Jyoti Mali asked:


What is SEO?

SEO is the active practice of promoting a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. It is focused on website promotion by improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural (organic) search results for targeted keywords.

Search Engine Optimization Companies that practice SEO can vary; some have a highly specialized focus, while others take a broader and general approach. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at so many unique elements that many Professional Search Engine Optimizers (SEO experts) consider themselves to be in the broad field of website optimization (since so many of those elements intertwine).

We have listed out some of the most essential Search Engine Optimization ethics that needs to be formulated for website promotion:

Directory Submission

Directory submission is a great source of links to the website. Submissions to web directories are the best place to start promoting a new site. Web directories offer links for free, for a fee or in exchange for a link.

Tips:

Always submit to relevant and most appropriate category Try to submit to a quality page If paid submission, then be sure to check the relevancy and quality of the link page If Reciprocal, then exchange link with similar PR or a page with higher PR.

Link Popularity

Link Building or back links are very important for optimizing the site on search engines. Google counts every back link as a vote delivered for your website but also considers the quality of the page linking to your website. So, only relevant and quality pages with less number of links should be preferred for Link building.

Tips:

Always choose relevant and quality pages for link building Free one way links are the best Pages that link to your website should be indexed with Google Pages that link to your website should be no more than 2 clicks away from the home page and should contain no more than 30 links on the page.

Social Bookmarking

Social Book Marking has become a very important strategy in the SEO process. Social bookmarking sites are “tag based”- which means you can “tag” them with keywords so your visitors that bookmark your site can find them easily later. Search engines when crawl, index these tags, as well as the link, so you are essentially getting free one-way links from high-traffic sites, with all of your keywords attached to them.

Tips:

Chose proper tags for your web listing Share your bookmarks with your friends and others Promote your bookmarks as well Comment on others bookmark and let others comment on yours

Keyword Research and Analysis

Keywords play the most important role when it comes to website optimization.
As search Engines need just the most informative and useful sites for their visitors, they prefer the sites containing content with the highest priority of the keywords being searched.

Expert Keyword Research is the cornerstone to a successful SEO.

Tips:

Always chose keywords relevant to your site’s theme Use multi-word phrases Research keywords specifically for each page Country specific Keyword Research Perform Effective Keyword Analysis Ongoing Keyword Research

Search Engine Friendly Design

Before starting search engine optimization process for the website, it is very important to make website Search Engine Optimization friendly. Making web site user friendly as well as Search engine friendly includes a few simple steps.

Make it simple Organize website Avoid Javascript and images Avoid scrolling

White Hat SEO

White hat technique to Search Engine Optimization consists of ethical methods of search engine optimization which are recommended by search engines as part of good design. Some of the most popular white hat techniques are:

Quality Content Use of Relevant Keywords Use Structural (Semantic) Mark Up and Separate Content from Presentation Proper use of Titles and Meta Data Keyword Research and Effective Keyword Use Quality Inbound Links

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Cheow Yu Yuan asked:


SEO is the bed rock of internet marketing. All webmasters who are into internet marketing should implement SEO to their websites. However, SEO is a tedious and continuous process. In order to see results from SEO, you need to build links consistently for months or even years. This is when a professional SEO service comes in handy.

Today, you can find many firms offering SEO services. With so many choices, how do you choose the right vendor? In this article, let me explain what do companies really mean when they say they are offering SEO service and what you can expect from it.

1. Keyword analysis. Keyword analysis is the most important part of a SEO process. When it is not done correctly, you will get mediocre results from your optimization effort. Companies will conduct a detailed keyword analysis and identify a set of keywords that your prospects will be searching for. Then, they will optimize your website by creating content based on the set of keywords.

2. Onsite optimization. A professional SEO company will not ignore onsite optimization. They will edit your META information, title and other HTML tags so as to improve your page rankings. In some cases, they will recommend you to revamp your website if they think that it is not search engine friendly.

