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Category: Search Engine Optimization

Wordpress – the most popular plugins

25 January, 2008 (12:09) | Blogging, Google, Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization, Statistics, Wordpress | By: clive

Google XML sitemaps

A sitemap is a file containing information about a web page. When a search engine crawls the website, it looks for a sitemap and if there is one, it reads it. The information in this sitemap makes it easier for the crawler and also lets it gather more accurate information about the website. Sitemaps supplement information that the crawler will get from the website but does not guarantee that web pages will be included in search engines.

The Google XML Sitemap plugin generates a XML-sitemap compliant sitemap of your wordPress blog in a format supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search.

Plugin features:

  • Available for all WordPress versions since 1.5
  • No PHP skills or file changes needed
  • User interface to customize all parameters like priorities etc.
  • Available in many languages
  • Generates a sitemap automatically for all types of WordPress pages
  • Calculates a priority for each post, based on the number of comments
  • Notifies Ask.com, Google, MSN Live Search and YAHOO about changes via ping
  • Includes a WordPress filter for other plugins which can add their pages to the sitemap
  • Generates a static XML file as well as a zipped version
  • ?and many more!

Plugin homepage http://www.arnebrachhold.de/redir/sitemap-home/

All in One SEO Pack

The All in One SEO Pack optimises you WordPress blog for search engines.

Some of its features:

  • Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
  • Automatically generates META tags
  • Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
  • For Wordpress 2.3 and higher – just install, it works out-of-the-box.
  • You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
  • You can fine-tune everything
  • Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.
  • Available in many languages

Plugin homepage http://wp.uberdose.com/2007/03/24/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Akismet anti-spam plugin

Approximately 91% of all comments are spam. Akismet strives to remove the hassle of comment and trackback spam and is free for personal use.

Plugin homepage http://akismet.com/

WordPress.com Stats

WordPress.com stats gives you just the stats you need as a blogger, clearly and concisely. It collects information about your pageviews, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave. It’ll also add a link to your dashboard, which allows you to see all your stats on a single page. All the processing is done at WordPress.com so your host will love you for that. It?s also the fastest stats system around.

Plugin homepage http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

Check out these useful posts on WordPress plugins you will find useful.

Need help with WordPress?

Comments: 1

Search Engine Optimization made easy – meta elements

24 January, 2008 (11:38) | Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

META ELEMENTS

Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured information about a web page. These elements are placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. They are not directly visible to a user visiting the site. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other information not provided through the other head elements and attributes. An example of a keyword meta element can be seen below:

<meta
name="keywords"
content="wikipedia,encyclopedia">

The use of META ELEMENTS in Search Engine Optimization

Google, in an effort to prevent abuse and false rankings, does not use the HTML keyword or metatag elements for indexing.

Different methods are used to improve a website?s ranking with search engines. In the past, the right meta element usually led to a higher ranking with the search engines ? and thus, higher traffic to the web site. So-called consultants saw the significance of these meta elements and used a variety of techniques (legitimate and otherwise) to improve ranking for their clients.
Meta elements have less significance today as search engine robots have become more sophisticated. More significance is now placed on the volume of incoming links from related websites, quantity and quality of content, technical precision of source code, spelling, functional v. broken hyperlinks, volume and consistency of searches and/or viewer traffic, time within website, page views, revisits, click-throughs, technical user-features, uniqueness, redundancy, relevance, advertising revenue yield, freshness, geography, language and other intrinsic characteristics.

The KEYWORDS attribute

In the mid 1990?s, the keyword element was the most commonly used meta element but by the end of the 90?s, search engine providers realized that information stored in meta elements was often unreliable and misleading. Search engines began dropping support for metadata provided by the meta element in early 2000. Today there is no agreement as to whether or not the keywords attribute has any affect on ranking.

The DESCRIPTION attribute

The description attribute provides a concise explanation of a wepage?s content and is supported by most search engines. The description attribute gives a more meaningful description of the webpage?s listing and is often displayed on search engine results pages. It is recommend that the description contain less than 200 characters of text.

The ROBOTS attribute

Use the robots attribute to control whether or not search engine spiders are allowed to index a page and whether or not they should follow the links from a page. The noindex value prevents a page from being indexed, and nofollow prevents links from being crawled. There are also other values, which dictate how the robot should handle the page. Meta tags are not the best option to prevent search engines from indexing the content of your website. Try using the Robots.txt file , it?s more reliable and efficient.

