Web Dev Notes

If they want to have success, companies should do everything they can to ensure that their SEO firm doesn’t provide lousy service. Here are 10 tips to keep in mind:

1. Be realistic.

Don’t waste your time or the SEO firm’s expertise by arguing about broad search terms. Don’t say you want to be in the Top 10 for “e-commerce.” The SEO firm should ask: “E-commerce and what else? E-commerce consultants? Please be specific.”

2. Think long-term.

If you can’t help yourself and you want broad search terms, such as “toys,” think through what it may take to pull that off. Variations on your favorite term may be best in the short term. If you start looking a year or two out, then make sure there aren’t site design, programming and link popularity flaws.

3. Be open with log files.

Don’t shield log files from the SEO firm. Admit if your web analytics capability is poor. How can the SEO firm do a good job if your host company can’t provide decent statistics, such as the number of visitors from search engines and the actual search terms they use?

4. Change text.

If an SEO firm wants to change text, give the consultant lots of room. If a graphic can be modified so the words appear as text, be open-minded about the change. Chances are, it won’t hurt the overall look of the web site. SEO professionals grit their teeth when clients say they want rankings and then resist change.

5. Don’t sit on recommendations.

You may end up discouraging the SEO firm you’re paying if you hire them and then fail to review their suggestions.

6. Reply to e-mails, voicemails and other communications.

If an SEO firm contacts you, especially for a scheduled meeting, make a point to return the e-mail or call. Really, it’s a good idea to be available for strategic conference calls.

7. Stick to the program.

Don’t ask the SEO firm to optimize the web site and then expect them to provide Pay-Per-Click (PPC) guidance as well. If you can’t handle PPC on your own, pay the experts.

8. Keep statistics in perspective.

With many search terms and engines, it’s always going to be possible for some keywords not to rank. Don’t get hung up on what search terms didn’t pop in the Top 30. Focus on your traffic growth and conversions.

9. Know your limits.

SEO firms appreciate informed clients - to a limit. Read the articles. Pick up an SEO book. Keep up with the news. But don’t hire an SEO expert and then tell them you’re an SEO expert. For example, you may be excited to learn about all of the SEO devices that could be at your disposal. Don’t blame the SEO firm for failing to use them all at once. Measured, gradual changes are best.

10. Take your company name out of title tags.

Do yourself a favor and make title tags available for search terms, not your long company name. Only keep it if it’s short and useful from a title tag proximity and density standpoint.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/10-ways-to-make-sure-your-seo-goes-out-of-its-way-for-you-642618.html

About the Author:

Sortins Technologies as the name suggests is an Indian web designing & development company located in Hyderabad that provides professional services in web design, website development, web hosting, website maintenance, website redesigning, web promotion, search engine optimization, multimedia presentations, e-catalogs, e-commerce web development, intranet application development, software development, extranet applications, portals and vortals development from Hyderabad, India.

I read an interesting article the other day titled “SEO or Content - Can There be Only One?” over at blognewswatch.com. I particularly enjoyed The Lazy SEO Manifesto which is both discouraging and encouraging depending on your point of view. SEO can be a great “get rich quick” tool, but without content, it’s like throwing magnets at a wall instead of a fridge, none of the traffic will stick.

The way I see it is quite simple. Quality content builds loyalty, quality SEO builds traffic. Content will allow your site to be successful in the long run, whereas SEO can bring you short term prosperity. Combining both SEO and content is the key to allowing your website to reach its full potential.

The reason we bookmark websites is because we have identified quality content. We would not need bookmarks if exactly what we wanted to see would show up every time we conducted a search. This leads to a major problem. Sometimes, what we are looking for is hidden in the depths of the internet because other sites with poor or equivalent content have used SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to gain higher rankings in search results. Millions of searches are conducted every week, so there is no doubt that higher rankings translate to higher traffic.

This website is a perfect example of SEO at work. While I hope to be offering quality content, there is no real reason why I should have a page rank of 5 and receive thousands of page views a week, after only my second week of writing this blog. Thanks to the 451press network of websites, each member benefits from the success of the other through extensive linking. In fact, I’ve noticed i’ve been getting traffic from search engines from people searching for “Alt-Tab Replacement” due to this article I wrote just last week! If I had posted the 100% exact same post on my Flogger blog, the post would remain, as previously mentioned, hidden in the depths of the internet.

