Another reason the SEO world is so complicated is that it has changed dramatically over the past few years. What worked in 2003 stopped working in 2004. What worked in 2004 stopped working in 2005. The complexity of this environment, and the rapid changes, have led to many SEO myths. This article identifies the top 10 worst SEO ideas, and provides an explanation as to why they don’t work. Here is our top 10 list:

1. Relying on keyword metatags: Deserves the number 1 spot, simply because this stopped working 3 years ago. Search engines rely almost solely on user visible text on your site in order to determine its ranking. Text that is not user visible, such as the keyword metatags, stopped being significant years ago, because the Spammers made them abused them so badly. So take the top few keywords that your page is focused on, plug them in here, and then forget about it.Do implement a title metatag though, because it is user visible, and one of the most important things you can do on your page to improve its ranking. Do implement a description metatag, not because it will influence rankings (because it doesn’t), but because some search engines (such as Yahoo) may use it as the description it shows in your search results under some circumstances.
2. Stuff keywords in invisible text: Definitely deserves the number 2 spot, because it can and will get your site banned. This includes text written in the same color as the background, or that is drawn way off the user visible page. These schemes are trivially recognized by search engines, and are treated as the act of a blatant Spammer. Don’t do it. Ever. Learn The Art of Keyword Selection.
3. Purchase Links: This practice is still incredibly popular, largely because there are many people who get away with doing it, and it helps them with their rankings. The problem is that the it is in the strategic interest of the search engines to defeat this practice, and they are working hard to do so. Google uses three techniques to detect purchased links:
   • Algorithms look for obvious patterns, such as the presence of words such as “Advertisers” or “Sponsors” near the link. Another thing they can look for is a grouping of unrelated links that don’t fit the topic matter of the page where the links are found.
   • Google has thousands of editors in Asia whose sole purpose is to review search results for quality purposes. Part of what they are trained to do is detect purchased links and flag them.
   • Google also accepts reports of purchased links and will send these for review by their team in Asia.

   So what does Google do when a purchased link is detected? They flag it and make it useless from a site ranking perspective. In addition, if they detect flagrant link buying for ranking practicespurposes, they can, and do, ban sites. Use the time more wisely. Take the same time you might have invested in finding links to buy, and find a link you deserve instead. It’s much safer, and it will build your business for the long term.

4. Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it’s one that most webmasters don’t understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites “leaks page rank” from your site. However, the world has changed. Page rank is a minute factor in ranking these days. Establishing, and reinforcing, site relevance is a huge factor in your rankings. You can do this by linking to pages and sites that are relevant to yours. Do link to relevant content.
5. Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don’t swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It’s a waste of your time. However, do swap links with sites that are highly relevant to your business, if these sites would be valuable to your users. Building your relevance in ways that are good for visitors to your site is always good. Of course, if you can get these relevant sites to link to you without linking back, this is better still.Read these articles for a Linking Overview and for Link Building Strategies.
6. Implement duplicate content: I have seen this done in two different ways:
   • Many businesses operate many 2 or more sites that contain similar, or even identical content. These different doorways may have been implemented as different business fronts to enable the business to pursue different methods for marketing their products or services.
   • Many sites have multiple ways of navigating to the same content, yet the content is delivered on a different URL in each case. Usually the URL is a simple manifestation of the path the user used to get there. The site owner has no bad intent and views each URL as being the “same page”.

   The trouble with duplicate content is that search engines want to rank the same content only once. So if you have multiple URLs on one site with the same content, one of these is just a waste of the search engine’s time. Here is a real case where you are “leaking page rank” – you are sending your own precious page rank to pages that will never rank.

   You also need to think about your crawl budget. If the search engine comes to your site and is going to crawl 1000 pages today, and 400 of these are duplicate pages that will never rank, you wasted a significant percentage of your opportunity for the search engine to find good unique content and rank it.

   And if you have implemented “doorway sites” you could be in bigger trouble. Search engines see this as Spamming, and you could get banned.

