Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

Written by Daegan Smith


Lets face it. Search Engines rulerepparttar World Wide Web today. Anytime you want to look up some information or a product you want to buy, you putrepparttar 105840 relevant keyword inrepparttar 105841 search field of a major SE like Google. And Violá! The efficient little engine throws up pages and pages of website URLs which carry your keyword.

SEO has becomerepparttar 105842 most popular andrepparttar 105843 most effective strategy for increasing website traffic today. It gives you more exposure, pulls in more qualified visitors and helps you substantially increase your income. So, if you are a home based business owner with a serious web presence you would knowrepparttar 105844 importance of attracting quality traffic to your website. Among allrepparttar 105845 strategies and tactics you can employ to attract focused web traffic to your site, optimising your website to get in top SE rankings isrepparttar 105846 most important. However to keep your rankings that way you have to be on top of what is happening inrepparttar 105847 SE industry. To understand how search engines work, spend some time at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,316408,00.html

Here are some great ways to optimize your site to get torepparttar 105848 top ofrepparttar 105849 SE rankings and stay that way:

  1. Reciprocal links: Fish out relevant (but non-competing) websites that complement your services and products and ask them to link to your site. It’s a big hit with search engines to see a large number of sites linked to yours. However more important than quantity isrepparttar 105850 quality ofrepparttar 105851 linked sites. Search engines look at how relevantrepparttar 105852 links are, that is, how muchrepparttar 105853 content ofrepparttar 105854 linking site has in common withrepparttar 105855 content on your site. The more relevant,repparttar 105856 better. SE s also gaugerepparttar 105857 importance of these sites; their online presence andrepparttar 105858 number of hits they get. In a nutshell SE s believe that company matters!

  2. Keyword isrepparttar 105859 king:however muchrepparttar 105860 SE industry changes its rules, algorithms, indexing methods….repparttar 105861 right keyword is stillrepparttar 105862 most important reason they will pick up your site to put on their top result pages. So keyword inclusion and placement is very important. The best places to place your chosen keywords are:

    • Domain name: Putting your keyword in your domain name is both most obvious andrepparttar 105863 most important. But take care to put it inrepparttar 105864 root ofrepparttar 105865 URL, not inrepparttar 105866 stem…that could SE s angry and do you more harm than good.
    • Title tags: inrepparttar 105867 title tags of your source code
    • Meta description: Inrepparttar 105868 Meta description of your site.
    • Meta keyword tags

  3. CONTENT CONTENT CONTENT: Create content rich information pages to get traffic coming your way. A word of caution…unless these pages contain information of some value torepparttar 105869 potential visitors SE s may not pick them up. Search engines hate "pointer pages" that have no content and exist only to add torepparttar 105870 number of links pointing to a site.

How to Avoid Website Downtime That Can Affect Your Search Engine Listings

Written by Nick Nichols


If your web pages are down — even momentarily — it can hurt you several ways. Learn why, and what to do to make sure your pages are visiblerepparttar maximum amount of time.

The Internet has changedrepparttar 105839 way we access information, andrepparttar 105840 way we buy and sell products and services. When it works, which, fortunately, is most ofrepparttar 105841 time, ideas and cash flow from person to person, company to company, and country to country.

But whenrepparttar 105842 inevitable happens and your pages go down, your business, your bank account and your reputation can suffer, especially if you are unaware ofrepparttar 105843 down status of your e-business operations for more than a few minutes. One way this can hurt you is withrepparttar 105844 search engines.

Whether you operate a corporate website, a mom-and-pop or something in between, there’s no question about it. If you want to get traffic viarepparttar 105845 search engines, you have to work at getting and maintaining placement onrepparttar 105846 first page ofrepparttar 105847 current “big four” — Google, Yahoo, MSN and AskJeeves. Depending onrepparttar 105848 keywords you’re trying to get high results for, this can be a time-and-resource intensive process.

Everyone who uses search engine marketing knows that getting and keeping high placement is an ongoing process filled with many unknowns. The rules ofrepparttar 105849 game seem to change without notice, causing frustration, disappointment and even desperation among beginners and veterans alike. Methods that work today may not work tomorrow. Tactics that may be “legal” today may cause problems tomorrow.

It’s as if, despite allrepparttar 105850 research, experimentation and best intentions, there really is no exact formula that can be applied to guarantee results. There is, however, one aspect of search engine marketing that is a known quantity. If your pages are down — even briefly — whenrepparttar 105851 spiders visit, you runrepparttar 105852 risk of losing your place. And unless they come back up immediately, they may be dropped altogether.

For example, Google’s “Information for Webmasters” area says that if your pages cannot be crawled after several attempts due to network or hosting problems, they won’t be listed — meaning they’ll be dropped — and it may take “a few weeks” to for them to show up again. MSN’s guidelines state that if your server is offline or there is another access problem when their spider tries to crawl your site, it may not return “until a later time.” Neither Yahoo nor AskJeeves seems to have guidelines on this issue, but it’s reasonable to assume that they and other search engine spiders operate like Google and MSN.

Another pitfall of web page downtime is wasted pay-per-click advertising dollars. When PPC landing pages go down, your clicks go nowhere and your money is needlessly depleted. Andrepparttar 105853 PPC medium may suspend your ad if your landing page goes down for too long.

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