While it’s great to have a web site optimized and performing well in the engines, you need to build out content on a consistent basis. Managing growth without upsetting your existing SEO efforts can often be a challenge. With these challenges in mind, here are my top ten tips for building site content while focusing on SEO opportunities.
Tip 1 — Identify New Keyword Markets
If you are pleased with how your existing content is performing, you need to tap popular databases and see what other markets exist. Using tools like Google adwords keyword tool, overture, WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, you can quickly locate new areas relative to your industry or niche that also have a search history associated with them.
Tip 2 — Exploring Analytics
SEO is as much about delivering targeted traffic as it is about rankings, right? If you’re with me on that, start checking your analytics. In particular, explore site paths and conversions relative to referring search phrases. Many times you will find that what you think are your money terms, are actually just pushing in unproductive traffic.
The information available in your analytics package can make or break everything for you. Building new content is always a great idea; When you go about it blindly, your efforts are often un-concentrated. If you take the time to identify visitor trends and habits on a keyword level though — you can then focus on building new content that puts more visitors to work for your business goals.
Tip 3 — Maintain Your Approach
Have you ever been browsing a company’s web site reading up on various services, when suddenly you’re slapped in the face by content that just doesn’t “fit”?
As more content is written, it becomes critical for the tone and approach of your writing to be consistent. Managing this in groups can be difficult at best, so if your content is scaled in this manner — consider having one consistent editor.
Tip 4 — Write for People, not Engines
I hate that this tip sounds like something out of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines… But, it’s true. Imagine if I decided to write this article of Quick Tips for Building SEO Content methods in such a manner that you were repeatedly hit by keyword saturation levels that were through the roof.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Process of website indexing by Google & other Search Engines
There is a lot of speculation about how search engines index websites. The topic is shrouded in mystery about exact working of search engine indexing process since most search engines offer limited information about how they architect the indexing process. Webmasters get some clues by checking their log reports about the crawler visits but are unaware of how the indexing happens or which pages of their website were really crawled.
While the speculation about search engine indexing process may continue, here is a theory, based on experience, research and clues, about how they may be going about indexing 8 to 10 billion web pages even so often or the reason why there is a delay in showing up newly added pages in their index. This discussion is centered around Google, but we believe that most popular search engines like Yahoo and MSN follow a similar pattern.
* Google runs from about 10 Internet Data Centers (IDCs), each having 1000 to 2000 Pentium-3 or Pentium-4 servers running Linux OS.
* Google has over 200 (some think ‘over 1000′) crawlers / bots scanning the web each day. These do not necessarily follow an exclusive pattern, which means different crawlers may visit the same site on the same day, not knowing other crawlers have been there before. This is what probably gives a ‘daily visit’ record in your traffic log reports, keeping web masters very happy about their frequent visits.
* Some crawlers’ jobs are only to grab new URLs (lets call them ‘URL Grabbers’ for convenience) - The URL grabbers grab links & URLs they detects on various websites (including links pointing to your site) and old/new URL’s it detects on your site. They also capture the ‘date stamp’ of files when they visit your website, so that they can identify ‘new content’ or ‘updated content’ pages. The URL grabbers respect your robots.txt file & Robots Meta Tags so that they can include / exclude URLs you want / do not want indexed. (Note: same URL with different session IDs are recorded as different ‘unique’ URLs. For this reason, session ID’s are best avoided, otherwise they can be misled as duplicate content. The URL grabbers spend very little time & bandwidth on your website, since their job is rather simple. However, just so you know, they need to scan 8 to 10 Billion URLs on the web each month. Not a petty job in itself, even for 1000 crawlers.
* The URL grabbers write the captured URL’s with their date stamps and other status in a ‘Master URL List’ so that these can be deep-indexed by other special crawlers.
