Search Engine Optimization: SEO Manual for Begginers (Old School)

Search Engine Optimization

What is Search Engine?

Search Engine refers to a program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. Example is Google.com

What is Search Engine Optimization (Also known as SEO)?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the website visibility or a web page in search engines through a Free or Natural Organic search results. In general, getting on the top page of a search engines, and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors of a website will receive from the search engines. Search Engines may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and other searches.

History of Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization was discovered from the early 1990's. The first documented use of the term Search Engine Optimization was John Audette and his company Multimedia Marketing Group as documented by a web page from the MMG site from August, 1997 on the Internet. This discovery gave Webmaster and site owners an idea that motivate them to have a highly visible sites in the search engines that brought a very valuable business results. First they explore the idea of gaining higher ranking of their websites, which brought higher visibility, and would a highly increased of visitor. These connections, tied with Search Engine Technology, and dawned the industry of Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) On Page Optimization

On Page Optimization is related directly to the content and structure of the website, meaning you are optimizing a website on its own web pages. This normally consists of pages written in the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). On Page Optimization involves modifying keyword frequency in the URL, Title, Headings, Meta Tags, Hypertext Links and Content. It may also involve reducing redundant HTML codes produced by Web page authoring tools and restructuring the site to produce better linked and focused page content.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Off Page Optimization

Off Page Optimization is related directly in having the search engine visibility, meaning you are optimizing a website off the web pages or the website. The main factors in Off Page Optimization are the Links (called “back links” these are the incoming links to a website or web page.) to your web page and the authority of your Website. That will be your main component to get the higher visibility and rankings on those Search Engines.

Search Engines Webmaster Guidelines

To ensure that your websites is doing the right thing in optimizing, here are the top search engine webmaster guidelines to follow.

We all know that Search Engines has different algorithm, but when it comes to their rules and regulation probably they do have the same.

Following these guidelines will help Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines find, index, and rank your site.

Design and content guidelines

a) Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.

b) Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map has an extremely large number of links, you may want to break the site map into multiple pages.

c) Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number.

d) Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.

e) Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.

f) Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the "ALT" attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.

g) Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.

h) Check for broken links and correct HTML.

i) If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

j) Review our image guidelines for best practices on publishing images.

Search Engines Rules to Follow

a) Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

b) Don't use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

c) Don't send automated queries to Google.

d) Don't load pages with irrelevant keywords.

e) Don't create multiple pages, sub domains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

f) Don't create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, Trojans, or other badware.

g) Avoid "doorway" pages created just for search engines or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

h) If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

SEO Starter

The most preferred browser to use in SEO

Mozilla Fire Fox is known as the best browser of an SEO specialist because this browser contains many aspect that make an SEO much easier. Why? Fortunately this browser is compatible to all SEO tools that are needed, these tools are called Add-Ons.

SEO Beginner Tools to use (Note: All SEO Add-ons Tools is a free download)

· InFormEnter - This tool adds a small, clickable icon next to every input field in a web form, from where you can select the item to be inserted - no typing required. You can configure it to display your frequently used information such as name, email, address...

· Fire Form - A simple yet configurable form filler. Includes support for multiple profiles and custom field names. Localized for English, French and other Languages.

· Firebug - Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web pages.

· Quick Search Status - Display the Google PageRank, Alexa rank, Compete ranking and SEOmoz Linkscape mozRank anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyser, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, canonical links, WHOIS, robots and more.

· Rank Checker - This tool will give you the fastest result for Search Engine Result Page for all of your Keywords.

· SEOpen - Provides quick access to some web-based tools to help with search engine optimization. Quickly check inbound links, PageRank, Pages Index, and much more. Right-click on an open area of a web page, or use the included toolbar.

SEO Website Analysis

The process of SEO website analysis before you starts with SEO. These steps will also help you in preparing the SEO strategy for the website or in the process of preparing proposal for the SEO works.