  • NOINDEX tag – tells a search engine not to index a specific page.
  • NOFOLLOW tag – tells a search engine not to follow the links on a specific page.
  • NOARCHIVE tag – tells a search engine not to store a cached copy of your page.
  • NOSNIPPET tag – tells Google not to show a snippet (description) under your search engine listing, it will also not show a cached link in the search results

Additional attibutes for search engines

NOODP

Search engines sometimes use the title and abstract of the Open Directory Project (ODP) listing of a web site for the title and/or description in the search engine results pages. The “NOODP” value for the “robots” element of the meta tags tell the search engine not to use this abstract. The syntax is the same for all search engines that support the tag.

NOYDIR

Yahoo! also uses content from their own Yahoo! directory next to the ODP listing. The NOYDIR meta tag allows webmasters the opportunity not to have this listing displayed.

Robots-nocontent

Yahoo introduced the attribute value: class=”robots-nocontent” which is not a meta tag, but an attribute and value, which can be used throughout web page tags where needed. This attribute tells the Yahoo crawler to ignore the content within the nocontent class.

Redirects

Meta refresh elements instruct a web browser to automatically refresh a web page after a given time interval. One can also specify an alternative URL in order to redirect the user to a different web page. The problem with using meta refresh is that it can be turned off by the user via their browser settings.

Comments: -

Improve your search engine ranking – optimize your blog for better results and more traffic.

24 January, 2008 (10:43) | Blogging, Google, Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization, Wordpress | By: clive

How To Optimize Your Blog For The Best Search Engine Results by Gregg Hall

If you are interested in trying to make money from your blog, you probably want to know how you can best optimize your blog for great search engine results. After all, most people stumble upon blogs when doing a search for something. If you use these optimization tips effectively, it may be your blog more people are drawn to. So, check these tips out and experiment with your own blog. Note what has the best results and stay with it. Change the other things around a bit until you get the results out of them that you want.

Simple Content

Many experts say that the best way to optimize your blog is to keep everything very simple. You can choose one quality content topic and make it your base. Then from there you can use variations of the topic in order to keep everything going. This may seem like a broad and useless tip, but once you get into blogging more and more, you understand how important it is.

Put More Out There

If you are trying to get more of a presence on search engines, be sure that you have something to show. The more content you have, the more likely you are to show up on a search engine. Bigger sites always do better than smaller sites. It is simply a numbers game. Search engines will see your site in a different manner, depending on how much content you have. The more content you have, the more there is a chance there will be that someone will stumble onto your site.

Ask Search Engines for Help

Few people know that you can actually submit your site to search engines. Submit your site's URL and ask to be put into the index. This can take a while, but if they do list you in the index, you will see a larger increase in traffic. Beware however of a service that asks for money in exchange for getting your sites into search engines. These can be a little misleading at times. There are ways to do this without needing to pay anyone at all.

Keyword Pay

A great idea for optimization is to identify the most popular keywords. By doing this, you are essentially targeting the keywords that people most often search for. When you do this, you have an edge over the competition. When you know exactly what the people are looking for, you can give them just that. Once you have a list of keywords, simply create articles that use these keywords. By creating these articles, you are putting yourself out there to be found. When someone does a search for those keywords, your blog just might pop up on their screen. Be careful not to use the keyword so much that your article does not make sense however.

Daily Updates

If you really want the best optimization, you should update it daily at the least. The more you update it, the more often search engines will index your blog. Therefore, you will want to be sure your blog is always fresh. Adding new information is the best way to update your blog. The more new information you have, the better off you will be! Just be sure that when you do update, it is for a good reason. You should always remember that content can have a purpose, but it should always be quality content. If you compromise content, you are only allowing yourself to strip the creativity from your project. If you are happy with doing that, by all means go ahead. However, as a writer, you will have a certain responsibility to web surfers. Unless you want everything on the web to be useless, do your part!

Use these tips to help optimize your blog and get the most from search engines. The more you post and use these tips, the more results you will see. If you earn your living from the number of clicks your blog or your ads get, this will essentially mean more money for you. You can use all of them or some of them. Experiment with them to see what works best for you and your blog. Put these tips to use and watch your results rise today!

