08 Feb 2010 11:52 am
Daniel Lew's post search engine result display made me think about the vertical search engines. Vertical search engines are entirely different from the general search engine's like Google,Yahoo and Bing. Vertical search engines know their visitor and they are made based upon the visitor's interest. You can easly find a lot of travel based vertical search engines like Kayak. There are search engine which go beyond the general search engine feature to provide results based upon word relation in context to search query. Truevert is one such search engine which provides true vertical results beyond general search engine niche intention based result. Another interesting search engine I came across was Bossy which provides single answer to visitor queries.
An example is
Question:: When did germany invade poland ? Answer:: Month: Sept Year: 1939
The latest computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha was intended to provide visitors with systematic knowledge on their queries.
Where is the search heading towards?. The search engine future might go beyond general search engines as new signals of relavance becomes important. Certain factors like user behaviour, speed of providing search results etc will play a much more dominant role in the coming years and this will make general search engines to start taking measures to understand about the user query signals to stay on top of the search industry.
08 Feb 2010 10:50 am
I have recently been playing with thoughts and thinking of ways that perhaps in the future could be possible. Let's think about this for a moment in the way of Google how it displays it's results.
First of all it shows the top 10 results before you click next and then next again to the 2nd ten. Now what if it was possible that they could give you the option to view 100 results per page, without having to click next and next every time. Would this be better in your opinion for SEO companies? Would we then be able to tell our clients we can get them on the 1st page. Perhaps we would need to propose to them a slightly different scenario. But if the results were displayed differently like this could this effect the services we are offering?
Quite simply it would not necessarily effect anything, we would just have to approach our angle differently when offering placements to companies. Anyway like I said this has not happened, and perhaps it will never happen. I mean if it didn't happen before why would it happen now?
Well Google has always tried to make things complicated for us SEO companies and will always do what they can to change the way they display data to move with the times. It's just part of nature and the internet game, don't get frightened as this has not yet happened but you never know what the future lies ahead. I always like to think one step forward.
Another thought that came to mind and something that you never know could happen is what if it was possible to display results all on one page without having to click next and next. Perhaps one day there might be such a thing. You never know, so again would this effect us? Perhaps it would, but again we would have to adjust our market and what we offer.
No matter the case the way results will be displayed their will always be someone on top of someone else, so for us SEO companies it is not a case of what page you are on, it is more a case of who is ahead or on top of you, as everyone looks from top to bottom anyway, it's just natural. I don't know anyone that searches and looks from bottom to top? Do you?
In my real opinion, what has worked well already will continue to work well, now that Google have introduced other data displays such as Twitter results products and videos in the results, you never know what could happen one day good or bad. We just have to be prepared and always be one step ahead!
07 Feb 2010 08:56 pm
A lot of rumours are being displayed in real time search results due to the real time search integration to search engine results. The false information are being promoted virally through twitter and other real time social media. How search engines would prevent this type of false information being displayed on their real time search results is not yet clear.
Search Engine's should come up with a new technology like Page Rank which I do like to call as Social Rank. The tweets that come online at real time in search engines should be based on the Social Rank. The social rank of each profile must be based on the credibility of the users social presence and interaction.
I hope that this way we can really get the correct news at the right time. Real time search should provide the correct news not just the real time data which might be false information.
In the morning on feburary 3rd, 2010 TV channels created a flutter airing incorrect information about the death of popular movie star in malaylam and it was tweeted virally. The real time search started showing the false information. At 1pm the channels said they regretted airing the false news but within this time the news had virally reached to thousands of people around the world.
The TCS hack was in the real time search results today. The website was hacked by a french hacker according to relevant sources and the domain was put to sale.
Real time search have its own merits as well as demerits like any other technology. Search Engines needs to ensure that they start measuring the Social Rank of each profile rather than the Page Rank which seems to be an irrelevant source to measure credibility.
Do you think Search Engines should measure Social Rank? Tell us what you think
04 Feb 2010 06:06 am
One common error people make when designing a website is embedding text into images. This is done through any photo editing program. A lot of web designers focus too much on images, image links, and embedded text into images to spice up their website. This is the same concept as our other article “Focusing On Navigation Menu’s” .