This process contains two procedures, first is to analyze what a website have from the on-page up to the off-page. The example of this procedure will be something like this:

Checker tools: http://www.searchenginegenie.com/tools/getPageSize.php

Name of the Site	Results	Status
URL
Category or Niche
Domain Age
Page Size
Page Load Time
Page Ranking
Alexa Ranking
Pages Indexed (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
Inbound Links or Backlinks (Google, Yahoo, MSN)
Keywords
Meta Tags
Sitemaps
Blogs
Site Structure
Navigation

URL – Determine if the URL of the site is active or doesn’t exist anymore. Also, it is important to identify if the site redirects.

Category – Determine the category of the website that will fit its own content. Example: Does the site should be on the business category or Services.

Domain Age – Get the domain age of websites (For faster checking visit this link http://www.seologs.com/dns/domain-check.html)

Page Size – Find out what the web page size is. (For faster checking visit this link http://www.searchenginegenie.com/tools/getPageSize.php)

Page Load Time – Find out how much time the website or a page load. This will be a guide by identifying if your visitors have their time to wait until it appear, this may cost the website increase in bounce rate.

Page Ranking – Page Rank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references.

Alexa Ranking – Alexa rank is a tool that determined traffic visualization of a websites. (For faster checking visit this link http://www.alexa.com/)

Page Indexed – Page indexed is a visualization to determine the number of website pages that a search engine index. The query for all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista, and AlltheWeb) when you enter the "site:" operator with your chosen URL. It will return the total link count for each URL.

Inbound Links – Back links is the general term of inbound links, these are the links pointing back to your website. (For faster checking visit this link http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/link-popularity.html)

Keywords – keywords are words that a search engine user might use to find relevant web page(s). If a keyword doesn't appear anywhere in the text of your web page, it's highly unlikely your page will appear in the search results (unless of course you have bid on that keyword in a pay-per-click search engine)

Meta Tags

The role of meta tags is misunderstood by some members of the webmaster community. I still have people who are not in the business come up to me and talk about SEO as if it's all about picking keywords metatags. I try not to cringe when I get into these discussions. I once had an idea for an article about this. The article was going to be completely blank. Only those that were enterprising enough to look at the source would have seen the content of the article in the keyword meta tags:

not, matter" />

I have built tons of high ranking sites and not implemented any keywords meta tags at all. Even so, I do suppose that there may be some search engines that examine the keyword meta tags, and it may matter some. It's just that there are better places to spend your time than customizing the keywords meta tag. The fundamental reason for search engines paying little heed to the keyword meta tag is that spammers abused it in the early days of SEO.

Search engines prefer to focus all of their attention on "user visible" text. The user can't see the keywords meta tags unless they view the source of your web page. It's this invisible aspect that makes the keywords meta tag so attractive for a spammer to abuse it.

So what about meta tags in general? This article will provide an overview of their value and the best way to use them.

Title Tag

Put this in the bank. The title tag is the single most important "on page" element in telling a search engine what your page is all about. Yes, the title tag is incredibly important. During the design of your site, you should have decided on the best keywords for each of your pages. For each page, you should use the most important keywords (note: keywords means "search phrases" as used in this article) in your title tag. For example, if the most important keyword for your page is "blue widgets", you may use a title tag such as:

<title>Blue Widgets from Blue Widget Manufacturing</title>

You can emphasize more than one keyword, but should limit it to no more than 3, as follows:

<title>Blue Widgets, Round Blue Widgets, and Square Blue

Widgets</title>

Note that we trimmed off the company name in this example. There are some SEOs that recommend that it's best to keep your title tag to 70 characters or less. Our opinion is that longer title tags are probably not harmful, but the extra characters are ignored by some search engines. Given that the extra characters are ignored, we tend to keep ours less than 70 characters.

Description Meta tag

This meta tag also sees limited use by search engines. Like the keywords meta tag, it is not generally speaking user visible. I know of no search engine that considers the content of the description metatag for page ranking purposes. However, under certain circumstances, a search engine may use your description meta tag as the description of your page that it displays in search results.

Yahoo, for example, does this if it can't find enough text on your page to develop a good page summary on its own. For that reason, you should make sure that you write a good description metatag for your pages. Since this description may show up in the search results shown by search engines, you want the description to be well written enough that it will help entice the user to click on the link to your site instead of a link to someone else's site.

