The Importance of Visible On-Page Factors!

Sid — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 07:20:43 +0000

Search Engine Marketing - The Importance of Visible On-Page Factors

On-page factors are dictated by the web pages’ content and are critical to a marketing campaign. Besides the fact that they are easy to manipulate and that search engine masters have started taking into account, other factors as well, on-page factors still hold a lot of importance.

These factors can be broadly categorised into Visible as well as Invisible. In this write-up, I’ll only highlight the Visible factors.

The Importance of Visible Content

Search engines give a lot more importance to visible content as this is the content that users are going to see.

Some important Visible On-Page Factors are Page Title, Page Headings, Page Copy, Outbound links, Keywords in URLs and domain names, internal link structures and anchors and over all structuring of the Site.

Title

It is the text that is defined by the subject of the element present in the <head> section of an HTML doc. This title can be clearly sited in the browser windows’ title bar and can also be seen in the headline of a SE result. This is clearly the most important factor from the SEO point of view. The quality of SE ranking for your site will depend a lot on your Page Title. Google advises webmasters to have descriptive Title Tags and headings. Using the same generic text for making titles for all pages of a website should be strictly avoided. This practise may get your site a poor ranking, or worse, it may get you penalised for posting duplicate content. Ensure unique and relevant titles for all pages! Headings Page headings may be used to indicate the collective context and meaning. They are usually larger in size than the rest of the content and are created with the help of <Hx> tags in HTML. “X” can be any digit between 1 and 6. They have been readily abused to manipulate SE rankings but are still a relevant on-page factor. Page Copy It’s important for a website to post pages that are relevant to a users’ query. SE algorithms put a lot of emphasis on this. Excessive keyword insertion should be avoided. Key words may be used in a variety of legitimate ways such as varying the tenses or mentioning a singular keyword in its plural form. Keyword stuffing should be avoided at all times! It should be noted that SE algorithms are unknown and constantly updated. This has added a lot of ambiguity to the subject of “Keyword stuffing”. SEO copywriting is an art, which if mastered, will enable you to use such ambiguous factors to your advantage. As a webmaster, all you need to do is to make a site which is useful for the surfer and at the same time, SE friendly. Key words may be exceeded to a certain extent but should not compromise with the content and its relevance. They should not look contrived! Outbound Links A web page should only contain links that will lead the visitor to relevant content. Your sites’ ranking can get serious downward jolts if you include links that lead to irrelevant web pages. Using Relevant Keywords in Page URL This practice should be adopted by all! Using keywords in the URL can dramatically improve rankings and CTR (click-through ratio). The URL may also be mentioned on a webpage in the form of anchor text. The Importance of Link Structuring Search Engines do not give much importance to pages hidden inside a sites’ internal link structure. Webmasters need to design websites in such a way that pages with relevant content are linked well to the home page. Direct linking can do wonders to a websites’ ranking in SE results. Here is an example of the things you should do and the ones you should avoid: The Wrong Way: This is something all webmasters should avoid. The pages between and aren’t directly linked to the home page. This practice will push relevant pages down the hierarchy. The Right Way: <h3 class="MsoNoSpacing"> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 </h3> In this case, it can be clearly seen that all the 9 pages between and are directly linked to the main page. Using this link structure will create a much better scheme of navigation to all the pages. </article> <article> <h1>Understanding Cloaking and its Significance in the Current Scheme of Things</h1> Sid — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:13:57 +0000 Cloaking is a smart<a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk"> SEO</a> technique categorised under Black Hat SEO by all search engines. It is a method of providing content to a search engine robot different to that provided to a user. The content of the page that is returned to a search engine robot is highly optimised to obtain high SE rankings and will differ a lot from the page that the end user is going to see. Cloaking is easily detected by search engines and can get you banned, until you mend your ways! What complicates the issue!? The issue of cloaking has cause a great divide between SE marketing communities. Some think of cloaking as perfectly OK. Others think of it as a misleading tactic. Besides the fact that search engines have lain down guidelines to curb cloaking, word has it that the same SEs aren’t very stringent about them. Infact, some of them are using