Use common sense and research your options before diving in

The fact that nobody knows exactly how Google’s algorithm ranks web pages anf that the algorithm is constantly changing and improving (what works today might not work tomorrow)

In this article, I'd like to make a quick rundown of some of the most common things that come up all this time

1. Should I Build “Anchor Text” Links

Clearly exact match anchor text links do correlate with high rankings.

Exact match anchors still positively correlate with rankings, but less so than partial match anchors.

So the answer to this burning question: 

Yes, you should definitely be building anchor text rich links if you are able to do it in a white hat way.

2. Should  you monitor your backlinks to keep an eye on bad links coming your way? 

Absolutely! Especially if you have outsourced your link building to a company or a freelancer. 

The most common reason for getting your site penalized is a poor link building choice from an SEO agency

Should you file a disavow request once you see some bad links coming your way? 

No. Unless you got a sternly worded email from Google telling you that you need to, in which case, you should go and take care of that immediately.

But you do still need to remove them. That is what Google tells you to do:

“First and foremost, we recommend that you remove as many spammy or low-quality links from the web as possible. In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most normal or typical sites will not need to use this tool.” Here are two simple ways to do that:

Reach out to the linking site: Simply send the site owner an email asking for the link to be removed. Save the email as a template so you can re-use it in the future to save time. 

404 the page: If you can’t get the site owner to remove the link you can just 404 the page the bad links are pointing to. If you do choose this option, then make sure to check if there were any quality sites which were also linking to the page and if so, ask them to update their link and point it to a replacement URL. 

3. Does Keyword Research Still Make Sense? 

It looks like Google is slowly but steadily making the “Build your site/page/business around these keywords” approach more and more obsolete.

Searchers intent, Personalization, Behavioral factors—all these things seem to be designed with the goal of stealing visitors from your perfectly optimized pages and sending them somewhere else. So should you still care about keyword research or just settle with the “build your site for humans, not the search engines” mantra?

I’d say you do both.

Keyword research will still give you a pretty accurate idea of what people are searching for and what kind of search volume you can expect if you rank high for that term.

But when creating your content around these keywords you should think much further than just putting 500 words on the page and using your target keyword in the title and headline.

These days “meeting searcher’s intent” is becoming a ranking factor that is almost as strong as having a keyword in the title of your page.

You may still have reasonable control of selected “short tail” keywords, but you have absolutely no control over dozens of longer tail keywords that this same page may rank for.

Providing stellar user experience is the only thing you can do here.

4. Should I Make My Website Mobile-Friendly?

Yes. This one is an absolute no-brainer. The exact same site will have two separate rankings for mobile and desktop, and Google has been pretty forthcoming about the fact that they give a lot of privilege to sites that are mobile-friendly.

Not only is adopting a mobile friendly approach better for your overall SEO, it’s also better for you as a business. This year we passed the tipping point where millions of people are using mobiles over desktops. This means going mobile isn’t just important, it’s essential.

5. Should I Hire an SEO or Try to Figure it on My Own? 

This is a tricky question to answer, because there are a lot of factors that come into play.

Website owners usually ask this question for two reasons:

They’re not sure if they will be able to figure it out on their own; 

They’re afraid of scammers, who will charge a lot of money for little to no result. Here’s my best suggestion for people who find themselves in this situation:

First of all, dig as deep as you can for yourself. A lot of SEO is nothing but common sense and if you’re using a popular CMS such as WordPress to run your website, you’ll discover that basic optimization is no rocket science.

Secondly, use your knowledge to hire someone who won’t scam you. Scammers prey on the SEO illiterate. However, if you know what a PBN is and that “full SEO audit of your site” may mean nothing more than the exported results of some crawl report tool – the chances to scam you are pretty much 0. Use common sense and research your options before diving in.

READ MORE

Here Are Some Of The Prominent Mistakes Made By SEO Experts

The first thing one can do as an internet marketer is to avoid making mistakes. Here are some of the prominent mistakes made by SEO experts: 

1. Not optimizing images with rest of the content

Optimizing images is sometimes not part of the SEO strategy and can be over looked. Adding target keywords to images relevant to the rest of the content helps search engines understand them. 

A link to the image with just numbers and alphabets in odd positions does not convey anything but some relevant words and numbers would matter. 

One should incorporate descriptive keywords for every image. Including relevant alt text helps search engines to find images in relevant searches and even the accessibility of the site. 