7. Use Session IDs on your URLs: Search engines makeing indexing decisions over a time period of many months. Getting a new site to rank is a year long process. Because of this, search engines look for static pages. When they see parameters at the end of a URL, the search engine treats them as part of the URL.If a search engine sees one Session ID when it crawls a page on your site today, and a different one when it crawls the same page next week, it thinks it has found two different pages. Neither version of the page will get ranked, and the search engine will view your site as unstable. Session IDs will kill your rankings. Put your parameters in a cookie. Live with the fact that 2% of the surfing public disables cookies.
8. Implement your site in Flash: Probably very pretty. But probably very useless from a search engine ranking perspective. Search engines can read and index Flash (try the following search: “cooking schools filetype:swf”), but you will not find any sites that rank high on competitive terms implemented in Flash. One basic reason for this is that search engines love text, and if you plan to implement a site with lots of text, Flash just does not make sense as the medium to use (movies are visual experiences, not reading experiences). You can read more about search engines and Flash here
9. Use lots of Javascript: Javascript can be used effectively in many ways in web site design. The trouble is that search engines don’t know how to read it. This will likely change at some time in the future. But even when it does, it will still be an inefficient means for communicating to a search engine what your site is about.The best thing to do is to use it sparingly, and when you do use Javascript, use include files and/or CSS to move it out of the way of the headers and text on your web pages. Let the search engine find the unique content on each page first, and everyone will be happier.
10. Cloaking: This is the practice of showing different content to the crawlers thaen you show to the user. It’s really easy to come up with legitimate ideas as to why you might want to do this. But it does not matter. It’s an emotional issue with the search engines, and they do not accept responsibility for determining your intent. It’s emotional because it was a very popular technique with the Spammers in years gone by.Search engines periodically implement new bots that they send out for the explicit purpose of detecting cloaking. There is no known technique for cloaking a bot whose name you do not yet know, coming from an IP address you currently don’t know. These new bots easily detect a cloaking implementation.

    When a search engine detects a site that is cloaking, there is an excellent chance that it will lead to the site being banned. Your intent in implementing cloaking does not matter. So don’t do it. Solve your problem by another means.

So what’s the bottom line? There are really two major things you need to do:

• Learn how to communicate to the search engine what your site is about. Many of the problems listed above relate to common practices that make the search engine’s job harder, or even impossible. Learning how to build your site so that the search engine can easily determine the unique value of your site is an outstanding idea.
• Don’t spend your time figuring out how to beat the search engine. It’s just not a good place to be. You may even succeed in the short term. But if you do succeed in tricking them in the short term, the day will come when you wake up in the morning and a significant piece of your business has disappeared overnight. Not a good feeling at all.Take the same energy you would have invested in the tricks and invest it in great content for your site, and in the type of marketing programs you would have implemented if the search engines did not exist.

This is how you can grow your business for the long term.

About the Author

Eric Enge is the President of Stone Temple Consulting. Eric is also a founder in Moving Traffic Incorporated, the publisher of Custom Search Guide, a directory of Google Custom Search Engines, and City Town Info, a site that provides information on 20,000 US Cities and Towns.

This article is here to provide some important tips that will aid the average and even above average web designer in improving their SEO skills.

1. Make the code prettier than the design

When building the front end of your site, make sure to use semantic code. By using descriptive tags to structure your pages, search engines will be able to read and have a better understanding of your content. This will also make the process of styling your site much easier and cleaner.

2. Use but don’t abuse your keywords

Keywords are the words that describe your content. It’s important to have them appear in strategic places throughout your page, such as: URL, title tag, and main heading tags. It’s also important to have it appear often in the body of the content, but not too often, which might cause your content to be penalized for keyword stuffing.

3. Avoid using Flash for navigation

As tempting as it is to whip out some nice looking drop down effects for your site’s navigation using flash, don’t do it. Search engines have trouble reading flash files, which means the links used in the navigation can’t be followed.

4. Use unique page titles

Each page on your web site should have a title attribute, and each title should be unique. If you use the same title for every page, search engines will think that every page on your site is about the same subject.

5. Don’t forget about images

Make use of the alt attribute of an image to properly describe it. As smart as search engines are, they can’t see what an image looks like. Failing to this can cost you substantial traffic from image searches.

6. Don’t use generic links

Search engines place a high importance on links. So when linking to relevant content, be sure to use a word that describes the content. For example, if you were giving your reader a link to learn more about Photosop, use something like “Learn more about Photoshop” as opposed to just “Learn More”.

7. Don’t use images to replace text

As designers, we always want to make things look as good as possible. This means sometimes replacing ugly browser rendered heading text with a nice smooth image. Try to avoid doing this. Again, search engines can’t see the contents of an image, and this is where you should be putting your keywords.

Edit: Looks like I misspoke(or mistyped) on this one. There are valid ways to accomplish this, such as FIR.

8. Use AJAX sparingly

Ajax is great for enhancing the user experience, but try not to over do it. Content generated with ajax can’t be linked to. A good rule of thumb is: if what you are loading with AJAX can be an individual page, then avoid using it.