it themselves! Is cloaking a deceptive technique? Is it worth the risk? A number of webmasters consider cloaking to be a perfectly legitimate tactic. Give what needs to be given to the search engine robot and let users have what they want. Most people argue that they should have the right to put whatever they want on their sites. Why Use Cloaking? Let us forget for a while that this technique can get you banned or black listed. SEOs argue on the necessity of protecting Meta data. It can be given off to the SE spiders, but why everyone? Cloaking is inexpensive. It’s easy to build an alternative site free if cost, fill it up with optimum content and Meta tags to boost visibility. Is it Fool Proof? A number of sites do get away with the practice but many have perished due to this technique. A normal search engine may not be able to detect you but SEs like Google and Yahoo can kill your web marketing efforts if they find anything fishy about your portal. Just imagine the amount of business you will lose if you are taken of the listings of Google and Yahoo. You might even have to close down! Just an Opinion I personally think that no one has the right to dictate the contents of my website to me, except me! Let’s define Search Engine! It’s an internet tool used to search for relevant information on the internet. Who is deciding what’s relevant or not? Google and Yahoo may have stuck to the definition mentioned above for some time. Then suddenly, someone working for them started thinking! L It’s a competitive world! Survival of the fittest! All I know is that if I can device a method to rank higher in a SE listing, I should use it. If my competitors cannot, then it’s their problem! </article> <article> <h1>Latest Google puts Bing out to dry! “Bing….wake up and smell the coffee…!”</h1> Justin — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:55:25 +0000 Recently, google has reveled its latest updated search engine which many developers have called “Caffeine”. I wanted to wait to see what every other <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO </a>wrote about this before I dived in with my own blog on the matter. After a series of rigorous tests <a href="http://www2.sandbox.google.com/">the new engine </a>will replace the <a href="http://www.google.co.uk">current one</a>. Bing launched recently with a huge media budget and boasted it was a much superior search function. However in typical Google style, Google have let their latest work slip out with it quietly doubling the speed of its parent engine, furthermore it will begin to product real-time results and news feeds. In 2008, Google dominated the search landscape with a huge 87% of the UK search market. Even though Bing.com is a great rival and with its huge marketing front it will certainly take some of the share. However, underestimate Google at your peril…they will not give up their share lightly. Furthermore, with Twitter’s real-time search and threatening to muscle in on Googles web dominance this is one other example of Google flexing its muscles to show it is the true king of the web… The general public will not notice the changes…its the algorythm that has been changed. The engine picks up fresher content and places webpages higher for the freshness of the relevant searched content. For the SEO industry this is great news! True SEO will provail and it will make it increainglt harder for Black Hat operators to manupulate the world of search. Tell us your thoughts…make comments guys……….. </article> <article> <h1>The Controversy behind Black Hat SEO – How far would YOU go?</h1> Sid — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 22:41:24 +0000 The debate on spamdexing is never ending! I’ve designed a site and want it to get the attention it deserves. Or the profits I deserve! There are limits to making a site user friendly! On the contrary, there are no limits to the number of times your sites’ listing may get appended in search engine results, just because some other sites were using deliberate methods to manipulate search engine results. It’s frustrating to see yourself on the 3rd page of Google’s results with virtually no hits in sight. This is when my mind tells me that it’s the search engines headache to set the parameters for acceptable optimisation. This is when that dark Black Hat starts to appear grey! My Single Point Agenda The purpose of a commercial website is to make money. Money is made on the first page of search engine results and the downfall of profits from the site listed #1 to the one listed #10 is exponential. I want to use techniques that will get me profit. Use Black Hat <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO technique</a><a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">s</a>? Trick Google and Yahoo into thinking that my Hat is the brightest white, even if it’s for some time? A typical search engine would list almost all websites for a given keyword but are not obliged to list any of them. Neither are we obliged to follow all the vague guidelines, a search engine frames. After all we haven’t signed a contract with them. Let’s take the following citation into consideration: Yahoo is continuously banning “pages that do not provide good user experience”. This is quite anarchic