2. Keyword stuffing Nowadays websites contain varied types of content in terms of text. 

One needs keywords for SEO and use of right keywords is important for getting the right audience. Optimize them carefully to gain popularity in search engines. 

But keyword stuffing will only ruin your website ranking since cramming a keyword multiple times makes content worthless. Only keywords do not get customers to a website. 

Also, Google algorithms will get the site blacklisted and also issue a bad ranking. Relying on large amounts of mediocre content can affect sites. 

Using specific keywords with strategic placement and relevant content is effective. Creating insightful info about a topic can can attract attention through different channels.

3. Not Setting Up Canonicalization

When implementing an SEO strategy, one should make sure that you do not have duplicate content on the site. 

If there is identical content for online access using different URLs, you need to identify the right page for visitors and implement a canonical to help search engines know that it is not a duplicate version. 

4. Disregarding Pages by Not Indexing Them

One should not forget indexing pages. Pages that are broken or missing are going to avoid search engine results altogether because pages indicating 404 error are excluded. 

A high number of 404s leads to an increase in bounce rate and visitors will feel cheated of any information. Search engines crawl websites and rank them and 404 pages interrupt their process. 

It is important not to have broken links on your site and keep the website active. 

5. No updates on site

After spending months to create an interactive and attractive website, one should try to keep it dynamic with consistent blog posts or some other content. 

Companies fail to optimize the site with keywords and just sit back to watch the traffic decrease. Let in some updates that will help your prospects with relevant information and they might convert to leads. 

One needs to make a schedule for posting different posts related to your field on a regular basis, and consistency will get you the attention of search engines too.

6. Neglecting social media

Neglecting social media is a crime in this day and age. Social media is no longer an optional marketing ploy but a necessity for businesses. 

By being conversant and relevant on popular social sites like Facebook and Twitter, one can enhance a company’s image and credibility. 

Sharing your content will lead the search engines and drive potential visitors to your site. Social media following can also boost brand awareness amongst loyalists. 

7. Lack of internal links

One might think that it is erroneous to link to one’s own content and even think that search engines might read into it and even blacklist the pages. 

Despite what you may think, internal links to website is great for SEO and helps search engines to crawl to your website. One should focus on the most important pages of any site and strategize posts to link back to those pages. 

One should find a real connection between pages to do the linking task. 

8. Failure to measure progress

Improving SEO is like losing weight. One needs to check and measure your progress on a consistant basis. 

One should know the current standing when you start, and then track the changes. With solid metrics in place, one will know that the SEO practices have been working or not. 

If you do not think that there has been any progress, then it is preferable to drop it.

Following “SEO Best Practices” can be difficult for online marketers. With search engines changing algorithms on a periodic basis, every SEO strategy needs to adapt and adjust with the latest techniques while giving up on age-old practices.

READ MORE

Promote Your Home Business By Using Blog

One of the major pluses of blogs is that they often to get good search engine posititioning because of interlinking and their content. 

Search Engines understand that most blogs are updated on a regular basis. Blogs have brought in a new flavor to the media relations world since bloggers are often seen as opinion leaders in their particular field. 

Topic specific blogs have become a kind of "speaker's corner" for the internet due to their relevency. 

Area specific blogs can also be a very useful resource. 

You might want to set up a city or town based blog. 

Or a webblog that covers particular topics or news effecting a certain state or other geographical location. 

Blogs can also be a source of news for subjects not covered in the mainstream media. 

You could use blogs to promote your website directly or use the traffic to promote an affiliate program like Google adwords to set up another stream of income. 

A blog might contain any content you desire, such as an article, rambling or any irreverent post you can think of. 

It could also feature the latest product upgrades, website updates and other pertinent information. 

By using them to help promote your home business you are accessing an entirely new audience. 

Getting a blog rolling for you is not particularly hard. 

Blogger (owned by Google search) may be the best way. Tblog is also a free to use service, and paid ones include salon dot com and the blogging network. Tripod offers a free blog builder and hosting service too. 

It was one of the first such free services, yet may be inferior to some services in certain quality respects. 

You can also use software applications to to create a more customized blog for your website. 

Once you have your blog up and running, there are a number of superb resources that you can use to promote it. 

Blog-city is a blog search engine and directory, blogsearchengine.com, blogwise (paid) and bloghop dot com(paid). 

Using blogs effectively can certainly improve the internet marketing results for your home business! 

READ MORE

Searching and finding what you are looking for is easy

Dearching and finding what you are looking for is easy if you are armed with the knowledge how to do it.

The best way to find information is through a virtual search engine.