Search engines cannot and I repeat CANNOT read text in images. If you are using an image with text in it to link to another page within your site, simply scratch that image and put a text link in there (anchor text link).
An anchor text link is just a basic URL/Href. Instead of putting a URL in it for the text, you put a keyword of whatever you may be linking to. Visit our other article on Anchor Text for more information on what they are and how to use them properly.
Search engines determine what your website is about by reading the text on every page. Using " tags really helps with optimization. These tags weigh more than regular text. Bolding and italicizing text also weighs out.
What weight means is, when a search engine crawls/reads your page, use of these tags makes these words stick out,
being the most. Use these for category names and article headings. When using any of the others, you don’t want to over due it for it will make the users experience miserable, for example bolding way too many words. Bold keywords that you want to rank for.
So the conclusion of this is, keep image use at a minimum when linking or using category names/keyword names. Using CSS can spice everything up AND use all of the text you need.
SEO
04 Feb 2010 06:04 am
A Navigation Menu in SEO can play a huge role in optimizing your website for search engines. The reason being is when a search engine crawls your website, it is going to read everything in the header and the first 100 or so keywords in your body which would usually be your article..
In this lesson we are going to discuss using targeted keywords, using text, why not to use image or flash, and why css is your best bet when it comes to header, footer and other navigation menu’s / bar’s.
Using targeted keywords in navigation menu’s
I am sure you have seen websites which use flash or image navigation menu’s in their headers. If you are trying to optimize your web site, this is a major SEO Mistake which has been added to the SEO Black book on here as reference.
The reason this is a no-no when it comes to SEO is because, search engine crawlers are not human, no matter how much you may want them to be. They cannot read images and flash. This is where using a CSS menu comes in handy. The reason this will come in handy is because you can spice up your navigation menu with awesome looking graphics and effects but at the same time you will use text to overlap every item on the menu. When designing a menu and adding categories and items, you want to use keywords that you are trying to rank for in search engines. We are going to discuss more of this below.
Using targeted keywords in your navigation menu’s
This will play a crucial role in your site ranking for keywords that you are targeting. In a normal menu you will see it categorized like this for example:
Home | News | Forum | Reviews | Tips | Tutorials
These are just general keywords. Now let’s say you have an SEO site like www.therantandrave.net and you are optimizing for SEO Keywords. When getting a site off of it’s feet, you want to use keywords in your menu until you start ranking for main keywords that you are aiming for. For example below.You would want your menu to resemble something like this:
Home | SEO Tips | SEO Tutorials | SEO Forum | SEO Tools
Now that you have a hint, these are keywords that I am trying to rank better for (SEO Tips, SEO Tutorials, SEO Forum, SEO Tools). As you can see in the top header navigation menu on our site therantandrave.net and on this site, our menu’s are in CSS. If you use wordpress, almost every wordpress theme comes with CSS menu’s which saves you a lot of work.
Notice that the keyword “seo” is used in each phrase. It is alright to use it in there like so when a site is getting off of it’s feet. Once you start ranking for the keyword “SEO” in this case, you then can change it up to just tutorials,forum,tools , for the search engine will start grabbing the information seo tutorials, seo tools in the future especially if you are building pages are given keywords.
Your best bet is using text/css navigation menu’s in your header, sidebar’s and footer using targeted keywords.
SEO Navigation Menu
04 Feb 2010 06:04 am
So you are here because your are wondering what SEO is? SEO is called Search Engine Optimization. The name pretty much gives you a hint itself but, let’s take a deeper look into better understanding what Search Engine Optimization is, how it works, and how it will benefit you and your website or blog.
If you own a website or a blog, you of course want to rank(be placed higher within search engines) and target as much traffic(website visits/hits) as you can. Nothing beats Organic Traffic. Organic Traffic is natural traffic that comes from people searching for keywords and terms that relate to your website within search engines and simply going to yours.
The more traffic that your website receives,the more money that you can make off of simply managing your website about something you may or may not love to write about. With this you don’t have to put in money to make it. If you are clueless to making money online with your website, shoot on over to our “Making Money Online” category.
