconceptions.

SEO is about secret strategies

There is a SEO myth that SEO Experts utilize secret strategies and methods that result in top placement in search engine results. In fact, there are some “SEO consultants” who might guarantee top placement for your website. While performing search engine optimization cam be a huge, time consuming task, the methods employed are widely known and available to everyone. If there are “Secrets” used, these are primarily employed by “Black Hat” SEO Service Providers. Utilizing these services will actually harm or lower your position in search engine results.

Load up on Keywords

Search engines are well aware of website pages that have been stuffed with keywords, regardless of their relevance to the content on the website. Keywords are key to the relevance and importance of the content on a web page. These keywords should be used (when possible) in the Title, meta keywords, meta description, and content of the web page for the best results. There is no magic number of keywords that will place your website before another in the search results. Best Practice: “Each web page should be written in a natural way and be designed with your website visitors in mind.”

Let’s Load up the page with Content

Have you ever seen one of those web pages that seems to scroll on forever about a certain topic? These irritate me. Too much content that runs on will send your visitors looking for another site that actually “gets to the point”. Too little content and your visitors will leave still looking for an answer. Unique, useful and up to date content is the best strategy for writing your content. Content is a major factor in regards to the relevance of your website. But there are many additional factors that are considered by the search engines.

Keep Submitting Your Websites to Search Engines

I remember the days when there were online services that sent a notification to hundreds of search engines monthly to ensure that your website was indexed. While some of these still exist, they are not necessary. Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all offer a method for submitting information about your website so they can begin to crawl your content. But submitting more than once could get you banned or blacklisted. The best method for getting your website into search engine results is to get quality links from other, relevant websites linking to your website using relevant keywords in the linking text.

Guaranteed Top Search Engine Placement

“We can guarantee you #1 search engine placement!”. Have you ever seen this staement before?
This is a lie.
Your website can place well for keywords with little or no competition. But your keywords should reflect the message of your content and bring in the types of visitors you are targeting. It is impossible for anyone to guarantee that the placement of your website will be number one or even remain constant over time.

All Links to my Site are Good Links

We stated earlier that “The best method for getting your website into search engine results is to get quality links from other, relevant websites linking to your website using relevant keywords in the linking text”. Links from a website on fashion tips to your website on website design probably won’t help your rankings in the search results very much. Links should come from websites with similar content if they are going to be of great value to your search engine placement. Google does consider some sites as “bad neighborhood” sites and these can effect the placement of your website in a bad way if they link back to your content.
Also, services that offer hundreds or thousands of links instantly should also be avoided. If Google sees a sharp increase in the number of links pointing to your website they get suspicious. Perform a link building exercise in a natural progression by getting links from sites with a good reputation from the search engines. Check out every site that will link to yours. Usually, if a website has a high Google Page Rank, they are worth having them link to you.

All Your Web Pages require W3C Validation

This would be great if all web pages followed a single standard. But with so many variables on the Internet (different web browsers, operating systems, etcc.), the effort involved to maintain a website to a specific set of standards would be massive. The programming code of your website should be in a format that is readable by the search engine robots. As long as each page follows some very basic formatting guidelines, you should have no problem.

Search Engines do not like Dynamic Pages

This has been a very misunderstood area. Search engines prefer static content with static URLs. However, they can index dynamic URLs as well. They ask that you give them the opportunity to determine the content by not re-writing the URL to make the page look static. I have found that the methods used by blogging applications like WordPress offer a good method of maintaining the data needed for a search engine to index it properly while rewriting the URL to a more static value. A full discussion on this topic can be found on the Google Webmaster Tools Blog.

Meta Tags are the most important

This is not entirely true. While Google does not use the keywords contained in the “Keyword” meta tag, other search engines and directories do use these values. The best approach is to write your content for your targeted visitors, and put the most important keywords in the “Keyword” meta tag as well. Use of the meta tag will not damage your placement, but there are HTML tags that search engines consider more important for the placement of your keywords (i.e. – H1, H2, B, STRONG, etc.). But the best practice is, “Concentrate on your content”.

High Google Page Rank is required for top Placement

Although a High Google Page Rank may help your placement in the search results, it doesn’t guarantee top placement for every search term or keyword. Having a low Google Page Rank for a keyword does not move you down in the results either. Search engines are all about producing a list of sites that is relevant to what the user is looking for.

