Search Engine Compatibility Study

Oftentimes a lot of money is spent on developing websites that are not search engine friendly or search engine compatible. In the final analysis, a lot of effort was spent for nothing. While the latest website development technologies that have emerged recently produce great looking, often animated websites, many are sadly ignored by search engines. Even some older techniques still in use today, like site building with HTML frames, are also not feasible for gaining top search engine rankings .

Since search engines use automated software robots to crawl the page links within websites and interpret the pages, websites that use technologies which make it impossible for search engines to crawl them, do not get indexed, resulting in exclusion from search results.

Website design elements that ensure that your website will be well-ranked by the search engines include your homepage’s ability to display links to the site’s most recent content, as well as the site’s drill-down menu structure and format. YELLOW7.COM understands that websites should appeal to online users and should at the same time be compatible with search engines, as search engines are the key channels that attract online visitors.

Search Engine Compatible Website Development Solutions

YELLOW7.COM understands what appeals to search engines and customizes your website accordingly. Our experienced SEO experts and web designers analyze your website to determine search engine incompatibility issues and customize solutions that increase your websites search engine positioning. They conduct an in-depth analysis of your websites performance in terms of browser compatibility, HTML design, navigation, search engine friendliness, user popularity, load time and dead link checks. YELLOW7.COM creates search engine friendly website architectures that improves a websites search engine rankings and site traffic.

A search engine compatibility study for your website is the first step towards attaining top rankings in search engines and is a critical prerequisite for any website that will be search engine optimized.

About The Author
Giovanni Gallucci

With over a decade of expertise building communities online and search engine technology, I am recognized as a social media expert, new media producer, and a leader in search engine marketing. My areas of expertise encompass community building, web design and development, website architecture, online marketing, new media, natural web site optimization, online viral marketing, and social media consulting.

From my experience, people who try to increase the flow of organic traffic to their websites domain will at some point attempt a whole bunch of ?optimisation techniques? without knowing if any of it really has had, or is having, any effect at all. Some of the SEO techniques I have seen people attempt are, whilst quite useless, based on a good idea. Other methods continually amaze me. Perhaps people that try such things have heard spurious rumours of how to get their site into Google?s top ten listings from certain forums. Incidentally they are probably at such a point of desperation that they are willing to try anything to gain just ten more visits.

I am regularly inundated with the same questions such as: Is it worth submitting my site to 300 search engines? Will I get penalised for cross linking my sites? Should I pay to have high ranking sites link to mine? And what exactly does Google page rank do, if anything!?

Questions such as these have driven me into despair and consequently writing this article during which i will attempt to explain definitively the more common SEO myths, risks and pitfalls. In this article we will examine some of the more common beliefs.

Before we get to the list it is worth noting that I have not written it in a particular order and at times I have explained the topic the myth concerns before answering the question.

Link Building

Q)Will the more links that point to my website increase my sites placement in search engines?

It will help your website as far as the major search engines are concerned. The most popular search engines use the number of links aimed towards a website as an important factor in determining the sites placement. They look for your link to be coming from sites with; high traffic, quality content and a high page rank, amongst other things. Do no cross link, do not spam your address in forums and on social networks and do not put it on irrelevant sites, or even those that seem slightly dodgy. Take your time, aim for directories that are related to your website, aim for directories with page rank 3+ or aim for blogs or similar sites that are relevant to your content.

Q)Is it worth me buying a place on a high ranking directory?

So the idea with this is that, say, a directory has a Google page rank of 7 and is very popular. Any site on it will be getting a big rub off via a higher spot on search engine rankings. However the catch is the directory charges ?50 a month for your listing. Is it worth it when there are so many free directories out there?

Personally I think it is worth it, as long as the site holds its high rank and doesn’t have thousands of listings competing with yours on it. The added bonus with pay for listings is that they usually review and include your site very quickly (24hours), which by itself may be worth paying for. And if you could buy 10 spots on decent directories your site will most likely become highly ranked on search engine results.

There are problems with this though. Firstly, it is said to be against Google?s terms of service ? paying to get a higher listing on Google?s organic results. (Google want their results to show the best and most relevant websites, not those with the most money behind them) They are however, unlikely to be too bothered even if they do find out.

