"How can I get my blog indexed quickly." It's an ever recurring question in the forums
Or
"I have submitted my blog to the search engines and it's still not indexed"
Another frequent thread in the search engines
So I thought I'd write this post on how you can get your blog indexed quickly in the search engines, specifically Google
I know that Google and Yahoo have a site submission service where you go and submit your URL to them and they eventually get round to crawling and perhaps indexing your blog. Like I said eventually.
But blogging is a business. And we all know time off the search engines is money lost.
So how can you get your blogs indexed faster.
The long and short of it is you have to let the search engines find your blog. The bots crawl millions of sites and follow links from sites already indexed to new sites that are not in the index.
These links do not need to be do follow. Google bots crawl no follow links as well. They just don't give them any SEO relevance.
Problem is how do you find frequently updated websites and how do you get a link to your blog on these sites?
Social Bookmarking Sites
Social bookmarking sites have frequently updated content and the more popular ones are frequently crawled by the search engine bots. Sites like Delicious and Digg. So the links are no follow. But very useful for getting your blog indexed.
RSS Feeds
Your blog has an RSS feed which you use to syndicate your content online. Some of the RSS feed directories are very popular and therefore have frequently updated content. Frequently updated content usually attracts the search engine bots. So if you submit your blog's RSS feeds to the feed directories, it gives another portal of entry to your blog for the search engine bots.
Sitestats Websites
Sitestats websites are sites that give information about other websites. When you query a website with them they give you information about the site like value, traffic, PR, Alexa ranking, etc. Information that may help in competition analysis or just to assess how your website or blog is doing. The problem with these sitestats is you can never find any two that agree on the value of any website. But there is one use of these sitestats. When a website or blog is queried, they create a webpage with details of the website or blog queried. This page has a backlink to the blog or website. The backlink is usually no follow but what you want is any link that can be crawled by the search enige bot. Some frequently crawled sitestats websites are websiteoutlook [one of the most popular], mysiteworth, websitemark.net etc
Forums
There are forums online that are very active. They are easy to find using Omgili.com or bigboards.com. Register with a bunch of these forums. Have a link to your blog in your signature and participate actively in the forums. Everytime you add a post on the forum, your signature is attached. That's a crawlable link. Please make sure your comments are relevant to the topic being discussed or your account will be banned.
Sitemap.
This is another great way to point the Google bots in the right direction. Create a sitemap for your blog and submit it to Google via the Google webmaster tools account.
With the above methods your blog will be indexed in a very short time.
The main theme is do not go to the search engines. rather let the search engines come to you
Submit a sitemap to Google via webmaster tools
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimization. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Title Tags And Search Engine Optimization
Title tags are so crucial to your search engine optimization.
Yet when I look at some 'niche marketers' websites, i just have to shake my head in dismay. No wonder sites are not ranking as well as they should be, especially when the keywords that the sites I reviewed are aiming for are not exactly what you would call competitive.
The main problem or I should say a common problem is the use of the title tag.
The title tag as I said earlier is crucial to your SEO efforts. The title tag is that area of text that comes up right at the top of the browser when you load a webpage. And is a real hot spot for optimizing your website for the search engines
So why am I coming across so many sites with index and homepage as the title tag when asked to review websites?
It is important that you use your title tag optimally
Include your keyword or keyword phrase there.
More importantly make sure the keyword you are targeting appears first in your title tag.
I'll give you an example. I could use the title tag 'get the skinny on title tags and SEO' for this page.
But what in earth is 'get the skinny'? How is that aspect of my title tag going to help my optimization
Why not 'Tittle tag and SEO, get the skinny'
Or simply
'Tittle tag and SEO'
I think in our rush to write attention grabbing headlines, which are not a bad thing if used appropriately, we have to consider what effect our choice of words will have on the performance of the website in the search engines.
You can 'get the skinny' all you like but if you are in position 100 in Google for your chosen keyword [and perhaps position 3 for get the skinny :) ] what good is that going to do you
Now I am not saying that the title tag is the only element of SEO and by all means you can get really good rankings by implementing other components of search engine optimization like load time and backlinks. But I am saying that it is an easy to implement and really effective component of search engine optimization
So do a couple of minutes work on your web pages title tags and you'll see good returns with respect to your search engine position
Yet when I look at some 'niche marketers' websites, i just have to shake my head in dismay. No wonder sites are not ranking as well as they should be, especially when the keywords that the sites I reviewed are aiming for are not exactly what you would call competitive.
The main problem or I should say a common problem is the use of the title tag.
The title tag as I said earlier is crucial to your SEO efforts. The title tag is that area of text that comes up right at the top of the browser when you load a webpage. And is a real hot spot for optimizing your website for the search engines
So why am I coming across so many sites with index and homepage as the title tag when asked to review websites?
It is important that you use your title tag optimally
Include your keyword or keyword phrase there.
More importantly make sure the keyword you are targeting appears first in your title tag.
I'll give you an example. I could use the title tag 'get the skinny on title tags and SEO' for this page.
But what in earth is 'get the skinny'? How is that aspect of my title tag going to help my optimization
Why not 'Tittle tag and SEO, get the skinny'
Or simply
'Tittle tag and SEO'
I think in our rush to write attention grabbing headlines, which are not a bad thing if used appropriately, we have to consider what effect our choice of words will have on the performance of the website in the search engines.
You can 'get the skinny' all you like but if you are in position 100 in Google for your chosen keyword [and perhaps position 3 for get the skinny :) ] what good is that going to do you
Now I am not saying that the title tag is the only element of SEO and by all means you can get really good rankings by implementing other components of search engine optimization like load time and backlinks. But I am saying that it is an easy to implement and really effective component of search engine optimization
So do a couple of minutes work on your web pages title tags and you'll see good returns with respect to your search engine position
Wednesday, 26 May 2010
Google Wonder Wheel Perfect Keyword Research Tool
In Niche marketing keyword research is crucial.
Here is a heads up on one of the smartest and yet easy to use keyword research tools I have used. It's free and the tool is by Google.
The Google wonder wheel. Absolutely a gold mine. If you know the general niche you want to be in e.g. fat loss that's a great start to setting up your niche marketing website. But what you want is the long tail keywords that command a lot of searches but as we know, are easier to optimize for than the top level keyword.
Problem is there are so many possible permutations and word combinations that constitute long tail keywords.
How do you know the ones that people are actually searching for. The answer is the Google wonder wheel.
So how can you use the Google Wonder Wheel?
Go to the Google home page and type in your top level keyword. For this post I will stick with Fat Loss
On the results page down the left side of the organic listings is a list of links.
Near the bottom of this list is the Wonder wheel link.
Click it
On clicking that link a new page loads with a wheel and spoke diagram on it. Your top level keyword is in the middle and Wonder wheel gives you a few long tail options in the spokes.