Now that these basics are out of the way, let’s discuss SEO. As stated above, this is a practice of optimizing your website to rank well within search engines. I will discuss a couple of the main, basic ways of doing so.
- Building Back-links
- Using Anchor Text
- Using Keywords To Target Traffic
- Optimizing Your Meta Tags
- Unique Content
The best way to rank well within Google is by building back-links. A back-link is simply a one way link back to your site. Google counts this as a vote for your website. You want to build quality back-links with sites that are relevant to your niche(what your website is about) and with high PR websites. (PR is Page Rank 1-10, 10 being the highest). You can check website page rankings by simply using the Google Page Rank Checker tool.
Within back-links you want to use anchor text. Anchor text is the text within a link. Within this text you want to use keywords that you are trying to rank for within Google. So for let’s say this site, I would link with a few sites with my site link on theirs being “SEO Tips” then on a few others “SEO Tutorials” and on others “Search Engine Optimization” and so on so forth. You don’t want to over use just one keyword. Try to rank for a few different ones that are related to your website. It’s up to you how many you want to try and rank well for.
Using keywords which are related to your website to drive traffic is of course a must. As stated above, these are terms that you want people to search for within Google and stumble upon your site by searching them. Use keywords in meta tags, page titles, article titles, categories in your navigation bar, within your articles and etc. Do not overuse keywords in articles or on pages for this is called keyword stuffing and your site may get penalized or banned.
For every web page that you have, you want to have optimized meta-tags which are in the header of your page. Use keywords within your meta-title, description, and meta-keywords. Meta-keywords really aren’t too effective on ranking anymore because of the abuse of keyword stuffing in the past. It still doesn’t hurt to use it though. In your titles of pages, use some keywords you are trying to rank for. In the description, describe what the page is about while using a few keywords within the first 150 characters or so.
Unique Content is something I have to stress. Google doesn’t like duplicate pages and plagiarized work. Always update with fresh content that hasn’t been discussed before. Even if it has, write it better than all of those others out there. I do not recommend using article re-writers. If you can’t write a decent article about something you are interested in, you don’t need to be running a website.
Remember, you don’t have to pay out thousands of dollars to have your site ranked well within Google. You can do this yourself and we give you all of the tools, tutorials, and tips needed to achieve this. We use all of these methods on this site constantly and by each day that goes by, we rank higher and higher.
If you have any further questions simply leave a comment.
SEO Tips
04 Feb 2010 05:54 am
A lot of people out there are always asking and looking for article rewriting scripts and programs. I do not condone to this type of thing but, we do have an article rewriter on here for download.
Having unique content is something that search engines like. If you are just writing about something that a couple million other websites already covered, it is just old news. If you have something new and fresh, search engines and visitors alike will eat it up like a fat kid bum rushing the cake on his birthday. Hehe.
Also never, NEVER, plaigiarize content and steal from other people. You will get penalized or even banned from search engines for this. In some cases you could even have a lawsuit filed against you! Would it really be so hard to spend 10 minutes on an article? People come to your website for YOUR opinion and what YOU have to offer. So keep it real, don’t steal.
Sometimes, or in most cases, webmasters and authors are afraid to speak their mind and their opinions because of the bad feedback they think they might get. Even if you do get bad feedback, it is still good feedback. It is your website and you are speaking your opinion so let it be heard. There are always going to be critics whether you like it or not, learn to embrace it.
SEO
04 Feb 2010 05:52 am
Keywords are what make or break your website when ranking within search engines.
Here are the steps we are going to explain with using them:
- Meta Tags
- Navigation Menu’s
- Text Formatting
- Anchor Text / Back Links
Meta-Tags
Meta tags are the information in your header that tells the search engines what your website and certain pages are. In your tags you have the Title, Description, Keywords. The title is well, what it says. It is your page title. In your title you want to use keywords within your description. Please refrain from using your website name or your website address in the title unless your website name has the keywords in it that you are trying to rank for. In the title use a brief description of what your page is about while using a keyword or two within it.
Your meta-keywords are the keywords that your site is relevant to and what you are trying to rank for. Use no more than 30.