The next problem is the cost. For a small company or personal website it is too expensive to pay monthly for many directories to list them, and possibly not worth it. Lastly, it is not guaranteed to help your website. It should, but does not always. I have paid for listings before and noticed very little difference, whilst other times it has made a huge contribution to my sites ranking. So it may be a risk, but it can pay off extremely well.

Q)Will submitting a video about my site or product to places such as Youtube be of benefit to me?

A recent link building trend has been to submit a short video describing the webmasters site or the service it provides, to as many video submission sites as possible. The theory behind this being that search engines give more weight in their results to pages with videos. So if your site or product has a video on Youtube, when that product is searched for on the web that video will often come up in the top ten results. If this video has a link to your site in it, under it or as nearby as you can put it, it should be good news for you and your site. People find the video as it is ranked so highly in the results, watch the video, like what they see and then visit your site to perhaps purchase what they saw.

Does it work? At the time of writing, yes it does and it is probably worth doing. Make a video, even if it is just text, sound or a power point presentation, and then submit it to as many video and social networking sites as possible. People will find it and it will hopefully persuade them to visit your site. The only real problem with this being that the search engines will not like all of the ?video spam? now being posted on the internet and are likely to change (lower) the priority of videos in their results.

Google Page Rank

Q)Will having a higher Google page rank increase the number of visitors to my site?

Before we can answer that we will have to look at what exactly Google page rank is. Google page rank is a spurious form of measurement for site popularity that the company introduced fairly recently. It is unknown to everyone, except possibly Google, how exactly it ranks sites. It is assumed however that its ranks depend upon on a mixture of traffic a site receives, external links pointing towards it and the content it contains. New websites may not have a page rank for many months. It is also possible to have a very successful website with thousands of visitors and sales and still not being ranked highly, if at all. This is because Google only ranks pages once every few months, probably around once every four-five months. So if you start your website and straight off advertise heavily you might recieve a high volume of traffic but it may still take months for Google to look at your site and rank it accordingly. Also, as a sites rank is dependent on more than just traffic l!

evels, in that scenario your site may still be ranked lowly once it is eventually seen.

To see a websites Google page rank you can download the Google toolbar and then once it is installed right click on it and select show page rank.

So back to the myth ? Does having a higher Google page rank mean more visits to your site? Well, yes and no. No, because it alone doesn’t actually have any effect on search placement, and as such won?t increase traffic. Yes, because indirectly it will benefit your site. If you have a high page rank Google will prioritise your site and check back often to see if anything has changed, such as content, giving you a good chance to increase your standing with the search engine. Another benefit is that both people and sites are more willing to trust websites that have a high Google rank. For example, if you are submitting your site to directories you will want to submit it to a high Google rank directory as Google will check them more regularly and take more notice of them and their content (which will be your link). So indirectly, a high Google rank should mean more visits for your site.

Buying in Traffic

Q)Is it worth me buying 10000 hits for ???/$$?

OK, we have all seen the adverts in our email promising thousands of targeted visits for an amazingly cheap cost. And at one point or another we have all been depressed enough to be tempted by them. But just say no.

The idea is, for say 100 pounds (or 200 dollars), a traffic company will direct ten thousand or so visitors to your site who are actually interested in your content. It sounds great and some companies will actually provide what they say as far as traffic to your site is concerned. However I have never found one where the traffic is actually targeted and people even bother to look around my sites. Often it turns out to be a robot that is obviously not going to look or buy anything from me. If not it may be that thousands of unfortunate people have had a dozen pop up windows attack them as they bravely try to fight them off. I may be generalising slightly with this, but usually the people that are directed or redirected to your website will want nothing more than to close it down.

It could possibly work for you if your site instantly captures people and most of your money is made off advertising that these people quickly click on before closing you down. However do not attempt to use bought traffic whilst using Google Adsense on your site as it is against their rules and your account might be terminated without warning. Another possible benefit is that some search engines rank sites based on incoming traffic, thus 10000 more hits by anybody may actually boost your rankings. However, this is unlikely to fool search engines such as Google or Yahoo!.

Cross Linking

Q)What is Cross Linking?