Already very exciting.
If you decide that you want to dig deeper, click on the long tail keyword of your choice. A new wheel is added with long tails of your long tail keywords
The Google wonder wheel is just so cool.
I am sure you can think of a lot of possible uses of the information you get from this.
But don't take my word for it. Take the Google wonder wheel for a test drive and please share your views in the comments section below
Here is a heads up on one of the smartest and yet easy to use keyword research tools I have used. It's free and the tool is by Google.
The Google wonder wheel. Absolutely a gold mine. If you know the general niche you want to be in e.g. fat loss that's a great start to setting up your niche marketing website. But what you want is the long tail keywords that command a lot of searches but as we know, are easier to optimize for than the top level keyword.
Problem is there are so many possible permutations and word combinations that constitute long tail keywords.
How do you know the ones that people are actually searching for. The answer is the Google wonder wheel.
So how can you use the Google Wonder Wheel?
Go to the Google home page and type in your top level keyword. For this post I will stick with Fat Loss
On the results page down the left side of the organic listings is a list of links.
Near the bottom of this list is the Wonder wheel link.
Click it
On clicking that link a new page loads with a wheel and spoke diagram on it. Your top level keyword is in the middle and Wonder wheel gives you a few long tail options in the spokes.
Already very exciting.
If you decide that you want to dig deeper, click on the long tail keyword of your choice. A new wheel is added with long tails of your long tail keywords
The Google wonder wheel is just so cool.
I am sure you can think of a lot of possible uses of the information you get from this.
But don't take my word for it. Take the Google wonder wheel for a test drive and please share your views in the comments section below
Monday, 17 May 2010
Backlinks To Avoid - Backlink Lists
Backlinks are good for search engine optimization. In fact backlinks are crucial for SEO, especially if you are after those lucrative keywords.
But there are a number of backlinks that you should seriously avoid. Simply because they could seriously hurt your sites performance in the search engines
In a rather old post on this blog we talked about link farms, bad neighbourhoods and blacklisted sites. These are pretty obvious and, unless you are a total newbie, you would already have figure this out.
But there is another sinister and apparently innocent source of backlinks that could seriously hurt your rankings
The Backlink list
You must have seen them in the forum
"List of 700 blogs with do follow links"
Or
" Auto-approved backlinks, 500 blogs"
Or
"List of do follow forums"
And on the surface of it they look great. And every man and his dog, at least every internet marketer and his outsourced link building guy in the third world will jump on these lists.
But these are websites that you really DO NOT want to get backlinks from.
In analyzing your website and the relevance of your websites in the search engines, Google looks at backlinks pointing to your website. And we all know that we want do follow anchor text links from websites preferably in our niche.
But it goes deeper than that.
From looking closely at how backlinks affect websites, it seems that Google looks at the type of sites that a website links to. If your website is getting a backlink from a webpage that links out to a whole bunch of spammy websites, then your website may generate enough suspicion for closer analysis.
Not a problem if that one site is the only website that is overrun by spammers pointing to your site.
But on analysis of all the backlinks pointing to your website, if the majority of the links are from websites that also point to other spammy websites then the case really is loaded against your website.
So back to those lovely lists of backlinks kindly provided by well meaning colleagues in the forums. Great idea but in reality, probably to be avoided.
Again I do not work for Google and my comments are based purely on observations.
But there are a number of backlinks that you should seriously avoid. Simply because they could seriously hurt your sites performance in the search engines
In a rather old post on this blog we talked about link farms, bad neighbourhoods and blacklisted sites. These are pretty obvious and, unless you are a total newbie, you would already have figure this out.
But there is another sinister and apparently innocent source of backlinks that could seriously hurt your rankings
The Backlink list
You must have seen them in the forum
"List of 700 blogs with do follow links"
Or
" Auto-approved backlinks, 500 blogs"
Or
"List of do follow forums"
And on the surface of it they look great. And every man and his dog, at least every internet marketer and his outsourced link building guy in the third world will jump on these lists.
But these are websites that you really DO NOT want to get backlinks from.
In analyzing your website and the relevance of your websites in the search engines, Google looks at backlinks pointing to your website. And we all know that we want do follow anchor text links from websites preferably in our niche.
But it goes deeper than that.
From looking closely at how backlinks affect websites, it seems that Google looks at the type of sites that a website links to. If your website is getting a backlink from a webpage that links out to a whole bunch of spammy websites, then your website may generate enough suspicion for closer analysis.
Not a problem if that one site is the only website that is overrun by spammers pointing to your site.
But on analysis of all the backlinks pointing to your website, if the majority of the links are from websites that also point to other spammy websites then the case really is loaded against your website.
So back to those lovely lists of backlinks kindly provided by well meaning colleagues in the forums. Great idea but in reality, probably to be avoided.
Again I do not work for Google and my comments are based purely on observations.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Images And Search Engine Optimization
Images and SEO is one of those posts that I have been thinking of sharing with you for a while now but didn't. Why? Because I thought the value of Images and optimizing your images for the search engines is very much in the 'well known' folder
But looking at some websites and some of the questions on the forums and which I am asked personally, perhaps This article on SEO and images needs to be written
The bottom line is the images on your websites should be independently getting traffic for you, search engine traffic.
Google images is a search engine that is often used by a lot of people when they want to see an image. And when I think of it, Google images is something I use on a daily basis, not related to my internet marketing business
So what you want is for your images to rank well in Google images for keywords relevant to your site and obviously relevant to your images.
So how do you get your images to rank well in the images search engine
File Name. I the old days it was okay to name our images image 1, image2, image3, .... and that's okay. but won't do you much good if you are trying to rank for 'search engine optimization'. So give the images names that contain your keyword or a variation on the theme
Alt Tag. When you add an image to a webpage, you have the option of adding an alt tag to it. The initial purpose of alt tag was so that you have a descriptive text of the image if viewing the site on a browser that cannot load images.
But the alt tag is words on your page. Words that can be read by the search engine bot and can therefore contribute to the keyword density of the page the image is on. So include your keyword in your alt tag. Make it short and to the point. Try not to be too spammy with it or the search engines could red flag you. Not a good thing
Words next to the image. The words around your image are relevant, especially the words immediately after the image. SO if you want one f your images to come up high in the Google image search engine for a particular keyword, have those words appear in the sentence immediately after the image
Okay so I have given you a few tips on how to optimize your images for the search engines
A gentle warning. DO NOT ABUSE THE ALT TAG. Having the same alt tag for all the images on your page, or worse still repeating your keyword in one alt tag over and over again could get you a penalty with Google
So use these tips but be sensible about optimizing your images for the search engines
But looking at some websites and some of the questions on the forums and which I am asked personally, perhaps This article on SEO and images needs to be written
The bottom line is the images on your websites should be independently getting traffic for you, search engine traffic.