9. Get indexed quickly

To get your site indexed in search engines in a timely manner, try getting it linked to by a popular site in a related niche. Submitting it to Google also works, but sometimes it can take several days if not weeks.

10. Build incoming links

The number and quality of incoming links plays a big role in the placement of your site in search results. Having quality and unique content is a good way to get people to link to your site. Another way is to be generous with your own links.

11. Use a consistent URL

When you build a site, decide from the beginning if you want to use or drop the “www”. Once you decide, stick with it. Search engines, for example, see www.webdesignledger and webdesignledger.com as two different sites and as duplicate content, which they do not like.

Do you have any additional SEO tips? Let us know.

Source: http://webdesignledger.com/

Keywords in < title > tag

Imagine walking down a street with dozens of shops on the left and right, each with a name at the top, wanting to buy a table lamp. The street is busy and as you walk down further, you see a shop with the name of ‘Lights & Lamps’. You walk in, buy that table lamp you’ve been searching for and walk out. Little did you know, the shop next door also sells table lamps but with a cheaper price. You didn’t notice it cause it’s name was ‘Mr Chee’. It’s name sounded more like a restaurant than an electrical store.

Shop = your site
Signboard = < title > tag

Keywords in URL

http:// rangit.com / keywords-in-URL /

Directory names can help rankings in Google even if competition is competitive although keyword stuffing in URL may contribute to the site being flagged as spam. If the content is of quality and it matches, you’ll have full points for it.

Keyword density in content

Keyword density is the ratio of the word that is being searched for against the total number of words appearing on a given web page. A naturally written document contains a keyword density of at most 10%. It’s one of the simplest way of gaining points in search engine rankings. Chris did it.

Keywords in anchor text

The anchor text of inbound links can be a decisive factor when going after top ranking on extremely competitive search terms. John Chow displayed the power of anchor test when he lured anchor text in the form of contests, though linking for prizes is considered a violation of Google’s terms and conditions.

Keywords in headings

There are six levels of headings from < h1 > (the most important) to < h6 > (the least important). User agents may use headings to construct a table of contents for a document automatically. If the content is of quality and relevance, you’ll have full points for it.

PR of inbound links

In the world of Google, the higher your PR the higher your reputation. Getting an inbound link from a high ranking site will certainly give more value to the inbound link.

Site similarity of inbound links

A hundred related sites linking to yours is more valuable then a thousand unrelated sites. Full points is awarded for relevance and and similarity.

.edu and .gov inbound links

Both top level domains are not sold to the public, hence the value. They don’t expire, are trusted and an inbound link carries much more weight than any other.

Quantity of inbound links

The more the better. It’s like voting. 1 link = 1 vote. All legitimate ones are counted and weighted against link popularity and originating context.

Site accessibility

Just think like a website visitor and your best selling layout is generated in your mind. Improvements include checking browser compatibility, reducing password protected areas, 404 errors and broken links. Getting more pages successfully indexed will earn a site full points in this area.

Another fundamental issue, which that is often neglected. If the site (or separate pages) is unaccessible because of broken links, 404 errors, password-protected areas and other similar reasons, then the site simply can’t be indexed.

Unique content

Content is king. Wrong.

Unique, high-quality, unduplicated content is king!

Regular content changes

Frequency of content updating in blogs and websites are becoming of more value to Google than it used to be. The more frequent the content, the more likely others are going to visit your site and find articles that they want to link to, which in turn provides leverage in SERPs. I personally regard frequent content updating as the BEST marketing tool you can ever have in today’s web.

Quite Important

The first in line

The heading should contain the most important keyword. Followed by a paragraph containing all the important keywords. Logic being the higher up the keyword, the more important it should be.

Keywords in < alt > tags

< alt > tags are considered by all 4 major engines. Use them to describe images. Put appropriate keywords in them as long as they actually describe the picture.

Anchor text of internal links

Internal links are hyperlinks that join the documents in the website. This is assuming you have more than one page which should be the case if you are serious about optimizing your site. As you have direct control over these internal links this is the place to start using the keywords that you are targeting in the anchor text.

Around the anchor text

Search engines pay attention to all of the text around a link as key words and descriptions to further indicate the relevance of the link. The text around it is also used to determine the nature of the link, whether if it is artificial or natural.

Age of inbound links

Think of it as wine. Also, gaining links consistently will certainly appear natural to search engines. A sudden spike in links will certainly alert them.

Links from directories

Certainly a boost in rankings. However, the most boosts will come mostly from huge directories like dmoz.org, yahoo directory, or about.com.

Age of document

Recent and regularly updated documents gain points from search engines.