Cross linking is a webmaster practice whereby a person owns many domains, uploads an identical site to each and then heavily links each domain to the others. For example, person A registers lotsofhits,com, but is not getting enough traffic. To fool the search engines into thinking it is a popular website he registers a hundred more domains, so each will have different web addresses but all have the duplicate page content of lotsofhits,com, and all of them link to one another. This in theory should boost the pages rank, as Google, along with other search engines, determine the importance of a site based on links from outside websites pointing to it(along with a few other things). It would also mean that there are a hundred more sites on the web that sell the same product as lotsofhits, com that could all possibly be found.

Q)Will Cross Linking my site(s) be penalised by search engines?

This is not a myth - search engines often penalise or even temporarily ban sites that Cross Link. If Google detect completely duplicate content on even just two sites that link to each other, then they will at least lower your page and result rankings, if not ban both sites.

Q)I heard cross linking is fine as long as the sites do not have completely duplicate content. Is there any truth in this?

If you are determined to Cross Link the safest way would be to own two or three domains that link to each other but each of which have completely unique content and link to other sites as well as one another. It is hardly worth creating two or more unique sites for the sole purpose of cross linking and I would not recommend doing so anyway.

SEO Software

Q.Is it true that there is no point in doing any manual search engine optimisation or search/site submissions when you can buy software that will do it all for you?

There is a little truth behind this, but not much. Whilst certain software might make for an excellent tool in assisting your SEO campaign, in the end there you will find there is no substitute for hard work. For example you can download a program that will submit your site automatically to 10000 search engines or put a link to you web page on 50 other sites. The problems there being: only four major search engines exist and between them they take over 80% of all search engine traffic. Those search engines will find your site automatically and rank it according to, amongst other things, relevant and unique content ? making the 10000 search engine submission promise redundant (even if it were true).

There are good tools available that will track your visitors (Google analytics), tell you how your site could be made more search engine friendly and software that even tracks how each of your keywords are ranked in major search engines. However, if you are purchasing such software, try to find a trustworthy independent review first so that you are sure you are not getting ripped off. Also try to make sure that any software you use does not go against Google?s terms of service.

So, whilst certain software can and will be useful to you, there is no replacement for hard work and unique content and regular updates. The search engine rankings should then take care of themselves.

Index is a website which contains details and links to millions of websites divided to categories and topics. Indexes can have multiple purposes.

Local Business Index ? like Yellow pages. This kind of indexes apply to people who are searching for services in their town or area. It is a good idea to sign your company into few such indexes in case your business is locally oriented like flower shop or electrician. Inclusion in these indexes , at least the most popular of them , is usually quite expensive but also useful from the point of view of customers seeking local service and search engines, since you can include your site URL and earn a strong incoming link .

Global Business Index ? like Hoovers.com or business.com. These indexes usually contain data about large companies with turnover of few millions of dollars a year. Not everyone is able to enter such index, although some of them allow small companies listing in exchange for reciprocal link or inclusion fee . Inclusion in these indexes is important to large companies who apply to customers worldwide , and they also give a good incoming link in terms of SEO.

The third type of indexes is Internet indexes which main purpose is to provide incoming links to websites. Usually these indexes are manually edited which means it can take months before the editor approves your link. Some indexes like yahoo require inclusion fee , some are free, like DMOZ and some require fee or reciprocal link. Website promoters largely use indexes to provide the new built websites with incoming links, although , not all indexes are usefull and important in terms of link strength and website promotion. Therefore I suggest to submit your website to as much as possible free indexes but be careful before paying for listing or exchanging links with nameless indexes.

In this article I will list some of the most important indexes to be included in.

General Guidelines to submitting your website to index:

Make sure your website has no pages “Under construction” or “Not exist” (Error 404) , since some indexes might disqualify your website because of that.

Wright down a short profile of your website which includes:

Site Name , Full URL, 10-15 key words and phrases, short description (200-500) characters. Site name should not include many keywords, it might cause rejection by the editor.

Open an excel file dedicated to indexes and directories where you keep all the passwords and usernames since you will probably need to come back to these websites few times to follow up your registration.

Place your website in the most suitable category, in order to improve your chances to be indexed and later to improve the impact of the indexing on your page listing in search engines.

Indexing takes a lot of time because index editors are volunteers and the demand is huge, so be patient and do not submit your website more than once , since it makes you look dummy and may cause your website be rejected .

DMOZ Open Directory Project

This is the most important and appreciated index on the web. It is edited by volunteers , and has more than half million categories and around five million websites.