* The master list is then processed and classified somewhat like -
a) New URLs detected
b) Old URLs with new date stamp
c) 301 & 302 redirected URLs
d) Old URLs with old date stamp
e) 404 error URLs
f) Other URLs
* The real indexing is done by (what we’re calling) ‘Deep Crawlers’. A deep crawler’s job is to pick up URLs from the master list and deep crawl each URL and capture all the content - text, HTML, images, flash etc.
* Priority is given to ‘Old URLs with new date stamp’ as they relate to already indexed but updated content. ‘301 & 302 redirected URLs’ come next in priority followed by ‘New URLs detected’. High priority is given to URLs whose links appear on several other sites. These are classified as ‘important’ URLs. Sites and URL’s whose date stamp and content changes on a daily or hourly basis are ’stamped’ as ‘News’ sites which are indexed hourly or even on minute-by-minute basis.
* Indexing of ‘Old URLs with old date stamp’ and ‘404 error URLs’ are altogether ignored. There is no point wasting resources indexing ‘Old URLs with old date stamp’, since the search engine already has the content indexed, which is not yet updated. ‘404 error URLs’ are URLs collected from various sites but are broken links or error pages. These URLs do not show any content on them.
* The ‘Other URLs’ may contain URLs which are dynamic URLs, have session IDs, PDF documents, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Multimedia files etc. Google needs to further process these and assess which ones are worth indexing and to what depth. It perhaps allocates indexing task of these to ‘Special Crawlers’.
* When Google ’schedules’ the ‘Deep Crawlers’ to index ‘New URLs’ and ‘301 & 302 redirected URLs’, just the URLs (not the descriptions) start appearing in search engines result pages when you run the search “site:www.domain.com” in Google.
* Since Deep Crawlers need to crawl ‘Billions’ of web pages each month, they take as many as 4 to 8 weeks to index even updated content. New URL’s may take longer to index.
* Once the Deep Crawlers index the content, it goes into their originating IDCs. Content is then processed, sorted and replicated (synchronized) to the rest of the IDCs. A few years back, when the data size was manageable, this data synchronization used to happen once a month, lasting for 5 days, called ‘Google Dance’. Nowadays, the data synchronization happens constantly, which some people call ‘Everflux’
* When you hit www.google.com from your browser, you can land at any of their 10 IDCs depending upon their speed and availability. Since the data at any given time is slightly different at each IDC, you may get different results at different times or on repeated searches of the same term (Google Dance).
* Bottom line is that one needs to wait for as long as 8 to 12 weeks, to see full indexing in Google. One should consider this as ‘cooking time’ in ‘Google’s kitchen’. Unless you can increase the ‘importance’ of your web pages by getting several incoming links from good sites, there is no way to speed up the indexing process, unless you personally know Sergey Brin & Larry Page, and have a significant influence over them.
* Dynamic URLs may take longer to index (sometimes they do not get indexed at all) since even a small data can create unlimited URLs, which can clutter Google index with duplicate content.
Summary & Advise:
1. Ensure that you have cleared all roadblocks for crawlers and they can freely visit your site and capture all URLs. Help crawlers by creating good interlinking and sitemaps on your website.
2. Get lots of good incoming links to your pages from other websites to improve the ‘importance’ of your web pages. There is no special need to submit your website to search engines. Links to your website on other websites are sufficient.
3. Patiently wait for 4 to 12 weeks for the indexing to happen.
Disclaimer: The actual functioning and exact architecture of the search engines may vary but in essence, this is what we believe they do.
While the speculation about search engine indexing process may continue, here is a theory, based on experience, research and clues, about how they may be going about indexing 8 to 10 billion web pages even so often or the reason why there is a delay in showing up newly added pages in their index. This discussion is centered around Google, but we believe that most popular search engines like Yahoo and MSN follow a similar pattern.
* Google runs from about 10 Internet Data Centers (IDCs), each having 1000 to 2000 Pentium-3 or Pentium-4 servers running Linux OS.