Keep the description meta tag crisp, just a few lines of text. Don't stuff it with keywords. Remember, search engines do not use this tag for ranking purposes. Write something that tells the user why they should come to your page - what benefit will they get by doing so. Straightforward, basic marketing. Here is a simple example:

Keywords Meta tag

So should you implement a keywords meta tag? Sure. Just don't agonize over it. Take the top 3 or 4 keywords that you decided to target your page for, put them in the keywords meta tag, and move on. There are dozens of other factors in the design and implementation of your page that are more important to spend your time on.

Robots Meta tag

The Robots meta tag is relatively new. Pioneered by Google, it is now generally available for all search engines. The tag is designed to allow you to tell a search engine when you do not want it to index your page, and/or when you do not want the search engine to look at or evaluate any of the links on your page. Not all search engines obey this meta tag at this point. The basic format of the meta tag is:

You can specify either attribute, both attributes, or neither attribute by simply not including the robots meta tag. Click here for more detailed information on the robots meta tag

NoODP Meta tag

This is relatively new. This Meta tag allows you to tell MSN and Google that you do not want them to consider using the Open Directory Project (ODP) description for your site as the description they show in their search results.

The main reason for this is that many site descriptions in ODP have gotten to be out of date. This is because ODP is an all volunteer organization, and sometimes the editors there become inactive for a period of time. You would used this meta tag only if you have an ODP listing and you do not like the description. Here is the format:

Understanding how to use meta tags can be useful. However, far too many webmasters agonize about the keyword meta tags and the description meta tag. By all means, come up with a decent strategy for them, and you will benefit. Just don't make it the focus of your SEO efforts. The SEO wars are won primarily with content and links.

Site Maps

Site maps are at the heart of Search Engine Friendly Design. They make it very quick and easy for the search engines to find and index every page on your web site by putting links to every page in one spot. We recommend both HTML and XML sitemaps.

Site maps also allow you to help the search engines to clearly understand what your web site is about and presents some unique opportunities in optimization.

All links should be plain text and point to every page within your site with descriptive words that make it easy for both visitors and search engine spiders to understand what they will find on your web site. Site maps are essential as an optimization technique and should always be linked to from your index page or home page.

Site Structure Analysis

· Website main page should have some reliable Information regarding to its own Business or Services.

· Website should be users friendly.

· Website should have some interesting and attractive design and content.

Site Content Review

· Constantly check and review the written copy of every websites pages and Identify correctly

§ Duplicated content

§ Spelling mistakes

§ Bad Grammar errors

§ The appropriate application of the H1, H2, H3 and H4 heading tags within page content

§ Blurred images

§ Other technical error

Keywords Analysis

· Analyze which Keywords would be the best and has the capacity to drive traffic to a website.

· Select a keywords that is rightly represent the business or services

· Selecting the keywords which can effectively display in the content, Meta data and links.

· Give some respective URL for each redirecting links.

Rich Snippets

· Make sure whether Rich Snippets are current or necessary to aid Google and Yahoo to current users with the majority useful and informative content approximate the website in their hunt results pages.

Website analysis is an element in Website planning and design.

Keywords Research

Keyword research is a practice used by search engine optimization professionals to find and research actual search terms people enter into the search engines when conducting a search. Search engine optimization professionals research keywords in order to achieve better rankings in their desired keywords

Simple Step in Effective Keyword Research

Brainstorming

The brainstorming phase can be described as the step where you identify your perfect audience and then properly survey your perfect audience to identify the specific keywords and keyword phrases that they will be using to search for the products or services that you offer on your website.

Categorizing

During the categorizing phase, we will break down our keywords and keyword phrases into specific themes. Examples could be specific products or model numbers of products that your customers are searching for. Or perhaps the problems or concerns that your customers are looking for you to solve.

Competitors Keywords Analysis

Analyzing competitor’s keywords will give you more additional idea that you can include to your list of keywords. The idea you get from your competitors can be benefited to your list of keywords.

Using Google Keyword Tools

· Find new keyword ideas

· Find popularity of keywords with specific monthly search volumes

· Identify trends based on 12 months historical data

· Identify competition for keywords. Choose keywords with less competition for better opportunities. Use the URL feature for automatically recommending keywords

· Use the URL feature to Analyze website keywords

· They have the largest search user base, and thus can offer great keyword depth

· Benefit from cost projections for keywords if using Google Ad words

· Save/Export your list in external document

This step can give you more keyword ideas that you can actually used as your target keywords. Make sure to remove all non relevant keywords.