Gregg Hall is a business consultant and author for many online and offline businesses and lives in Navarre Florida. See more articles on blogging and internet marketing at http://www.theinternetmarketingsecrets.com

Article Source: High Quality RSS Feeds and Articles on 350+ Topics

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Search Engine Optimization made easy – SEO terminology 101 part 5

24 January, 2008 (10:10) | Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

OTHER TYPES OF SPAMDEXING

Mirror websites

Mirror websites are websites with similar content but using different URL’s. Some search engines give a higher rank to results where the keyword searched for appears in the URL. So the more URL?s containing the keyword, the greater the chances of getting ?hits?.

URL redirection

Taking the user to another page without his or her intervention, e.g. Using META refresh tags, Java, Javascript or server side redirects.

Cloaking

Cloaking refers to any means used to serve up a different page to the search-engine spider than will be seen by human users. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. Cloaking is an attempt to mislead search engines regarding the content on a particular web site. It can also be used to trick search engine users into visiting a site based on the search engine description which turns out to have substantially different, or even pornographic content. However, cloaking can also be used to ethically increase accessibility of a site to users with disabilities, or to provide human users with content that search engines aren’t able to process or parse. It is also used to deliver content based on a user’s location; Google itself uses IP delivery, a form of cloaking, to deliver results.
gs and guest books where automatic programs can add spamming links to user edited pages.

  • see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
  • see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
  • see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
  • see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
  • see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

Comments: 2

Search Engine Optimization made easy – SEO terminology 101 part 4

24 January, 2008 (09:35) | Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

USING WORLD-WRITABLE PAGES

Some spammers use sites such as Wikis and blogs that can be edited by users, to post links, etc in the comments.

  • Spam in blogs

    • Any site that accepts visitor comments is a target. Spammers place keywords in the hyperlinked text of the inbound link. Guest books, forums and blogs are particularly vulnerable and are often victims of drive by spamming where automated software creates nonsense posts with unwanted and irrelevant links.

  • Comment spam

    • Comment spam is a form of link spam and occurs in web pages that allow user editing such as in Wikis, blogs and guest books where automatic programs can add spamming links to user edited pages.

  • Wiki spam

    • Spammers edit the Wiki pages and add their spam links which are usually unrelated to the Wiki content. Wikipedia has implemented a nofollow value for the ‘rel’ HTML attribute. Links with this attribute are ignored by the Google’s PageRank algorithm. Hopefully this will discourage this type of spam.

  • Referrer log spamming

    • Some websites have a referrer log, which shows which pages link to that site. Robots are then used to access many sites repeatedly with a message or specific address given as the referrer. That message or internet address then appears in the referrer log. Since some search engines base the importance of sites by the number of different sites linking to them, referrer-log spamming may be used to increase the search engine rankings of the spammer’s sites, by getting the referrer logs of many sites to link to them.

    • see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
    • see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
    • see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
    • see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
    • see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

Comments: 4

Search Engine Optimization made easy – SEO terminology 101 part 3

24 January, 2008 (09:20) | Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

LINK SPAM

Link spamming is having links purely to boost the websites page ranking. This is because of the search engines link based ranking algorithms such as Google’s PageRank algorithm which gives a higher ranking to a website with more other highly ranked websites linking to it.

Link spamming includes:

  • Link farms

    • Involves creating tightly-knit communities of pages referencing each other, also known humorously as mutual admiration societies

  • Hidden links

    • Putting links where visitors will not see them in order to increase link popularity. Highlighted link text can help rank a webpage higher for matching that phrase.

  • Sybil attack

    • A spammer may create multiple web sites at different domain names that all link to each other, such as fake blogs known as spam blogs.

  • Spam blogs

    • Also known as splogs, a spam blog, is complete fake blog created exclusively with the intent of spamming. They are similar in nature to link farms.

  • Page hijacking

    • This is achieved by creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites.

  • Buying expired domains

    • Some link spammers monitor DNS records for domains that will expire soon, then buy them when they expire and replace the pages with links to their pages.

  • see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
  • see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
  • see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
  • see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
  • see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

Comments: 5

Search Engine Optimization made easy – SEO terminology 101 part 2

23 January, 2008 (09:54) | Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

SPAMDEXING

There are 3 forms of spamdexing.