* Google has over 200 (some think ‘over 1000′) crawlers / bots scanning the web each day. These do not necessarily follow an exclusive pattern, which means different crawlers may visit the same site on the same day, not knowing other crawlers have been there before. This is what probably gives a ‘daily visit’ record in your traffic log reports, keeping web masters very happy about their frequent visits.
* Some crawlers’ jobs are only to grab new URLs (lets call them ‘URL Grabbers’ for convenience) - The URL grabbers grab links & URLs they detects on various websites (including links pointing to your site) and old/new URL’s it detects on your site. They also capture the ‘date stamp’ of files when they visit your website, so that they can identify ‘new content’ or ‘updated content’ pages. The URL grabbers respect your robots.txt file & Robots Meta Tags so that they can include / exclude URLs you want / do not want indexed. (Note: same URL with different session IDs are recorded as different ‘unique’ URLs. For this reason, session ID’s are best avoided, otherwise they can be misled as duplicate content. The URL grabbers spend very little time & bandwidth on your website, since their job is rather simple. However, just so you know, they need to scan 8 to 10 Billion URLs on the web each month. Not a petty job in itself, even for 1000 crawlers.
* The URL grabbers write the captured URL’s with their date stamps and other status in a ‘Master URL List’ so that these can be deep-indexed by other special crawlers.
* The master list is then processed and classified somewhat like -
a) New URLs detected
b) Old URLs with new date stamp
c) 301 & 302 redirected URLs
d) Old URLs with old date stamp
e) 404 error URLs
f) Other URLs
* The real indexing is done by (what we’re calling) ‘Deep Crawlers’. A deep crawler’s job is to pick up URLs from the master list and deep crawl each URL and capture all the content - text, HTML, images, flash etc.
* Priority is given to ‘Old URLs with new date stamp’ as they relate to already indexed but updated content. ‘301 & 302 redirected URLs’ come next in priority followed by ‘New URLs detected’. High priority is given to URLs whose links appear on several other sites. These are classified as ‘important’ URLs. Sites and URL’s whose date stamp and content changes on a daily or hourly basis are ’stamped’ as ‘News’ sites which are indexed hourly or even on minute-by-minute basis.
* Indexing of ‘Old URLs with old date stamp’ and ‘404 error URLs’ are altogether ignored. There is no point wasting resources indexing ‘Old URLs with old date stamp’, since the search engine already has the content indexed, which is not yet updated. ‘404 error URLs’ are URLs collected from various sites but are broken links or error pages. These URLs do not show any content on them.
* The ‘Other URLs’ may contain URLs which are dynamic URLs, have session IDs, PDF documents, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Multimedia files etc. Google needs to further process these and assess which ones are worth indexing and to what depth. It perhaps allocates indexing task of these to ‘Special Crawlers’.
* When Google ’schedules’ the ‘Deep Crawlers’ to index ‘New URLs’ and ‘301 & 302 redirected URLs’, just the URLs (not the descriptions) start appearing in search engines result pages when you run the search “site:www.domain.com” in Google.
* Since Deep Crawlers need to crawl ‘Billions’ of web pages each month, they take as many as 4 to 8 weeks to index even updated content. New URL’s may take longer to index.
* Once the Deep Crawlers index the content, it goes into their originating IDCs. Content is then processed, sorted and replicated (synchronized) to the rest of the IDCs. A few years back, when the data size was manageable, this data synchronization used to happen once a month, lasting for 5 days, called ‘Google Dance’. Nowadays, the data synchronization happens constantly, which some people call ‘Everflux’
* When you hit www.google.com from your browser, you can land at any of their 10 IDCs depending upon their speed and availability. Since the data at any given time is slightly different at each IDC, you may get different results at different times or on repeated searches of the same term (Google Dance).
* Bottom line is that one needs to wait for as long as 8 to 12 weeks, to see full indexing in Google. One should consider this as ‘cooking time’ in ‘Google’s kitchen’. Unless you can increase the ‘importance’ of your web pages by getting several incoming links from good sites, there is no way to speed up the indexing process, unless you personally know Sergey Brin & Larry Page, and have a significant influence over them.