Review Step

In the review phase we will be compiling our lists of keywords into a spreadsheet then sorting them, categorizing them based upon the level of search, the competitiveness level and the relevancy to your website.

You’ll discover in this phase that many of the keywords that had come up in your brainstorming or through your keyword research just are not worth the time or effort in targeting because they may not have enough search volume, or that no one searching for them, or the competition for those words is through the roof and that are more profitable long tail keywords that you could target instead.

Finalizing the chosen keywords

After you whittled away at your keyword list in the review phase, you will often still find yourself with a list of hundreds, if not thousands of keywords that you have to choose from. Finalizing your list Narrow down the keywords Remove all unrelated keywords Create a mix of both targeted and broad terms Use Google insights for same process.

Search Engine Optimization Marketing Plan

Being a SEO requires not only an understanding of the search engines, but requires a plan of action. When tackling the search engine optimization for clients I use the following steps strategy.

· Keyword Analysis

· Quick site review

· Keyword research

· Competition analysis

· Link structure

· Main targets for index

· Individual page optimization

· SEO Planning and implementation

· Launch and initial submissions

· Website maintenance

Keyword Analysis

It is important to ask the client for a list 20 or more words that define their industry, product or service. The list should include insiders’ terms, desired targeted products or popular brands, and general keywords related to the industry. Encourage clients to consider what geographic region they are targeting: get keywords for their city, neighborhood or region. Getting a list from the client does several important things: First it gets them involved in the SEO process. Secondly it helps establish their goals. Most importantly it gives a better understanding of the client’s business. Another important thing to ask the client during this phase is for a list of their competitors or companies who are their offline competitors.

Quick site review

Sometimes this is actually the first step in the process. Visiting the client’s site and look at the level of optimization. Check their Page Rank, text version of Google’s cache, date when it was last cached, and keyword targets. A good SEO should be able within 2-3 minutes understand how well a site is currently optimized and any flaws with that optimization.

If the client is developing a completely new site with a recently purchased domain name, this step is more about being aware and making the client aware of the challenges of promoting a new site.

Keyword research

This is where you create a master list of keywords. The research starts with doing basic Google Keyword Tool searches using the client’s keywords, then going further by recognizing patterns in the ways people search. Often you can expand your search parameters by looking at the competitors’ targeted keywords or using a thesaurus. See the sections on Keyword Research.

Competition analysis

Just like the review of the client’s site a SEO needs to understand and review the competitors’ sites. By understanding the level of competition and knowing what you are using to compete with, you can create realistic targets for the client. Usually it is good to give them a list of keywords that can reached early in the marketing process and ones the will be more challenging that can be reached over time.

Link structure

By this point you should have an excellent understanding of the targeted terms for the client’s site. When developing the link structure it is important to create themes and subthemes around these targets and develop a navigation which is a marriage between search engine friendly and user friendly design.

Main targets for index

The index page of a web page is usually the page with the highest level of competitiveness. The keywords it targets are usually the most challenging. It is important to be focused and define with as few terms as possible the core products or services of the client’s business. An example of a main term would be Toronto web design where as secondary pages would target Toronto web design services.

Individual page optimization

Depending on the size of the website, the subpages will allow you to develop keyword themes. When doing this optimization, use the SEO Checklist. Though SEO requires precision it not the case that things have to be precise. It is better to make the text natural then worried about having exactly 8% keyword density. Both the user and the search engines will appreciate more natural text. Personally, I believe that SEO requires finesse and prefer to avoid using tools to do the work.

SEO Planning and implementation

Often it is the case that there are many people involved in the process of the web design. Web designers will often create sites which go against the needs of a SEO. Usually there designs allow for little text content or sometimes will change text based content like links into images. Sometimes the role of SEO involves educating the designer on the use of CSS style sheets and ways to balance design with SEO. Another challenge that affects the implementation of the SEO strategy is the actual client. Though client’s needs should always be first and foremost for the SEO, it is important to make them aware how those needs will affect the ability to successfully market their site. The SEO is often a negotiator between all the groups and needs to be watchful from the very beginning of the project to very end because ultimately when things go wrong it is usually the SEO that gets the blame.