3. SEO copywriting. A search engine optimized copy will make your website rank higher on the organic search listings. Therefore, no SEO service is complete without them. SEO companies will work with you on the content. They will edit the existing content on your website to include important keywords and key phrases. Also, they might add articles or a blog to your website to have more search optimized content. Content is king when it comes to SEO. Search engines love updated content. Adding articles and blog posts frequently to your website will make search engines happy.

4. Link building. The number of links that point back to your website will greatly impact the rankings of your pages. Therefore, SEO companies will build back links consistently to your website. There are many link building strategies and different companies may use different types of strategies. Some effective link building services are article marketing, press release, blog commenting, directory submission, etc.

These are the things that must be included in a SEO service. Keep in mind that different SEO companies will focus on different combinations. So before you engage a vendor, be sure to check with them the strategies they will be focusing on.

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Marsha Maung asked:


SEO writing is very different from content writing, article writing, story writing and news writing. When I first realized my innate talent for writing stuff and putting thoughts into words, I was still reading Mills and Boons, and it was during this time that my romance storybooks were confiscated by my classroom teacher because I was reading in class.

Writing is a very personal thing, I discovered. Some people have the talent for writing creative stuff. Some people have the talent for writing ads. Some write excellent factual stuff. Well, I fall into the factual stuff category. The boring-writing-technical-mumbo-jumbo writing stuff. How I fit into this category, I don’t know.

Well, SEO article writing is very much like that. First, you decide what topic or keyword that you want. For instance, you’re selling decorative lamps, right? in the SEO article writing process, list down ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’. Then think about other words that relates to ‘decorative’ and ‘lamps’…words that people use all the time to describe them. This is a very important part of SEO article writing because these are common words that your potential site visitors will use to find you.

How about ‘light’, ‘bright’, ‘pretty’, ‘lighting’?

Ok, now your SEO article writing keywords are:- decorative, lamps, light, bright, pretty and lighting, right? So, on to the SEO article writing process. First you write everything that you need to write down first. Beef up the article. As a general rule of thumb, SEO articles should be no less than 300 words and no more than 500 words. Any more than that, you’re wasting your time writing a novel for your SEO article. Read through the SEO article now and replace words and reword sentences to fit in those keywords. Yes, you’ll have to restructure some the SEO keywords here and there, but do it anyway.

Make sure the sentences make sense, ok? Because although the search engines won’t know bad grammar from good grammar, your site visitors will. And most of them, site visitors who visit your website based on those SEO keywords DO mind the bad grammar. And once you turn them away, it’s almost impossible to bring them back!

The final step to SEO article writing is…..proofread your SEO article and make sure they flow. The problem with SEO writing is that your thoughts might come in buckets… a splash here and a splash there. So, during the SEO article proofreading process, you’ll have to make sure one paragraph flows on to the next.

Good luck!

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Cheow Yu Yuan asked:


SEO is the bedrock of internet marketing. If you intend to increase traffic to your website and get conversions, you need SEO. SEO is a time consuming process and it is not a do-and-forget job. To see results from optimization, you need to do it consistently. This is why some companies decide to outsource SEO to a professional agency.

In this article, let me share with you some of the things you can expect from a professional SEO service:
1. Website auditing. Before an agency can start optimizing your website, they will audit your website to identify existing problems and current SEO strategy. After the audit, they should point out the areas that need to be addressed. Some agencies will also study what your competitors did so as to give you an edge over them.

2. Search engine friendly web design. In order for a SEO campaign to be effective, the web design must be search engine friendly. Therefore, the agency should analyze the design of your site and recommend a revamp if it is deem unsuitable for optimization.

3. Onsite optimization. Once your website is ready for optimization, the agency will place important keywords on every page of your website. Keywords will be placed in important areas of a page, such as Title, Meta, H1 and Alt tags. The keywords should be relevant to the content of the page.

4. Content creation. The content of your website is the key to SEO success. As your SEO strategy is focused on certain keywords to rank highly on, the agency will make sure your website focuses on these keywords properly in the content. The content should be relevant for both human and search engines.