* Dynamic URLs may take longer to index (sometimes they do not get indexed at all) since even a small data can create unlimited URLs, which can clutter Google index with duplicate content.
Summary & Advise:
1. Ensure that you have cleared all roadblocks for crawlers and they can freely visit your site and capture all URLs. Help crawlers by creating good interlinking and sitemaps on your website.
2. Get lots of good incoming links to your pages from other websites to improve the ‘importance’ of your web pages. There is no special need to submit your website to search engines. Links to your website on other websites are sufficient.
3. Patiently wait for 4 to 12 weeks for the indexing to happen.
Disclaimer: The actual functioning and exact architecture of the search engines may vary but in essence, this is what we believe they do.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Link Building - A long horse race
Link building is a waiting game. Many clients have asked me why they do not see changes in traffic or ranking before a month goes by. It takes time for the search engine robots to find those new links and index the pages they are linked to.
The Process Of Indexing Links
Links are what make the World Wide Web go round. Links are how we travel through the web pages of the World Wide Web. The indexing, or spidering, of links on a web page is like the indexing of pages that you submit directly to the search engines. In order for your link to provide link popularity back to your website, the page the link is on must appear in the search engine databases. The search engine robots must index the web page to be included into the search engine databases. If the web page is already in the search engine database, it is a matter of indexing the updated information on the web page and having that link show as a backlink in the search engine results.
Why Do I Have To Wait So Long For Results?
When it comes to link building, it is quite simply a slow process. Even if you pay for a link, the page the link is on still must be indexed by the search engine robots in order to be included in the database, thus showing up in the search engine results.
What's A Backlink?
A backlink is a spiderable link (typically a text hyperlink) that points from another web page to your designated web page. The preferable type of backlink is one that is topical in nature. If your web page and keywords focus on gardening books, you would want to have backlinks from other gardening websites, especially gardening book sites.
Finding Backlink Results
The search engines vary in how they show your backlinks. Google has limitations on what links show up in their backlinks; generally you will not see all of your backlinks in the Google listing. Yahoo! generally shows most of your backlinks, it picks up most pages that link to you.
To find your backlinks, you will typically use a search like "link:www.yourdomainname.com" or "link:http://www.yourdomainname.com".
This should show the links you have pointing back to your web page. If this search does not work in the search engine you are using, try using the advanced search feature of the search engine to find the correct syntax.
For an overall report view of your backlinks, visit http://www.marketleap.com and click on the Link Popularity Check link in the Free Search Engine Marketing Tools section. Once you run the report you will be able to see how many backlinks show for the search engines listed. As with any software tool, use it as a guide, not as absolute factual information. You can also enter your top competitors' websites in this query and see their backlink results along side of your own results.
Is The Linked Page In The Database?
You can check to see if the page your new link is on is in the search engine database by performing a search like "info:www.yourdomainname.com" or "site:www.yourdomainname.com".
Or use the advanced search features offered at each search engine.
Of course, to find out if you are listed in a directory, you must click through the categories to the category you submitted your information to. To speed up your search, look for the directory link results that usually accompany regular search results at directories. If you are listed in the directory, the next step is to wait until the link is indexed by the search engine robots and shows up in the search engine results and your backlink results.
Waiting For Results
Link building is time consuming and you must wait to see the full results. Work on your content as well for natural linking from other websites. Use search engine optimization in combination with link building for optimum results. Think of link building not as an immediate payoff but as a long-term goal to better your overall ranking in the search engine results.
The Process Of Indexing Links
Links are what make the World Wide Web go round. Links are how we travel through the web pages of the World Wide Web. The indexing, or spidering, of links on a web page is like the indexing of pages that you submit directly to the search engines. In order for your link to provide link popularity back to your website, the page the link is on must appear in the search engine databases. The search engine robots must index the web page to be included into the search engine databases. If the web page is already in the search engine database, it is a matter of indexing the updated information on the web page and having that link show as a backlink in the search engine results.
