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Beat Competitors To Rank For Keywords Not Machine
Posted by: Morgan Greenhalgh | 2008-06-20 13:45:30 | Posted in: SEO Info
When you're researching how to get your website to rank in search engines, what do you do? Do you consult with ebooks? Do you prefer to troll through forums looking for answers? These are all viable tactics to use, but one tried and true method works especially well online: see what your competitors are doing.
Google Search For Your Keywords
Here's your first step: search Google (or whichever SE you prefer) and see what the top organic listings are. Now you know who your top competitors are for those keywords. Go to these sites and see what they're doing to rank so highly for the words that you want. Are they doing something special with their meta? Do they have great backlinks? Do they have lots of fresh content targeting the words?Look through these sites and you'll see some great new ways for you to improve your site. That's the great thing about working online: everyone's work is on display for you to inspect. You'll be able to benefit from other people's years of experience and use it to help your site.
Beating Competitors, Not Machine
When you're online, you don't need to make exactly what Google wants. Nope, it's much easier than that. That's the thing with Google, Yahoo and the other search engines, they're quite good at what they do and you can't beat machine. Luckily for you, you don't need to beat machine, you just need to beat your competitors. This is why doing a competitor analysis is pivotal for building high ranking websites.Once you've seen how everyone else is doing it and how they are getting their rankings, all you need to do is do things slightly better. Make yourself stand out from the crowd and you'll start getting those rankings.
When you’re setting up a website, one of the first things you’re going to have to come up with is a domain name, that URL that people need to type in to get to your site. This is a great thing about the Internet. Nowhere else in life do you get to choose your own address. Well, you may get to choose it, but you don’t get to choose what it’s called. You’re stuck with: 5489 Drab Place or whatever. Online, your address can be whatever you want it to be.
Available Domain Names
Within limits. You can’t choose anything obscene and for that matter, anything with an “X” anywhere near it has probably already been co-opted by some porn site. Pretty much every four letter or fewer letter combination has already been used, as is probably every word in the English language not in combination with one or more other words.
My Name Is URL
So what’s a name-maker to do? Keep in mind that your domain name is also your URL, the thing people have to remember in order to type it in to their web browser in order to get to your site. Try to make a domain name that describes your product or service without getting too wordy: WeCleanYourDrains.com rather than TheBestPlumberInTheWorldThatOffersaVarietyofPlumbingServices.com. I’d also avoid too many syllables and too much alliteration. ResplendentRedRackets.com sounds like a distinctive name for your site that sells tennis gear, but it may be more trouble that it’s worth. Was it RedResplendent or ResplendentRed? What was that first word again? Try to keep it simple.
Welcome to Your Site
While the choice of a domain name may not seem that important in the greater scheme of things, the fact is, it is your introduction, the first thing people see about your site, and like they say in the commercial, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression."
What’s The Good Word: Blogs And Keywords
Posted by: Nadia | 2008-06-17 14:11:27 | Posted in: SEO Info
What’s The Good Word:
Blogs And Keywords
Certain words -- nay, many words -- are so vulgar that they cannot be repeated on television (unless you subscribe to cable). Even more words just sound bad, despite their true meaning: banal, disgruntled, moist. Every year, the National Spelling Bee tests the knowledge of how words are correctly spelled, starting with the contestants announcing each individual letter and ending with most of the kids in tears. In short, words are everywhere, often causing suffering.
But what about keywords in a blog? Those words should be carefully selected the same way a sushi chef delicately filets a fish. The keywords you use in a blog make all the difference between how many people view your site.
Getting Your Blog
Noticed With Keywords
Considering keywords is easy, especially when you are running a niche site. For example, if you sell paraphernalia related to words – dictionaries, crossword puzzles, National Spelling Bee baseball caps – you want to put those keywords all over your blog. The reason blogs are so successful with businesses is because it casually yet effectively incorporates content into your site, no matter what the site is about, thus bringing in precious Internet traffic through SEO.
So if you’re writing a blog concerning the latest version of Scrabble, you not only want to include keywords in the tags section, but you want to make sure those keywords are inserted into the blog without overusing them. Scrabble, board games and word games are all phrases that need to be repeated with finesse. Use them, yet don’t rely on them, for SEO practices. Keywords should also appear in subheadings as well as in the blog to help attract even more traffic.