Sitemap

Gain favor with search engine spiders. Every website should have one. Here’s a suggestion. Try this sitemap generator.

Site size

The bigger, the better. Also, take user friendliness and ease of navigation into consideration as it grows.

Site age

The older the site is, the more recognized and regarded it will be. Trust points are awarded to respected and established sites, for they indicate the notion that they have been around and are here to stay.

Site theme

This is an area that matters a lot as it promotes the ranking of pages that are related to the theme. The theme ‘because you value your mind‘ is one example of low theme/content relevance.

Important

Keywords in < description > and < keywords > metatags

Since the search engines use a wide variety of factors to determine site rankings, optimizing a page to rank high is a cumulative effort. You should use everything available to you that the engines might give some weight, and therefore you should certainly use < Description > and < Keywords > metatags along with every other legitimate, acceptable technique available. At best, it may help boost your site a bit in those engines that still read them.

Keyword phrases & adjacency

The gap between 2 keywords is best when close to each other. Imagine ‘heart surgery’ in the first paragrgaph compared to ‘heart’ in the 1st sentence and ’surgery’ in the 10th sentence. Keyword phrases stand a better chance when it is popular like ‘free online dating’ or ‘make money online’.

Secondary keywords

Rank better for targeted traffic. Imagine battling with hundreds of thousands of others for ‘plastic surgery’ compared to a handful for ‘plastic surgery manchester city’.

Misspelled keywords, Word stemming and Plural keywords

Sometimes misspelled keywords can represent a very high number of searches. Obviously, you don’t want to have misspelled words be visible on your page, however, it is a good idea to include them in your keywords meta tag.

Word stemming refers to the use of root words as synonyms for other words. For example, the word “climb” will be treated the same as “climbing”. Most search engines use word stemming, but in many cases the search results will vary. It is best to add the most commonly used versions of each word.

You will also find different results when searching for singular and plural keywords. It is best to include both.

Synonyms

Search engines do take into account synonyms of targeted keywords besides the main ones. The site get points from search engines when ranking and relevancy is calculated.

Total outgoing links from the page that links to your site

Scarcity brings value. Imagine an ice cream sale everyday and an ice cream sale once a month. The less outgoing links that the site has, the more value it brings to your site.

Named anchors

Using named anchors where appropriate improves keyword relevancy. When links are in the form < a href=”/keyword.aspx#keyword” >, then keyword targeting is improved.

IP address of inbound link

MSN and Yahoo! may not take into account inbound links that originate from the same IP classes. However, Google takes all inbound link IP classes into account.

Page size

A page size of < 40KB gains more favor than a page size of > 100KB.

Location of files

The nearer a file is to the root directory, the better it ranks. Imagine comparing it against another file that is stored in the 5th layer of the tree.

Domains and Subdomains

The domain name http://rangit.com is definitely given more points by search engines compared to the subdomain of http://rangit.wordpress.com

Hyphens in URL

An underscore ‘_’ is not considered as a divider by Google.
Only hyphens ‘-’ are.

Source: http://rangit.com/

You might be wondering the reasons your web site is not getting much internet traffic. After all your web site took lots of financial and human resources, but unfortunately like so many web sites, it is quite unknown and as a result it does not get enough internet traffic to make it financially viable.

Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.

And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine’s pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.

Search engine optimization steps for a web page:

Title:
The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.

Keywords:
The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.

Description:
The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.

Keywords in Headings:
Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.

Web page text:
It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.

Keywords in Alt Tags:
Every html picture “img” tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Keywords in Anchor Tags:
Every html hypertext link “a href “ should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Robots.txt file:
Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.

There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/

HTML code validation:
Search engine’s crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.

Links:
Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.

Registering with Directories and Search Engines:
It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.

Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.

This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.

Summary: How Does PageRank Work?
1. PageRank is only one of numerous methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance.
2. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. Google looks not only at the sheer volume of votes; among 100 other aspects it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. However, these aspects don’t count, when PageRank is calculated.
3. PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them – relevance and quality are important (in terms of the PageRank of sites, which link to a given site).
4. PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)). That’s the equation that calculates a page’s PageRank.
5. Not all links weight the same when it comes to PR.
6. If you had a web page with a PR8 and had 1 link on it, the site linked to would get a fair amount of PR value. But, if you had 100 links on that page, each individual link would only get a fraction of the value.
7. Bad incoming links don’t have impact on Page Rank.
8. Ranking popularity considers site age, backlink relevancy and backlink duration. PageRank doesn’t.
9. Content is not taken into account when PageRank is calculated.
10. PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually.