The main importance of DMOZ is its influence on major search engines like Google , Yahoo and etc. which derive information from DMOZ and ascribe large importance to links incoming from there to your website.

To include your website in DMOZ go to www.dmoz.org , find the most appropriate category to your website, press Add URL and follow the orders. Take few minutes to read DMOZ terms of submission in order not to mess up your application.

DMOZ will reject your website If it is placed under wrong category, mainly under construction, has no value to public or is poorly described. Description must be objective otherwise most chances it will be excluded.

DMOZ will not notify you about reception or rejection. If you can’t find your website, don’t hurry to submit it again , try asking at DMOZ forums what is the status of your application.

Entering DMOZ index is the only way to enter Google website directory.

Yahoo Directory

Yahoo is the most popular website in the world and US. Inclusion in its index might be worth the huge fee of 299$. Wright a short description (10-25 words ) , make it objective and fluent , include 2-3 keywords but do not exaggerate.

Make sure your website is in a good condition (no 404 pages and under construction pages) Yahoo is not condemned to include your website even if you pay the fee , but they are supposed to review your listing in about 7 workdays. In yahoo index you don?t need to pick a category , one of the editors does it. Must say, most of the websites are included. Business sites must pay the fee every year while non-profit sites must pay only once.

There is a lot of talk nowadays about Search Engine Optimization, but not so much about Organic Search Engine Optimization itself. So what exactly is Organic Search Engine Optimization?

Organic Search Engine Optimization is just like ordinary Search Engine Optimization in that it is the process of optimizing the design of your website so that search results using keywords in search engines will rank your website higher in the non-paid listings. Organic Search Engine Optimization (also called Natural Search Engine Optimization) however, also has a slight difference from ordinary Search Engine Optimization in certain aspects but the main focus is to work towards getting the best ranking in Natural or Organic search results (SERPs).

For instance, Organic Search Engine Optimization requires your SEO team to evaluate your website thoroughly to see how best to optimize your website’s potential. The SEO team will then try to identify any technical issues which can bar your site from being indexed properly during the Organic Search Engine Optimization process.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires detailed keyword analysis to be done so your Organic Search Engine Optimization team can produce a list of appropriate keywords and phrases that can be used for your website. Keyword analysis should require real information about the function, products and services offered at your website, stay aligned with your goals for marketing your website, and try to get the best Organic Search Engine Optimization impact on the search engines and end users. Some Organic Search Engine Optimization specialists will give you a list of target keywords and phrases that have been ranked as to how popularly use each is by Internet searchers.

It has been found that to get the best search engine rankings, Organic Search Engine Optimization should rely on effective and efficient organization of the website, with content selected by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team so that keywords and phrases will not look ridiculous when used in the website content. Organic SEO starts with selecting the right Title and Meta tags, creation of on-page text with emphasis on content and layout, and then followed by insertion of internal links of the various web pages of your website. If these are followed by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team, keyword relevance and correct page formatting will increase.

Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires manual submissions of your website to directories and search engines. This helps assure you ? the client ? that Organic Search Engine Optimization will meet the special demands, regulations, and legal requirements of every search engine that is contacted by your Organic Search Engine Optimization team.

Your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must rely on ethical link building techniques, not only to safeguard the security of your search engine rankings but also to allow your website descriptions to be placed under the right directory categories. Ethical Organic Search Engine Optimization link building will also help your website use only the correct resource web sites.

Does Organic Search Engine Optimization end here? Actually, no, your Organic Search Engine Optimization team must constantly track search engine submissions so that they can tweak and amend your website if needed to provide the best results for you. Organic Search Engine Optimization also requires that the team document their monitoring activities so you yourself know what is happening all the time.

It would be helpful if your Organic SEO team can track the numbers of visitors your site generates, to make it more convenient for you. After all, you need to concentrate on running your organization and/or business so Organic Search Engine Optimization should be a separate endeavor that others should do for you.
Otherwise, why outsource this function?

Organic Search Engine Optimization aims to help you bring in more visitors than you were getting before, so that your potential sales will be maximized in the process. But you need to avoid illicit practices and favor Organic Search Engine Optimization more because:

1) illicit marketing practices do not reflect well on you or the SEO team you hired.
2) Organic Search Engine Optimization does work when used the right way.
3) Organic Search Engine Optimization does not harm the search engine you will submit your website to, so you have a favorable image with search engines in general, and
4) Organic Search Engine Optimization is part of the use of best practices that have
been accepted by most of the Internet world nowadays.