While good SEO can lead to almost immediate success, you cannot expect your website to be viable for long without quality content. Building visitor loyalty is extremely important, because search engines are constantly working on ways to provide better results for searches conducted with their engine. As a result, if you rely solely on SEO, within a single day your website could potentially drop from thousands of visitors to virtually none should a search engine like Google make changes that cause your website to receive a lower page rank.

The best thing you can do is focus on content first. Next, build up good relationships with other websites similar to your own so that you can get quality incoming links. This will help build a solid foundation for your website such that it can survive regardless of whatever search engines are up to. If time remains, then try to do some SEO to increase traffic to your website. Don’t waste time on SEO until you have something to offer. In fact, you may actually harm your site if visitors are lured in and find nothing useful because in the future, once you have content, they may skip clicking your link if they still remember wasting their time the last time they visited it!

Have you ever considered the possibility that Google and other search engines might prefer domains which have a further expiry date? I know I hadn’t until I read an article at DailyBlogTips.com on the subject.

Here is a quote from a Google Patent which indicates that a domains expiry date is likely to contribute to the websites ranking! How much it contributes, we will likely never know…

Certain signals may be used to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate domains. For example, domains can be renewed up to a period of 10 years. Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith. -Google patent

Should you start renewing your domains for longer periods? I would. There are billions of websites out there so any competitive edge you can get, no matter how small, will sometimes allow your website to jump up in rank past thousands of others!

Most of my domains are currently 1-year registrations with the exception of one that is 3-years. Come renewal time, I’ll be taking a moment to consider my future plans. For websites that I know will still be kicking in a few years, I’ll renew for longer! However, my parked domains or those sitting relatively idle will still only be 1-year registrations. The idea here in not to waste money, but invest it properly in online real-estate where it counts!

Submitting articles to Digg is an incredibly powerful resource because it can potentially send you thousands of visitors if you reach the front page! However, Digg is very community focused and is more about swarming the popular content online as decided by the majority of its users, rather than promoting the authors of the content. WriterDatabase.com on the other hand is all about promoting the authors and connecting them with publishers online.

Articles submitted to WriterDatabase.com are ranked by rating, giving the top authors in different categories the chance to have their material read. The best part is, you can link to your website within your articles and on your personal profile which is good for search engine optimization and which will continually drive traffic to your website!

There is also a top authors list which is based upon the number of articles you submit. Those who submit the most articles to the site will show up at the top of this list, exposing their profile and any links it may contain to all users of the website. You can include up to 5 links in your profile to any website you desire. Your profile will also link to all the articles you have submitted, each of which will link to your websites and the source of the article!

Submitting articles to websites like WriterDatabase.com is definitely a great way of driving traffic to your website because of all the links you will generate in the process! By creating these links, your page rank will also get a boost, therefore increasing your rankings in search engines and thus lead to an even further increase in traffic! The next best part is that publishers will use website like WriterDatabase.com to find content for their websites. If a publisher uses one of your articles, they are required to keep your links and give you all credit for the material, meaning you could have very popular news sites sending your tons of traffic as well!

Is WriterDatabase.com a nice idea, but not for you?

There are some things to consider before submitting an article! First of all, because the article will be published on WriterDatabase.com, you need to make sure the content is your own and you have permission to submit it! Also, if you are a 451 Press writer like myself, you can only submit articles that are 30 days old or more because 451 Press receives exclusive rights for one month. However, could you think of a better way to start driving traffic to your older articles? Have those older articles start sending you traffic all over again by submitting them to WriterDatabase.com!

Are you excited about this opportunity and eager to start submitting your articles, but don’t have the time to do so?

The effort is worth it! In the long run, you will drive traffic to your site and boost your page rank giving you an advantage over your competitors!

And of course, at this point I must tell you who is bringing WriterDatabase.com into your life to provide you with these wondrous opportunities!

Yes, I am guilty of promoting my own website, I admit it! WriterDatabase.com is a site I have put together using Article Dashboard. In fact, you can download the Article Dashboard software to create your own article directory as well! If you do create your own directory, please send me the link because I want to submit all my articles to as many article directories as possible for all of the advantageous reasons I listed above!

Lynn Little at SeoDance.com was the one who first inspired me to look into submitting my content to article directories when she suggested some good websites to submit articles too and explained why you want to do so! Hopefully she’ll add mine to the list!