on the part of Yahoo! This is too wide, a perspective! This means that I hire a web design team to make my site as good looking and user friendly as possible and Yahoo! decides whether it’s good enough or not. SEO for Commercial Websites Purely commercial sites do not have elaborate content. They just want to sell their products and services. Online markets are competitive and these sites have to use aggressive <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO</a> methods to rank well. Bait and switch techniques are two examples of Black Hat SEO that some sites still get away with. To tell you the truth, there is no dearth of Black hatters who continuously devise new ways to manipulate search engine algorithms. For some commercial websites, <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO</a> is not the only thing that matters. Conversions are of utmost importance. The art of hooking up a visitor and making him come back for more in the hope of translating his visits into sales is not perfected by all. What Constitutes Black hat SEO Here are some practices that are considered Black hat SEO by MSN, Google and Yahoo! This one is for the people who are continuously thinking of bending the rules! Or breaking them! <ol type="1"> <li>Anchor text, keyword or domain name stuffing.</li> <li>Employing the use of links and hidden texts.</li> <li>Do not try to step up the number of incoming links to your page. Techniques such as link farms and are well monitored by all search engines.</li> <li>Excessive cross linking of sites to increase your popularity.</li> <li>Cloaking, i.e. delivering web pages to a search engine that are different from the real ones.</li> <li>Using Gateway Pages. These are optimised for different keywords but do not have any worthwhile content in them.</li> <li>Using content that is of no value to the user. This is also called auto-generated content which either targets relevant keywords or creates unnecessary inbound links.</li> <li>Spamming blogs and web forums.</li> <li>Link Hoarding.</li> </ol> The use of all these tactics and many more will get your website banned from search engine indices. Most of the above mentioned technique do not need special attention by search engines. They can be automatically detected. Do take a look at the Yahoo!, Google and MSNs’ <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">Search Engine Optimization</a> Guidelines. </article> <article> <h1>Great Traffic and Super Sales! – Picking the Right SEO Firms</h1> Sid — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:28:30 +0000 Most of us have come across SEO firms that promise a #1 ranking for any keyword(s)? Steer clear of such dubious claims! Getting a high ranking is lucrative, both for the <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO firm</a> as well as for you but it is impossible to achieve if the keywords are highly competitive. False Promises Most of these firms make promises of getting any website, a top ten ranking with search engines such as MSN, Goole, AltaVista, AOL Search, Infoseek and Web Crawler etc. These are false claims! Anything less than a rank of 25 is difficult. It may take a few weeks to a few months before you can see your website on the third page of a popular search engine listing. Client Expectations There must be thousands of SEO firms operational in the world today with at least, a hundred clients each. Imagine all of them wanting to get a #1 ranking in Google! This not only sounds unrealistic but naïve as well. A wannabe SEO firm is only going to use Black Hat techniques to get your site listed in the top few results for a short period of time before you are traced by search engine personnel and black listed. SEO Firms – Who and Why? Why? The reasons are numerous! Most online business owners do not have the time or the technical expertise to work on their site. It’s good to have an SEO expert to mentor your team while the website designing work is going on. A number of firms may be able to help you with this but you will need to study the basics yourself. These primarily include an in-depth knowledge of Black hat malpractices and search engine spamming techniques. SEO is an easily understandable topic but involves a good amount of skill, experience as well as knowledge for effective implementation. Some of the services that an SEO consultant or a firm may provide are: <ol type="1"> <li>Expert advice on the problems involved with your web portal.</li> <li>Help in providing relevant edits to your pages so as to make it search engine friendly.