What To Look For When Choosing An SEO Firm by: Jeffrey Henderson

Okay everybody, last week I covered some of the scams and things that you should look out for. Today I'll go over some of the qualities you should look for when choosing an SEO Firm.
The first thing you should look for in a SEO Firm is whether or not they use a non-disclosure agreement. Any SEO Firm who advertises who there clients are is putting their clients at risk to unethical practices that other SEO firms will use to get a website penalized or banned so they can help their own clients. Also, any SEO Firm that is producing results isn't going to want other SEO companies to be able to analyze their work so they can copy their techniques. Just like the Colonel won't give away their Original Recipe for their chicken no good SEO Firm would so willingly give away their recipe for results.   

Go-to-Read >>>

What You Did Wrong With Your Domain Names! by: Mark Kessler

Trying to improve search engine rankings is just like a rubics cube. A puzzle that can keep you occupied for hours. How many times have you heard "They keep changing the rules?," and the frustrating part is...they don't even tell you what the rules are in the first place!   

Go-to-Read >>>

What if you could had a piece of Google? by: Herman Dias

Have you ever "just missed" one of those *big* opportunities that you *knew* could've been BIG for you... if you'd just *acted*?
I'll tell you what... I sure have. And if you're like me at all, when you sit back and think about that lost opportunity, you know it doesn't feel very good, does it?
Well here's what I've got. Something just came across my desk that I truly believe will be the NEXT BIG THING, and I simply could not wait one moment to get this in your hands.
So HOW big? I'm talking "Amazon" big. I'm talking "AOL" big... I'm talking "buying 50,000 shares at Microsoft's IPO" big. :-)
One of the internet's best minds...

Go-to-Read >>>

What is Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a text (not HTML) file you put on your site to tell search robots which pages you would like them not to visit. Robots.txt is by no means mandatory for search engines but generally search engines obey what they are asked not to do. It is important to clarify that robots.txt is not a way from preventing search engines from crawling your site (i.e. it is not a firewall, or a kind of password protection) and the fact that you put a robots.txt file is something like putting a note "Please, do not enter" on an unlocked door - e.g. you cannot prevent thieves from coming in but the good guys will not open to door and enter. That is why we say that if you have really sensitive data, it is too naive to rely on robots.txt to protect it from being indexed and displayed in search results.

Go-to-Read >>>

What are my chances to get the first place in search engine listings? by: Oleg Lazarenko

Let's examine the situation from the beginning. Search engines just need your content to deliver it to searchers. If a searcher is happy with the search result from the particular search engine, he will come back and use this search engine again. Do not think that search engines serve to send customers to your website. They DO NOT CARE about your website or your business. All they need is content.

When the search engines first appear in the Internet they needed help to determine what your site is about and how relevant is your website to search queries. People used "Keywords" meta-tag in those days. Keywords gave too many opportunities to cheat with search engines results so searchers were not happy with their search queries results. Same thing was with the search engines. Manipulation with a website position in the search engines listings became known as Search Engine Optimization. That was the time when you could actually wake up a rich man after the search engine came to your website, included it into its database and started sending you thousands of customers.

Go-to-Read >>>

W3C Compliance & SEO by: Dave Davies

From reading the title many of you are probably wondering what W3C compliance has to do with SEO and many more are probably wondering what W3C compliance is at all. Let's begin by shedding some light on the later.

What Is W3C Compliance?

The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium and basically, since 1994 the W3C has provided the guidelines by which websites and web pages should be structured and created. The rules they outline are based on the "best practices" and while websites don't have to comply to be viewed correctly in Internet Explorer and other popular browsers that cater to incorrect design practices, there are a number of compelling reasons to insure that you or your designer insure that the W3C guidelines are followed and that your site is brought into compliance.

In an interview with Frederick Townes of W3 EDGE Web Design he mentioned a number of less SEO-related though very compelling arguments for W3C-complaince. Some non-SEO reasons to take on this important step in the lifecycle of your site are:

Go-to-Read >>>

Will Search Engines Draw a Blank or Give You a Rank? by: Derek Fulford

One of the most common website analysis questions asked by search engine neophytes is: "Is my site optimized?" followed by: "How can I tell?" and ultimately: "How can I tell if my competitor’s site is optimized?". Well friends, I’m here to help you answer these simple SEO analysis questions with some easy-to-follow instructions on how to do a website analysis.