Google images is a search engine that is often used by a lot of people when they want to see an image. And when I think of it, Google images is something I use on a daily basis, not related to my internet marketing business
So what you want is for your images to rank well in Google images for keywords relevant to your site and obviously relevant to your images.
So how do you get your images to rank well in the images search engine
File Name. I the old days it was okay to name our images image 1, image2, image3, .... and that's okay. but won't do you much good if you are trying to rank for 'search engine optimization'. So give the images names that contain your keyword or a variation on the theme
Alt Tag. When you add an image to a webpage, you have the option of adding an alt tag to it. The initial purpose of alt tag was so that you have a descriptive text of the image if viewing the site on a browser that cannot load images.
But the alt tag is words on your page. Words that can be read by the search engine bot and can therefore contribute to the keyword density of the page the image is on. So include your keyword in your alt tag. Make it short and to the point. Try not to be too spammy with it or the search engines could red flag you. Not a good thing
Words next to the image. The words around your image are relevant, especially the words immediately after the image. SO if you want one f your images to come up high in the Google image search engine for a particular keyword, have those words appear in the sentence immediately after the image
Okay so I have given you a few tips on how to optimize your images for the search engines
A gentle warning. DO NOT ABUSE THE ALT TAG. Having the same alt tag for all the images on your page, or worse still repeating your keyword in one alt tag over and over again could get you a penalty with Google
So use these tips but be sensible about optimizing your images for the search engines
Monday, 3 May 2010
Get Your Backlinks Indexed
Building do follow backlinks is the core of search engine optimization ... for now
And if you are like most niche marketers you spend a lot of time looking for new ways of getting backlinks or building backlinks to your sites
And be it forum profiles, guest blogging, article marketing or building content on free blogging platforms, you probably have been there and done that
One key ingredient that can take these efforts up a notch is getting these backlinks indexed
We all have been there. You write a post, spin it and submit it to a bunch of article directories. And then wait and wait for the articles and their contained link to your site, to get indexed in Google. And it sometimes takes ages for this to happen.
So give your backlinks a little help. get them indexed by using RSS
You can create an RSS feed for the pages that contain your backlinks i.e. those profile pages or articles on article directories.
To create the feed use http://rss.icerocket.com or dapper.com
The both allow you to add URLs and create a feed that you can then distribute to RSS feed directories
Till next time
And if you are like most niche marketers you spend a lot of time looking for new ways of getting backlinks or building backlinks to your sites
And be it forum profiles, guest blogging, article marketing or building content on free blogging platforms, you probably have been there and done that
One key ingredient that can take these efforts up a notch is getting these backlinks indexed
We all have been there. You write a post, spin it and submit it to a bunch of article directories. And then wait and wait for the articles and their contained link to your site, to get indexed in Google. And it sometimes takes ages for this to happen.
So give your backlinks a little help. get them indexed by using RSS
You can create an RSS feed for the pages that contain your backlinks i.e. those profile pages or articles on article directories.
To create the feed use http://rss.icerocket.com or dapper.com
The both allow you to add URLs and create a feed that you can then distribute to RSS feed directories
Till next time
Sunday, 2 May 2010
Canonical URLS www vs non-www
Canonical URLS is something that had me confused for a long period of time. And it adversely affected the way my websites and blogs performed in the search engines
You upload a website and throw content and backlinks at it. All well and good.
But in the process of assessing your home page you find that the address is displayed variably as
www.yourdomain
yourdomain
www.yourdomain.com/index
and so on
And for me initially I did not understand what the problem with this was.
Duplicate content. The search engine treat the three examples given above as three different domain names. Three domain names with exactly the same content and layout. Smells of duplicate content to me. Not really great for your search engine optimization
Backlinks. Major problem. You build backlinks to your site. And sometimes you copy and paste the URL and at other times you type it in manually. Problem is instead of getting a ton of back links to one URL, you end up with a bunch to the www domain, some to the non-www domain and others to the /index.html domain. Totally dilutes out your efforts
Is this important. You bet. In fact it is crucial.
Just do a backlink analysis of your own website using the www.domain and then the domain without www. yo could even try the /index.html
You'll find that if you have not canonicalised your domains URL, the results will not make for good viewing
So what should you do now
Decide which version you want as your homepage URL. I tend to go for the www.domain version. This is the version you want Google and the other search engines to index and this is the version that you want your backlinks to point to.
Once you have decided what version you want, do a permanent redirect i.e. a 301 redirect of the other domains to your main domain i.e. the www.domain version
The 301 redirect in my opinion is the best way of handling this problem because it redirects all traffic, human and robot to your desired domain URL
Another option is to use the canonical URL tag. This is a piece of code you put in the header portion of your html code.
The code reads like
This means that all other formats of the page should be treated as the www version. This is an instruction to the search engine bots and therefore does not impact n human visitors
If you are using Wordpress, canonicalization is easily accomplished. Go to your settings page and type in the version you want as your domain's URL
You upload a website and throw content and backlinks at it. All well and good.
But in the process of assessing your home page you find that the address is displayed variably as
www.yourdomain
yourdomain
www.yourdomain.com/index
and so on
And for me initially I did not understand what the problem with this was.
Duplicate content. The search engine treat the three examples given above as three different domain names. Three domain names with exactly the same content and layout. Smells of duplicate content to me. Not really great for your search engine optimization
Backlinks. Major problem. You build backlinks to your site. And sometimes you copy and paste the URL and at other times you type it in manually. Problem is instead of getting a ton of back links to one URL, you end up with a bunch to the www domain, some to the non-www domain and others to the /index.html domain. Totally dilutes out your efforts
Is this important. You bet. In fact it is crucial.
Just do a backlink analysis of your own website using the www.domain and then the domain without www. yo could even try the /index.html
You'll find that if you have not canonicalised your domains URL, the results will not make for good viewing
So what should you do now
Decide which version you want as your homepage URL. I tend to go for the www.domain version. This is the version you want Google and the other search engines to index and this is the version that you want your backlinks to point to.
Once you have decided what version you want, do a permanent redirect i.e. a 301 redirect of the other domains to your main domain i.e. the www.domain version
The 301 redirect in my opinion is the best way of handling this problem because it redirects all traffic, human and robot to your desired domain URL
Another option is to use the canonical URL tag. This is a piece of code you put in the header portion of your html code.
The code reads like
<link rel="canonical" ref="http://www.yourdomain.com">
This means that all other formats of the page should be treated as the www version. This is an instruction to the search engine bots and therefore does not impact n human visitors
If you are using Wordpress, canonicalization is easily accomplished. Go to your settings page and type in the version you want as your domain's URL
Saturday, 1 May 2010
Blog Commenting Useful Or a Waste of Time
Is blog commenting useful for creating do follow backlinks and getting traffic to websites or blogs?
