How Google analyzes the top keywords on your website ?

Google recently filed a patent application that deals with the keywords that Google finds on your web pages.

Google's new patent filing describes a way for website owners to view the top phrases that Google assigned to their website. The patent shows that Google finds the most important keywords on a website with a phrase-based indexing system and it describes a method that could allow website owners to add additional related keywords.

How does Google find the top keywords of your website?

All major search engines index web pages based on the individual words that they find on the page. If certain words and phrases appear together on the same page, search engines assign a topic that is related to these words to the page.

For example, the words "Paris" and "Hilton" are associated with a woman instead of a city and a hotel, the words "Tiger" and "Woods" are associated with golf.
Google's patent application indicates that Google might plan to tell you what they believe are the top keywords for your website and let you suggest changes to these phrases.

How can Google find the relation between words?

Google has billions of web pages in its index. If Google finds that many web pages contain both the word "Paris" and the word "Hilton" then Google might assume that these keywords are related. The other words on these pages could give Google a hint that this special word combination is about a woman.
Words that frequently appear very close to each other could get a tighter connection. Google has a lot of algorithms that allow them to calculate the relation between different words.

What does this mean for your website?

Google does not allow you to suggest your keywords through a form yet. That means that you must use other methods to tell Google for which keywords you want to be listed on Google's result pages. That's why search engine optimization is so important.
Here are some things that you can do to show search engines that your site is relevant to a special topic:

*Use a meaningful site architecture
Use a logical system to organize your website content. Create content sections that deal with different parts of your main topic and make sure that everything that is related to your topic is mentioned on your web pages.
Make sure that your web pages are put in the right categories on your website and that it's easy to find the different categories.

*Create web pages that use different relevant search terms
If you want to get high rankings for the keyword "shoes" then it's not enough to mention the keyword "shoes" on your website.
You must also use related keywords such as "sneakers", "boots", "sandals", "footwear", etc. to show Google that your website is relevant to the general topic.

*Find out why other pages rank higher than yours
If you ever asked yourself why another page has been ranked higher than yours although you perfectly optimized your pages for your search terms then you should analyze the inbound links of the top ranked pages.

The number and the authority of inbound links are important. However, it's also important that the links come from semantically and topically related pages.

Don't focus on a single keyword when optimizing your pages. Modern search engine algorithms require you to create a website that has been optimized for many different but related search terms.Optimize different pages of your website for different but related keywords to get the best possible rankings in Google and other important search engines.

9 factors that affect your website usability and SEO

Optimizing web pages for search engines does not mean creating special pages for search engines. Optimizing web pages for search engines is often the same as optimizing web pages for web surfers.

If you do it correctly, your website will be attractive to both web surfers and search engine spiders. The following list shows nine factors that can improve the usability of your website as well as your search engine rankings.

1. You should have fast loading web pages
Usability: Web surfers don't want to wait for web pages.

Search engine optimization: Search engines can index your web pages more easily.

2. Your web pages should be easy to read
Usability: It's easier for web surfers to read your web pages.

Search engine optimization: Near-white text on a white background and tiny text is considered spam by most search engines.

3. The contents of your web pages should be clearly arranged
Usability: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make your web pages easier to read.

Search engine optimization: Clear headings, paragraphs and bullet lists make it easier for search engines to find the topic of your web pages.

4. Your web page images should use the image ALT attribute
Usability: Web surfers with images turned off and visually impaired visitors will be able to see the content of your images.

Search engine optimization: Search engines cannot index the content of your images but they can index the content of the IMG ALT attribute.

5. You should use custom 404 not found error pages
Usability: If your 404 not found page contains links to other pages of your website or a search form then people might remain on your website.

Search engine optimization: Proper 404 error pages make sure that search engines index the right pages of your website.

6. Your website should be easy to navigate
Usability: Clear and concise navigation links that are easy to find help your website visitors to find content on your site.

Search engine optimization: Clear and concise navigation links that contain your keywords make it easy for search engines to index all of your web pages.

7. Important content is above the fold
Usability: Web surfers with small computer screens can quickly see what your web page is about.

Search engine optimization: The sooner your important content appears in the HTML code of your web pages, the more likely it is that it will be indexed by search engines.

8. Your web page titles are explanatory
Usability: If web surfers bookmark your web pages, a clear web page title will help them to find it again.

Search engine optimization: The web page title is one of the most important SEO elements. It should contain your keywords and it should look attractive so that web surfers click on it when they see your web page title in the search results.

9. The URLs of your web pages are meaningful and self-explanatory
Usability: It's much easier to remember a web page like www.example.com/support than a web page like www.example.com/123123-werwc.php?2342234.

