Tag Archives: SEO

Selling links? Don’t be Stupid!

By Joost de Valk on 17 December, 2010

I’m going to say this one more time (that’s a lie, considering how stupid people have been at this, I’m probably gonna repeat it over and over again): when you sell links, nofollow them. If you don’t, you run the risk of being banned. If you knowingly run that risk, don’t be stupid and don’t get yourself caught. How you get caught? Well… Allow me to elaborate a bit:

Read the full post: Selling links? Don’t be Stupid!

Paid Links – Add the nofollow Tag

Paid Links

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

  • Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
  • Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We’ll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66736

SEO – 6 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines

By Jim Lodico

Why Search Matters for Blogs

In an earlier article, I talked about the importance of blogging and search engine rankings. However, once you’ve got the blog up and running, the next thing to do is to start optimizing your posts for the search engines. Although search engine optimization (SEO) can be overwhelming to the newcomer, once you understand a few basic concepts, you’ll soon find it’s really not that difficult.

Good SEO copy and a search engine–optimized website accomplish three things:

  1. They’re easy for the search engines to read
  2. They’re easy for the target audience to find
  3. They’re easy for people to read

Everything you do to optimize a post is based around those three basic concepts.

So with that in mind, here are six things you can do to optimize your website or blog posts for the search engines:

  1. Start With Quality Content

  2. Determine Targeted Keywords

  3. Write Strong Meta Titles and Descriptions

  4. Analyze and Revise

  5. Internal and External Links

  6. Optimize the URL

Read the full article: SEO – 6 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines

SEO – #6 on Google – Natural Ranking

Melissa Williams is #6 on Google (natural ranking).

Keyword: collaborative law austin
Website: http://www.melissamwilliams.com/

Keywords were placed in the following HTML locations:

  • Title tag
  • Meta description tag
  • Meta keyword tag
  • Navigation text
  • Alt image tags
  • Paragraph text on the page was also crafted around this keyword

Melissa’s site has maintained a “natural” top-10 ranking on Google for over a year.

We built Melissa’s Website using WordPress, which is a great choice for SEO, and included the All In One SEO plugin.

5 SEO Tips Every Newbie Should Know – Gregg Murray

My first tip is for you to get as many links as you can to your website, from other websites. These are called, “inbound links,” and Google loves them. When other websites have a link to your website, Google is more likely to see your website as authoritative and more important. This means everything else you do on your web pages when it comes to SEO will be more valuable. However, not all inbound links are created equal. The bigger the website you can get to link to you, the more impressed Google will be. Start with your Chamber of Commerce website, and keep it going from there.

Bonus Tip – Remember, “keywords” still matter in links. A link to your site (or even within your site) that is hyperlinked as a keyword is much (MUCH) more valuable than just a hyperlink that says, “click here” or “www.yourwebsiteaddress.com.”

Read all 5 search engine optimization tips at Elance: 5 SEO Tips Every Newbie Should Know by Gregg Murray

Search Engine Optimization SEO – Importance of HTML Title Tag

“…having the [key]words in the exact order of the phrase that people are searching for, and putting that in the HTML title tag, is exactly what improves Google ranking.”

~Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land

Search engine optimization SEO – Improve your site's visibility in Google Search

Search engine optimization SEO – Improve your site’s visibility in Google Search

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html

Webmaster Tools helps you see how your site is performing in our search results, troubleshoot potential problems, and build Google-friendly sites. Webmaster Tools is for anybody with a website – bloggers, online stores big and small, government and education sites.

Make sure Google can find all the pages on your site

Webmaster Tools helps you see your site the way Google sees it. If we have a problem accessing any of the pages on your site, we’ll let you know. And it goes both ways: You can tell us about pages on your site by submitting a Sitemap

Drive traffic to your site

We’ll show you who’s linking to you and how. Want to see which pages on your site get the most links? Which keyword searches drive the most traffic? We’ve got that too.

Build a Google-friendly site

Use our Content Analysis to identify potential issues with the content on your site. The robots.txt analyzer tool will help make sure you’re not accidentally blocking Googlebot from crawling your site. And our Help Center is your first stop for official Google guidelines on creating the very best sites possible.

Remove pages from Google’s search results

Things change. Pages get removed. Tell us about pages you don’t want in our index, and we’ll remove them from our search results.

And it’s free!

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html

Search Engine Optimization SEO – Top-10 Google Ranking Expectations, Guarantees & Measuring Success!

Search engine optimization SEO: Top-10 Google ranking expectations and success can be measured in the following ways:

1. SEO keyword phrases have been applied to each product/page, as viewable in each page’s HTML code (keyword-rich title, meta data, headline and image alt tags, body copy, anchor text, page navigation, etc).

2. In-bound link exchange relationships, with related sites, have been developed and implemented, as viewable on your links page and the Websites that link to you. A list of in-bound links/sites will be made available.

3. The expectation is that good Google ranking is a result of good, Google-approved optimization.

4. Guarantees: I guarantee to adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for SEO (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769).

5. Expectations for success: being indexed in Google; being ranked within Google’s top-30. These are expectations, not guarantees. Timeframe: indexing and good ranking can take anywhere from 30 days to 3-6 months or longer.

6. Since indexing and ranking is strictly in Google’s hands, no guarantee is made for any indexing or ranking whatsoever! I guarantee to provide Google’s “best practices” SEO techniques for your Website. On-going optimization may be required to help maintain ranking position; however, indexing and ranking is strictly in the hands of Google.