I am sure you have come across this question as often as I have in the affiliate marketing forums.
And it's a valid question. Because it takes time to compose a blog comment that will pass scrutiny and get approved by the blogs moderators. You have to read the post first and some posts are just long and then compose your comment. So if it does not work then blog commenting could be a total waste of time.
Before I go further, I must admit that blog commenting is not my main method of generating do follow links to my sites. it's not even a method that I spend a lot of time on these days.
I tend to do a lot of competition analysis and take my cue from there.
or analyze backlinks of the websites that I know are run by SEO 'gurus' and see what they are doing
Anyway during one of my 'guru' analysis I found a webpage that is doing pretty well in Google for a few decent keywords
And doing some backlink analysis found that the majority of the do follow backlinks to that page were.... you guessed it, blog comments
What really amazed me was some of the blog pages the comments were on had decent page rank. No not the home page, the specific post page.
So I think maybe blog commenting is not a total waste of time after all.
See you on the blogs :)
I am sure you have come across this question as often as I have in the affiliate marketing forums.
And it's a valid question. Because it takes time to compose a blog comment that will pass scrutiny and get approved by the blogs moderators. You have to read the post first and some posts are just long and then compose your comment. So if it does not work then blog commenting could be a total waste of time.
Before I go further, I must admit that blog commenting is not my main method of generating do follow links to my sites. it's not even a method that I spend a lot of time on these days.
I tend to do a lot of competition analysis and take my cue from there.
or analyze backlinks of the websites that I know are run by SEO 'gurus' and see what they are doing
Anyway during one of my 'guru' analysis I found a webpage that is doing pretty well in Google for a few decent keywords
And doing some backlink analysis found that the majority of the do follow backlinks to that page were.... you guessed it, blog comments
What really amazed me was some of the blog pages the comments were on had decent page rank. No not the home page, the specific post page.
So I think maybe blog commenting is not a total waste of time after all.
See you on the blogs :)
Sunday, 18 April 2010
Outbound Links And Search Engine Optimization
Somewhere along the line someone came up with the idea that outbound links i.e. links pointing out of your blog or website to another website, can significantly boost your search engine optimization. And like all SEO tips it caught on like wild fire. And a lot of webmasters and bloggers wrote articles on the types of sites you should be linking to in order to maximize this SEO boost.
And there was the suggestion that if your site links out to an authority site like Wikipedia, it will help your SEO.
Hmmm. Does not sound very credible to me.
Having outbound links can be beneficial, don't get me wrong. It's just that there is no evidence that doing this in itself has an inherent search engine optimization effect.
A couple of benefits of linking out include
Natural linking. We have said time and time again that Google looks for natural linking patterns in websites. And most websites will have links pointing in, and links pointing out. So yes for this purpose it makes sense to have some outbound links. And if you have to, then linking to authority sites like Wikipedia which has good content for your readers makes sense
Visitor trust. Your visitors are likely to keep coming back o you if the websites you recommend to them have quality content that helps them. It's the whole physiology behind the Google search engine. No reason not to apply it on your web pages.
Reciprocal link. Reciprocal linking is something that I really do not seek out simply because one way links have more SEO boost than a reciprocal link from the same page. But reciprocal links are better than none. There is the possibility of the webmaster of a page you link to lining back to you in their blog roll or another article. Does not happen often but from time to time blog owners will link back to a reference made to them on another site
So yes outbound links have there purpose on any niche marketing website or blog.
But the suggestion that outbound links give an SEO boost or advantage, to my mind needs a little more evidence
And there was the suggestion that if your site links out to an authority site like Wikipedia, it will help your SEO.
Hmmm. Does not sound very credible to me.
Having outbound links can be beneficial, don't get me wrong. It's just that there is no evidence that doing this in itself has an inherent search engine optimization effect.
A couple of benefits of linking out include
Natural linking. We have said time and time again that Google looks for natural linking patterns in websites. And most websites will have links pointing in, and links pointing out. So yes for this purpose it makes sense to have some outbound links. And if you have to, then linking to authority sites like Wikipedia which has good content for your readers makes sense
Visitor trust. Your visitors are likely to keep coming back o you if the websites you recommend to them have quality content that helps them. It's the whole physiology behind the Google search engine. No reason not to apply it on your web pages.
Reciprocal link. Reciprocal linking is something that I really do not seek out simply because one way links have more SEO boost than a reciprocal link from the same page. But reciprocal links are better than none. There is the possibility of the webmaster of a page you link to lining back to you in their blog roll or another article. Does not happen often but from time to time blog owners will link back to a reference made to them on another site
So yes outbound links have there purpose on any niche marketing website or blog.
But the suggestion that outbound links give an SEO boost or advantage, to my mind needs a little more evidence
Saturday, 17 April 2010
Content, Best On Page SEO
In a post on search engine optimization which I think I put up two days ago, I talked a lot about backlinks for SEO. In fact I think the post yesterday was also on some aspect of getting backlinks to help your search engine optimization efforts.
But On page optimization matters and it matters a great deal. So do not neglect your on page SEO
When you talk about on page search engine optimization, people start talking about title tags and headers and keyword density, which is all well and good
But the most important aspect of your on page search engine optimization efforts, in my opinion, should be content.
In another post we have talked about volume of content and all that but here I want to talk about the quality of your content.
Someone said the search engine is an algorithm, a robot, and no robot is going to make a purchase from your site or opt in to your email list.
People however do make purchases, and click on adsense ads and occasionally some even give you their email address so you can contact them again and again.
It is the content on your pages that will compel them to reach into their pockets.
You are probably thinking that what we have discussed so far has more to do with conversions than with search engine optimization
But hang on a minute
Google aims to deliver accurate, relevant and useful content to their search engine users
You aim to deliver useful, relevant, accurate and current information to your website users.
Looks like you and Google are trying to achieve the same thing
It stands to reason then that if you are writing with quality in mind, you'll be delivering the kind of content that Google wants to deliver to it's audience
Think about it
But On page optimization matters and it matters a great deal. So do not neglect your on page SEO
When you talk about on page search engine optimization, people start talking about title tags and headers and keyword density, which is all well and good
But the most important aspect of your on page search engine optimization efforts, in my opinion, should be content.
In another post we have talked about volume of content and all that but here I want to talk about the quality of your content.
- Does you post or website deliver what the title suggests
- Does it speak to your readers
- Are your readers likely to come back based on their satisfaction with this one post.
Someone said the search engine is an algorithm, a robot, and no robot is going to make a purchase from your site or opt in to your email list.
People however do make purchases, and click on adsense ads and occasionally some even give you their email address so you can contact them again and again.
It is the content on your pages that will compel them to reach into their pockets.
You are probably thinking that what we have discussed so far has more to do with conversions than with search engine optimization
But hang on a minute
Google aims to deliver accurate, relevant and useful content to their search engine users
You aim to deliver useful, relevant, accurate and current information to your website users.
