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SEO Strategies Explained:
On this page we will attempt to elaborate upon the two most important criteria of SEO that are used by search engines in their weighting formulas. "Weighting" being a term used to illustrate how search engines use and combine the data they have mined by crawling web sites to determine web site ranking. As mentioned earlier; content relevance to the search term query measured with link popularity are numeros uno and duo in importance. Both of these vitally important aspects are premised upon the use of keywords and keyword phrases. I know, I know, this has all been said before in this eBook report but it is so important that it bears repeating.
SEO should begin with the naming of your web site: Beyond comprehension are the number of web sites that are named or have page titles that do not reflect their web content. Talk about throwing search engine spiders for a loop right off the bat. Your web site's title, name and theme should be reflective of that web site's domain name. This is admittedly not always easy to do as most premium domain names that are short and memorable are long gone. On paper: the most desirable way to optimize your web site being a domain name that is also your business name that is also your web site name that is also your web site's theme and that also has a real good highly searched keyword incorporated into it. Too bad we don't live our lives on paper. The realities of the internet, especially pertaining to the availability of desired domain names, makes some forms of compromise necessary. Ideally, you should work backwards; research and find a highly searched keyword derivative that is short and memorable, purchase a domain name incorporating this term, create a business name from this domain name and then derive the website's theme and subsequently its content from the domain name inspired business name. But who thinks like this? It almost invariably happens the other way around: The business exists before the web site exists, before any consideration is given to SEO. In most instances the domain name for the web site is purchased without even an ounce of thought given to SEO. It is safe to say that web sites that have considered SEO from their inception have a distinct advantage over most other web sites in attaining a high search engine ranking.
Link Popularity: Much of what should be encompassed within your link exchange strategy is covered in "Dropping Spider Bait" further down this page. A number of things to avoid doing while placing your links around the internet have also been mentioned in other portions of this eBook report. It is important to give link popularity the attention it deserves but the right attention, focusing on the aspects of placing your links (preferably text links) in the right places that will be beneficial to your web site.
Link values: The best types of links and the type that you will ultimately always be looking to place are one way inbound text links from higher ranked websites that incorporate your carefully chosen keywords or keyword phrases as the text. This type of link has the greatest value from a SEO perspective. You will however run into numerous situations where in order to leave your link on a higher ranked website, they will ask you to provide a backlink to them. This type of reciprocal link has value as well simply because the site you are exchanging links with is higher rated than your own, though not as great a value as a one way inbound text link. Next in terms of value are plain one way inbound hyper links (or links without text) from higher ranked sites. Of lesser value are one way inbound links and reciprocal links (respectively) from lower ranked websites than your own. Link swapping is important generally speaking as a means of having search engines find you, but the practice does not garner as much direct traffic from the sites that you swap with as some would have you believe. You will find that unless you are swapping links with a web directory or classified ads site, or an astute webmaster that has a good site search utility, human eyes may never see your links. It is also wise to organize the links you post as reciprocal links in an organized fashion, possibly in a small web directory attached to your web site or at the very least on an individual web page entitled "Link Partners". Again; resist the temptation to automate this process, at least as far as exchanging the links goes. You can take automation to a point where you use a link swapping service to find link swap partners but you must have the option of manually approving (and checking out) every link that you do a reciprocal link exchange with. One of the best of these services to be found on the internet is here: Link Market
Revisiting Keyword Domain Names:
It has also been mentioned before that a niche keyword or keyword phrase incorporated into a domain name can drive traffic to your web site. It takes some research to find that desirable keyword or keyword phrase but it can be done and when you do come upon it, knowing what to do about it is important. On the next page we will show a true case history in the Discount Carbide Story, this also has been mentioned before. What was not mentioned however is how Google and Yahoo as the world's two largest search engines must be treated a little differently. All of the basic criteria as covered earlier in this eBook report is valid for both of these search engines (and MSN Search as well). The primary difference between the two search engines is that Google is a free inclusion search engine selling Pay Per Click advertising to commercial entities while Yahoo is a paid inclusion search engine which also sells advertising to commercial entities. To get both of these vitally important search engines to index your web site you must "engage" them, or in other words use their services, focusing on their free services but also buying from them when faced with situations where you must spend a few dollars. No other situation presents itself where it is more imperitive to spend a few dollars than in the purchase of secondary domain names that are incorporating keywords or keyword phrases pertinent to your web site content. The only choice for this is Yahoo Domain Name services. This is so for a number of reasons; they have one of the best domain name control panels available which allows you to point your domain name to any location on the web. You have the choice of pointing the domain name to your web spaces' name servers or pointing the domain name to any web page URL as either a masked or unmasked re-direct. You can bet that this re-direct is search engine friendly. It is no coincedence that domain names purchased through their service are spidered almost instantly to see where they are pointing and how they are being used. They also have an ongoing sale for your first domain name purchase which allows you to try this strategy for as little as $2 for the first year (one domain name only at this price) Check them out below:
Engaging Google: Getting Google to notice your website is actually very easy. "Their search engine spiders are easy to train" is how one wag put it. There are at least five places that are very good to "engage" Google, all are provided by Google as free services and all (or some) can be extremely useful to a website owner. Signing up for a Google Adsense account as a publisher will almost guarantee that their spiders will be paying you a visit. If advertising is not suitable for your website, many of their other services will be.