The last question on your mind might be, why submit to WriterDatabase.com now when it has just launched and is still a small directory? Well actually, thats the best time to start submitting! Remember, those who submit the most articles will have their profiles shown highest on the Top Authors page! Now is the easiest time to make the list and drive extra traffic to any of the websites you list as a link in your profile!

The first step to Search Engine Optimization is making sure all the creepy crawlers can actually find their way around your website. Lets say I plan to take a trip to China to crawl (ie: visit) a certain part of the country. When I show up I’ll need directions, but unfortunately, even if I find a kind fellow happy to assist me, if he speaks to me in Mandarin, I won’t understand anything and I’ll be lost!

You can do all the optimization you like, but if you confuse poor Googlebot, he’ll turn around and go visit someone else! You need to welcome Googlebot and friends with open arms and feed them all the instructions they need to easily find all the destinations on your site. Sitemaps are great, but we’ll talk about those another day. Flash websites for example can be beautiful, but crawlers hit Flash like a bird into a freshly cleaned patio door. While they’ll stop at your site knocked out for a moment, they’ll quickly realize they can’t go forward, turn around a fly away!

Knocking out Googlebot is a bad idea if you want to increase traffic to your website. While crawlers can handle indexing poorly coded websites, the best thing you can do is validate your site “just in case”. Validating your website will help you find errors in your HTML or CSS that you likely don’t know are there and which are usually very easy fixes. Fix these up and make your site more inviting to the crawlers!

Also, definitely find broken links and fix them ASAP! Don’t upset those poor crawlers by sending them looking for pages that don’t exist! That’s just cruel don’t you think?

• W3C Markup Validation
• W3C CSS Validation
• W3C Feed Validation
• Find Broken Links

Remember back in April when I became the new writer for Web Dev Notes? I started off by introducing Joomla, PHP-Nuke, phpBB and PHP. I even recommended some cool software like the ALT-Tab Replacer, Virtual Desktop Manager and the Firebug plugin for Firefox. After a slow start, I finally got my big break when my article Formatting Text in Wordpress started to bring in steady traffic!

In my early Web Dev Notes days I stuck to covering more technical topics such as how to insert CSS on your website or how to create your first PHP page. However, after testing out the use of humor in posts like the Top Ten Stupidest Joomla! Administrator Tricks and When will GoogleBot index my Brain I discovered that this unique approach was actually quite well received! I also realized website marketing and SEO was a very popular aspect of web development so I decided to venture into this area with posts like The Battle for Traffic - SEO vs Content, No Contacts, No Money and Validate Your Website for Better SEO!

Of course, even though I would later discover that marketing and SEO would be a very popular topic on my blog, at the time I had no idea yet! Looking at my stats, the posts about PHP were the most trafficked so I decided to cover this area more extensively! In May I introduced some great web development resources and then discussed the relationship between PHP and a Web Server/Browser in order to build a solid foundation before diving right into PHP for the rest of the month. I then covered how to comment PHP code, the debate over using Print or Echo, how to use variables, how to use concatenation with variables and variable naming conventions. Using this introductory material, I was then able to go even deeper and cover topics like using arrays, if/else programming logic, nested IF/ELSE conditional statements, and PHP Loops. Since the topic of loops is already an extensively covered subject, I decided to make my articles sound unique by naming them, “The magic of WHILE Loops“, “The incredible FOR Loop Multi-Tasker“, and “The FOREACH Loop Love Affair with Mr. Array“.

In order to stay informed, I subscribed to many RSS feeds relating to my topic. In so doing I noticed that Digg and Google were two very popular topics. I decided to explore these subjects a bit with articles like, “List of Google Hoaxes“, “Who’s Digging You?“, “Google’s PageRank Explained by Phil Craven“, “Declare Warr on Digg Doondles!“, “I Hacked Google and Stole Their Robot lolol“, and “Are Your Archives Burying You Worse Than Digg“. These articles continue to bring in traffic to this day!

During the month of June I was taking a course on Interface Design so decided to cover similar topics on Web Dev Notes. I began by discussing the advantages of using personas during development and then decided to list nine causes of software error before discussing software quality and the three general principles of quality assurance. I introduced the subject of human/computer interaction and demonstrated how good design can help us better interact with computers. In fact, making the interaction between humans and computers as easy as possible is an important goal of improved user interface design. I also mentioned that building the right product is even more important than building a product right.