Looks like you and Google are trying to achieve the same thing
It stands to reason then that if you are writing with quality in mind, you'll be delivering the kind of content that Google wants to deliver to it's audience
Think about it
Friday, 16 April 2010
Get Backlinks From Statistics Websites
So for those who are really desperate for backlinks, there is a relatively simple method of getting backlinks from statistics websites.
Statistics websites are sites that show some statistical information about other websites e.g. alexa, websiteoutlook, jinxsun, etc
They show information like traffic, backlinks, value of website. The information is not always accurate and two of these sites can have absolutely different figures for the same site. For example the value of this blog is $9767.4 on websiteoutlook and $48581 in strategicfirst [heavens knows where the point four came from]. So for statistical analysis the information is to be taken with a shovel full of salt. However each of these sites has a backlink to the site being analyzed. Hmmm.
Unfortunately for the majority, the backlinks are no follow but a few have do follow
So how would you use these links?
Indexing. remember we said that to get indexed, it does not matter whether the links to your site are do follow or no follow The Google bot can crawl these links, it's just they only give SEO weight to do follow links. [See Do follow, what exactly is do follow]
So if you have a website that is new and you want the Google bots to discover, then these links from statistics websites could be useful.
Problem is the process could be time consuming if this is done manually.
Solution - an free online script that does it all for you. The site is http://www.freesitescripts.com
Check it out
Till next time
Statistics websites are sites that show some statistical information about other websites e.g. alexa, websiteoutlook, jinxsun, etc
They show information like traffic, backlinks, value of website. The information is not always accurate and two of these sites can have absolutely different figures for the same site. For example the value of this blog is $9767.4 on websiteoutlook and $48581 in strategicfirst [heavens knows where the point four came from]. So for statistical analysis the information is to be taken with a shovel full of salt. However each of these sites has a backlink to the site being analyzed. Hmmm.
Unfortunately for the majority, the backlinks are no follow but a few have do follow
So how would you use these links?
Indexing. remember we said that to get indexed, it does not matter whether the links to your site are do follow or no follow The Google bot can crawl these links, it's just they only give SEO weight to do follow links. [See Do follow, what exactly is do follow]
So if you have a website that is new and you want the Google bots to discover, then these links from statistics websites could be useful.
Problem is the process could be time consuming if this is done manually.
Solution - an free online script that does it all for you. The site is http://www.freesitescripts.com
Check it out
Till next time
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
Changes In Google Webmaster tools
I recently logged into my Google webmaster tools account and found things have changed a little and for the better.
By the way I think every niche marketer should have a webmaster tools account. it's free and gives you a lot of information about how Google sees your website
Recently though Google has added a great feature to the analytics aspect of webmasters tools
Previously it showed us the keyword that our sites appear in the top 100 for. and in a separate column showed us the keywords sending traffic to our websites. This alone is very useful information
But Google has amalgamated this and improved it
Now you have a table showing the keywords your website has impressions for and the click through rate. This is excellent research information for improving your search engine optimization efforts.
If you do not have a Google webmaster tools account, drop everything and sign up for one NOW. it will help you manage your websites better
Till next time
By the way I think every niche marketer should have a webmaster tools account. it's free and gives you a lot of information about how Google sees your website
Recently though Google has added a great feature to the analytics aspect of webmasters tools
Previously it showed us the keyword that our sites appear in the top 100 for. and in a separate column showed us the keywords sending traffic to our websites. This alone is very useful information
But Google has amalgamated this and improved it
Now you have a table showing the keywords your website has impressions for and the click through rate. This is excellent research information for improving your search engine optimization efforts.
If you do not have a Google webmaster tools account, drop everything and sign up for one NOW. it will help you manage your websites better
Till next time
Search Engine Optimization Everyday
Getting a number one ranking and staying there for a relevant and lucrative keyword in Google is not going to be easy but it is possible.
It is why you need a strategy that works when doing SEO for your website.
It's about creating a system that you work at everyday and only vary from when you find a better method
Emphasis on everyday
You could decide to focus on article marketing and directory submissions for example. I am not saying you must do this, the methods you choose are totally up to you, as long as they help create long term, anchor text, do follow backlinks to your site.
For the example above, you could opt to do directory submissions for 30 minutes to an hour every day and create and submit articles for at least two hours every day.
Lets talk a little more about directory submissions. Initially you will find that in half an hour you may only be able to post to 15 directories. But you'll find that as you get more experience with this, you'll get faster at it. or you may find a free software that semi-automates the process for you.
So initially you were looking at 15 directories a day and by the end of a few weeks you could be submitting to 60 directories a day.
You'll find that not all the directories will approve you links and some of them will turn out to be no follow or close down after a period of time. It's why you are going for a lot of volume with this method of generating backlinks
Regarding articles, this needs a little more time.
The articles will be
Once you have a system in place, the periods of sitting in front of the PC not knowing what to do next are gone. You have a plan, a solid plan that should last you the rest of your niche marketing career. Because if the system works you can apply it to your next website or blog or both and the one after that, etc
I said if the system works. For any system to be invested in, you need to test the system and make sure it is giving you the desired results if not better.
The problem with SEO is the results are not immediate when it comes to changes in your website's search engine results page position.
You can however
Analyze the system and see what is working and what isn't. You may find that you need to change the directory you are submitting to, or alter the call to action message in your biobox.
Whatever it is that you are doing in the system you develop, do it everyday and analyze and tweak
Till next time
It is why you need a strategy that works when doing SEO for your website.
It's about creating a system that you work at everyday and only vary from when you find a better method
Emphasis on everyday
You could decide to focus on article marketing and directory submissions for example. I am not saying you must do this, the methods you choose are totally up to you, as long as they help create long term, anchor text, do follow backlinks to your site.
For the example above, you could opt to do directory submissions for 30 minutes to an hour every day and create and submit articles for at least two hours every day.
Lets talk a little more about directory submissions. Initially you will find that in half an hour you may only be able to post to 15 directories. But you'll find that as you get more experience with this, you'll get faster at it. or you may find a free software that semi-automates the process for you.
So initially you were looking at 15 directories a day and by the end of a few weeks you could be submitting to 60 directories a day.
You'll find that not all the directories will approve you links and some of them will turn out to be no follow or close down after a period of time. It's why you are going for a lot of volume with this method of generating backlinks
Regarding articles, this needs a little more time.
The articles will be
- articles for your website
- articles for your blog and
- articles to syndicate via article directories.
Once you have a system in place, the periods of sitting in front of the PC not knowing what to do next are gone. You have a plan, a solid plan that should last you the rest of your niche marketing career. Because if the system works you can apply it to your next website or blog or both and the one after that, etc
I said if the system works. For any system to be invested in, you need to test the system and make sure it is giving you the desired results if not better.