5. Link building campaign. Once they finish with onsite optimization, they should develop a linking strategy to build back links to your site. In order to obtain high page rankings, you need an efficient and effective link building campaign. Some link building strategies are: article marketing, commenting on blogs, directory submission, forum posting, social book marking, etc.

6. Result monitoring and report generation. The agency should track the results of the SEO campaign to ensure that everything is heading towards the right track. They will track the rankings of some important keywords, the percentage increased in overall organic traffic and conversions. Every month, they should generate a report for you.

By hiring a SEO agency to optimize your website, you can save a lot of time and do the things that you do best to grow the business.

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Kin Lee Say asked:


Optimizing a website so as to improve the search ranking requires a lot of patience and effort. Here is a list that I’ve summarized as a guide for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Tip 1 – Content is King

In any content-driven website, rich authorative content is key to drawing traffic. It is important to select a topic which interest you most, because passion drives everything. Search Engine Optimization journey starts with a topic. And it has to be rich and authorative along the way.

Tip 2 – Keywords

Once the content has been drafted out, it is important to identify important keywords for the Internet keyword search. Wordtracker, at www.wordtracker.com, is an excellent tool which calculates the search frequency of keywords on the web. Remember to choose keywords that your segment market will use, not technical terms which they are not familiar with.

Tip 3 – Spice up your LINK Popularity

Having both quantity and quality inbound links surpass most SEO techniques. If you could establish just 5 in-bound links from sites which have at least a PageRank of 4 (PR4), your site’s Google PageRank will improve. Another good way to improve the link popularity is to sumit your site to directories of a least a PR4 and submit your articles to EzineArticles. Install Google toolbar and you will be able to determine the PR value for all websites and pages.

Tip 4 – Meta Tags

Two of the most important meta-tag are the Title tag and the Description tag. Set the values of these tags which correspond well to the content information in the page. Keep all Title tag values unique for each individual page.

There are many FREE tag analytical tools on the web which you can test your settings. You can try such tool at www.seomoz.org and www.submitexpress.com.

It will also be helpful to insert the ALT tag for images and photos. Structure the titles and sub-titles using H1-H6 tags so as to assist the spider to have a clearer understanding about your site.

Tip 5 – Things to AVOID

Spider cannot interpret Flash and Javascript. To your best ability, avoid the following:

heavy Flash codes
heavy Javascripting
Content Management Solution, as most refrain user from changing the tag values
two different pages with exactly the same content
Setting same colour to fonts and it’s background, spider may intepret as spam
html frame
image map
associating your site with bad neighbours


Tip 6 – Marketing

Marketing is really an art and there are 101 ways of doing it. Popular ones include:

advertisements & classifieds eNewsletter (Mailing list) blogging forum participations article submissions business networking Press Releases

Again, it is important to offer rich and authorative content in all marketing strategies.

Tip 7 – Traffic Monitoring

Google Analytics tool is an excellent tool to monitor all traffic information and conversion rates.

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Tom Greaves questioned:

There are many ways to introduce SEO services to your website. Seo services are there to increase the visibility of your site with regards to online presence. There are many types of SEO services, some if not all can be carried out yourself but unfortunately SEO takes time and can be a very delicate matter.

So what types of SEO services are there. Well the first and most vital part of any seo service is to analyze what you already have. By this I mean a complete review of your site needs to be conducted. Where do you currently rank, what is your linking structure like, does your site have any anomalies that are going to hamper seo services.

The next seo step is to make keyword rich content and to ensure you page HTML is fitted with the most relevant keywords for your sites content. Your title and h tags all need to contain the type of keywords you are targeting. This is a crucial part of any seo service and should not be overlooked.

The second step that is just as vital is making relevant links to your site. The links you make need to relevant to your site content and preferably, from sites with high pagerank. If your site has never been optimised then it is vital to submit it to as many directories as possible. These will be you starting high PR links. You could then go on the article marketing as part of your seo service but ensure that any articles you write are relevant to the keyword you are targeting.