It was around mid-June when I also began to notice how well my SEO, blogging and marketing tips posts were doing! I therefore decided to write about the guaranteed way to generate incoming links and conquering the crowded niche! I also wrote about some issues I was having with trying to follow my own advice when I noticed my trackbacks were being kidnapped and asked if it were possible if my bullets were killing them! Not wanting to stray too far from the very roots of web development, I also introduced the Pixel Groovy website, discussed how to created animated favicons and threw in 21 CSS tutorials answering frequently asked questions.

During the month of July I continued to cover a lot of marketing topics. I created a new Top 11 Posts section and asked if people thought linking to other sites increases incoming traffic. I also started to learn a great deal about blogging and realized that my very own archives contained in itself the power to help WebDevNotes succeed. I therefore stopped considering old posts like dirty socks thrown into a laundry bin, and instead began viewing them as cornerstone content that should be linked back to frequently so that new visitors could access my best content easily.

Upon making this realization, I began offering my visitors some blogging advice with the help of Lolcats to make the posts more fun and easy to read. For example:

Don’t let Chihuahua’s hold back your website! Start working with the purrrrfect partners and plot your plan for success. Make sure you plant the seeds for success early and listen to feedback so you can feed your readers a happy meal. Make good use of article directories and other marketing techniques and never forget the secrets to writing a successful blog!

In conclusion, to those who say linking to old content is difficult, I beg to differ! Don’t let those archives go to waste

Search Engine Optimization, often referred to as “SEO”, is basically a method for fooling search engines into ranking your website higher! The reason this sounds evil is because it is! When we search the web, we want to find relevant search results that provide high quality content! However, when we then go to work on our website, we use SEO to try and get our results ahead of others! In a perfect world, we would sit down and write higher quality content in order to rank ahead of others, but this is no perfect world! Given a reasonable level of quality and some good SEO, you could find yourself showing up in search results in no time! The trick is knowing exactly what to tweak and how to tweak it.

For more articles relating to SEO, check out the WebDevNotes SEO section. The point of this particular article is not to teach you SEO, but to make sure you are aware of it’s importance. If Darwin were around today, he’s be more than happy to explain his theory of evolution and relate the idea of survival of the fittest to websites and their ability to rank in Google.

As usual you may be asking yourself, what the heck do I mean? Nobody will eat your website, but your website does need to eat in order to survive. Unless you are writing a script for a horror movie, your website should not literally be eating people, however, it does need a constant supply of visitors to serve any useful purpose. Unless you are willing to invest in advertising, the only way you are going to get visitors to your website is by either posting actively on other web-sites or ranking higher in Google. It’s survival of the fittest because as soon as a more SEvOlved website comes a long and starts ranking better for your keywords, that website will start stealing all of your visitors, hence starving your website species into extinction!

Unless you want your website to become obsolete and extinct, you need to make sure it is SEvOlved! Keep reading our SEO section on a daily basis in order to stay up to date on the latest web-mutations that can give you a competitive advantage over other website species. Unlike human evolution, web-evolution does not take millions of years, it takes weeks.

Greetings fellow bloggers, web developers and entreprenurs. Today, I’d like to bring up and important topic which may be holding back certain websites. Are your archives burying you worse than Digg?

This question is only relevant to certain types of blogs and websites. If your site is news focussed, this is not really a big issue for you. News websites require frequent updates with current news relating to the topic in order to be successful. However, other blogs and websites may be more focussed on tutorials and information which remains relevant regardless of it’s age.

Take this blog here for example. I have written some basic getting started with PHP tutorials which some people found useful when they were first posted. PHP has not changed since I wrote the articles, so they would still be useful today. If I’m lucky search engines will send those posts some traffic or another site will link to them. However, if I am not lucky, the post will be buried deep in my archives and users may never find the information again.

If I wrote a post reporting about Paris Hilton going to jail, I wouldn’t care if the information was buried forever, because today the post is old news. However, when you have written some really exceptional posts that are still relevant and useful today, you need to make sure they don’t get lost. Many websites therefore often link to their top articles in the header of their website or in a menu which is very visible. If the top posts are good, these websites have a better chance of getting their visitors to come back!