Most search engines have advanced search options which can come in very handy if you are not skilled with operators when searching.

Search engines explore resources on the Internet and return results related to your query.

Search engines allow keyword searches and use crawlers to find sites or pages that match the query.

A simple query like "web hosting" on Google returns 15,100,000 results. Now how do users know which sites are useful to them, thus creating a kind of "Information Overload". How can users be sure of the quality of the information?

The thing about search engines is that they usually display all web pages that contain one or both of the words contained in the search query.

So the question arises: how do we find the information we are looking for?

There are various techniques you can use to make your search queries better which will then help you achieve more relevant results.

For example if you use the "+" operator and reorder your query to "web hosting" + Windows, it will only show sites that offer Windows hosting. You can also use the Boolean "AND" operator, depending on your convenience.

You can use the "-" and "web hosting" - Linux operator keys thus telling Google to make sure that it doesn't show Linux related hosts. This is the same as using the Boolean operator "NOT".

There are also keywords like ADJ, NEAR etc. which are used by some search engines. The NEAR operator looks for the keywords specified in the query within a certain distance from each other, ie ensures that the keywords "web" & "hosting" are on the same page and placed close to each other in the text.

The ADJ operator is a stricter filter and returns only pages that have contiguous keywords, ie it will only return pages where the keywords "web" and "hosting" are mentioned together.

Another technique to ensure you get better results is to use queries that make sense. Use the words you think will fit on the site you are looking for: "web hosting" is better than "I want web hosting".

Also note that search engines usually ignore certain words like "a '," for "," from "," in "," in ", etc.

Another important thing to remember is that most search engines have 'tips' pages that specifically contain information on how to perform better searches on search engines. It's always great to read these tips.

"The internet is an amazing place full of resources that can really help us"

However, finding information that is relevant to you is a challenge.

READ MORE

Hallmarks of 1990s Web Design

Of course, when someone says that a website looks like it came from 1996, it's no compliment. You start to imagine loud background images, and little "email me" mailboxes with letters going in and out in an endless loop. Amateurish, silly, unprofessional, conceited, and unusable are all adjectives that pretty well describe how most websites were made just ten years ago. 

Why were websites so bad back then? 

Knowledge. Few people knew how to build a good website back then, before authorities like Jakob Nielsen starting evangelizing their studies of web user behavior. 

Difficulty. In those days, there weren't abundant software and templates that could produce a visually pleasing, easy-to-use website in 10 minutes. Instead, you either hand-coded your site in Notepad or used FrontPage. 

Giddiness. When a new toy came out, whether it was JavaScript, Java, Frames, animated Gifs, or Flash, it was simply crammed into an already overstuffed toy box of a website, regardless of whether it served any purpose. 

Browsing through the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine, it's hard not to feel a twinge of nostalgia for a simpler time when we were all beginners at this. Still, one of the best reasons for looking at 90s website design is to avoid repeating history's web design mistakes. This would be a useful exercise for the tragic number of today's personal homepages and even small business websites that are accidentally retro. 

Splash Pages 

Sometime around 1998, websites all over the internet discovered Flash, the software that allowed for easy animation of images on a website. Suddenly you could no longer visit half the pages on the web without sitting through at least thirty seconds of a logo revolving, glinting, sliding, or bouncing across the screen. 

Flash "splash pages," as these opening animations were called, became the internet's version of vacation pictures. Everyone loved to display Flash on their site, and everyone hated to have to sit through someone else's Flash presentation. 

Of all the thousands of splash pages made in the 1990s and the few still made today, hardly any ever communicated any useful information or provided any entertainment. They were monuments to the egos of the websites' owners. Still, today, when so many business website owners are working so hard to wring every last bit of effectiveness out of their sites, it's almost charming to think of a business owner actually putting ego well ahead of the profit to have been derived from all the visitors who hit the "back" button rather than sit through an animated logo. 

Text Troubles 

"Welcome to…" Every single website homepage in 1996 had to have the word "welcome" somewhere, often in the largest headline. After all, isn't saying "welcome" more vital than saying what the web page is all about in the first place? 

Background images. Remember all those people who had their kids' pictures tiled in the background of every page? Remember how much fun it was trying to guess what the words were in the sections where the font color and the color of the image were the same? 

Dark background, light text. My favorite was orange font on purple background, though the ubiquitous yellow white text on blue, green or red was nice, too. Of course, anyone who will make their text harder to read with a silly gimmick is just paying you the courtesy of letting you know they couldn't possibly have written anything worth reading. 