Launch and initial submissions

The proper launch of a site is important. If design changes were involved with the SEO work, then it is important that when the new version of a site goes live that 301 redirects are in place if necessary so old pages will not be lost. Remember the search engines will generally find new sites and sites which were just newly optimized will be indexed over time. To help with the promotion of the new version of the site a SEO can recommend online press releases or social bookmarks. The idea is to give the crawlers a means to find the new content quickly and give the new content established link popularity. Using Google sitemaps makes the process of indexing the new content quick as well and Google site maps should be used whenever possible.

Website maintenance

No matter how great the optimization will rank #1. Marketing is an ongoing process. The goal of the marketer is building on current rankings and expands to new targeted terms. Maintenance can include building content, web analytics, link building, press releases, social media marketing, and more.

Link Building

Link Building or Building Back links is refer to a process of establishing relevant, inbound links to your website which help your website achieve higher ranking with the major search engines and drive targeted traffic to your site.

Search Engine Submissions

Search engine submission is how a webmaster submits a web site directly to a search engine. While Search Engine Submission is often seen as a way to promote a web site, it generally is not necessary because the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use crawlers, bots, and spiders that eventually would find most web sites on the Internet all by themselves.

Steps on how to submit URL in Search Engines: Note All Search Engines that allows URL Submission has the same form for Submitting URL.

Step1: Fill out the confirmation code and your URL that you are trying to submit. (Note: If you already submitted the URL that you are trying to submit, never try to submit it again. Search Engine Don’t allow same URL.)

Step 2: After Filling out the form, you must enter the submit URL

Step 3: After Submitting the URL you will be notified if they received your URL.

Directory Submissions

A web directory or link directory is a directory on the World Wide Web. It specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links.

A web directory is not a search engine and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords; instead, it lists web sites by category and subcategory. Most web directory entries are also not found by web crawlers but by humans. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories. Web directories often allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

Steps on how to submit in a Web Directory

Step 1: Modified first which category your website will be fit.

Step 2: After choosing the right category for your website, hit the submit button.

Step3: After wards a form will appear. Fill out the form. (Note: On the Title and Description you can include some of your targeted keywords)

Step 4: After filling out the form hit the “continue button”.

Step 5: After that a confirmation will appear to notifying if the submission was successfully submitted. Check your email for the email verification to make your posting go live.

Article Submissions

Article submission is one of the most popular and one of the oldest link building methods known to the SEO industry. Everyday thousands of articles are being submitted to these article directories by webmasters and SEO professionals to boost the back links of the website under question.

Steps on how to Submit Articles on a Article Directory

Step 1: The first thing you need to do is Register. Click on the join or register button. After that fill out the form and press submit or add me etc.

Step 2: A page contain thank you message will appear after you sign up the form. After that you need to verify through the email confirmation.

Step 3: On your email there is a message containing a verification, just click the verification.

Step 4: After you confirm the verification you will be redirected to the log-in page on the Article Directory.

Step 5: When you are log-in you will see your profile page. Click the Add New Article to submit your Articles.

Step 6: Fill out the Form to submit your article. After you complete the form press the Add Article Button to submit your Article. (Note: The Content contain HTML)

Step 7: After Submission a thank you page will appear, notifying you that your article was successfully submitted.

Step 8: To View your Article, go to your profile page and see below your submitted article.

Classified Ads Submissions

Classified Ads Submission is one of the powerful methods to attract visitor going to your website. An Online Advertising Ads contains promotional message that has the powerful message in attracting visitor to visit your website. Also, Online Advertising can help your website increase back links.

Steps on how to submit a Promotional Ads Online

Step 1: Registration requires in some of the Classified Ads Sites. Fill out the registration form with your complete details.

Step 2: After filling out the form a verification message will appear. View the confirmation through your email upon registration.

Step 3: On your email there is a message for the confirmation. Click the confirmation link to login.

Step 4: After confirming the Link, a page with a verified email address will appear. This message notified if you have successfully registered.