</li> </ol> You can use website optimising services for a short period of time to get those one off improvements to your website or you can sign a long term contract with a firm. Take your pick! If you are coming up with a new site, hire an SEO consultant immediately! It can do wonders to the way your website will be ranked on major search engines in the coming years, not to mention the traffic you are going to receive and the subsequent profits. Who? So, how is the Firm ranked in Search Engine Listings It may sound funny but the best way to select a good SEO firm is to visit a popular search engine and see how the firm is ranked in their listing. Two of the most competitive keywords are “search engine optimisation” and “SEO”. Existing Clientele It’s a good move to refer to existing clients. Check for their rankings in major search engines as well, for their target key words. SEO Blogs The best way to find great <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO service</a> providers! There is no dearth of SEO blogs on the internet. Refer to them for an updated knowledge on SEO techniques, newer versions of search engine algorithms as well as reviews on the best SEO firms in business. Ask For a Process Flow Chart A credible SEO firm will lay down the process they are going to use for optimising your site. If not, ask for it. Some SEO firms are reluctant to lay down complete processes so as to safeguard themselves from giving away their trade secrets. Do not bend down on this if you are signing up for a long term contract. There is nothing wrong in getting a general explanation on the plan of action your firm is going to undertake. The Final Aim Results matter a lot! What good is an SEO firm if it cannot get your site relevant traffic and profits (in case of commercial web portals)? Though rankings can’t be immediately guaranteed but the firm should constantly persevere to improve present rankings as well as getting quality traffic. Some firms use the methods of “bait” and “jump pages”. These are useless and won’t get you any more traffic or sales that you already have. Make use of this information! Go online and make a search with the different SEO related keywords and see what you get! </article> <article> <h1>Learning the Basics Is Critical</h1> Galvin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:44:01 +0000 Something I read while trawling through the web made me think about the fundamentals of SEO. Basically before you set out on a SEO campaign you must have the basic techniques before trying the fancy stuff. This may sound obvious, but, people want quick results so may opt for the more technical techniques wishing quicker results. So before trying to do things like PR sculpting or any other more advanced techniques, ensure that the basics are in place. You can break SEO into three main areas: Content, Architecture and Links. These are the fundamentals of SEO that need to be understood and get right first. Architecture - Can your site be crawled? When commencing on the road of having your website created you need to look at whether or not your site can be crawled by the search engine spiders. You could be spending hours producing the best content , but if the spiders cannot crawl through then your hard work will be in vain. Below I will list a few things to which will help make your site more crawl-able: 1. Try to avoid things like flash or javascript navigation. To date search engines struggle crawling these types of navigation, but who knows in time this may change? 2. Make your site’s architecture as flat as possible. Keeping your pages as close to the root as possible will help the spiders see your content. In other words, yourwebsite.com/folder/product is much better than yourwebsite.com/category/subcategory/product/product-description. 3. Distance your site from parameter strings in URLs. Having parameter strings in URLs could have multiple versions of the same content and you will have to learn how to properly use the canonical element. Avoid this by not using parameters. having a static URL for each page whenever possible is the way forward. For example: yourwebsite.com/product-name.htm is much better than mysite.com/?prod-id=432hju&cat-id=abc765. 4. Internal linking should be used appropriately If it makes sense to link to other pages within the content then do so. Make sure you do no just rely on your sites navigation to get people and the search engines to where you want them to be on your site 5. Sitemaps. Make sure your site has both an HTML and XML sitemap I will write next week on tips on content and the good and the bad ways of linking. </article> <article> <h1>What Triggers the Future of SEO?</h1> Vaibhav — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:50:24 +0000 When I started in the web arena, around 6 years back, things used to be very different from what they are today. <a href="http://www.associateprograms.com/discus/index.php">Associate Programs</a> was considered to be a good place to hang out. I still remember one of the modes <a href="http://www.associateprograms.com/discus/sutra12500.html&highlight=#12500">throwing a warning</a> at me for the prolific usage of profanity in one my posts WTF (good for me that i soon realized that forums are a piece of shit and no point wasting time out there)… I have lived my live on my computers and internet since, and internet is not just work for me, its my passion and my life. Things have changed drastically since then, people like James Martel used to dominate the internet with their 1st-in-everything sites by simply writing a 200 words article on every keyword in every niche and dominating the SERPS… those were the Golden days for a Fortunate few!! Though the basics never change but things move on; and Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest comes into action. It’s good for the smart people because only the ones who have the metal will survive, and others will get buried. What will