The problem with SEO is the results are not immediate when it comes to changes in your website's search engine results page position.
You can however
- Do some backlink analysis to see if these links you have created are being indexed.
- Do some traffic analysis to see if they are bringing you direct traffic.
Analyze the system and see what is working and what isn't. You may find that you need to change the directory you are submitting to, or alter the call to action message in your biobox.
Whatever it is that you are doing in the system you develop, do it everyday and analyze and tweak
Till next time
Friday, 9 April 2010
Website Load Speed And Google Search Position
Search engine optimization can be a real pain. Mainly because of the ever changing algorithms of Google. I know a lot of people say there are other search engines but as long as Google has the lions share of search engine users, the smart niche marketer will try to get some of this traffic.
So we tend to be a little obsessed with SEO, especially SEO for Google. And although they never reveal their algorithm, we guess at the components based on experience.
And it looks like another change is coming soon according to this post.
The change is that the speed with which your website loads will be factored in to where it appears in the search engine result pages for your keywords
Makes sense really as Google's aim is to deliver relevant, accurate results for queries and at the convenience of the web user.
We all know how irritating it is when you click on a website and it takes...forever for the oage to load.
So how does this affect you the affiliate marketer.
You have got to do what it takes to reduce your websites load time.
A few things you can do to reduce page load time are
Till next time
So we tend to be a little obsessed with SEO, especially SEO for Google. And although they never reveal their algorithm, we guess at the components based on experience.
And it looks like another change is coming soon according to this post.
The change is that the speed with which your website loads will be factored in to where it appears in the search engine result pages for your keywords
Makes sense really as Google's aim is to deliver relevant, accurate results for queries and at the convenience of the web user.
We all know how irritating it is when you click on a website and it takes...forever for the oage to load.
So how does this affect you the affiliate marketer.
You have got to do what it takes to reduce your websites load time.
A few things you can do to reduce page load time are
- Images. They look great and can help the user experience but do not go overboard with images. Also if you have a few images on one page, consider combining them into fewer images perhaps by using a photo editor to merge them.
- HTML. Try and keep your code as clean as possible. Avoid unnecessary code or broken code. These just slow things down
- I frames and redirects. If it's not necessary, avoid I frames and redirects. They just slow things down a little.
- Music. Some of you like to have a tune playing when someone loads your website. While it may appeal to some of your visitors, it is another drain on the speed with which your website loads
Till next time
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Backlinks and IP Diversity
So a lot of you are busy building backlinks to improve your SEO, but how many of those links actually do count. There is the concept of IP diversity which I first came across a few years ago, but judging from the forums a lot of people are not paying attention to this.
The basics of backlinks and IP diversity is this.
Aim to get backlinks from websites with different IP addresses. Simple.
Getting several links from the same IP address is not SEO effective, they all count as one link
And you probably know this and are careful to only generate one link from a website to yours
It becomes a little tricky though when many websites in a wide variety of niches share the same IP address.
For example, Ning websites. There are, I am sure, thousands of Ning sites out their but there is no IP diversity with Ning sites. So getting backlinks from a hundred different Ning sites is ... Not SEO effective.
You are probably thinking 'What about article marketing?'
Any regular reader of this blog knows I am a huge fan of article marketing especially ezinearticles. 'But if I am submitting all my articles to ezinearticles does IP diversity not affect this?'
The thing about article marketing sites is you are hoping to syndicate those articles to other websites. The aim with ezinearticles is to have other webmasters take your articles including your biobox with your link and post these articles on their sites. That's where you get the IP diversity from with marketing through ezinearticles.
Obviously, if your articles suck so badly that no-one republishes them on their website, then yes, if you are using just one article directory then your hundred backlinks from a hundred articles has the power of exactly ..one
So take the time to check the IP addresses of the sites you are getting your backlinks from especially if you are using a footprint to build links.
To check the IP of a site, just do a Google search for 'check website IP' and a lot of options pop up
Also you can assess the backlinks that your website already has to ensure that there is link diversity in two clicks
Use SEO elite to analyze the backlinks to your website. SEO elite gives the IP addresses of all the sites it finds that are linking back to the webpage you specified. It's quite easy to see therefore if your backlinks are all valid and from different IPs or not
The basics of backlinks and IP diversity is this.
Aim to get backlinks from websites with different IP addresses. Simple.
Getting several links from the same IP address is not SEO effective, they all count as one link
And you probably know this and are careful to only generate one link from a website to yours
It becomes a little tricky though when many websites in a wide variety of niches share the same IP address.
For example, Ning websites. There are, I am sure, thousands of Ning sites out their but there is no IP diversity with Ning sites. So getting backlinks from a hundred different Ning sites is ... Not SEO effective.
You are probably thinking 'What about article marketing?'
Any regular reader of this blog knows I am a huge fan of article marketing especially ezinearticles. 'But if I am submitting all my articles to ezinearticles does IP diversity not affect this?'
The thing about article marketing sites is you are hoping to syndicate those articles to other websites. The aim with ezinearticles is to have other webmasters take your articles including your biobox with your link and post these articles on their sites. That's where you get the IP diversity from with marketing through ezinearticles.
Obviously, if your articles suck so badly that no-one republishes them on their website, then yes, if you are using just one article directory then your hundred backlinks from a hundred articles has the power of exactly ..one
So take the time to check the IP addresses of the sites you are getting your backlinks from especially if you are using a footprint to build links.
To check the IP of a site, just do a Google search for 'check website IP' and a lot of options pop up
Also you can assess the backlinks that your website already has to ensure that there is link diversity in two clicks
Use SEO elite to analyze the backlinks to your website. SEO elite gives the IP addresses of all the sites it finds that are linking back to the webpage you specified. It's quite easy to see therefore if your backlinks are all valid and from different IPs or not
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
On Page Search Engine Optimization
On page SEO is all those wonderful things you can do on your website or pages to help them have better position in the search engines for keywords related to your content
I can here you groaning "We know that already"
Before you click away I'd like to ask you one question
"So why are you not paying more attention to your on page search engine optimization?"
In the race to get as much traffic to our sites, we become carried away with this whirl-storm of getting 'as many backlinks as we possibly can'
Don't get me wrong. Backlinks are a good thing, but they are not to be you primary aim in getting traffic to your website
In the flurry of all these bells and whistles backlinking packages, something crucial gets left in the dust. On page SEO
Admittedly, you can get a website to rank very well, even get the number one position in Google for competitive keywords based solely on the backlinks [off site optimization] to that site. The 'click here' Adobe example is an often quoted example of this. But like in the example you need a ton of backlinks...thousands of do follow links all pointing back to you to show up anywhere in the competitive keyword SERPs
And lets face it, without resorting to black hat SEO techniques, it really is impossible for most of us niche marketers to get the relevant volume of backlinks in a reasonable period of time
So the missing ingredient would be on page SEO.