Components of an SEO Analysis

The search engine index is the cornerstone of any SEO analysis. In order for a site to have good search engine rankings, it needs to be in the search engines’ indices. Makes sense, doesn’t it? When performing a website analysis, it is important to determine whether or not your site is listed in Google because it is the most popular search engine. It also has the largest index. If you can not find your site in Google, it is probably not listed on the other engines. This should be the first step of any SEO analysis. To see if your site is listed, start by searching for a site by name to determine if it is in the index. If it doesn’t come up, go to Google and type "site:www.url.com" (without the quotes and with your actual URL). This will show how many pages of the site, if any, are in Google’s index. If your site does not come up, there are two possibilities. One, the site has not been indexed, or, two, the site has been penalized. Hopefully, the situation is the former and not the latter, or you have a long uphill battle in front of you, and crying doesn’t help. In the next step of website analysis, we turn our attention to the...

Go-to-Read >>>

What are Blogs, and Why Your Business Should Use One by: Richard Zwicky

Today, blogs are much more dynamic. Some major corporations' web sites contain internal blogs, where employees can post their thoughts, ideas and more; sometimes they are public, sometimes not. But mostly, blogs are hosted on independent web sites. When using one of these, the diary keeper, or blogger, logs in and starts posting his or her thoughts in real time to the Internet. Witnesses to events can comment on breaking stories faster than the mainstream media, which usually are at least one hour from being 'live on the scene'. Thus, bloggers can publish reports and commentaries live on the Internet, and provide information to the world faster than traditional media, all without a publisher or editor to review or approve their work.

Think about it, Monks used to have to handwrite lengthy text to record events. Then Gutenberg came along, and revolutionized the publishing industry by making it possible to mass produce their work. Systems got faster and faster for a few centuries, and then along came the Internet. It became possible for anyone with a computer and a web site somewhere to publish their work and have it visible anywhere around the world in seconds. Now, anyone can spread their message, instantly. Aspiring and established writers alike can bypass the traditional publishing industry, and disseminate their work directly to the public.

Go-to-Read >>>

Web Links from the Search Engine's Perspective

Search engines can take a step beyond what humans can compute. They look at the entire Web from a one-way linkage view, triangular linkage view, reciprocal linkage view and a direct edge linkage view. Envision the three diagrams multiplied together to form hundreds, if not, thousands of pages with some sorts of linkage between the two. Now isolate the pages that link in one of the four fashions mentioned above and assign a solid red line to represent a one-way link, a dotted red link to represent a reciprocal link, then mentally note the links that are triangular in nature and finally, I have highlighted the links that are direct edges in yellow/red. After you have all of that mapped out, stand over this color document and look down. You should be able to quickly see an unnatural linking pattern between groups of pages. For example, look at the page on the second row to the left, second box down. You will see that many dotted red lines point to the box (page). That means there is a lot of reciprocal linking taking place between that page and others. While you are at it, try to locate pages that are linking in triangular patterns versus one way links.

Go-to-Read >>>

What is The Google Sandbox Effect? by: Jakob Jelling

In the age of fair competition you may find it hard to believe that a search engine may hinder the appearance of a new website. This is what is currently believed to be happening on more web servers today. Some programmers have viewed Google as uncomfortable to rank newer websites until they have proven their viability to exist for more than a period of "x" months. Thus the term "Sandbox Effect" applies to the idea that all new websites have their ratings placed in a holding tank until such time is deemed appropriate before a ranking can commence.

However the website is not hindered as much as the links that are reciprocated from other users. Newer links that are created are put on a "probationary" status until again they pickup in rank from other matured sites or placed directly by an ad campaign. The idea behind the hindrance is to prevent a fast ranking to occur on a new website. The usual holding period seems to be between 90 and 120 days before a site would start obtaining rank from reciprocal or back linking.

Go-to-Read >>>