Step 5: Login to your account to make a post.

Step 6: After you login you can see now your profile and make a post for an online ads. Click the Post Ad button.

Step 7: Choose your specific Location and Category to target your niche.

Step 8: Next page will be a form that will complete all the rest of information you need to advertise. (Note: On the Post Description you can include anchor text with links)

Step 9: After you have complete filling out the form, a page viewing your ads will appear for you to modify and review your posting.

Step 10: After submitting the post, a confirmation message will appear. Click on the link to view the submitted Ads.

Social Bookmarking Submissions

Social Bookmarking is a method of saving and storing web pages in a single online location for future use or for sharing with other Internet users. Sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit provide social bookmarking.

Steps on how to submit in social bookmarking sites

Step 1: Fill out the registration form and after you have done registration, you might need to confirm a verification email that was sent to you.

Step 2: Now that you have receive the registration verification, you need to click the verification link and it will redirect you to your profile page.

Step 3: Start posting by clicking the submit link button. Insert the URL you wanted to bookmark and click submit

Step 4: After that a page containing your post will appear. Click on the save button, for you to keep a copy of bookmark.

Blog Commenting

One of the benefits of blogs as compared to other types of content-based websites is that blogs have the ability to become a two-way discourse between the author and reader. Comment systems help to accomplish this. By leaving a comment on a blog, you benefit the website owner and other readers, and you can make your opinions heard without setting up a website of your own.

· How to Leave a Comment

In most cases, you can determine whether a blog welcomes comments by looking for an area with a label like "Leave a Comment" or "Leave a Reply" at the bottom of a post. Usually you must provide a name and email address to leave a comment. You may also type a link to your website, if you have one. Type your comment in the largest text field, and then hit the "Reply" or "Submit" button to leave your comment. In most cases, your first comment must be approved by a moderator. Some blogs do not moderate future comments from someone who has had a comment approved previously. Some blogs disable comments on posts after a certain length of time to curtail spamming.

Benefit for Readers

Communities sometimes build up around popular blogs; in some cases, you may find yourself reading and replying to comments from the same people when you read your favorite blog. In this sense, blog commenting helps to foster an active community with plenty of reader input. If you see a change in your favorite blog that you do not like, your comments may help change the blog for the better. If you own a website and include a link to the site when making comments, you may also find that your most valuable and interesting comments help to gain readers for your site. Note that most blogs use the "nofollow" attribute in comment links, so commenting on blogs will not improve your website's search engine rankings.

· Benefit for Webmasters

Comments allow a webmaster to get direct feedback from her readers. Although readers will seldom take the time to write email when they like or dislike an article, leaving a comment takes seconds, and so people are often much more likely to leave comments than email. In addition, comments add additional content to a blog that the webmaster does not have to pay for. The text in comments can add to the keyword density of an article, which may help its search engine rankings.

Types of Comment Systems

In most cases, the comment system for a blog is built into its software. Readers need only provide their names and email addresses to leave comments. However, some blogs use external comment systems that allow commenters' accounts to carry over from one website to another. Two such systems are OpenID and Disqus. A benefit of an external comment system is privacy; rather than providing your identity to many websites, a single website manages your data.

Example of a Blog Comment

Forum Comments or Forum Posting

Forum Posting is a way in discussing tips and strategies to promote your web site with the search engines. Also, Forums are good source of knowledge through discussions it’s also have other benefit like having a signature links which help you increase back links.

Three Various Benefits of Forum Posting

* Establishing yourself as an expert - this of course works only if you provide great content, comment and other ideas on a regular basis.

* It can be a source of generating some traffic - example: you write great posts on a SEO forum with a signature links, this post will have several types of comments until your post became popular to search engines like Google.

* Back links for SEO purposes: On a regular basis there are forums who allow user to have their signature with links, these links can deliver a good back links and search engine love it.

Generating Report for Clients

Search Engine Result Page

Search Engine Results Page or SERP for short is the listing of results that have been returned by the Search Engine through querying of certain Keyword(s). It could include results for web pages, video, maps, books, images and anything that is related to the keyword being queried. SERP results are also different in nature and may be sponsored or organic.

