SEO by Imran Qaisar: January 2011

Monday, January 31, 2011

Inbound Link building SEO Training

Inbound Link Building means putting links on other sites to get traffic on your site. It is of 4 types.

One way - Site A link is on Site B
Two Way - Site A link is on Site B and Site B link is on Site A
Three Way - Site A link is on Site B and Site B link is on Site C and Site C link is on Site A
Link Farming - Building links on different sites and focusing all links towards targeted site to bring traffic.

This type of SEO comes under Black Hat SEO. This practice is not appreciated by search engines. Link Farming is worst type of SEO. Google may remove the ranking of site from listing.

Friday, January 28, 2011

Sitemap in SEO Training

Sitemap is a file which provides links information embedded in the website. It contains links of all pages. Search Engine crawler look in to this file to scroll all pages inside your website.

The sitemap file is of two types.

.txt file
.xml file

.txt file is a simple notepad file. Webmaster paste all links of the site in this file one in each line and save this file as text file.

.xml file is a file with all links of the website along with different parameters to set priority of a specific page and change frequency of the page. Change frequency means how often the page will be updated.
This helps the crawler to understand the attributes of page and its a search engine friendly activity to save time of crawler.

A simple example is shown below:

<url>

<loc>http://iqaisarseo.blogspot.com/</loc>

<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
</url>

The change frequency can be set as once, daily, weekly, monthly etc. "lastmod" means last modification date and time. Add this information with every link of your website in sitemap.xml file.

Webmaster make the sitemap file with either .txt or .xml extension and upload it through his ftp account in his website. This page is not displayed for visitors. (example: sitemap.txt or sitemap.xml

Sitemap file is done during on page optimization.

For blogspot website sitemap submission is a bit complicated process in google webmaster tool which is made easy here

One can generate his sitemap.xml file through internet by hundreds of free sitemap.xml generating websites. Its easy to use !!!

Understanding HTML in SEO training

HTML is hypertext markup language. It is commonly used in web page development. HTML code is written in a text file (.txt) extension and saved as "name.htm" (don't forget to add double cots and "select all" option while saving document.

Understanding HTML coding in SEO in important as the SEO expert should know the basics to define title, keywords, description and headings properly. If the coding is wrong he could be able to identify the errors on page. It comes under On page optimization.

Here is an example of simple html coding.

<html>
   <head>
   <title>my first HTML</title>    (what is meta)
   <meta name="keywords" content="introduction, my site, personal site, my own site />

   <meta name="description" content="Learn HTML explains the basics to advance level of learning free by using templates, source codes and tons of scripts />
</head>
<body>

A <strong>free HTML Learning</strong> website. <br>

Heading Tags
<H1> This is H1 heading </h1>
<H2>This is H2 heading </h2>
<H3> This is H3 heading </h3>
<H4> This is H4 heading </h4>
<H5> This is H5 heading </h5>
<H6> This is H6 heading </h6>

<p>   (Paragraph tag)
    Paragraph about content of my site
</p>
You can insert a hyperlink in your website by simply putting one line code.
<a href>"www.mysite.com.pk">My Site</a>
You can insert image and put description for mouse over display by following these commands
<img src="www.abc.com" alt="sample picture"/>
<img src="sky.gif" alt="blue sky" />

</body>
</html>

Follow the tags and closings carefully while writing code in HTML.

SEO experts much consider the head section of coding where title, keywords and description is defined for
search engines. Most of the SEO tuning scripts are included in head section of web page coding.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Link Building in On Page Optimization

Link Building term is used to place links on your page. These links can be of within website or can take the visitor to other sites. We will discuss about the inbound links or within site links. This is called On Page Optimization.

Internal link building helps search engines to classify your web pages.
If you want to bring attention of crawler towards the main page or any specific page of your website you can use that page's keyword in other pages and mark that keyword as a link towards your desired page. This way crawler will get impact of importance of that specific page. Or in other way of understanding you chose a keyword relevant to your page that searchers use on search engines, make sure that most of the pages in your site must contain that specific keyword.

Furthermore your site should be linked with other similar websites to draw attention and better ranking in search engines through crawler. This is called inbound link building. For example if site X is similar to site Y and site X link is placed on site Y, crawler will give importance to site X due to its popularity. But keep in mind that Not all Links are equal because if a health assistance site is getting links from a machinery products site, search engine will possible not count it but if that site is getting links from medical, hospital or doctors sites this will put it in better ranking. To understand importance or weightage of URL click here

Putting link on your site is as simple as
<a href="www.google.com">Popular Search Engine</a>
The URL is link address and text is anchor text

Also make note that targeted keyword in anchor text should not be included in all your page, please vary a little.