Why Do I Have To Wait So Long For Results?
When it comes to link building, it is quite simply a slow process. Even if you pay for a link, the page the link is on still must be indexed by the search engine robots in order to be included in the database, thus showing up in the search engine results.
What's A Backlink?
A backlink is a spiderable link (typically a text hyperlink) that points from another web page to your designated web page. The preferable type of backlink is one that is topical in nature. If your web page and keywords focus on gardening books, you would want to have backlinks from other gardening websites, especially gardening book sites.
Finding Backlink Results
The search engines vary in how they show your backlinks. Google has limitations on what links show up in their backlinks; generally you will not see all of your backlinks in the Google listing. Yahoo! generally shows most of your backlinks, it picks up most pages that link to you.
To find your backlinks, you will typically use a search like "link:www.yourdomainname.com" or "link:http://www.yourdomainname.com".
This should show the links you have pointing back to your web page. If this search does not work in the search engine you are using, try using the advanced search feature of the search engine to find the correct syntax.
For an overall report view of your backlinks, visit http://www.marketleap.com and click on the Link Popularity Check link in the Free Search Engine Marketing Tools section. Once you run the report you will be able to see how many backlinks show for the search engines listed. As with any software tool, use it as a guide, not as absolute factual information. You can also enter your top competitors' websites in this query and see their backlink results along side of your own results.
Is The Linked Page In The Database?
You can check to see if the page your new link is on is in the search engine database by performing a search like "info:www.yourdomainname.com" or "site:www.yourdomainname.com".
Or use the advanced search features offered at each search engine.
Of course, to find out if you are listed in a directory, you must click through the categories to the category you submitted your information to. To speed up your search, look for the directory link results that usually accompany regular search results at directories. If you are listed in the directory, the next step is to wait until the link is indexed by the search engine robots and shows up in the search engine results and your backlink results.
Waiting For Results
Link building is time consuming and you must wait to see the full results. Work on your content as well for natural linking from other websites. Use search engine optimization in combination with link building for optimum results. Think of link building not as an immediate payoff but as a long-term goal to better your overall ranking in the search engine results.
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Optimizing Your Web Design
It only takes an average of four seconds for each visitor to decide whether to stay on your site or not. This means that it is essential to optimize your website’s main page not only for the search engines but also your average visitor who may buy your products, engage your services or even recommend your website to people they know.
A visitor-friendly design
A web design that carefully considers the browsing needs of your site visitors, compliments the content, and overall theme of your site can give your site visitors a good impression. Not only will they have an excellent motivation to browse through your stuff, they just might also decide to bookmark your site as a resource to come back time and again.
While content plays a vital role to your site’s ranking and popularity, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t provide them with a candy-for-the-eyes user friendly images and design. Would you opt to shop from a site with simple yet elegant layout, appropriate product images and relevant descriptive content that’s easy to navigate and browse through. Some sites may offer just about the same products and services but the way their website is presented and designed may spell the difference between high sales traffic and a trickle.
Basic things to consider
Keep in mind that there are two things you have to take into account in your basic website design layout:
First, you must keep in mind what your visitors would like to see in your site. If you plan to be in authority of a certain topic, you can’t just put on poorly designed graphics. Everybody loves colors, and a little Flash animation here and there wouldn’t hurt but remember that search engine bots won’t be able to see or index them. Your website, especially your main page, should convey something to your customers. It should communicate trust and confidence in what you have to offer them. Bottom line for your consumers, make your site easy and simple with design and with complimented content.
Second, you have to design your site search engine friendly. This could be a tad more difficult but search engine friendly sites have greater chances of topping the SERP’s rather than flashy, graphic intensive sites. Most search engines have what they call “spiders” that crawl into your website particularly your HTML codes and scripts. The easier the spiders can get to your text of your web page, the better. This gives the spiders a better view of your site’s content. On the other hand, spiders frown on a much complicated programming like that of java scripts, cloaking tactics, invisible texts, and too much flash pages.