With the right balance of off page optimization and on page SEO, you can achieve better results in the search engine results pages than just focusing on getting an endless number of backlinks
Read Quick On Page SEO Tips
I can here you groaning "We know that already"
Before you click away I'd like to ask you one question
"So why are you not paying more attention to your on page search engine optimization?"
In the race to get as much traffic to our sites, we become carried away with this whirl-storm of getting 'as many backlinks as we possibly can'
Don't get me wrong. Backlinks are a good thing, but they are not to be you primary aim in getting traffic to your website
In the flurry of all these bells and whistles backlinking packages, something crucial gets left in the dust. On page SEO
Admittedly, you can get a website to rank very well, even get the number one position in Google for competitive keywords based solely on the backlinks [off site optimization] to that site. The 'click here' Adobe example is an often quoted example of this. But like in the example you need a ton of backlinks...thousands of do follow links all pointing back to you to show up anywhere in the competitive keyword SERPs
And lets face it, without resorting to black hat SEO techniques, it really is impossible for most of us niche marketers to get the relevant volume of backlinks in a reasonable period of time
So the missing ingredient would be on page SEO.
With the right balance of off page optimization and on page SEO, you can achieve better results in the search engine results pages than just focusing on getting an endless number of backlinks
Read Quick On Page SEO Tips
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Multiple Sources Of Visitors
Andy asked an important question on getting backlinks and visitors in a previous post of mine and I think it needs to be addressed
Andy has been using easysubmits to try to get backlinks to his site and although he has garnered some do follow links, things are not moving along quickly
Directories are okay
I am a little luke warm on directory submissions but in the absence of any other backlinks, they are an easy method of getting backlinks that is not time consuming....especially if you are using a semi-automated product like easy submits
You must have noticed "luke warm"
A lot of the free directories use no follow attribute on their outbound links. This is an established fact.
Also even the ones that do follow, the majority are low PR pages.
I would only use directory submissions in my downtime. Not as a major backlinking strategy. And certainly not as a source of visitors. DMOZ is great, if you have 1.5 years to wait for that one link
You need multiple methods of creating backlinks, preferably do follow backlinks and you need multiple sources of visitor
Better methods of generating backlinks include
Linkbait. Write pillar articles. Articles that are so through and informative that others in your niche will link to it
Build your own network of blogs. These do not have to be blogs on accounts hosted by you. There are loads of free blogging platforms on the Internet that allow you to build your own little blog on their platform. This means you can build content on those sites and put links anywhere within the body of your article
Guest Blogging. Kim Roach is pretty keen on this one. I personally like to keep my content on my pages, but guest blogging is one way of syndicating your content and getting backlinks and visitors to your sites.
Forum participation. It may be an old and often abused method but forum participation is one of those things that will be around for ages because it works. Even if the forums are no follow, if your contributions to the forums are useful, visitors will click on your link or profile to see your site
Social Bookmarking. Again a great source of visitors to your sites if done right. The links are often no follow or redirects but if you have the right type of friends and followers. traffic from these social networking sites can be ginormous
I cannot overemphasize it. You need multiple methods of building backlinks and multiple sources of visitors to your sites to make this work
Andy has been using easysubmits to try to get backlinks to his site and although he has garnered some do follow links, things are not moving along quickly
Directories are okay
I am a little luke warm on directory submissions but in the absence of any other backlinks, they are an easy method of getting backlinks that is not time consuming....especially if you are using a semi-automated product like easy submits
You must have noticed "luke warm"
A lot of the free directories use no follow attribute on their outbound links. This is an established fact.
Also even the ones that do follow, the majority are low PR pages.
I would only use directory submissions in my downtime. Not as a major backlinking strategy. And certainly not as a source of visitors. DMOZ is great, if you have 1.5 years to wait for that one link
You need multiple methods of creating backlinks, preferably do follow backlinks and you need multiple sources of visitor
Better methods of generating backlinks include
Linkbait. Write pillar articles. Articles that are so through and informative that others in your niche will link to it
Build your own network of blogs. These do not have to be blogs on accounts hosted by you. There are loads of free blogging platforms on the Internet that allow you to build your own little blog on their platform. This means you can build content on those sites and put links anywhere within the body of your article
Guest Blogging. Kim Roach is pretty keen on this one. I personally like to keep my content on my pages, but guest blogging is one way of syndicating your content and getting backlinks and visitors to your sites.
Forum participation. It may be an old and often abused method but forum participation is one of those things that will be around for ages because it works. Even if the forums are no follow, if your contributions to the forums are useful, visitors will click on your link or profile to see your site
Social Bookmarking. Again a great source of visitors to your sites if done right. The links are often no follow or redirects but if you have the right type of friends and followers. traffic from these social networking sites can be ginormous
I cannot overemphasize it. You need multiple methods of building backlinks and multiple sources of visitors to your sites to make this work
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Direct Link Or Redirect
Just something for you guys to watch out for when you are busy building backlinks to your websites.
There are a lot of media where you can easily submit your backlinks. With forums and blogs and RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites all around us
As a webmaster you are are that a lot of these sites have opted to use the no follow attribute in the links pointing out of their pages, i.e. your backlinks, to reduce the amount of spam and probably to keep as much of their PR juice on their pages as possible
But the disadvantage of this is these sites that use the no follow attribute in links do this at the risk of reducing the volume of comments they get, in the case of blogs or participation in the case of forums.
And we all know that user participation is a significant part of generating fresh content and also retaining a loyal following
But some webmasters have another way around this.
They leave the do follow attribute on the links so you think that you are getting juicy do follow backlinks to your sites when you participate in these sites.
You can easily find what links are do follow and which are not using the tips I outlined on a previous post on how to find do follow links
But these webmasters convert all links to a redirects. So instead of the link pointing to your domain dot com. It points to their domain/ your domain dot com
This link has no SEO benefit for you!!!
So when you are going around the web, dropping those useful bits of information on blogs and participating actively in forums, just make sure that the link in your signature which may have a do follow attribute is actually linking directly to your site
How can you do this?
Status Bar
In the tool bar of your browser, click on view. In the drop down menu, the status bar should have a tick to the left of it. If it doesn't click on it. This will bring up a status bar at the bottom of your browser. When you hover your mouse over any link on the page, it will show the exact URL the link is pointing to in the status bar
Copy URL Location
The other option is to right click on the link and copy link location. Paste it on a notepad document to see exactly what URL the link is pointing to.
Have fun building those links
There are a lot of media where you can easily submit your backlinks. With forums and blogs and RSS feeds and social bookmarking sites all around us
As a webmaster you are are that a lot of these sites have opted to use the no follow attribute in the links pointing out of their pages, i.e. your backlinks, to reduce the amount of spam and probably to keep as much of their PR juice on their pages as possible
But the disadvantage of this is these sites that use the no follow attribute in links do this at the risk of reducing the volume of comments they get, in the case of blogs or participation in the case of forums.