How then do you find an Organic Search Engine Optimization team that you can work with? One way is to look for SEO industry data about who are the best Organic SEO players currently operating online. Examine the background of the company, and pay close attention to who they cite as their satisfied clients. You might want to contact these clients yourself discreetly so you can inquire into their Organic Search Engine Optimization experience with that SEO player. Another way is to ask people you know who have used Organic Search Engine Optimization themselves. Sometimes, the best way to get proper service is through ordinary word-of-mouth advertising from people you trust.

How can one way link building services help you and your business? In the world of internet marketing you probably already know by now that it is a tough and very competitive world out there. There are millions of websites, literally, and each one of them are trying to get customers just as you are. While not all are trying to get the same customers as you are, they are all trying to get customers. Now, your customer base will be a competitive field as well. You have other competition and they do want the same customers.

What can you do? There is a method called search engine optimization. This method is a host of techniques that work together to boost your ranking on the search engine and get your website noticed by your customer base, people searching for your keyword. Now, the problem is that other websites are trying for good ranking on the same keyword, at the same time. They too are trying to implement a good search engine optimization plan.

One method of search engine optimization is using one way link building services. Google uses many different elements to determine page rank. Links are extremely important to Google and the more links you have pointing to your website the better off you are. However, it is not always as easy as that. One way links are very difficult to get and maintain.

There are certain criteria that need to be met. First, these links must be of high quality. The links cannot be placed on link farms; this can actually hurt your page rank. The higher the quality of the page your link sits on, the better it is for your ranking. The links must also be from different websites. This means that each website your link is on, must come from an IP address different from all of the others.

Furthermore, the links must be permanent and one way. At one point in time, reciprocal links were the most common. You link to an important website and they link back to you. However, now a days more importance is placed on one way links than any other type.

Because this is hard to achieve, you can take many advantages of one way link building services. These services are offered by individuals or companies that are experienced in building one way links. They have access to websites that are high quality and accept one way links. Using these services can get your links on websites with high ranks on Google, which is ultimately important.

Provided that you use one way link building services that are reputable and experienced, you will find that your own rank increases and your customers have a better ability to find you and your services. One way links are just one method of search engine optimization that can help increase your popularity in the search engines and ultimately increase your traffic, sales, and income all at the same time, which is important to any business.

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog?s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn?t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won?t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it?s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won?t care about. It is important to find a balance?frequent, quality posts that won?t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It?s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you?re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That?s why we?ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.

2. Carefully think about what you?ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you?ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.

3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won?t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.

4. Begin writing your post. Don?t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what?s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you?ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with no problems.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn?t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine?and achieving a high ranking?is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better. Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine. Well, please forget the article’s title above. The best SEO is still frequent posting.

Frequent blog posting can be easy as long as the person who is posting takes the time to plot out what they?ll write about. So take a few minutes to think about your post and then just do it!

Technorati Profile

by Esther C Kane - SEO Webmaster - Eckweb Designs, Inc.

Internet access via cell phones and other similar devices is extremely large throughout Europe and Asia, but has not quite caught on in the USA.

Read this article in the International Herald Tribune, for more information about cell phone use throughout the world.

My point is that eventually, the United States will catch on and will begin copying the Europeans and the Asians in their mobile Internet habits. So, what should you be doing to get ready?

Go .mobi

The extension, .mobi, is intended for websites on a mobile format, like cell phones. So, how do you go about getting your website ready for mobile use?

1) Purchase the .mobi version of your domain name. Go to your registrar, where you purchased your domain name and purchase the .mobi version. You should purchase it for at least 2 years.

2) Contact your website designer (or whoever is managing your website) and ask them to create a .mobi version of your website. To get an idea of what .mobi websites look like, check out mobinomy.com

3) Ask your website designer to add a link from your website to your .mobi version. Try to add the link at the top left hand corner of the website. Why? Because that is the section of your website that comes up on the cell phone. So, when a user reaches your website they’ll be able to access the .mobi version quickly and easily.

Oh, and just so you know. Google is one of the biggest backers of promoting the .mobi concept. In fact, google.mobi looks like this on a cell phone,

http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.p…&Submit=Submit

And you have the option to have your results only from .mobi sites or mobile friendly sites. Now, that’s pretty cool!