Now how to get inbound links. Inbound links are essential to search engine optimization. Without inbound links you have no chances on Google, which dominates search engine world with ~65% market share.
Ways to get inbound links:

Submit your website to online directories.
Submit to paid directories like Yahoo Directory and Business.com
Join local business chamber and get a link from it. Google trusts .gov links
If you know professors, try to get a link from university domains. Google trusts .edu links
Get in touch with your business partners and request a link from their website
Buy links from other websites. Google considers this "black hat" and may ban your website. Careful link buying still works.
Create quality content and email it to websites in your industry. If they like it, they will link to you voluntarily.
Exchange links with webmasters. Not as useful as it used to be.
Rent links from links brokers. Do a search if you're interested.

Links should never be broken or should not be ambigous like
www.mysubdomainpakistan.com/contact/feedback?en.l/

Avoid using such links. The link must be relevant to the content, title and direction of your page.

Also see

Link building in Off Page Optimization
How to create backlinks in Off Page Optimization
What is On Page Optimization

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

On page Optimization SEO training

On page optimization is started after selection of keyword. When you select a keyword through research and analysis, forget other keywords and focus on your selected one. Now decide which page you want to be shown on search result. The point is to have a single keyword which is returned to you by research.

You might need to make a new page or edit an existing one. Now find followings on your selected page.

title
head
main content

Add this keyword in all of them in a good proportion. Title should not be greater than 7 to 9 words. Keyword density should be 7% in content. Repeating keywords or different keywords than your website content may lead your SEO towards black hat seo.

Create separate page for specific keywords you select. Make sure to pick those keywords which have highest volume of traffic and maximum relevancy with your page content because in beginning I mentioned that you can not predict keyword because you don't know. It should be decided by the search engine and your research over it. Mutual consent of both is necessary. Now adjust your home page according to your other pages.

Check for links, the links should be properly described and no broken link should be there. It creates bad impact on crawler of search engine. Check for programming errors, remove them if any. Check for spelling mistakes it annoys the visitor.

And always avoid black hat SEO techniques.

Also See

Keyword Cannibalization
What is Meta
Link building in On Page Optimization

Monday, January 24, 2011

Google Adwords SEO training

Google adwords is google's main product which is generating enormous revenue. We use google adwords tool to select the most appropriate keyword first by putting all keywords we got through brain storming later the statistics will precise our selection of keywords.

First search google adwords tool on google.com.

In the webpage enter the keywords in your mind and enter security word which is shown on page as captcha (if required). You find different options to customize your search like locations, language or URL of website. The URL of website will provide you the keywords used by that website for better reference. Supposedly you search your keywords relevant to your website and you find some links on top of searches, now you want to know which keywords are used for those websites, you can simple check by giving URL here. This tool is amazing to fulfill one's needs.

The search results will show lots of keywords matching your given keywords and their relevant results. This result is inclusive of competition, global searches and monthly searches. You can download this result by simply clicking "download" button on top of search results in to CSV file.

By looking at competitor's favorite keywords you can easily decide which keywords are worthy to be placed as meta keywords of your site.

Keyword research means to analyze the current search volume, future prediction and keyword status in a particular geographic location. Google adword program provides the benefit of both i-e the keyword research and putting these keywords in your advertisement campaign with google. These two aspects are different to each other. The keyword should be a quality one rather than quantity one. For example, if you own a laptop online store and you chose laptop as keyword you may get huge volume of irrelevant traffic. Your traffic statistics would be huge but actual buyers would be very few. Beside this keyword if you use 'cheap laptop' or 'buy latest laptop' you will be hit by targeted traffic which will be a best conversion of traffic through keyword. Better keyword bring more customers.

Google can put your website ad on other websites and the visitor you get through this advertisement is ROI (Return Over Investment). You pay google for every click on your ad. By google adword program, the revenue generated by this product for google for year 2010 was US$ 27 billions. To setup your account with google for your ads placement you need to make an account by visiting google's adword official website.

Also see

Search Engine Strategies in 2011
Sear Engine Marketing
Tips to improve SEO

SEO types

SEO is categorized in majorly two types, On-page optimization and Off-page optimization. In on page optimization we use google analytics and webmaster tools. Off page optimization is all about backlinks and publicity of website. Content is quite much considered. This is also mentioned by some SEO experts that Google is only considering content rather than meta keywords. But we will always focus on meta keywords because Yahoo and Bingo consider keywords.
In optimization process we call content as king and backlink as queen. We will discuss content and backlinks in detail later.