If you cannot edit the theme of your website or blog to include a top posts list, you should consider writing a post from time to time letting your visitors know about some of your best articles! Make sure your best material is read more often!

For an example of what I am talking about, visit the very successful problogger.com website. You’ll notice in the top left corner right below the website logo is a list of some of Darrens most popular articles. If you check the dates, some were written as early as 2004!

I’ve now been writing this blog for three months with a minimum of five posts per week! Thats over 60 articles, many of which are starting to get buried deep in the archives! Now that I have put in place a solid foundation, I also need to start following my own advice and help my visitors find the best of my older articles. I cannot edit my theme for this particular site, so from time to time I’ll now start writing a new series of articles titled, “Top 11 WebDev Articles”. Why 11? It’s my lucky number!

I’ve already explained why this would be a good idea, but here’s another example just to further stress why this is important. One of my more popular articles is related to formatting text in Wordpress. This article helped many people at the time and is still relevant today. The article also gets some search engine traffic, so I know its information people are still looking for and need! This is therefore an example of the type of post I would want to include in my top list!

Also remember, good internal linking will help search engines better crawl your website, help increase your page rank, and help increase your page views and readership! Just put yourself in your visitors shoes. If they visited your website and enjoyed your posts, they will then be very eager to find a list of your top articles to read those too!

Lynn Little caught my attention recently with her post, “The End of PageRank?“! In this post she suggests that Google may be putting an end to its practice of ranking websites…!

If you visit the PageRank Update or Export List History section of the SEO Company, you will notice that this is currently the longest ever between an update! In fact, it was previously estimated, based on past data, that the update would occur sometime in July of this summer!

Is it time to panic? Is PageRank dead?

I highly doubt that PageRank is dead. PageRank is the idea that brought Google to power and helps their search results be very accurate. With a system in place that is stilll working fine, I see no reason that PageRank would be removed from the equation. Google constantly makes changes to their algorithms, but I can’t see them taking out PageRank.

So what may be changing? Well, it is entirely possible, that since PageRank is so important to Google returning accurate search results, that they may be discontinuing their practice of revealing PageRanks in order to make it more difficult for people to find ways to cheat the system. In fact, they’ve already tried to make it more difficult by increasing the delays between PageRank updates. Perhaps they have decided to increase the delays even further!

Even though we cannot currently see the updated PageRanks, they still definitely update all the time. According to Googles Webmaster Tools, BattleCity Classic has been my highest ranked page for the last three months. According to my Google tool bar, BattleCity Classic only has a PageRank of 1, but is still listed as my highest ranked page even though I have others where the tool bar displays a PageRank of 3!

So, is PageRank dead? I doubt it. I can definitely see the delay having been increased even further, but since so many advertisers, including those using Google Adwords, use PageRank and Alexa very closely when selecting ideal advertising hot spots, Google will likely continue the practice of ranking websites and releasing this information to the public. They may just take 6 months to do it so mischievous people will have to learn to write good content in order to get search engine traffic!

Earlier this month we asked our readers, “What is Your Favorite Marketing Strategy“. I encourage anyone who has written on the subject of marketing to post a link to your articles in the comments below or to send me an email and I will feature your website in a post therefore sending you tons of traffic and a powerful page rank link! In fact, getting a high page-ranked website to link to your articles is a good marketing strategy!

What is my favorite marketing strategy? I am a strong believer in SEO so I spend a lot of time trying to market my website simply by optimizing it for search engines. The idea behind this is that the more optimized my website is, the more free traffic I will get! This is also my favorite strategy because I am a computer nerd and therefore enjoy tweaking code to its peak performance! If I were more of a social minded person, I might have said my favorite marketing strategy was posting comments on other websites in order to increase the exposure of my own!

Here are some links to some helpful marketing resources that may or may not inspire you! Either way, they do contain some useful information!

Website Marketing Plan is dedicated to providing resources which will help you market your website. Definitely worth checking out.

Nowsell.com has a nice little collection of free website marketing tools and guides. Go check them out!

Knowthis.com has a nice little section of articles related to different online marketing strategies.

Expansion Plus has a good collection of information that will help you improve your internet marketing strategy and your search engine visibility.

Finally, check out my Web Dev Notes Marketing Section for my personal ideas and thoughts on marketing online!