The meta description is what the description of your page is and this comes up in search engines under the page title/url/link to your site. Again use a brief description using no more than 140-160 characters in it with keywords that you are trying to rank for in it also.
Navigation Menu’s
For a more in depth explanation on how to optimize your navigation menu’s please visit our lesson for Focusing On Navigation Menu’s.
To give a brief explanation, you want to use keywords in place of your categories in your navigation menu’s. This helps you rank for the given keywords and it tells the search engines what each page/category is about and pretty much helps map your website out for the search engines.
Text Formatting
When writing your articles in the body of your page, you want to build it around keywords that you are ranking for. In the title of your article you want to use
, tags which are basic HTML header tags for a paragraph. These tags weigh a lot within search engines.
When using keywords within your articles you want to bold and italicize them which also makes them stick out within search engines and also makes them weigh a lot. Don’t over due it with the bolding and italicizing of keywords for your page will look spammy and non-user friendly. Try to use each keyword 5-7 times in an article and don’t use anymore than 2-3 keyword phrases in each article.
Anchor Text / Back Links
As explained in our previous lesson, anchor text is one of the main factors in your website ranking. The anchors help tell the search engines that this is a keyword phrase that your site is about hence when someone goes to search for example “SEO Tips” your site will come up. Whether it is first page or 20-30 pages back, it will come up. To help rank higher you want to use anchors in your back links. A back link is simply a link from another site to yours. As explained in the previous lesson, a back link is basically counted as a “Vote” for your website.
Always link with quality sites preferably with a high page rank. You can use the Google Page Rank Check Tool to determine what other websites rank. The ranking chart goes from 1-10, 10 being the highest.
For more information please visit our lesson on Anchor Text.
04 Feb 2010 05:51 am
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is your basic href link with text in it. for example:
Seo Tips And Tricks
Now your link text will come up as “Seo Tips And Tricks” .
Now when you link to a lot of pages, this will bring up your ranking but you must look into the quality of the pages you are linking to. So you want to have text links from your pages that go to pages already high in the Google ranking system. Stay away from link farms and spammy sites. Doing this will get you ranked higher.
Now this is a pretty long process, you should find some other ways to do this. You objective is to Build Page Rank higher. Here are some other ways to do so.
Blogging – If you are a blogger this is a good way. Link up with other Bloggers, do guest posts on other related blogs using Anchor Text and links in your articles.
Page content – So what is in your pages, how unique is your content? Do not use duplicate content for Google does not like this, do not steal other sites content either. Make your page interesting, to the mind and to the eye. If you site is unique other sites will come to you more often.
Social Networks – There has been a huge debate on this but Social Networking is great for a website. Build a page for your website, give information, add friends and reach out to people. Interact with others, don’t just spam or people will disown your site. Post links around in comments urging others to come to your site. Post when you have new content, try to get users active in discussion.
These are just a few ways that you can increase your ranking with. Focus on your content, make your content interesting that will keep readers around waiting for more. Get your readers into the discussion. Have a site that people want to link to, and you will achieve getting a higher ranking.
03 Feb 2010 09:01 am
A lot of things happening right now is very challenging. If I can compare affiliate and cost-per-action programs, which is which? What method is very easy as of this moment? First of all, I understand that online and affiliate marketing is a difficult and challenging process, and that includes CPA, pay-per-download, pay-per-sale, etc.
What are the programs right now which I am focusing on to earn money?
1. Clickbank - affiliate program
2. CPALead - CPA program
3. CJ- affiliate program
4. AdSquareNetwork - CPA program
5. TribalFusion - PPC and CPM program
6. ShareCash - pay-per-download
I know that affiliate and CPA are the same, but there's something different about them. Affiliate programs focused on sales through purchased products and services. On the other hand, CPA programs are focused on sales through generating leads of valid registrations on surveys, programs, etc.
But CPA is one of the basics, because they can pay you as little as $0.20 per lead who have clicked your survey link or banner and entered their valid information and affiliate marketing programs are very high on prices. So on my conclusion right now, I will try both affiliate and CPA because these two methods are a great tandem and can make you hard cold cash. So if that is affiliate vs. CPA, let's call it a truce and join them together for a chance of your dreams to be successful, which I want to be one of the successors as well.