Search engine optimization: If your URLs contain your keywords, this can have a positive effect on your search engine rankings. Dynamic URLs with many variables can lead to problems with search engine spiders.

Effectiveness of PPC for SEO benefits

Pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) are widely used for search engine marketing, but are mostly performed in isolation to one another. The cross utilization of data is seldom seen, which if done, could potentially produce far better results.The idea behind this post is to ascertain how best PPC can be used to gain useful insights, which when implemented in search engine optimization can help us derive improved results. Mentioned below are few tasks that can be performed better by using PPC to ‘test the waters’.

1. Keyword selection: There is no shortage of free and paid keyword research tools but the data presented by them is not always accurate. Many of us would have learnt this fact the ‘hard way’ – by optimizing for keywords that don’t deliver targeted traffic, or for that matter any traffic at all. It is a costly mistake both in terms of time and money.

PPC can be used to determine the ‘traffic generation capacity’ of keywords by mining raw data such as number of impressions for that particular keyword. This data can be extrapolated to predict the traffic yielding capacity of keywords. Optimizing the website for such keywords would therefore drive more traffic to the website.

2. Building a wider keyword portfolio: Every website has a set of core terms it wants to rank for, in addition to other semantically similar key phrases. High rankings for core terms will deliver maximum targeted traffic, but at the same time the importance of ranking for secondary terms cannot discounted.

By running a PPC campaign for core terms on broad match, we can identify keywords other than the core terms that trigger the ad. This will not only help in building a database of relevant keywords that are searched for, but also assist in ascertaining keywords that Google considers relevant to the core terms. Tapping these keywords along with the primary keywords would therefore channel more visitors to the website.

3. Judging keyword efficacy: As everything else in search engine marketing, not all keywords are made equal. It is a well established fact that some keywords convert better than others, but the only certain way of knowing keywords that convert better is to test.

PPC is a quick and efficient way to check the ‘conversion potential’ of both the primary and secondary key phrases. Optimizing your website for keywords that drive conversion is a sure shot way of generating more revenue.

4. Writing compelling descriptions: Meta description may have lost its importance as a ranking factor but plays a crucial role in enhancing ‘click through rate’ for organic listing. In short, it is the ‘ad copy’ for organic listing.

PPC can be used to test different versions of ad copies and their corresponding click through rate. The best performing ad copies, based on their click through rate, can then be improvised to develop Meta descriptions that are likely to attract more clicks.

5. Testing landing pages: A website that does not have the potential to convert visitors into customers is no good.

In order to create a landing page that facilitates conversions it will need to be tested, modified, and tested in an iterative manner. Since PPC has the propensity to deliver quality traffic quickly, testing can be performed without waiting for organic rankings and the consequent traffic. The whole exercise of leveraging PPC to build a high performing SEO campaign has an additional bonus attached to it – you get the ‘best of both worlds’.

Basic SEO tips for Web Designer

Some basic SEO tips for Web Designer

1. Using Correct Doctype.
2. Using Meta Content and Meta Keywords.
3. Using Alt tags for Images.
4. Using Valid HTML and CSS code.
5. Make your web site load fast.

1. Why to Use Doctype and what does correct doctype means ?
Document type defination(DTD) is also know as Doctype, doctype informs the browser how to interpret the content of the page. If the the doctype is not declared, the browser assumes you don’t know how to code, and goes into quirks mode. If you know what you are doing and include a correct HTML doctype, your page will be rendered in standards mode.

Some Recommended DTDs to use in your Web document.
Use correct doctype, for example your using strict doctype and you use used align in in div tag or in p tag then doctype you used is not correct because align attribute is deprecated in strict doctype.

2. Using Meta Content and Meta Keywords.
Use proper keywords and content relate to your web site, that helps search engine to crawl your web site.

3. Using Alt tags for Images.
Specify alt tag for image and that alt tag should be a keyword related to web site, because images you have placed on site can be seen by visitors but not by search engines, so alt tag help search engines to read, with the help of alt tags search engines display the image results.

4. Using Valid HTML and CSS code.
Validate your html and css code and make your code w3c standard.

5. Make your web site load fast.
Don’t mess up your site with heavy images that makes your site heavy and slow, try to optimize images that reduces weight and helps to load fast.

Pagerank - Brings value to your site

Many people are aware of the importance of inbound links. Basically the more links to your website, the better your website will perform in the search engine rankings. For example, if you compare your website to your competition's webiste, and everything on the page (metatags and keywords) are the same, then the website with the most inbound links would rank higher.