11. Each inbound link is important to the overall total. Except banned sites, which don’t count.
12. PageRank values don’t range from 0 to 10. PageRank is a floating-point number.
13. Each Page Rank level is progressively harder to reach. PageRank is believed to be calculated on a logarithmic scale.
14. Google calculates pages PRs permanently, but we see the update once every few months (Google Toolbar).

Summary: Impact on Google PageRank
1. Frequent content updates don’t improve Page Rank automatically. Content is not part of the PR calculation.
2. High Page Rank doesn’t mean high search ranking.
3. DMOZ and Yahoo! Listings don’t improve Page Rank automatically.
4. .edu and .gov-sites don’t improve Page Rank automatically.
5. Sub-directories don’t necessarily have a lower Page Rank than root-directories.
6. Wikipedia links don’t improve PageRank automatically (update: but pages which extract information from Wikipedia might improve PageRank).
7. Links marked with nofollow-attribute don’t contribute to Google PageRank.
8. Efficient internal onsite linking has an impact on PageRank.
9. Related high ranked web-sites count stronger. But: “a page with high PageRank may actually pass you less if it has more links, because it’s spread too thin.” [RY]
10. Links from and to high quality related sites have an impact on Page Rank.
11. Multiple votes to one link from the same page cost as much as a single vote.

1.1. What is PageRank?
* “PageRank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance.”
* “Google uses many factors in ranking. Of these, the PageRank algorithm might be the best known. PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites. With PageRank, five or six high-quality links from websites such as www.cnn.com and www.nytimes.com would be valued much more highly than twice as many links from less reputable or established sites.”
* “PageRank has only ever been an approximation of the quality of a web page and has never had anything to do with the measuring of the topical relevance of a web page. Topical relevance is measured with link context and on-page factors such as keyword density, title tag, and everything else.”

1.2. How Does PageRank work?
* No one really knows.“No one knows for sure how PageRank is currently calculated by Google.”
* PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn)). “That’s the equation that calculates a page’s PageRank. In the equation ‘t1 – tn’ are pages linking to page A, ‘C’ is the number of outbound links that a page has and ‘d’ is a damping factor, usually set to 0.85.”
* We can think of it in a simpler way: a page’s PageRank = 0.15 + 0.85 * (a “share” of the PageRank of every page that links to it). “share” = the linking page’s PageRank divided by the number of outbound links on the page. A page “votes” an amount of PageRank onto each page that it links to. The amount of PageRank that it has to vote with is a little less than its own PageRank value (its own value * 0.85). This value is shared equally between all the pages that it links to.”
* “The core Google PageRank algorithm “distributes” it’s established PR across all of the outbound links. Put differently, if you had a web page with a PR8 and had 1 link on it, the site linked to would get a fair amount of PR value. But, if you had 100 links on that page, each individual link would only get a fraction of the value.”
* “From this, we could conclude that a link from a page with PR4 and 5 outbound links is worth more than a link from a page with PR8 and 100 outbound links. The PageRank of a page that links to yours is important but the number of links on that page is also important. The more links there are on a page, the less PageRank value your page will receive from it.”
* “PageRank [..] uses the link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. Google looks at considerably more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; e.g. it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.”
* “Not all links weight the same when it comes to PR. So an ‘important’ page linking to you gives you more PR than a ‘less important’ one. […] A factor in PR propagation is the number of out-links the ‘voting’ page have. So a PR4 page with only one out-link on it might give you more weight than a PR5 page with 100 out-links on it. A typical example here would be the famous milliondollarhomepage. This page is PR7 page with hunderds of out-links therefore its weight is would contribute very little to your page PR.”
* Each Page Rank level is progressively harder to reach. “PageRank is logarithmic in its calculation. In the same way that the earthquake Richter scale is exponential in calculation, so too is the mathematics behind Google PageRank. It takes one step to move from a PR0 to a PR1, it takes a few more steps to PR3, it takes even more steps to PR4, and many more steps again to PR5, and so one.”