In this article, I will cover CONTENT SPAM

Content spam includes the following:

Keyword stuffing

Keywords are repeated within the page so as to raise the keyword count, variety and density of the page. It increases the likelihood of the page being found by a web crawler. However, most modern search engines are able to recognise stuffing. Also, large webpages are truncated, so that massive dictionary lists cannot be indexed on a single webpage.

Hidden or invisible unrelated text

Keywords and phrases not related to the page are disguised by making them the same colour as the background, using a tiny font, or hiding them within the HTML code. However, hidden text is not necessary spamdexing as it is also used to enhance accessibility. Search engines can ban website for having hidden text on some webpages.

Meta tag stuffing

This practice involves repeating keywords in the META tags and using meta keywords that are unrelated to the site’s content.

Gateway or doorway pages

These pages are stuffed with keywords and phrases and contain very little real content. These pages serve no purpose other than to rank highly in the search engine results. A doorway page will generally have “click here to enter” on the page.

Scraper sites

These sites are also known as Made for AdSense sites and are created by ?scraping? search-engine results pages to create ‘content’ for a website. The content on these sites is unique and is merely an amalgamation of content taken from other sources, often without permission. These websites are generally full of advertising or redirect the user to other sites.

  • see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
  • see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
  • see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
  • see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
  • see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

Comments: 4

Search Engine Optimization made easy – SEO terminology 101 part 1

22 January, 2008 (14:49) | Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

SEO

Search Engine Optimization are the steps taken to improve the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via the search results for targeted keywords. The higher the site appears on the results page, the more traffic that site is likely to get. Those trying to optimize a website need to consider how the search algorithms work as well as which keywords people use to do a search. Once this is known, they then need to design the site in such a way that the coding, presentation and structure all work towards optimizing the site for search engines. They will also make sure that the site contains unique content, that this content is easily indexed by the search engine robots and that the site is user friendly.

Other, less acceptable methods include Black hat optimization or spamdexing. These use techniques such as keyword stuffing and link farming. Black hat optimization may cause that the website is excluded from the search engines index. So beware.

Search Engine Optimizers are the people that do the optimization.

SEARCH ENGINES

Search engines are an information retrieval system which help find information stored on computers. Google is a well known search engine which searches for information on the World Wide Web. There are many more.

ALGORITHMS

Algorithms are a list of instructions for completing a task from its initial state to its end state. In terms of search engine algorithms, they process the search according to a definite set of instructions which make up the algorithm and terminate with the search result.

SPIDERING

A web crawler, also known as a web spider or web robot is a program which browses the World Wide Web. This process is called web crawling or spidering. During this process, a copy of all the visited pages is created and later indexed. It is the index that search engines consult when doing a search. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a website, such as checking links or validating HTML code. They can also harvest email addresses which are then used for spam. So don’t have your email address anywhere on your website pages where the crawler can read it.

CONTENT

Web content includes the graphics, photos, video, animation, text and sound content that makes up the users experience when they visit a website.

BLACK HAT

A black hat is a person who compromises the security of a computer system without permission, typically with malicious intent. A black hat is also known as a cracker and generally tries to break into information systems.

WHITE HAT

A white hat is a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of computer systems and is as skilled as a black hat. A white hat is also known as an ethical hacker. A white hat generally focuses on securing information systems.

NOFOLLOW

Nofollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value which instructs search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. Its aim is to reduce the effectiveness of search engine spam, thereby improving the quality of search engine results and preventing spamdexing.

SPAMDEXING

Spamdexing uses a number of methods to manipulate the likelihood of website content being indexed by search engines. Usually this takes the form of cramming keywords into the META keywords tag, or repeating keywords in the body of the page or even within the URL. Many search engines check for spamdexing and will remove transgressing pages from the index.

  • see part 1 for general SEO terminolgy
  • see part 2 for Spamdexing: Content Spam
  • see part 3 for Spamdexing: Link Spam
  • see Part 4 for Spamdexing: World-Writable Pages
  • see part 5 for Spamdexing: other types

Comments: 4

Keyword Selection For Search Engine Optimization SEO

14 December, 2007 (16:08) | Google, Increasing Traffic, Keywords, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

By Simplifying The WEB

Choosing your primary keywords may be one of the most difficult parts of good SEO. It is also, however, one of the most important. When you begin optimizing your website for search engines, you will need to choose one primary keyword or keyword phrase, and four to six secondary keywords.