Another vital aspect of seo service is to look for link partners. These are webmasters who publish information that is relevant to your site. These webmasters will be able to provide you with a link in exchange for one of theirs. These links are not as powerful as one way links to your site and I would recommend not exceeding five on any of your site pages. The reason why reciprocal links can be damaging is because some of the major search engines may consider them to be paid exchanges between webmaster which is against search engine guidelines.

The final step of seo service is to analyse your traffic and tweak optimisation where needed. You will need to see what your traffic sources are and how each source behaves with your site. This will help you to tweak your optimisation methods and bring more profitable prospects to your site.

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John Doetsch asked:


Optimizing search engine results helps to improve online marketing exposure.

Dynamic and impactful SEO articles help to ensure your site is positioned most strongly on critical search engine results. Developing an online strategy designed to maximize your website’s popularity will both drive increased traffic and, hopefully, sales for your internet business. SEO articles, then, are valuable tools for improving web site productivity, and should be included on all business web sites.

The acronym of “SEO” stands for “search engine optimization,” and SEO articles are web site content pieces written to increase a site’s overall popularity within important online directories such as Google, Yahoo or MSN. The most successful SEO articles are written according to a specific formula or format, which is designed to attract search engine attention, while also maintaining a sense of originality and purpose.

Keyword rich content is the primary element of SEO articles. Keywords are the words or phrases that an Internet searcher types into a search engine. Keyword rich content, then, makes use of a specific set of words or a particular phrase that is designed to prime website searches. Generally, this type of content article is only a few hundreds words long. However, the more critical component of these pieces is actually the density with which a keyword phrase is used. “Density” refers to the percent of words in a keyword article devoted to the keyword phrase. For example, if “soda” was a keyword phrase for your cola company and you published a 100 word article using the word “soda” 3 times, your article is said to have a keyword density of 3%.

However, it is important to remember that keyword rich content is not the only element of SEO articles. In order for SEO articles to maximize their business impact, they must be interesting, useful and well written. One of the most common mistakes in writing SEO articles is to forsake quality for basic keyword repetition. Most major search engines deem articles with keyword densities of fewer than 5% as a legitimate, informative article. Therefore, online marketers should not publish an article that simply repeats the keyword phrase a gratuitous number of times. With the sophisticated filters now used by search engines, articles that are written in this format can actually be considered akin to spam and may, in fact, actually lower your website’s popularity.

Regardless of the keyword phrases used, however, your website’s content is, practically speaking, an important gauge that potential customers use when measuring your site’s legitimacy; it serves as a client’s first impression. Therefore, any copy published online through keyword articles, should be designed not only for attracting search engine attention, but also for providing useful information to the greatest number of people– a quality, like any successful marketing tactic, that is essential to your bottom line, as well.

Using quality SEO articles can, in addition to boosting your search engine ranking, improve the all over tone and feel of your web site. Interesting content may encourage readers to spend more time on your site, rather than just briefly scanning the page for a few seconds before moving on to the next search engine result. Indeed, SEO articles that provide real information or advice in the form of tips, useful product related news, and other relevant information provides you with the opportunity to impress your potential customer with the quality of knowledge you bring to your business.

SEO articles that are skillfully written and targeted specifically towards the products and services featured on your business web site can prove to be an invaluable part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. In addition to improving your site’s search engine ranking, SEO articles can also infuse customers with confidence about and trust in your online operation. Engaging in search engine optimized articles is, therefore, a critical component for both your company and your clients.

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Christopher Kyalo asked:

There are many people who still don’t identify SEO with a content writer or content writing for that matter. To them SEO is some complicated technical thing that a content writer can not possibly be able to make head or tail of.

This kind of thinking is extremely expensive because it is currently costing many site owners millions of hits. The truth of the matter is that a very important and key part of SEO is the use of the best non-competitive keyword phrases for the particular site. One keyword phrase can produce millions of hits via leading search engines. Keyword phrases are used on the content and that is why it is so important for a content writer to understand the use of keywords, even if somebody else is researching them for him or her.