Google PageRank Explained
* “PageRank does not rank web sites as a whole, but is determined for each page individually. Further, the PageRank of page A is recursively defined by the PageRanks of those pages which link to page A.”
* “Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to user’s search. Google examines all aspects of the page’s content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it’s a good match for user’s queries.”
* “Google calculates pages PRs once every few months (PR update). After a PR update is done, all pages are assigned a new PR by Google and you will have this PR until a new PR update is done. New sites that were just launched will have a PR of 0 until an update is done by Google so that they are assigned an appropriate PR.”
* “Google PageRank is calculated all the time, but what we see in the Google Toolbar (or other online PR tools) is a snapshot in time which is updated every 3 months or so.”
* PageRank values don’t range from 0 to 10. PageRank is a floating-point number. “It’s more accurate to think of it as a floating-point number. Certainly our internal PageRank computations have many more degrees of resolution than the 0-10 values shown in the toolbar.”
* “We’re sure that their curve is similar to an exponential curve with each new “plateau” being harder to reach than the last. I have personally done some research into this, and so far the results point to an exponential base of 4. So a PR of 6 is 4 times as difficult to attain as a PR of 5. [..] The difference between a high PR of 6, and a low PR of 6, could be hundreds or thousands of links.”
* “PageRank is believed to be calculated on a logarithmic scale. What this roughly means is that the difference between PR4 and PR5 is likely 5-10 times than the difference between PR3 and PR4. So, there are likely over a 100 times as many web pages with a PageRank of 2 than there are with a PageRank of 4. This means that if you get to a PageRank of 6 or so, you’re likely well into the top 0.1% of all websites out there. If most of your peer group is straggling around with a PR2 or PR3, you’re way ahead of the game.”
* “The fact is that PageRank is based on incoming links, but not just on the number of them. Instead PageRank is based on the value of your incoming links. To find the value of an incoming link look at the PR of the source page, and divide it by the number of links on that page. It’s very possible to get a PR of 6 or 7 from only a handful of incoming links if your links are “weighty” enough.”
* “Google tries to find pages that are both reputable and relevant. If two pages appear to have roughly the same amount of information matching a given query, we’ll usually try to pick the page that more trusted websites have chosen to link to. Still, we’ll often elevate a page with fewer links or lower PageRank if other signals suggest that the page is more relevant. For example, a web page dedicated entirely to the civil war is often more useful than an article that mentions the civil war in passing, even if the article is part of a reputable site such as Time.com.”
* Links don’t give PR away, they are votes. “When a page votes its PageRank value to other pages, its own PageRank is not reduced by the value that it is voting. The page doing the voting doesn’t give away its PageRank and end up with nothing. It isn’t a transfer of PageRank. It is simply a vote according to the page’s PageRank value.”
* “We know from the paper “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” (Paper) that the PageRank of a Web page is a number calculated using a recursive algorithm in which the page receives a share of the PageRank of each page that links to it.”
* Crawlers don’t analyze web-sites permanently. “It often takes two full monthly updates for all of your incoming links to be discovered, counted, calculated and displayed as backlinks.”

1.3. Which factors do have an impact on PageRank?
* Each inbound link is important to the overall total. Except banned sites. “PageRank is a form of a voting system. A link to a page is a vote for that page. Higher PageRank pages are viewed by Google as more important. Their votes are given more value by Google — much more value, in some cases. In general, the more voting links, the stronger the PageRank.”
* Adding new pages can decrease Page Rank. “The effect is that, whilst the total PageRank in the site is increased, one or more of the existing pages will suffer a PageRank loss due to the new page making gains. Up to a point, the more new pages that are added, the greater is the loss to the existing pages. With large sites, this effect is unlikely to be noticed but, with smaller ones, it probably would.”
* Page Rank can decrease. “You can lose some important links that are no longer linking to your site. PR loss can also occur if some of your linking partners also experience a drop in their own PR, possibly setting off a chain reaction of lower PageRank all through the immediate linking network.”
* Links from and to high quality related sites are important. “The more closely related the pages, the higher the PageRank amount transferred.” “Linking to high quality sites shows the search engines your site is very useful to your visitors. Unless your site has been around for years and is well established and trusted by Google, this factor will have an adverse effect on your site’s overall ranking. Linking only to high quality content sites will give your site an edge over your competition.”
* Incoming Links from popular sites are important. If pages linking to you have a high PageRank then your page gains some part of their reputation.
* Site can be banned if it links to banned sites. “Be extremely careful of any out-going links from your site. Don’t link to bad neighborhoods (link farms, banned sites, etc.) Google will penalize you for bad links so always check the PageRank of the sites you’re linking to from your site.”
* Illegal activities will penalize your PageRank and possibly ban your site from Google. “Hidden text, deceptive redirects, cloaking, automated link exchanges, or anything else against Google’s quality guidelines” can ban your site from Google.
* Myth: the higher your google PageRank, the better the results. “While pages with a higher PageRank do tend to rank better, it is perfectly normal for a site to appear higher in the results listings even though it has a lower PageRank than competing pages. [..] Google examines the context of your incoming links, and only those links that relate to the specific keyword being searched on will help you achieve a higher ranking for that keyword.”
* Related high ranked web-sites count stronger (or don’t they?). “One-way inbound links from websites with topics that are related to your website’s topic will help you gain a higher Page Rank.” Other one-way inbound links from pages with high page rank but unrelated topics do help a little, but not nearly as much.
* Different pages from a site can have different Page Rank. “Search engines crawl and index webpages not websites, that is why your page rank may vary from page to page within your website.”