This concept is referred to as link popularity. And just like a popularity contest, the more popular you are the more attention you get. What most people are not aware of is that some websites make for better link partners than others. In fact Google has created a system to measure the link value of any webpage. This is called Pagerank.

PageRank is a link analysis algorithm used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns weight, or a value, to web pages. The algorithm is used in determining the authority and relevance of a webpage for search engine results. Basically the higher the Pagerank, the better the search engine rankings.

PageRank is important to Google, but its useless if you do not have much content on the site for Google to index. Thus if you have no content, you really will not have any keywords for Google. When you design a site it is probably a good idea to take into consideration the keywords you would think people would use to find your site, and somehow integrate those words into your content that you have.

The Pagerank is assigned to webpages based on a 0-10 scale. Websites with a Pagerank 10 or PR10 are considered the most popular, and usually are considered the most authoritative on the world wide web. The webpage http://google.com would most definitely fall under this category.

So having higher Pagerank websites linking to lower Pagerank websites will benefit the lower Pagerank website, but not necessarily detract from the higher Pagerank websites.

What is Link Building ?

Link building is the process of getting inbound links, incoming links, inward links, or inlinks to one's site coming from other web pages or websites. This is actually done to increase a site's link popularity, drive more traffic, and also to increase a site's Page Rank. Search engines like Google uses the quality and number of backlinks a certain site has for their formula to determine how important a site is. Search engines give higher credit to sites that contain large numbers of quality-relevant backlinks. However, some says that the quality of the backlinks is more important than the relevancy.

Types of link building:

1) One Way Linking: In this way you will set inbound links from other websites to your website. Google will take each incoming of your website as a vote. The number of votes you have can significantly affect your Google Page Rank and therefore affect your page rankings. In other words, to have high keyword rankings youre linking and linked to are relevant enough theret want their sites to be negatively affected with your low Page Ranks or rankings.

2) Reciprocal Linking: It is the process of exchanging links based on some agreement between two trusted websites who shares the same business interest with an aim of increase website traffic and link popularity.

3) Three Way Linking: In this way for example you have two sites A and B. You link from site A to site C and in return ask site C to link back to site B of yours. Another way is that your site A links to site B, site B links to site C and site C links back to your site A. You can base on this flexibility to develop more three way linkings and even multiple way linking for yourself.

Onpage and Offpage factors in SEO

To learn the Search Engine Optimization, or create sites for search engines or SEO must learn the basic principles, in this post I have mentioned some principles of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

We can split the Search Engine Optimization into two parts: Onpage optimization and Offpage optimization

* Onpage Optimization:
To create a search engine optimized pages you must use keywords/ keyphrases in various places on the same page and the Keywords/ keyphrases are the words written by the people in the search engine to access the site, that’s why you should choose your keywords carefully, we will talk brifly on how to choose your keywords in another post.

Title Tag: Include the target search term. Example: “SEO Tips”

Meta description META description: Given that the meta description does not have a significant impact in the current algorithm used by the search engines it never hurts put a good description for your page

Header Tags H1, H2, H3: Use the H1, H2 and H3 in the pages of the site and make them contain your targeted keywords.

Page content: Try to write the content for your visitors and not to target the search engines spiders only. You should ofcourse include keywords/keyphrases within your content to get a good ranking for them on search engines

Title and description of the links and images Alt Tag: Found in the images and links. Add your keywords in each description and link. Never leave an image without an Alt Tag

* Offpage Optimization:
Offpage opitimiztion is all about building the links to increase your inbound links, that can be done by

Directories: Try to list your site on as many directories as you can.

Exchange links: Try to exchange links with other related sites with good page rank.

Articles: Try writing articles about your site or service and submit them to articles directories, DO NOT forget to add a link back to your site in the article.
Forum & Blog Commenting: Blog and forum commenting is outstanding way to gain quality inbound links. Not only will you get a link, but you will be able gain good exposure to your website.

Social Bookmarking: Bookmarks are sites such that allows you share your site through tags. There’s a bunch of talking going on right now about whether theses forms of links will carry as much weight as they used to. Still, social bookmarking has been around awhile and has evidenced to be an effective strategy for getting inbound links.

Press Release: Press releases are basically articles that advertise your site, and if made correctly you will be able to bring instant relevant backlinks. Google loves press release since they’re the epitamy of white hat search engine optimization. Even so, publishing a press release can be pretty hard, depending on your niche.

Which is better SEO or PPC ?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) have become the two most prominent forms of web marketing today. Any company that has plans of using the incredible reach of the Internet to market their business will find it impossible to do so without engaging in at least one of these two activities. Marketers often get confused when faced with the dilema of making a choice between organic search engine optimization or Pay per click advertisement strategy, to promote their business online. "Which path is better for my business, SEO or PPC?"