These keywords are going to be essential later on. You won't just use them for a single page on your website. Instead, they should feature prominently on each page of your website, in any website-related blogs, in any website-related newsletters, and in any website-related press releases. SEO goes beyond just a website.

With that in mind, look for keywords that will stand the test of time. Avoid keywords that are too general; you want targeted keywords for targeted traffic. But don't swerve to the opposite extreme; a keyword is no good if it's something so specific that no one would ever search for it.

Your secondary keywords can be a little more flexible than your primary keyword or keyword phrase. Pick the words people are most likely to use when searching for your product or information. You should ideally have between four and six secondary keywords, but if necessary, pick as many as ten. Don't go above ten, as too many keywords end up diluting the importance of any of your keywords.

Look for a blend of general and specific secondary keywords. Better yet, make one or two of them keyphrases, such as "handcrafted knit scarves" that blend the specifics of the three words together with the generalness of each individual word.

Once you have your keywords, don't limit them to just your website. Use your primary keyword phrase every time you link to your website, in blogs, in newsletters, and in RSS feeds. Don't overlook relevant forum signatures! The right keywords, used in the right way, can be invaluable.

About the Author: For more information visit Orange County Website Design Search Engine Optimization Orange County SEO Simplifying The WEB

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=153276&ca=Internet

Comments: 1

3 Steps To Selecting And Using The Right Keywords For Your Site

14 December, 2007 (16:02) | Google, Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization | By: clive

By David Bain

Keywords play a great role in how popular (or unpopular) your website is in the internet. Here are three steps for using and picking keywords for internet marketing purposes.

Your website traffic is your business? lifeblood. It is therefore of great importance that you employ all possible measures in order to increase your website traffic. One way to increase traffic is through search engine optimization or SEO.

The key to SEO is to select the right keywords that would drive targeted traffic to your website. The idea is to get visitors who are more likely to be persuaded to become your customers. Therefore, it is very important that you find the right keywords in order to get your target or your niche market.

Search engines are practically driven by millions of keywords, so there is a great need for you to find only the relevant keywords that you would need to make your site relevant to your intended audience. Here are some important points that you have to consider in determining the keywords that would get you noticed by your niche market.

Step 1: Study the competition

Is there a room for more? There is a need for you determine if your niche has a room for another competitor and another website. A particular niche may be saturated with too many websites and businesses endorsing their products that, inadvertently, you would always rank poorly in search engines queries.

Studying your competition and your niche size is very important in order to find the right keywords. Unless you are running a well-established website or blog, you should avoid keywords with high rate of search. Most likely, these keywords are used by a great number of your competitors. It will be very difficult for you to rank high in search results.

You should, therefore, carefully examine and study your keywords before anything else. This is very important because your keywords would determine your success in your marketing campaign.

If you find that your niche is indeed saturated, your option is to use more specific keywords. You must avoid general keywords, and instead, break the general keywords down. The goal is to choose keywords that have a minimal amount of competition.

Step 2: Research your keywords

Determine the characteristics of your keywords for your niche. The goal is to find the most pertinent keywords ? pertinent to your business and your niche. This is extremely important in order to get your target market.

If your keywords are relevant to your market, chances are high that by optimizing your site for these keywords (through SEO), your niche will find your website and search engines will credit your website with higher ranking.

However, let me reiterate once more that it is also important that you find keywords that are innovative and unique, which would make your website stand out from all other similar websites.

Step 3: Take time in selecting your keywords

Your keywords are crucial to the success of your website. You should take time to consider and select the keywords that you should use in order to optimize for the search engines.

Check and test keywords using search engines. Google?s keyword tool is particularly helpful in checking out the competition for keywords. You will get an idea on what keywords are oversaturated, and what keywords will possibly help your website stand out and rank higher in search engine queries.

About the Author: David Bain is the founder of the free report "Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Mistakes". Visit http://www.Top10SEOMistakes.com to download the report today.

Source: www.isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=146001&ca=Internet

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