Entire paragraphs of text centered. After all, haven't millennia of flush-left margins just made our eyes lazy? 

"This Site Is Best Viewed in Netscape 4.666, 1,000x3300 resolution." It was always so cute when site owners actually imagined anyone but their mothers would care enough to change their browser set up to look at some random person's website. 

All-image no-text publishing. Some of the worst websites would actually do the world the service of putting all their text in image format so that no search engine would ever find them. What sacrifice! 

Hyperactive Pages 

TV-envy was a common psychological malady in 1990s web design. Since streaming video and even Flash were still in their infancy, web designers settled for simply making the elements on their pages move like Mexican jumping beans. 

Animated Gifs 

In 1996, just before the dawn of Flash, animated gifs were in full swing, dancing, sliding, and scrolling their way across the retinas of web surfers trying to read the text on the page. 

Scrolling Text 

Just in case you were having a too easy time tuning out all the dancing graphics on the page, an ambitious mid-1990s web designer had a simple but powerful trick for giving you a headache: scrolling text. Through the magic of JavaScript, website owners could achieve the perfect combination of too fast to read comfortably and too slow to read quickly. 

For a while, a business owner could even separate the serious from the wannabe prospects based just on how (un)professional their business websites looked. Sadly, the development of template-based website authoring software means that even someone with no taste or sense whatsoever can make websites that look as good as the most biggest-budget design of five years ago. 

Of course, there are still some websites whose owners seem to be trying to spark a resurgence in animated gifs, background images, and ugly text. 'll just have to trust that everyone is laughing with them, not at them.

A Nostalgic Look Back

A nostalgic look back at 90s web design, and a warning to anyone whose website is an accidental anachronism. 

Remember the days when every PC was beige, every website had a little Netscape icon on the homepage, Geocities and Tripod hosted just about every single personal homepage, and "Google" was just a funny-sounding word? 

The mid-late 1990s were the playful childhood of the worldwide web, a time of great expectations for the future and pretty low standards for the present. Those were the days when doing a web search meant poring through several pages of listings rather than glancing at the first three results--but at least relatively few of those websites were unabashedly profit-driven.

READ MORE

All about the company's blog

A blog can be an interactive addition to an intranet or e-mail newsletters. Since automatic update notification is possible on blogs, people are more likely to stay on top of the latest postings. 

Blogging can help establish a company or employee as an expert in their field. By posting information about a certain topic, a person exhibits their knowledge of the subject matter, setting himself up as an authority. 

People will come to equate the site and the author with that topic. This reputation for subject mastery and expertise can boost your sales and consumer opinion. 

Corporate Blogging refers to a company producing or supporting a blog that it uses to accomplish business objectives. 

A blog can serve many purposes in a corporate setting. Internally, a blog can be a forum for discussion about work-related issues. 

The informal atmosphere is encouraging to internal corporate communication. From small-scale discussions to virtual “town meetings,” in which employees at all levels feel that they can be heard, blogs promote collaboration and knowledge sharing. 

A blog can strengthen the bonds between the company and its customers. When a company presents itself honestly and transparently, it not only builds trust, but instills loyalty as well. Customers are more likely to work with a company they feel they know better than another. 

Blogs allow for that informal communication. They create good word-of-mouth among customers who don’t read the trade magazines or business pages. 

The nature of a blog fosters that image of transparency and openness for a company. Most people prefer companies who are honest in their dealings and frank about their issues. As seen in the media with the Dan Rather case, a blog can illuminate the truth through encouraging people to share what they know. 

Blogging also reflects forward thinking. By staying current with the technological trends, you give your company a fresh image. 

A blog can serve as a recruiting method. Interested job seekers can examine the company by reading its blog. 

When testing a new product or service, a blog is an excellent place to give more detailed instructions or receive feedback. 

Although, comments can be negative. Not everyone will agree with what is said on a blog. Instead of preventing them, welcome the constructive criticism and edit comments only to remove profanity and personal attacks. 

The Down Side 

There are some drawbacks to blogging. It is not a magic solution to your business needs. Many people feel that blogging popularity is much like the Internet in the 90's, a promise of money, but not necessarily delivery. 

Blogging can lead to legal issues as well. Companies have real concerns about liability, exclusions and limitations, and indemnity. Although there are laws that protect against libel, misappropriations and other injuries suffered as a result of posts on the Web, companies can be held vicariously responsible for statements made by employees that are harmful to others. 