Hiring a content writer who understands and uses seo techniques can therefore gain you many million hits over a relatively short time. It will also save you the time and money in researching the best keywords for your site yourself, or hiring a different person to do it for you.

Finding a good SEO content writer is easier than you think. For starters carefully trace your steps backwards to how you found your seo content writer. If they used seo methods to advertise their services, then you will be pretty sure that they are experts and know exactly what they are doing.

How can you possibly believe in a seo content writer who does not use seo content writing techniques to advertise their own services?

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Cheow Yu Yuan asked:


SEO, also known as Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting your website to rank well on the natural listings of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. As the industry becomes more educated on the topic of SEO, many companies are now engaging in the optimization process so as to get high rankings for their websites.

However, SEO is not always about ranking and position. You need to look at traffic and conversion too. When your site is being optimized, you need to track the amount of organic search engine traffic that comes to your website. For most web statistics tracking software, you will be able to know the exact keywords that searchers type to find your website. Tracking of organic traffic is very important as you can analyze the information and fine tune your optimization process.

Now that you know the amount of organic traffic that you are getting, it is time for you to calculate conversion rate. Before you can calculate conversion, you need to determine the goal of your website. In other words, what you wish to achieve from your website? Is your website an e-commerce store that generates direct online sales? Or are you intending to use your website to generate leads for your services or products, and close the deals offline? After you have determined the goal of your website, we will have a KPI or Key Performance Indicator to work on.

If you run an e-commerce site, your conversion calculation will be pretty straight-forward. You need to have a web statistic tracking software to track the path that visitors take when they reach your site. Then, use the number of sales resulted from organic traffic and divides it by the total organic traffic to your website. Then multiply it by 100. This will be your conversion rate for SEO.

If your business deals with offline sales and services, what you can do is to place an unique phone number on your website that is not use elsewhere. So whenever there is any enquiry to this phone number, you will know that it comes from your online marketing effort. Then, instruct your phone operator to always ask anyone who calls in on how he or she finds your website. When tracking conversion for offline sales and services, it is near impossible to get a 100% accurate number. But at least, you will have some numbers to work on.

Any marketing effort needs to be measured in order to produce good result. I know that it is very tedious to measure some of the online marketing campaign like SEO. You can choose to just look at keyword rankings and positions. But if you do not know the actual conversion rate and numbers from your SEO effort, you will never know how well your website fares in the optimization war.

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Cheow Yu Yuan questioned:

What exactly is SEO? SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engine via natural search results. The earlier your site appears on natural search results, the more visitors you will receive from search engines. Traffic from search engines is targeted. When your web pages rank high for keywords that are related to what you are offering, you get more traffic and business.

To make your web pages rank high on natural search results, you must optimize your website. So if you are still wondering whether your website needs SEO, it is no doubt – YES. If you run a small business, SEO gives you the opportunity to compete with the huge boys. When your website appears on the first page of the natural search results, you can take traffic and business away from your competitors.

Many websites do not use SEO and they are losing a lot of quality traffic. SEO is the bed rock of internet marketing and every website should use it.

So now you have understood that SEO is an vital business process, what’s next? It is possible for you to do SEO on your own but it is a tedious and continuous process. It is not something that you can do it once and forget about it. So if you are not well-verse in SEO or do not have the time to do it consistently, you should allocate a budget to engage a professional SEO firm to do it for you. Professional SEO companies have the resources to optimize your website consistently and they know what they are doing. If you go online and do a search, you can find tons of companies offering this service. So how do you choose the right company to optimize your website?

You should shortlist a few companies and meet up with them. Listen to what they can offer and remember to question them what exactly they will be doing for you. If any company guarantees rankings for certain keywords, you should beware. This is because with it comes to SEO, no one can ever guarantee keyword rankings. Moreover, SEO is more than guaranteed rankings for certain keywords or key phrases. It is about improving the volume and quality of search engine traffic to your site.

Before you choose to engage a company to optimize your website, be sure to check out the price. Professional SEO service may be costly but it is certainly worth every single cent in the long run.

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