Now, did you even notice how many times I just the term “keyword” in this blog?
I’ve been writing a lot this week about the joys and pitfalls of affiliate marketing. While I’m still not quite an expert on the subject (though a lot closer than I was a week ago) there is one thing I’ve realized, and that’s the importance of making sure your website is one that interests you.
Picking Your Poison
When people are considering what kind of website they will use as the basis for their affiliate program, they usually think first about what will drive the most traffic to their site, what subject will catch the attention of search engines and send hordes of Internet consumers streaming to their pages ready to start an endless cascade of clicks on the affiliate ads that rest within.
Choose Wisely
The reality is that making an affiliate site successful usually takes time and effort, and you won’t always see dividends right away. That’s why it’s important that the focus of your site be something that’s going to make you want to come back and work on it every day.
Do What You Know
Listen, I know mortgage loans aren’t anyone’s favorite topic, but if you have an interest in real estate, it makes a lot more sense to make mortgage loans your focus than say, poker. On the other hand, poker is perfect affiliate site for someone like me, who is constantly glued to episodes of the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker, and whose eyes glaze over when he hears talk of things like “negative amortization,” “variable rate mortgages,” and “Private Mortgage Insurance.”
They say “do what you love and the money will follow.” Base an affiliate marketing plan around something you love (or at least like) and even if the money doesn’t follow, you’ll have a good time giving it your best shot.
Furthering Your Education in a Fast Paced World
Posted by: Keion Moradi | 2008-06-12 10:14:54 | Posted in: SEO Info
I was in the middle of graduate school when I first found CKMG. Boy, was I thrilled to take a break from the full-time grind of academic study. However, after a year-long hiatus, my unfinished business is looming and it's time to get back to the books, at least part time.
Which brings me to the point: education is a continuous process. In order to stay sharp in your chosen field, it's necessary to exercise and enhance your skills. Always look for ways to build on your existing level of expertise. I'm a firm believer in furthering education to meet the demands of this fast paced world.
Further Your Education With Online Courses
Online classes are a flexible option for those juggling various obligations. You have the convenience of learning what you want, when you want, from the comforts of your own home.
Attend a Local Workshop and Further Your Education
In many cases, you don't have to be a traditional student to take advantage of the resources offered by the school. Look for courses in the extended learning program at your local community college or university. This is a great way to enhance your skills and stay up-to-date on the latest advances in your field.
The results that come up for a google image search can often be surprising, confusing, and sometimes cosmically hilarious. Usually, though, it seems that the images that come up from an image search are not as equally relevent as the web sites that come up when you do a web search. This is because images are not being optimized to the same extent that websites are. This allows many to seize the opportunity of focusing on optimizing their images for an image search and see more substantial results because of less competition. Keep in mind, Google image searchs can bring the same amount of traffic to your site as the regular google web search.
One crucial step in optimizing for Google's image search specifically is utilizing the enhanced image search specifications under the google sitemaster's tool. You will need a Google account to access these tools, but it'll be well worth it because in this section you can categorize your own images to match the way in which Google sorts and categorizes the search results.
Upload your images to be as large as possible. Having bigger images that link from thumbnails can greatly increase the preference for that image amongst Google's spiders. Bigger pictures are given more priority over smaller ones.
Utilizing particular characters within your image's title can affect how Google interprets it. If you use dashes, Google will translate each dash as a space. A word with one dash will be read as two words by Google's spiders. This can help better match your image to a potential search.
You can also check to make sure that Google has your image files indexed, and take steps to resubmit them if they aren't showing up. You can view the images for a particular site by using site: http:// [desired website address] within Google's search field.
Other methods are utilizing all relevent html tags (i.e. alt and longdesc) and making sure to give a relevent name to the the image ( see more on this in my previous post).
Although, frames have become slightly outdated as a method of structuring a website, it's helpful to realize why their effect can have such a negative impact in terms of search engine results.
What Is A Frame?
A frame is an html tag that allows you to load multiple html files into one browser screen. People often use this method as means of keeping a stationary navigation, while allowing the user to search through individual content pages.
The Main Problem With Frames?
Although it is now possible for search engines to identify and find the individual files associated within the frameset, the main problem with frames consists of them not allowing any links to those individual framed pages. In other words, you can only bookmark one URL for the web address and this is for the frameset file itself.