In any medium where an employee is sharing information, there is the possibility of leaking trade secrets or financial information. Former Google employee Mark Jen was famously fired for gabbing about life at the company on his personal blog, not sanctioned by Google. 

Like all essentially unfiltered communication, blogs can get personal. Many bloggers feel the need to discuss their personal lives as well as their professional ones. 

Companies must be careful not to stifle communications by keeping personal lives out of the workplace. By doing this, they risk closing down the lines of communication entirely. 

Inevitably, a disgruntled employee may use this as an opportunity to badmouth the company. This is not limited to blogs, since an unhappy employee has a variety of mediums through which to vent his disapproval. Blogs just make it easy. 

The content may not have enough substance to warrant or hold an audience. Some companies fill their blog with marketing fluff. People can see right through this and will most likely ignore the site. Blogs should be used for transparency, not shameless self-promotion. 

Best Practices 

Fine Print. Since there are so many legal issues surrounding blogs, it is imperative that the site has some sort of disclaimer and limitation of liability. 

Know What You’re Doing. Senior management should be educated by the corporate communications and legal department about what blogs are and how they might affect business. 

Create blogging policies. A company should have a list of policies regarding blogging to ensure that trade secrets are kept secret and personal lives do not become public. Policies may include keeping financial information from being posted, as well as severe consequences for anyone using the blog for negative publicity. 

Avoid the Marketing Blog. Making your blog into a blatant marketing campaign is a bad idea. Customers are looking for real answers and honest opinions. They will pick up on insincerity instantly. 

Keep It Fresh. Make content relevant and timely. Update the blog as often as possible with the most worthwhile news. This will encourage people to come back. 

Reinforce the company’s core values. Then, make sure the content fits these values and supports the business strategy. 

Encourage employees to use it, but remind them of the ramifications of their actions. 

Free versus Paid Products 

When creating a blog, there are hundreds of services and software from which to choose. The first decision to make is whether to go with a free service or pay for one. 

For paid services, the cost varies depending on the features used. The basic hosting fee for a domain is anywhere from $5 to $15 a month. The domain name will need to be registered yearly, which can cost $5 to $35. This does not include the software, which may also have to be purchased. 

While free services offer the basic necessities of blogging, paid services are usually more desirable since they have more to offer. 

With a free service, the company offers a free site, but it may contain advertisements to offset the cost of maintenance. A paid site will not have any advertisements. 

Most free services have a variety of templates to choose from for the look of the site, but paid services offer highly customizable designs. 

In addition to the basic functions, paid blogs offer the ability to upload photos and images and tailor links on the site. They also offer better security and allow the creator to censor or control comments. 

Paid sites normally lead to a higher search engine ranking. They enable the creator to configure search output and there are fewer restrictions placed on paid sites. 

Paid news aggregators will often keep a list of recently updated blogs and will rank them, showing new sites and newly added photo albums. 

For a simple blog, any free service will do, but to get a truly customized and highly functioning product, it will take paying something for it. 

RSS Feeds 

With the rising popularity of blogs, it has become increasingly time-consuming to keep track of ones that are of interest. No one has time to check each and every favorite blog every day to search for new content. RSS feeds have become the solution. 

RSS feeds are small XML files that contain a headline, date/time and description and link to information published on a blog. When used along with a feed reader, or news aggregator, they give an update on the newest content that has been added to a blogging site to a subscribed user. 

RSS was developed in several different versions, each with a different meaning. RSS can stand for Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary or RDF Site Summary, depending on the version used. 

All versions do the same thing, though. They provide a summary of information. They send a blog’s highlights to subscribers instantly upon publication. RSS feeds save the user from having to visit the site for updates. 

To receive RSS feed, a user must have a feed reader, also commonly referred to as a news aggregator. This can be software, a Web-based service, extension or built into a browser. It essentially takes the XML code and translates it into readable information. When the “update” button on the feed reader is clicked, it searches all of the subscribed sites’ RSS feed for new information. 

Having a RSS feed greatly increases the traffic to a blogging site because it provides an easy way to keep an audience abreast of the latest developments. Once someone is a subscriber, he will continue to be involved in the site. RSS also makes it easier for someone to add a site as a link onto their own site. 

Blogging inherently encourages communication and the transfer of ideas. Blogging lets businesses extend their reach and strengthen consumer loyalty, as well as get people talking about their product. It's a matter of perception, encouraging integrity and strengthing relationships in the corporate world. Blogging has become the trademark of forward thinking companies, willing to suffer a few stings in order to get to the benefits it has to offer.

READ MORE