SEO or PPC?

Honestly, most web marketing professionals agree that SEO offers substantially greater returns than PPC. However, the truth of this can be debated depending on the nature of your business as well as your immediate needs.To help with your decision, and to outline the benefits, as well as the drawbacks of both SEO and PPC, I have listed some of the advantages and disadvantages of both:

Advantages of Pay Per Click

* Immediate results: PPC gets your website listed on search engines as soon as you sign up for it. Unlike SEO which requires lengthy campaigns, research and 'tweaking' in order to achieve a similar feat.
* Guaranteed top ranking: PPC can guarantee that your website is on the first page and at the top of search engine results placements (SERPS).
* No fear of the "search engine dance": The search engines algorithms are in an almost constant state of flux, though they don't regularly undergo notable changes, this can mean that SEO needs to constantly adapt to considerations of search engines algorithms.

Disadvantages of PPC

* Comparatively low click through: Organic search results (those achieved without paid-for marketing) has been proven to have a higher click through rate (CTR) than paid advertising, such as PPC.
* Bidding war: When someone else bids a higher amount than you for the words you use, your ranking position will go lower on the search engine results. To overcome this you have to bid a higher amount than your competitors and regain your position. This can become very expensive to maintain.
* No fault-find: Since you're paying for your search engine placement you can never determine faults within your website that would become apparent through SEO.
* No authority: SEO is building it's authority in marketing circles and this authority could help develop your brand and credibility.
* Long term expense: PPC will always grow in expense as more competitors for specific keywords drive the costs up. Some of our keywords, for example, have increased in value upwards of 1000% since we began using PPC.
* Click fraud: Click fraud is the term used to describe the active clicking on PPC adverts by competitors to force the advertisers to pay for the click. This can be done manually or by "click-generating" software.

Advantages of SEO

* Greater return on investment (ROI): While SEO might take longer to show results than PPC, the results are usually far more convincing.
* Long-term value: The cost of SEO reduces over time, while the cost of PPC can only increase.
* SEO is adaptive to market diversity: A user conducting a deep search who finds you can identify a new market, through the use of keyword tracking such as that offered through Net Age. This helps not only your online marketing but can aid your business as a whole.
* Return customers: SEO has a better chance of building a base of return customers. This owes to the fact that SEO focuses on what the customer, rather than the company, wants in order to deliver success.

Disadvantages of SEO

* Long time to market: Compared to PPC, SEO takes a long time to deliver notable results.
* Higher cost up front: SEO is usually far more expensive at the start than PPC. Aiming to make up for this with it's superior long-term results.
* SEO requires commitment: To keep up with the changing algorithms of the search engines, SEO needs constant tweaking. This means your company needs to maintain SEO, rather than just paying for it once off and never considering its implementation again.
* Mis-information: If trying to SEO your own site it can be hard to find information on the industry that is accurate. This is why it is important to use an experienced and professional company like Net Age for your SEO needs.

In conclusion:

Both SEO and PPC have their own set of pros and cons, these will have to be considerations you take into account when deciding which type of campaign to embark upon. Truth be told, your best bet is to use a combination of both PPC and SEO, using both helps to exploit the strengths of both methods while minimising their weaknesses.

Pay Per Click Advertising (Paid results)

Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a widely used form of paying for advertisements on the Internet. The idea of pay per click advertising was first introduced in 1998.

PPC advertising works like a silent auction. Advertisers place bids on keywords or phrases that they think their target audience would type in a search field when they are looking for specific goods or services. When a web user types a search query into the field of a search engine that matches the advertiser’s keyword list or visits a web page with content that correlates to the keywords or phrases chosen by the advertiser, the PPC ad may be displayed on the page. In search engines, a PPC ad is generally just above or to the right of the search results where they can be easily seen.

The other form of pay per click advertising is called content match. When people create private content driven websites, they can choose to participate in programs that allow ads to run on their pages. They usually are reimbursed on a pay per click basis too, though they only make a percentage of the total the advertiser pays. Search engines look for ads that will match content on private sites, so that people interested in the content would also be the most likely customers for any ads shown.

If you’re interested in pay per click advertising for your website you’ll find varied programs on most major search engines. It’s important to note that your site may not be among the first sites shown when a person uses a search engine to look for something. Many search engines rank pages and will still choose what they consider the best pages in their sponsored results. Though pay per click advertising may not cost you anything if no one is clicking on your ad, it also doesn’t bring you business if no one visits your site.