This hinders the site because users cannot bookmark any of the content, and it's impossible for outside sites to link in to any other pages besides the homepage. If the individual page is found by chance using a search engine, it will load as only the frame content and will be orphaned from the usually crucial navigation frame -- this will greatly hinder your SEO ranking efforts.
For websites with frames, all traffic to the website has to come in through the front, ensuring all of the frames of the website are included. This obviously hinders all other traffic linking in to the individual sub pages. Since all traffic is directed to the front home page, this makes optimizing the rest of the site for individual pages nearly impossible.
The Solution To Frame Based Layout?
Since frames were mostly utilized in order to create a stationary navigation (i.e. navigation that stays in the same position while the rest of the page scrolls), the use of CSS (cascading style sheets) has greatly remedied this problem and created much better SEO website design possibilities. CSS allows certain elements on the page to take on various types of positioning properties. One of these properties is 'Absolute' positioning, which gives that element an absolute position that stays at the same point regardless of scrolling. This now allows the same result while using only one html document. Returning to a layout that utilizes only one html document being viewed at a time creates a page that is easier to optimize for search engines.
--Marco del Rio
I was an excellent American history student. I read the textbook cover to cover and earned the top score possible on my high school AP test. In short, I know my facts.
But memories get rusty after several years of ignoring the books in favor of TV. Did you know that Tulsa is home to one of the top ballet companies in the country? Or that Colorado Springs was originally founded in the hopes of building a health resort in the late 1800s? Maybe you had no idea that Virginia has no major professional sports teams, but that Washington, D.C. has one of each and is home to the most monuments in one area. If you didn't know, a simple search with SEO methods could probably tell you. The other way to find out is wait for the latest and greatest from CKMG.
City Info Search From CKMG
Oh, the fun facts you learn when you are tasked with acquiring as much knowledge as possible about all 50 states in the U.S. of A. and its top 50 cities. From Omaha to Oklahoma, Seattle to South Carolina, I’ve read about them all in the past week in preparation for CKMG’s newest venture, City Info Search. The site will cover every state in America and discuss everything from restaurants, nightlife and shopping to points of interests and historical sites. City Info Search will be about finding what you want to know about any city, anywhere in the U.S. And yes, there is a good chance you will learn that Arizona is the fastest growing state or that the beach is accessible from any point in Rhode Island within 30 minutes. Three cheers for red, white and blue!
--Nadia Osman
Keeping Your Web Designs Simple, Focused And Effective
Posted by: Chris Stout | 2008-05-30 15:08:11 | Posted in: SEO Info
If your website design looks like a 14-year old's MySpace page, you're gonna run into some trouble. Too often, online businesses will try to go over the top with backgrounds, graphics, splash pages and overly-designed sites. If you want your website to be effective, you gotta keep it simple.
Start With An Optimized Site Architecture
Before you start putting together a flashy design for your site, start with the fundamentals. Create a site architecture that allows you to optimize for specific keyword phrases. Your goal should always be to help users (and search engine spiders) track down relevant information in the clearest possible way.
Organize your top-level navigation bar with tabs that point to your most important content pages. Incorporate a left navigation that helps users find what they are looking for quickly. Once you've established a solid website architectural foundation, you can start sprucing up your design.
Flashy Splash Pages Do Nothing For SEO
If you've created an entire flash-based site or an intro splash page that animates images and text into a crazy multimedia presentation, you may be losing valuable opportunities to optimize your site properly. A little bit of flash design doesn't hurt, but if all of your content appears in an image-heavy flash presentation, your content won't get properly indexed by the search engine spiders. Your keyword-rich text will be lost if it appears as a flash image. An all-flash site won't have an optimized URL structure and you'll lose valuable interlinking opportunities. When it comes to using flash on your website, keep it simple and remember, less is always more.
Let The Content Speak For Itself
We live in world full of multimedia-rich outlets, but throwing up tons of graphics and images can detract from the real meat of your site -- the content. Your multimedia design elements should supplement your content, not vice versa. Well-written content that offers users the information they're searching for will always win out over flamboyant images and graphics.
So before you try to make your site look like an explosion of pictures, moving images, graphics and flash presentations, remember the basics. Create keyword-rich content that helps people and couch this content in a visually appealing, but not overly distracting design. Simplify the content finding process, and you'll get love from users and search engines alike.
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