be the future of <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO</a>? For this we should go to the basics of how google ranks sites ? Currently google uses primarily 2 factors to figure out what which page should rank any given keyord <ul> <li>Contents of the page</li> <li>Back links (back links a long is a topic on which i can write a complete book but i ll keep it short here)</li> </ul> Despite the paradigm shift in the web world and SEO, Google will still need some basis to rank the websites… It has to be such that the good websites rank at the top and the users are easily able to retrieve good and useful content, specific to their requirements. Now with the number of web addresses exceeding the number of people on earth, the only method Google can use to rank websites has to do with human votes for a website either in the form of back links or in form of one of the social media methods. Now whatever involves human intervention can also be manipulated by the same humankind. 6 years back something known as a directory submission used to produce excellent results in terms of ranking a website. Then one day it suddenly struck me that Google might ban all the directories as they are being used extensively for SEO purposes (i was unable to sleep that night). I guess it was just a wild figment of my imagination, directories are still on, and the only thing which keeps changing is the amount of authority which passes from a directory link. Although Google did manually penalize some of the top dog directories, but the ones which were under the radar are still working good and reaping excellent results. So whatever changes Google adds to its algorithm the following things should always be kept in mind: <ul> <li>Backlinks will always work although the sources of backlinks which get exploited will diminish the link juice passing ability.</li> <li>Whatever new method (social media or anything) is used by Google it will still come to people’s notice and will be manually manipulated. </li> <li>The ones who are the first people to exploit a given method will for sure enjoy the benefits like James Martel did when he got started. </li> <li>The mouse and the rat game will always be on (between Google and people trying to play with the algorithm).</li> </ul> I will try and make one point very clear; Google’s algorithm is not as strong as they cast it to be. I won’t get into its nuances any further, just try and experiment We have a team of 75 + people in house working on <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">Search engine optimization</a> for 400+ clients, and 5 people including me (core seo team) who love experimenting so I have the hindsight of my own experience to state the aforementioned. Another suggestion (for people who love to work hard and love stability) is to create websites not for Google but for the people. Yes I know it sounds crazy to some of the BH folks, but whatever change happens to the algorithm of Google a website made keeping the mass in focus and not Google will always sustain the roller coaster journey that comes with time. Here essentially your goal and Google’s goal will fortunately remain the same. Your goal will be to make the website considering its value of utility for the masses and Google’s aim would be to make sure that the widely used websites make it to the top SEO rankings. I will always keep my eggs in multiple baskets, and I love it when Google tries to play with the SEO folks because, when the going gets tough the tough get beyond Google… So in a nutshell do not complicate your track, keep your eggs wide spread, and don’t worry if you are the fittest as Darwin’s theory is universally applicable. </article> <article> <h1>Microsoft & Yahoo (cont.) - What will the future ‘bing’ 8-P ?</h1> Galvin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:47:19 +0000 Yesterday I commented on the deal with <a title="Yahoo" href="http://www.yahoo.co.uk" target="_blank">Yahoo</a> and <a title="Microsoft " href="http://www.microsoft.com" target="_blank">Microsoft</a>, which will span over the next 10 years with a search-and-advertising agreement which in essence will take the latter from the search business & finally will make Microsoft a search contender. This all throws up some pertinent questions such as; what will this mean for <a title="SEO - Search Engine Optimisation Specialists" href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO</a> and what impact will it have on the search field? In essence the deal will enable Microsoft a 10-year license to Yahoo’s core search technologies. This smart man oeuvre by Microsoft will allow them to integrate this valuable search engine technology into it’s own. [<a href="http://www.bing.com">Bing</a> formerly known as Live and MSN]. Yahoo have agreed to take a step back from the Search Engine Business. Each time in the future you utilise Yahoo’s search facility it will produce results using Microsoft’s search engine. Yahoo will remain in control of their user interface for its own search engine, so it will look like you are searching on Yahoo. Yahoo and Microsoft are integrating their paid search technologies, they have aired that this will happen approximately 1 year after the integration of their free search technologies, or sometime in 2011 for most major countries. The completion date of when all results shown on Yahoo are delivered by Microsoft will be sometime early 2012. Again, I see this change of direction as positive for users of the internet, to give a broader spectrum of search facilities can only mean a step forward. </article> <article> <h1>The SEO Industry is getting a bad name due to bad operators!