1.4. Which factors don’t have an impact on PageRank?
* Frequent content updates don’t improve PR automatically.” Although Google might send crawlers more frequently to analyze your site, what is more significant are links pointing to you.
* “Content is not taken into account when PageRank is calculated. Content is taken into account when you actually perform a search for specific search terms.”
* “High PageRank does NOT guarantee a high search ranking for any particular term. If it did, then PR10 sites like Adobe would always show up for any search you do. They don’t.”
* Google considers site age, backlink relevancy and backlink duration. PageRank doesn’t. If backlink isn’t relevant, it won’t weight much.
* Wikipedia Links don’t improve Page Rank. “Wikipedia implemented a no-follow rule, indicating that outbound links should not be followed by search engine spiders.”
* Listing in DMOZ and Yahoo! doesn’t give your site a special PR Bonus. “Google uses Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org), to power its directory. Coupling that fact with the observation that sites listed in DMOZ often get decent and inexplicable PageRank boosts, has lead many to conclude that Google gives a special bonus to sites listed in DMOZ. This is simply not true. The only bonus gained from being in DMOZ is the same bonus a site would achieve from being linked to by any other site.” However, DMOZ data is used by hundreds of sites.”
* Sub-directories don’t necessarily have a lower Page Rank than root-directories. Depending on the popularity of a web-site your subdirectories can have a higher PageRank than the root pages.
* Meta-Tags don’t improve PageRank. “Google can sometimes use the meta description tag to create an abstract for your site, so it may be useful to you if your home page is primarily composed of graphics. However, do not expect it to increase your rank.”
* .edu and .gov-sites do not provide higher PageRank (or do they?).“We don’t really have much in the way to say “Oh this is a link from the ODP, or .gov, or .edu, so give that some sort of special boost.” Its just those sites tend to have higher PageRank because-because more people link to them and reputable people link to them.”

No Follow Treatment
* Links marked with nofollow-attribute don’t contribute to Google PageRank. “Google implemented a new value, “nofollow”, for the rel attribute of HTML link and anchor elements, so that website builders and bloggers can make links that Google will not consider for the purposes of PageRank — they are links that no longer constitute a “vote” in the PageRank system.”
* Multiple votes to one link from the same page cost as much as a single vote. “It is reasonable to assume that a page can cast only one vote for another page, and that additional votes for the same page are not counted.”
* Links from one page to itself don’t improve Page Rank. “It is reasonable to assume that a page can’t vote for itself, and that such links are not counted.”
* Bad incoming links don’t have impact on Page Rank. “Where the links come from doesn’t matter. Sites are not penalized because of where the links come from.”
* Dangling links don’t have impact on Page Rank. “Dangling links are simply links that point to any page with no outgoing links. They affect the model because it is not clear where their weight should be distributed, and there are a large number of them. Because dangling links do not affect the ranking of any other page directly, we simply remove them from the system until all the PageRanks are calculated. After all the PageRanks are calculated they can be added back in without affecting things significantly.”

1.5. Ranking Factors (related to PageRank)
* Efficient internal onsite linking is important. “Internal linking is important to your overall ranking. Make sure your linking structure is easy for the spiders to crawl. Most suggest a simple hierarchy with links no more than three clicks away from your home/index page. Creating traffic modes or clusters of related links within a section on your site has proven very effective.”
* Anchor text is important. The more specific is the reference, the better Google can evaluate it and consider it in relates search queries.
* Google penalizes link farms. “Google is only concerned with pages of over 100 outgoing links. Google considers overly linked pages to be link farms, and they are penalized as such.”
* Headers (h1, … ,h6), strong tags and semantic content are important. (Update: But it doesn’t improve PageRank.) “Place it in the description and meta tags, place it in bold/strong tags, but keep your content readable and useful. Be aware of the text surrounding your keywords, search engines will become more semantic in the coming years so context is important.”
* “The anchor text of a link is often far more important than whether it’s on a high PageRank page.”
* “If you really want to know what are the most important, relevant pages to get links from, forget PageRank. Think search rank. Search for the words you’d like to rank for. See what pages come up tops in Google. Those are the most important and relevant pages you want to seek links from. That’s because Google is explicitly telling you that on the topic you searched for, these are the best.”