And we all know that user participation is a significant part of generating fresh content and also retaining a loyal following
But some webmasters have another way around this.
They leave the do follow attribute on the links so you think that you are getting juicy do follow backlinks to your sites when you participate in these sites.
You can easily find what links are do follow and which are not using the tips I outlined on a previous post on how to find do follow links
But these webmasters convert all links to a redirects. So instead of the link pointing to your domain dot com. It points to their domain/ your domain dot com
This link has no SEO benefit for you!!!
So when you are going around the web, dropping those useful bits of information on blogs and participating actively in forums, just make sure that the link in your signature which may have a do follow attribute is actually linking directly to your site
How can you do this?
Status Bar
In the tool bar of your browser, click on view. In the drop down menu, the status bar should have a tick to the left of it. If it doesn't click on it. This will bring up a status bar at the bottom of your browser. When you hover your mouse over any link on the page, it will show the exact URL the link is pointing to in the status bar
Copy URL Location
The other option is to right click on the link and copy link location. Paste it on a notepad document to see exactly what URL the link is pointing to.
Have fun building those links
Thursday, 24 December 2009
Easy Directory Submissions For Backlinks
Was doing some analysis of the backlinks to one of my websites a few days ago and cam across a few interesting links
They were directory listings, do follow and some had PR as well.
Now if you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that using directories to build links is not something I focus on so much any more. There are more effective ways of getting do follow high PR backlinks
Anyway I scrambled around to find how I had submitted that particular site to the directories. I have only a few methods I use, so it was not too difficult to track down
Before I tell you what tool I used to submit these links, there is something you need to know.
Getting the maximum ROI of time invested is key on this niche affiliate marketing business. You really can not spend too much time on activities that may or may not yield results. For me, manual directory submissions is one of those activities.
By all means submit to DMOZ manually. But for other directories, a semi automated submitter is key, in my opinion.
Semi automated because it gives you the option of varying your anchor text and altering your description. That way you don't end up with a ton of backlinks all saying the same thing.
So back to my research.
I found that the links in question were links I had submitted with a web-based semi automated directory submitter called easy submits. I'll confess these were links I submitted while watching TV so not very effort intensive. And they were submitted months ago.
But hey, I have the do follow, some PR backlinks to show for the 'effort'
The site again is easysubmits.com
They were directory listings, do follow and some had PR as well.
Now if you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that using directories to build links is not something I focus on so much any more. There are more effective ways of getting do follow high PR backlinks
Anyway I scrambled around to find how I had submitted that particular site to the directories. I have only a few methods I use, so it was not too difficult to track down
Before I tell you what tool I used to submit these links, there is something you need to know.
Getting the maximum ROI of time invested is key on this niche affiliate marketing business. You really can not spend too much time on activities that may or may not yield results. For me, manual directory submissions is one of those activities.
By all means submit to DMOZ manually. But for other directories, a semi automated submitter is key, in my opinion.
Semi automated because it gives you the option of varying your anchor text and altering your description. That way you don't end up with a ton of backlinks all saying the same thing.
So back to my research.
I found that the links in question were links I had submitted with a web-based semi automated directory submitter called easy submits. I'll confess these were links I submitted while watching TV so not very effort intensive. And they were submitted months ago.
But hey, I have the do follow, some PR backlinks to show for the 'effort'
The site again is easysubmits.com
Saturday, 19 December 2009
How To Validate Embedded You Tube Videos
For many of us, Youtube has been a gold mine for getting videos for our websites and blogs.
And Youtube has been very helpful by providing an embed code
All you have to do is grab the embed code of the relevant Youtube video and paste it in the relevant area of your sites or blogs html code and Hey presto, you have video on your site
Problem is it causes problems with your website's validation
What is website validation and why does this matter
Standardization
The code for websites, HTML or XHTML, must follow a certain standard which is set by W3 consortium. Your website code needs to be compliant with this standard.
You could argue that some browsers can correct for these errors but not all can. What you want is for your HTML code to be universally understood and interpretable
Search Engine Optimization
We all know that backlinks are a major component of search engine optimization. But on page factors play an important role. If the search engine spiders have difficulty interpreting part of your code, it could have major implications for how they handle the relevance of the related content
Page Loading Speed
Poor HTML coding could adversely affect the speed with which your website loads. And no-one hangs around waiting for a slow page to load. Also there are rumours that Google will soon update it's algorithm to include speed of loading as a factor. Now while this rumour is not verified, I think doing everything that you can to help your webpage or blog's performance in the search engines is not a bad idea.
So enough on validation and why you should validate your site. We will go into more details of this in another post
For now, back to the Youtube issue.
If you embed Youtube videos as is on your webpages, the code just does not validate
To check for the validity of your code use the W3 schools HTML validator
Just type in the URL of the page that contains a Youtube video and the result speaks volumes
But using Youtube videos is great. It has certainly helped increase the traffic to some of my websites
So how can you embed Youtube videos into your websites without corrupting your code
I use a free web based script and it works a treat
The script is at flash embed code validifier
Works for other embed sites as well
Till next time
And Youtube has been very helpful by providing an embed code
All you have to do is grab the embed code of the relevant Youtube video and paste it in the relevant area of your sites or blogs html code and Hey presto, you have video on your site
Problem is it causes problems with your website's validation
What is website validation and why does this matter
Standardization
The code for websites, HTML or XHTML, must follow a certain standard which is set by W3 consortium. Your website code needs to be compliant with this standard.
You could argue that some browsers can correct for these errors but not all can. What you want is for your HTML code to be universally understood and interpretable
Search Engine Optimization
We all know that backlinks are a major component of search engine optimization. But on page factors play an important role. If the search engine spiders have difficulty interpreting part of your code, it could have major implications for how they handle the relevance of the related content
Page Loading Speed
Poor HTML coding could adversely affect the speed with which your website loads. And no-one hangs around waiting for a slow page to load. Also there are rumours that Google will soon update it's algorithm to include speed of loading as a factor. Now while this rumour is not verified, I think doing everything that you can to help your webpage or blog's performance in the search engines is not a bad idea.
So enough on validation and why you should validate your site. We will go into more details of this in another post
For now, back to the Youtube issue.
If you embed Youtube videos as is on your webpages, the code just does not validate
To check for the validity of your code use the W3 schools HTML validator
Just type in the URL of the page that contains a Youtube video and the result speaks volumes
But using Youtube videos is great. It has certainly helped increase the traffic to some of my websites
So how can you embed Youtube videos into your websites without corrupting your code
I use a free web based script and it works a treat
The script is at flash embed code validifier
Works for other embed sites as well
Till next time
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