Basic Design Tips
Here are some tidbits you might want to take note of when optimizing your web design for search engines:
Go easy with images. While you have shouldn’t have to totally omit the use of graphics and images, remember that SE spiders can only read HTML text. You just have to make sure that your images don’t overshadow your text content. Use appropriate ALT text and keyword related filenames for your images.
• Avoid creating webpage frames. Spiders seem to have difficulty crawling into web pages with frames. Same advice is given to tables and layers.
• Though tempting, minimize using Flash images and texts. The thing is search engine spiders will be having a hard time what you ought to convey through your Flash. If you can utilize your Flash designs to be accompanied by HTML, the better.
• Links, nowadays, are often blended with JavaScript which presents similar problems with spiders. It is important to note that links play a major role in getting your site ranked in search engines. If their spiders can’t get through your links and index them, you’ve wasted time and effort harvesting your vast links.
• Make use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to anticipate future changes without affecting your entire site design. CSS can smooth the flow of your website as you add content, images, or whatever future updates you may have.
Bottom line is: create a simple and interesting design for your savvy visitors and, by the by, gain better positioning in major search engines.
A visitor-friendly design
A web design that carefully considers the browsing needs of your site visitors, compliments the content, and overall theme of your site can give your site visitors a good impression. Not only will they have an excellent motivation to browse through your stuff, they just might also decide to bookmark your site as a resource to come back time and again.
While content plays a vital role to your site’s ranking and popularity, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t provide them with a candy-for-the-eyes user friendly images and design. Would you opt to shop from a site with simple yet elegant layout, appropriate product images and relevant descriptive content that’s easy to navigate and browse through. Some sites may offer just about the same products and services but the way their website is presented and designed may spell the difference between high sales traffic and a trickle.
Basic things to consider
Keep in mind that there are two things you have to take into account in your basic website design layout:
First, you must keep in mind what your visitors would like to see in your site. If you plan to be in authority of a certain topic, you can’t just put on poorly designed graphics. Everybody loves colors, and a little Flash animation here and there wouldn’t hurt but remember that search engine bots won’t be able to see or index them. Your website, especially your main page, should convey something to your customers. It should communicate trust and confidence in what you have to offer them. Bottom line for your consumers, make your site easy and simple with design and with complimented content.
Second, you have to design your site search engine friendly. This could be a tad more difficult but search engine friendly sites have greater chances of topping the SERP’s rather than flashy, graphic intensive sites. Most search engines have what they call “spiders” that crawl into your website particularly your HTML codes and scripts. The easier the spiders can get to your text of your web page, the better. This gives the spiders a better view of your site’s content. On the other hand, spiders frown on a much complicated programming like that of java scripts, cloaking tactics, invisible texts, and too much flash pages.
Basic Design Tips
Here are some tidbits you might want to take note of when optimizing your web design for search engines:
Go easy with images. While you have shouldn’t have to totally omit the use of graphics and images, remember that SE spiders can only read HTML text. You just have to make sure that your images don’t overshadow your text content. Use appropriate ALT text and keyword related filenames for your images.
• Avoid creating webpage frames. Spiders seem to have difficulty crawling into web pages with frames. Same advice is given to tables and layers.
• Though tempting, minimize using Flash images and texts. The thing is search engine spiders will be having a hard time what you ought to convey through your Flash. If you can utilize your Flash designs to be accompanied by HTML, the better.
• Links, nowadays, are often blended with JavaScript which presents similar problems with spiders. It is important to note that links play a major role in getting your site ranked in search engines. If their spiders can’t get through your links and index them, you’ve wasted time and effort harvesting your vast links.
• Make use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to anticipate future changes without affecting your entire site design. CSS can smooth the flow of your website as you add content, images, or whatever future updates you may have.
Bottom line is: create a simple and interesting design for your savvy visitors and, by the by, gain better positioning in major search engines.
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