(verified Jan 8, 2009, 10:30 a.m. PST)
#3 Google natural ranking for “collaborative law Austin” for www.MelissaMWilliams.com/
#4 Google natural ranking for “vintage fur coats” for www.Scivago.com/
#6 Google natural ranking for “vintage coats” for www.Scivago.com/
#18 Google natural ranking for “Austin divorce attorney” for www.MelissaMWilliams.com/

The current sites above that I have in Google’s top-10/top-20 natural ranking are a result of my adhering to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for SEO. But their ranking can never be guaranteed. No SEO professional can guarantee ranking, since no one knows Google’e ranking algorithms, except Google.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO How-to Secrets/Instructions for Top-10* Google Ranking

Search Engine Optimization:
Top-10* Google ranking – What’s the secret?
SEO How-to Secrets/Instructions for Top-10* Google Ranking.

Current stats (verified Jan 5, 2009):
#3 on Google for “vintage coats” and “vintage fur coats” for www.Scivago.com
#3 on Google for “collaborative law Austin” for www.MelissaMWilliams.com

Case Study for Melissa Williams, Attorney at Law, Austin, Texas (http://www.MelissaMWilliams.com/)

Setting up a Website for natural, lasting search engine ranking is basically a 5-phase process:

1. What are you selling?
- Come up with a handful of keywords that you would use to describe your product(s) and/or service(s).

Example:
- Melissa Williams is an Attorney in Austin, Texas and wanted to be found in the search engines under “family law,” “collaborative law,” and “Austin divorce.” She also only wanted to be found locally, in Austin.

2. Research your keywords
- Discover what search engine users are ACTUALLY searching for.
- Google (http://adwords.google.com/ > Tools > Keyword Tool) has a great keyword tool that displays keyword searches per month, as well as, the average over a 12 month period.
- WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/).
- Axandra (http://www.axandra.com/).

Example:
- After researching all of Melissa’s keywords, we decided to utilize on the following two phrases: “collaborative law Austin” and “Austin divorce attorney“.

3. Write keyword-rich text and add to your Website
- Write keyword-rich titles, meta description and meta keywords specifically for each individual page and place in each page’s HTML code, between the <head></head> tags.
- Write keyword-rich headlines and place in each page’s HTML code, in the <h1> tags.
- Write keyword-rich body copy and place in each page’s HTML code, in the <p> tags.
- Write keyword-rich text for all images and place in each page’s HTML code, in the <img> tags.
- Navigation: build the site’s navigation using keywords.
- Create a links page with keyword-rich outbound links to other related sites.
- Create keyword-rich anchor link text.

Example:
- Melissa’s title for her home page is “Austin Divorce Attorney specializing in Collaborative Law in Austin, Melissa Williams, (512) 477-5448.”
- Her navigation has also been created using her keywords: Home, Austin Divorce Attorney, Philosophy, Collaborative Law in Austin, Links, Contact.

4. Add tracking and site visibility code to your Website
- Create and add Google Analytics tracking code to the HTML code of every page that you want to track (http://www.google.com/analytics/).
- Create and add an XML Sitemap for your Website to Google’s Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/).

Example:
- Google Analytics code: <script type=”text/javascript”>var gaJsHost = ((“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”); document.write(unescape(“%3Cscript src=’” + gaJsHost + “google-analytics.com/ga.js’ type=’text/javascript’%3E%3C/script%3E”)); </script> <script type=”text/javascript”>var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(“UA-5674966-1″); pageTracker._trackPageview(); </script>
- XML Sitemap: http://www.melissamwilliams.com/sitemap.xml

5. In-bound linking
- This keyword-rich link text will be placed on other related sites and point to your site.
- Write the keyword-rich text for your in-bound link (title, URL & description) to share with other related Websites.
- Using your keyword phrases, search for other related sites and contact those Webmasters to exchange links.
- Search for related blogs and leave keyword-rich comments along with your URL (if possible).

Example:
- Title: Adorable gifts for baby shower! Super-cute baby girl gift with Baby Diva glitter logo on pink baby clothing
- URL: http://www.babysplayclothing.com/
- Description: Baby Diva glitter logo baby shower gift. Adorable baby girl gift for babies that love cotton baby clothes with a cute Baby Diva glitter logo. Pink baby clothing gifts for baby shower… for a baby birthday gift. Gifts for baby shower in baby t shirts, toddler t shirts, baby rompers, kids t shirt sizes. …baby girl clothes and toddler girl clothes. Sweatshop free clothing made in USA.
- Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts)

*NOTE: I focus on top-10 natural Google ranking, but make NO guarantees of Google ranking.

Contact Reid Walley to help search engine optimization SEO your site!

I adhere to the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Search Engine Optimization SEO – Google Top-10 Natural Ranking!

Search Engine Optimization SEO – 3 keywords still on Google’s Top-10 Ranking!

These are Google top-10 “natural” rankings, not paid-placement. Check the stats for yourself (verified Jan 5, 2009). Let’s do something similar for your site! Don’t get blacklisted! Work with a Search Engine Optimization SEO professional. Contact Reid Walley.

#1 on Google
Keyword: Vintage Fur Coats
Website: Scivago.com
Verified: Jan 5, 2009
We finished search engine optimization for Scivago.com 3 years ago, in Jan. of 2006, and it’s been in Google’s Top-10 “natural” ranking ever since!

#3 on Google
Keyword: Collaborative Law Austin
Website: MelissaMWilliams.com
Verified: Jan 5, 2009
We finished search engine optimization for MelissaMWilliams.com on Nov. 20, 2008 and achieved #2 Google “natural” ranking 3 weeks later on Dec 14, 2008.

#3 on Google
Keyword: Vintage Coats
Website: Scivago.com
Verified: Jan 5, 2009
We finished search engine optimization for Scivago.com 3 years ago, in Jan. of 2006, and it’s been in Google’s Top-10 “natural” ranking ever since!