It’s the beginning of the next big thing. At least, I think so!

Greetings, Earthlings,

Blogging ain’t easy, especially when you’re trying to get noticed among the million or so other blogs currently posting. Intimidated? Not even sure how to manage a successful blog? Need a few pointers? Then, look no further. Wordbot has five basic blog tips that should help emerging writers and new authors make waves in the blogsphere.

Keep it short and sweet. Sure, it’s important to have a playful tone and establish a good voice, but not at the expense of your content. Make sure you have a strong SEO title and keyword-friendly first paragraph, so your readers know what your post this week is actually about. Long, irrelevant blogs will definitely get swept under the digital rug before Internet surfers have even finished reading them.

Be honest, but excited. Sometimes the truth can hurt, but as long as you look on the bright side and find a rhyme to the reason, your readers will respect you. Don’t get bogged down by negativity or marketing pessimism. Instead work to help your fellow writers and yourself with useful information and proactive suggestions.

Use your common sense. You’d be surprised – simply being practical can works wonders for your blog. When you pose real problems and offer time-tested solutions that are easy to implement and adaptable, you should definitely seem an increase in Internet traffic and positive comments. Before long, people who stumble upon your insightful posts will link back to you, ask questions about your experience and subscribe to your feedburner.

Stay current. Make sure your posts are always relevant to your mission and address topics that in the news. People want to stay in the loop. Even tidbits and reasonable predictions can make a world of different. Publishing industry buzz and printing technology updates will not only earn you hot keywords, but a contemporary audience as well.

Balance is key. When you’re designing your blog, be sure to think about your layout. Most blogs include search engines, about the blog text, author links, other site information along with a wide variety of widgets. Incorporate graphics, podcasts, viral videos, humor and information into your posts, and create a memorable blog people look to for guidance. Consider purchasing a personal domain name as well, and giving your blog a URL title that readers won’t forget.

Though there’s no guarantee that your blog will become the latest craze on the Internet, by following these rules of thumb you can definitely turn your weblog into a hot spot for your target audience.

Wordbot upload completed. Transmission ended.

How Your Layout Affects Your SEO

published by Hannah

William Slawski wrote a very good entry on the importance of page layout in SEO. To emphasise his point he pointed out to the patent application filed by Kesari and Anandsudhakar in August of 2006 and that was recently published last month. The patent application entitled “Techniques for approximating the visual layout of a web page and determining the portion of the page containing the significant content” is obviously used to help Yahoo! find the parts of a web page that contains the more important content. It seems that at least Yahoo! does determine the importance of the contents of the page based on the page layout, and if Yahoo! does this I guess it is safe to conclude that Google and the other search engines have their own if not similar method of determining the importance of the content based on page layout.

What this means for SEOs is simply that we should emphasise to clients the importance of placing keywords and phrases in the main part of the site. It is also more important to try to get linked to by other sites not just on the sidebar but the actual main section of the site. In short, it is better to be mentioned in a blog post than to be included in a blogroll and most definitely over being placed on the footer. As the abstract of the patent says

“The element that contains the most meaningful content is determined based on the amount of weighted content of elements and their position within the page.”

So remember it is not only the position but also the amount of content in that certain position that affects how search engines interpret the importance of that section of the page.

Furthermore, though most of us do this already, always remember that it is good practice to emphasise keywords by using a larger font size, putting it in boldface, or changing its color.

As I mentioned in the beginning, this SEO blog was created during a competition we had at “Compucall Web Marketing” where I work.  All the SEO, SEM and web analytics I write about are things we practice daily as we try to do our job well. Part of those efforts will be put into creating a Compucall Blog (CompuBlog) that will be written by the Compucall staff (CompuStaff) including myself.

The main goal of the Compublog is to include as much web marketing information as possible. Some will write about SEO, others will write about Web2.0, web analytics and also about news in the web marketing field, a subject I don’t write enough about (yet…)

Right now both the blog and the site are beig given a very nice and deserving face lift, and once the blog is up in the next two or three days  I will let you know. I will also keep you updated on the latest CompuBlog posts - especially those written by me . For now, you can go to the Compucall site and play the SEO game that’s there. Try to spot the white and black hat SEO techniques.