When referring to a websites SERP results, one is referring to the Natural listing of the website links that appear on the Search Engine in reference to the Keyword being used. This result is usually referred to by page, result number, Search Engine and the keyword, for example Page 1 Result Number 3 in Google Search for the keyword "SERP".

Notice that for the site Wikipedia, the SERP result is Page 1, Result 1 on Google for the keyword "Search Engine Optimization".

How to test a Search Engine Results Page?

There are many ways you can test SERP and can be both manual or automated testing. First you must determine which Search Engine you would like to test the results on and then you must determine the keyword(s) you would like to test.

Once you determine that, enter the keyword into the search engine and notice the results that are returned. The returned results on Major Search Engines include

1. A Title
2. A Description or Snippet
3. URL Link

Please refer below to Diagram 1.2 to illustrate a SERP Anatomy

Diagram 1.2 - SERP Anatomy

Remember that SERP can also differ from country to country as personalization is taken into account. Also Google provides different Country Search and the results may differ depending on the prefix or country you conduct your search with.

How to get better SERP Results?

There are many factors involved in Search Engine algorithms that determines how it ranks different results and these factors are different for Search Engines depending on what they perceive as important. However, there are some accepted factors that are agreed to have a positive or negative impact on rankings. In order of importance factors that determine SERP Rankings include

1. Page Value

Search Engines are always investigating new techniques on how to deliver value to their users, if someone wants to query "List of Free SERP Tools" then search engines wants to display sites that provide a list of Free SERP tools, this is known as establishing value.

When we discuss page value or website value we specifically mean the value the site offers towards answering a specific keyword query.

One must also bear in mind this is a difficult process, for example, if you were looking for something specific such as "Definition of SERP" it's simple to determine if a website answers that specific query and thus the value will be determined on how well the website has related towards providing the answer to that Specific query. However, when someone quires a broad keyword such as "Information" then it's a little more difficult for Search Engines to determine the value as the Keyword query, is broad in nature and the true answer will lie behind the person who entered the query, one person could want to know the context of information and another could simply want a brief definition.

Search Engines are always trying to improve their service by finding new ways to measure this intangible factor, but bottom line, to achieve higher in the Search Engine Results Page, you must first start by making sure that you are truly providing value by answering that specific keyword query.

2. Title and Description

The Title and Description of the website will affect the search engines ranking. Search Engines look for relevant titles and descriptions that are associated with a Keyword Query in order to establish value, it's one of the mechanisms used by the Search Engine Algorithm.

3. Content

The content of a website can be used to build up the description of the website. It can be relevant to determine SERP rankings depending on the nature of the keyword search. They say that content is King, but that is only true when content comprehensively to the best possible answers the question in hand and thus provides value to the seeker of the queried.

4. Back Links

Search Engines find it very important that you have Quality Links pointing back to a site to rank it higher. One method of determining SERP results is for search engines to analyze the Backlinks (Links pointing to a certain website) to a certain website that are relevant to the keyword being used. This is because if Website A is pointing back to website B, that means Website B has value in what it offers and for that very reason must be important. Remember that Search Engines are intelligent and will determine if the link pointing back to the website is related or provides value in anyway.

5. Meta Data

The Meta Data including the Meta Description and Meta Keywords are used by Search Engines to help build a description about a website and play a role with some search engines to determine SERP. The closer the description fits the targeted keyword the more chances there are that the website will achieve higher ranking SERP.

Website Statistics

Website Statistic is the amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives.

Web site traffic was initially viewed as an all-important metric for gauging success on the Web. This assumption was due in part to the lack of other business metrics to explain the .com phenomenon. Now much of the focus has shifted back to profitability, and Web site traffic is only part of the equation.

Web site traffic x conversion = results

Web site traffic is still important, as you can't have conversions without visitors, but it is becoming less important as a standalone metric

Example of a Website Statistics

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. The product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use on around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites. Another market share analysis claims that Google Analytics is used at around 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (as currently ranked by Alexa).

GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.

Integrated with AdWords, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using GA, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimize or cull campaigns.

Search Engine Optimization

Monday, December 3, 2012

SEO Manual for Begginers (Old School)

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