</h1> Justin — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 08:40:08 +0000 Before we embarked on forming the company SEO Next (UK) Ltd we ran our own internet/e-commerce business’s. therefore, we come to know about the plethora of SEO companies out there cold calling to do the following; 1. Promise you the world 2. Sign you into a 12 month contract you cannot get out of 3. Not be too fussed about achieving results for you and making your phone line ring! Have you found the same thing? Many of the larger SEO companies in the UK have a single business purpose…that is to hit their own sales targets and not be bothered about achieveing for their clients. Many of the SEO companies on page 1 for the keyword SEO operate in this way and simply live off the fact that they are number 1 on google for the keyterm <a href="http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=seo&btnG=Google+Search&meta=&aq=f&oq=">SEO</a>. Sure…this is great and shows they can achieve good rankings and it is a real good sales tool when selling into clients, however…how do you know they havnt paid a company like us to get them there? Dont get me wrong…over the next 12 months we will be aiming to get <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">www.seonext.co.uk</a> to page one for several keyterms relevant to our services but it is not something we will be shouting about. When selling SEO to someone I prefer to display quantifiable results to my customers, showing them “hey, we did this for X company, and they achieved X sales from it making a ROI of X”. I personallly think this is a much better way of displaying to clients the reasons for signing up with SEO Next. Furthermore, the industry is changing rapidly. There are several companies that have salesmen of SEO working for them that have never ran an online business of their own…therefore, if you think about it…how can they sell SEO? Marketing is all about return on investment and therefore, how do these sales guys know how much a phone can ring by ranking a company for certain keyterms, or generate X sales from what they do! Our mission at SEO Next is to ensure everyone who sells SEO here knows more than the SEO tactics that get a site to page 1, they must have ran an online business or been involved in the marketing for one and therefore know the FACTS! Enough of the rant! My only questions I would ask anyone to ask a SEO company when they employ them to do their SEO is ask the guy who is selling the SEO, whats your background and have you been under pressure to make a phone ring from the results of a <a href="http://www.seonext.co.uk">SEO</a> program. If you get a wooly answer to that, its time to move and look for someone who can tick all the boxes for you. </article> <article> <h1>Ad campaign puts Google & Microsoft at logger heads</h1> Galvin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:04:48 +0000 Every day the biggest competitors on the Internet, Google & Microsoft go head to head. Make no mistakes, Google champions the current search traffic by a considerable distance. Furthermore they have recently set upon a month long ad campaign. While this is not unusual, for Google it is as they have never had to visit this method of advertising to date. But as you can imagine Google do nothing by half heatedly. Billboards will be sited across 4 of the major cities in the United States, these include Boston, San Francisco, New York and Chicago. The adverts will be changed on a daily basis to catch the passersby attention, showing the very latest online office applications. Google decided this change of direction soon after with the announcement of Microsoft’s confirmation of their amalgamation with Yahoo with its online ad and search! This deal in Google’s eyes was potentially damaging more so than either site could do independently. Ezra Gottheil, an analyst from technology Business research Inc, voiced that with Microsoft pursuing Google’s Search Engine market with a huge ad campaign, Google have now set their sights on Microsoft’s Office suites. This is all ammunition for 2 of the Internets biggest names to come to a unavoidable confrontation in the future. My personal opinion is that with Google leading the market for so long Microsoft have had to sit up and quite rightly look at how to improve their current market growth. We can only sit back and watch to see the outcome. <a title="SEO - Search Engine Optimisation Specialists" href="http://www.seonext.co.uk" target="_self">SEO</a> Next ensures the techniques used to gain position on Google also follow across all major search engines. That ensures whatever the future holds and which Search Engine is crowned champion, all of our clients will remain best placed. </article> </main></body></html>

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The Importance of Visible On-Page Factors!