We hope this list has helped you understand a bit more about Search Engine Optimization. If you would like to see how your site scores in an SEO Analysis, have a try at our new SEO Analysis Tool.

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Does Your SEO Work?

The Coach — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:16:16 +0000

Many of us have come to appreciate the fact that link building, to create inbound links to our web sites, is an effective way to increase our web sites popularity on the Search Engines. Not only do inbound links bring new visitors to your sites, search engines like Google treat inbound links as a positive signal that your site has a good level of importance in your specified area.

What is the best way to increase your inbound links?

Develop more inbound links with other sites that contain content relevant to that of your web sites content. This is easier said than done. Developing links with other web sites is an ongoing effort that takes a lot of research and time.

First, you must first use search engines to determine which web sites contain relevant content for linking purposes. Just the huge number of search engines on the Internet today makes this a daunting task. This takes your efforts away from actually developing more valuable content … or relaxing by the pool. Then there is the request for reciprocal links, the waiting and then posting the links to each site.

Even after you have established inbound links, how do you know if the other sites are still linking to your site? You must occasionally go and visit each site to determine if your link is there. A more effective use of your time could be spent by using well established SEO tools for finding web sites with relevant content.

We have identified a few tools to assist you in developing those inbound links and make your SEO work for you.

The first tool that caught my attention was LinkAssistant. This software tool automated many of the time intensive tasks and cut my workload significantly. With LinkAssistant I could:

Find and select link partners out of hundreds of relevant, high-quality sites
Generate web directories of relevant sites for inclusion on my own site
Create personalized emails to web site owners (LinkAssistant can actually find the web site owners email address in a matter of seconds)
Quickly verify if my link partners are still linking back to my web site
Reveal black-hat SEO techniques your link partners might be turning against you
Group and manage my links into categories so I could use them on various landing pages which were specific to that category

These were just the features that provided me with instant benefit in making better use of my time. What I wasn’t expecting, were some of the other added features that makes this tool very useful for ensuring that your SEO is working for you. LinkAssistant is able to track my web sites rankings across 370 search engines. So if something isn’t working, I can instantly see what I need to fix to rank better.

It is easy to see how this tool can catapult your website to the top of search engine listings through Google-tested on-site optimization. You can learn more about it here.

The other web site SEO tool that impressed me was the suite of online tools at SEOmoz.org. They provide access to SEO guides and offer loads of SEO tools to help you to become an SEO expert.

SEOmoz.org is a site that caters to the SEO beginner as well as the SEO/SEM Professional by offering tools, guides and a custom question and answer marketplace to help you understand how SEO works.

We are still evaluating a couple of other products:

Want to know what others did to make their websites rank higher? Click here.

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Link Building: No comments please

The Coach — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:50:37 +0000

Did you know that most blogging tools and services DO NOT help your site rank higher for your keywords?

In the past, I have always taken the approach that a link to my site, in any form, was a good thing as long as the link text was appropriate and the site had some relevance to my web site. But what I didn’t know, was that some linking strategies do nothing for you when it comes to building links to my site.

I am referring to comments in blogs and the links that are created within your comments.

Many blog engines use a simple attribute called “no follow” for comment links. While there are still many blogging engines that do not use this attribute, many are moving to using the attribute to help eliminate the ever increasing “comment spam” that many blog owners have to cope with.

The details of “Why Leaving Blog Comments is not a Link Building Strategy” have been described in this HubSpot post.

Does Your SEO Work?

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Most Popular Blogs SEO "could be better"

Eric — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 04:13:24 +0000

Happy New Year!

A report was released a few months ago which I thought was of interest in relationship to the top 20 blogging sites on Technorati. Some interesting findings include that “out of the top 20 bloggers, 40% are missing a 301 redirects, 65% are missing description metadata, and 80% are missing keywords metadata“.

The report, put together using HubSpot’s Website Grader Tool, shows that many of the most professional and top ranked sites are missing key elements in their pages to help them place high in the search engine rankings.

This is actually good news for the average blogger proving that, as long as you have content that everybody wants to read, and you haven’t missed out on some the key elements of SEO, you still have a chance of beating out the popular blogs in the search engines.

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