About Google Webmaster Tools and Blogger.com: Both are owned by Google, both can be invaluable places to engage Google. Google Webmaster Tools will inevitably lead you to Google Analytics and Google Site Maps. One recommended strategy is to attach a Blogger.com blog to your website navigation as a "News" link. This is very effective on two fronts; it acts as an open invitation to the Google search engine spiders and it allows you as a web site owner to publish news about your site or business to a format where it can be linked to, turned into an RSS feed or become just a good old spider bait page. If a map to your location is appropriate for your website and the type of business you are promoting with your website, then embedding a Google Map into one of your web pages becomes another good way of engaging Google.
Dropping Spider Bait: The fourth order of business
This particular strategy must be explored in more detail as it is the basis of improving your site's link popularity. The search engine spiders need to have multiple routes of access to your web site. There is no better way to attrach the search engine spiders than laying bait for them. Remember they love to gobble up text links, you know the ones; the text links containing your chosen keywords and keyword phrases. The ones that you will be placing strategically around the internet on any good neighbourhood web site that will accept your URL while you concentrate on higher ranked sites. You are looking for any place that the search engine spiders visit regularly, you are attempting to place your web site URL in ther path. Sounds simple enough and it can be if you are prepared to do a bit of work. Once you feel it is time to promote your web site and with your site description, the email address you are using, page title and relevant keywords all at the ready, it becomes time to place your link in as many free web directories, higher ranked classified sites, carefully chosen link partner sites, blog comments sections, web forum and guestbook sites as possible. . . and just about in that order at first. A good place to start doing this is here: A List of Free Web Directories. Again avoid FFA sites and ad blaster sites if you can. The most important stop on the previous Free Web Directory list is: DMOZ it may take up to six months to be indexed by them but if approved and accepted, this is a premium location for your web site URL.
When the Spider Bait priorities change: There really is no actual identifiable point where you will shift your priorites pertaining to where you leave your links but once you develop a system for doing this you will find that some activities such as commenting on blogs or in web forums can be time consuming. There is also the use of RSS Feeds to consider, once you get through the learning curve, you may want to set your priorities a little bit differently, adding more importance to the use of RSS Feeds and building "Spider Bridge Pages" (mistakenly referred to by some as "doorway pages"). To give you a real life example; during the last SEO project, the author of this eBook shifted focus slightly once the goal of 100 inbound links placed on higher ranked websites was met. The focus then shifted to setting up a daily regimen were 10 quality link partners or inbound links were added per day. The search for niche keywords continued and remains ongoing, knowing that Spider Bridge pages can be added to the website at any time in the future. The variety is important to maintain interest for most people, blog commenting or joining a few select web forums all become means to the same end while adding the all important interest factor. The most important thing is to maintain the effort.
Doorway Pages: You will see many a warning on the internet against using doorway or gateway pages. I disagree with many of those warnings but with some qualification; Search engines in general frown upon the excessive use of doorway pages, there is no disputing this but search engine spiders love a properly constructed "Spider Bridge" web page which is a little bit different. A Spider Bridge page is generally a stand alone web page containing a well crafted and informative article relevant to your other web site information that is optimizing 1-3 keywords within its content. A good article on this can be found here: About Doorway Pages
About Article Publishing: Building Spider Bridge pages and utilizing article publishing to optimize your website are two secondary (but nonetheless important) strategies that are just begging to be married together. Article Publishing can be very effective as a means of gaining valuable internet exposure but be careful here as well. Writing articles is time consuming for most people, as you are initially optimizing your website for the search engines, time consuming efforts must be prioritized against their relative effectiveness. In other words; leave the article writing strategy to a little later on in your website's development, there are more important things to complete first. Then when you do reach the article writing stage of your promotional efforts, consider incorporating it into your building of Spider Bridge webpages strategy.
 
Internal Link Directory
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