Search Engine Optimization (Organic results)

SEO or search engine optimization is a technique used to make your Web pages more useful for your customers while making them more transparent and understandable to search engines. SEO is an inexpensive way to help your Web site get more page views by creating Web pages that rank highly in search engine results.

SEO Basics

While there is no magic bullet for writing a Web page that will rank highly in search engines, there are a few things you can do to help your pages do better:

1. Write strong content.
If you focus on nothing else, you should focus on the content of your Web pages. Search engines want to provide links to relevant pages, and so they are constantly tuning their programs to read and review the content of Web pages to make sure that it really is about what you say it's about. Content is king on a Web page both for your readers and for search engines.
2. Write valid HTML.
Ironically, this is often one step in SEO that many Web developers forget - they focus so much on other aspects of SEO that they forget that simple things like valid HTML can help your pages get spidered much more than meta keywords and meta descriptions.
3. Find good keyword phrases.
What makes up a good keyword phrase can be tricky, but that is what you should be optimizing your page for. Don't try to come up with every keyword phrase possible. Instead, focus on one phrase that really captures what your page is about, and make sure that that phrase is repeated in the content, the headlines, and links within the page.
4. Don't optimize your entire site.
This may seem confusing, but many Web developers want to come up with one keyword phrase and optimize every page on the Web site for that phrase. While that makes your life a lot easier, it won't get any of the pages the exposure that you would otherwise want. Instead, focus on optimizing one page at a time - find the keyword phrase that works for that page, and optimize it. Then move on to the next page in your site. If you treat every page as a possible entry page on your Web site, your readers will have more ways to find the site.

Don't Give Up on SEO

SEO takes a long time to see results with. Even if you ask a search engine to spider your Web site or a specific page, it can take days for it to show up in the results. And if you're optimizing an existing Web page that's already in the search engine, it can take even longer for your changes to take effect.

Don't get discouraged by your rankings. Remember that unless you've chosen a very unpopular search term, it can be very hard to get a top 10 (first page) ranking in most search engines. Just keep trying - the results are worth the effort.

What is Online Marketing ?

In its simplest form, the term online marketing refers to using the power of Internet advertising to generate a response from your audience. Also known as Internet marketing or web marketing, online marketing is used by companies selling goods and services directly to consumers as well as those who operate on a business-to-business model.

Types's of online marketing :-

* Affiliate Marketing: In affiliate marketing, a business recruits associates to promote the company's products or services. The associates receive a commission or other similar rewards for every sale, visitor, subscriber, or customer they bring to the company. Amazon.com Associates Central is an example of an affiliate marketing program that Amazon.com uses to encourage private website owners to bring traffic to its site.
* Display Advertising: Display advertising involves the use of web banners or banner ads placed on a third-party website to drive traffic to a company's own website and increase product awareness.
* Email Marketing: Companies that use email marketing send promotional emails directly to customers. However, it can often be hard to distinguish between spam and legitimate email marketing messages.
* Interactive Advertising: Interactive advertising involves the use of animations and other graphic techniques to create ads that engage the viewer and invite participation.
* Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Optimization (SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion are search engine marketing techniques that companies can use to increase their visibility in the search engine page results from Google and its competitors.
* Viral Marketing: Viral marketing is a technique is which companies encourage customers to pass along information about their products or services. Company websites that let visitors email interactive games or funny video clips to their friends are an example of a viral marketing effort.

Online marketing, regardless of the exact method a company chooses to use, offers several benefits. It's convenient, affordable, and provides the opportunity for companies to track results as a campaign progresses. In addition, Internet marketing allows even the smallest of companies to compete in a global marketplace.

Online marketing is often related to public relations, customer service, sales, and information management. However, it is important to remember that these fields can be considered separate specialties as well.

Introduction to Internet marketing

Internet has made the people very busy. You can sell your product in any corner of the world without opening a shop and without appointing sales men to promote your business. This can be done with the help of Internet marketing. The internet allows marketers to show off their business or products and services to the mass of people through World Wide Web.

There are certain ways which will help you to increase the presence of your products on the internet. For attracting the customers towards your product or if you want the people around the world visit your site to see your product or to purchase them, you must spread the news of your site with the help of online marketing. This can be done only with the help of search engines. For this you have to list your website in a search engine. A search engine attracts customers to your web site. Whenever somebody searches a product in the search engine and you are listed in that search engine the customer is attracted or directed to your site along with others.

Organic results and pay per click

Now it depends upon your listing in the search engine how you are presented by the engine to the customer. You can either depend on the real search results (called organic traffic) or pay for the clicks from the contextual ads on the right side (e.g. Ad sense) - that's called pay per click (PPC).