In content the repetition of keyword is not much appreciated. The density of keyword mentioned in content should not be greater than 7% ideally. But in few cases if some brand name is repeating along with its models or versions, Google ignore this repetition. The content must be brief, attractive and appropriate information based because it is the only thing which a visitor is looking for. Relevancy in your description about the website attract the targeted customers.

Furthermore while continuing with the optimization of website there are further three categories where the techniques get fall.

White Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO
Grey Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is ethical SEO which is allowed by google. The techniques and tools are recommended and practiced by most of the organic SEO experts.

Black Hat SEO is un ethical and in organic optimization which leads to fool the search engine and get desired traffic by any means. Google and other search engines do not appreciate such SEO. In this SEO the keyword density is not considered, relevant or irrelevant content is placed and many false backlinks are created. Conent is updated via tools or software to attract crawler towards site.

Grey Hat SEO is a mix up of both types of SEOs. It means the grey hat SEO combines both ethical and un ethical SEO tactics. This is for individual SEO technique which do not have clear black or white hat SEO definition.

Our SEO is strictly White Hat by following rules and regulations. Being fair is ethical.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Keyword Research SEO Training

Keyword research is fundamental part of search engine optimization to achieve success.
Keyword research is a practice to find the actual search terms entered by people into the search engines. SEO professionals research keywords in order to achieve better ranking in search engines.
If you think that you know the keywords, then you are absolutely wrong, because you don't. You can predict and assume but that could not be precise.

Keyword research is a continuous process thus it is bit difficult. This is the first step to start optimization of website. You need to continuously discover keywords through analysis and research to create a competitive advantage. Google has provided tools for keyword research. These tools help us to identify which words are being widely searched, which words are in trend and out of trend. For a better analysis Google also provide advantage to get keywords from top ranked sites. Google insights tool can provide the forecasting of the keywords by showing graph of searches for the specific keyword.

Traditionally we conduct keyword research by brainstorming. First we come up with some keyword ideas that link to our content of website. Then we opt a tool to find a set of most appropriate keywords. After getting some keywords on basis of stats and recommendations by tool we teak and optimize our site.
There are hundreds of tools available on internet. Many of them are free to use. But we will go in detail to learn how these tools work, on what basis these tools recommend some specific keywords.

We should also consider the regional demands of the searches as well. For example if we are optimizing a website that provides services or sells items in a specific region and getting huge volume of hits through search results but the traffic is not from the targeted area or region then this traffic will not be a quality traffic. To attain quality traffic we should precisely research the keywords keeping in mind the region where we are targeting customers. Google provide tools where filters are available to see stats of keywords region wise. Google trend is the tool to provide such details.

In a nut shell we should keep these points in mind while selecting keywords

Current Search volume
Future prediction
Keyword status in a particular geographic location

We will study Google Adwords, Google insight , Google Analytics and Google trends and other useful Google tools to find best suitable keywords for our website. These tools provide the self analysis, research techniques and transparently describes the keyword usage and its future trend.

(Note: If any of the tool does not work or does not show result, please check your browser settings. Recommended browsers are latest versions of firefox and google chrome.)

Also See

Tool to Calculate Keyword Density
How to get better ranking in search engines 2011
What is Page Rank
What is keyword Cannibalization

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Introduction to SEO training

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process to attain volume of traffic towards site, improving the quality of traffic from search engines. This process also attributes towards the ranking of the website in search engines. More precisely the site is optimized better ranks can be achieved. SEO is done by natural or un-paid means. In technical terms this is organic or algorithmic search result rather than Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or paid efforts.

The technique to gain maximum volume of visitors on site is called organic or pure search result. Whenever somebody search some required information your site gets his attention by standing at top in searches, this phenomenon is called search engine optimization.

The site is refined and content is updated with latest information and a thorough research of inbound links attracts the search engines. The publicity aimed at the raising of site in Search Engine Result Pages (SERP)

In short the SEO is is the process of editing a web site's content and code in order to improve visibility within one or more search engines.

It is a subset of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that aims at facilitating site crawling and influencing a more prominent search engine organic ranking with an end goal of driving traffic from natural listings.

We have case study examples of many companies who gained maximum ROI through this process. Some companies offer this service. They have trained and experience people to cater the needs and forecasting methodologies to improve the ranking in search results of search engines. There is a huge growth in business by giving attention towards this process.

The site should be comprehensive in terms of content, code, design, layout and interactive enough to engage the visitor. The process edits every page of website to gain the maximum level of optimization so it could fit in almost every relevant keyword searches.

In our track we will focus on GOOGLE search engine, its techniques, tools and softwares to learn optimization of website.

Also see

Pagerank by Search Engines
Keyword Cannibalization
What is Search Engine Friendly site