This list was made using pretty much the same algorithm (only small modifications were made, mainly due to the fact that SEO blogs are more popular). Once again the list should be useful because it is based on objective factors. There are many “Top SEO Blogs” lists around the web, but most of them are based on the preferences of the author.

#1 Search Engine Land
#2 SEOBook
#3 SEO Moz
#4 Matt Cutts
#5 Search Engine Watch
#6 Search Engine Roundtable
#7 Search Engine Journal
#8 Online Marketing Blog
#9 Pronet Advertising
#10 Marketing Pilgrim
#11 SEO Chat
#12 Search Engine Guide
#13 SEO Blackhat
#14 Stuntdubl
#15 Graywolf’s SEO
#16 SEO by the SEA
#17 Link Building Blog
#18 Jim Boykin
#19 SEOpedia
#20 DaveN
#21 Bruce Clay
#22 Blue Hat SEO
#23 Tropical SEO
#24 SEO Refugee
#25 Small Business SEM

Blogs considered: the list considers only blogs that have a high percentage of SEO-related content. Topics might range from SEO news coverage to general SEO discussion and link building.

Source: http://www.dailyblogtips.com/

You should consider exploring each of these avenues and more to truly get the most out of your path to understanding search engine optimization. Some methods are more appropriate for enthusiasts and others for those looking to become SEO professionals some day…. Obviously experience is the best teacher, but what other ways are there these days?

We all learn in our own way….

While there is no end to the SEO advice that permeates the web marketing world, it can often be very difficult to sort out exactly how one should research and where one should turn to learn about SEO. In a follow up to a post I made a year ago, I thought an updated look might be a good idea.

Now let us count the ways

SEO Books
One of the great things about books, real or eBook, is that you can not only take them with you and read on-the-go, but they are often easier to reference later should you be looking for a nugget to deal with a given situation.

The downside of SEO books, as with many technology books, is freshness.

The world of search engines is constantly changing and thus any related information must also be updated. Be sure to cross reference information found in books relating to search to ensure freshness and reliability of the information.

• Professional Link builder’s guide – SEOmoz ($29)
• SEO Fast Start – from Dan Theis (FREE)
• Small Business guide to Search Engine Marketing – by Jennifer Laycock ($79)
• the SEO Handbook – by yours truly ($10)

Considering the recent decline in SEO book publication one has to imagine the popularity of this form is on the decline. I myself prefer a good read in hard copy or portable digital form… but potentially in the minority on that one.

Online Guides
Once more, like books… the main consideration is how up to date the information is. Here are some guides that are great for those looking for great information online;

• Beginners guide to SEO – SEOmoz
• Local small business SEO basics – by Sugarrae
• Bloggers guide to SEO – by Aaron & Giovanna Wall
• 11 Experts on Link building – From Sugarrae
• SEO Theory guides – SEO Theory
• SEO guide to information architecture – Audette Media
• 5 Easy SEO tips for your website (video) – Search Marketing Gurus
• FireHorse guide to Google personalized search – Firehorse Trail

There are many more out there but these are some that are truly worthy for anyone getting around the waves of the search marketing ocean. If you know of others, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.

Online Training
Unfortunately I haven’t had the pleasure of reviewing any of these services, but there are some fairly respected resources out there for those looking for a more structured system of learning. For me, this type of learning does well as there are generally instructors on hand to help guide the student.

• SEO Book Training – from Aaron Wall
• Link Ninjas – Jim Boykin (and others)
• Link Bait Coaching - Lyndon Antcliff
• SEOmoz Pro membership – SEOmoz
• Learn SEO Live – Garrett Pierson
• Search Engine College – SEC
• SEOmoz Video training series
• the Joomla SEO Book Club

Classes, Seminars and Conferences
Again, while I am a big believer in these types of mre hands-on interactive approaches to learning SEO – I have not had the chance to really participate in many of these. If you want to get out and play with some industry thought leaders, there is no better way than one of these offerings;

• SMX (conference)
• SES (conference)
• PubCon (conference)
• SEO ToolSet – from Bruce Clay
• Elite Retreat
• SEMPO Training
• SEO Class (We Build Pages)
• SEM Canada (conference)

Blogs
In some cases, blogs are not the greatest place for learning; at least for the noobs. Many times there are advanced theories, rants and personal perspectives more than structured reading for a person looking to learn SEO. That being said, they are a great wealth of information for beginner, intermediate and advanced SEOs alike. Some of the best include;

..and there are plenty more in Lee’s Big List…

Media Outlets
Much like the blogs, these sites are more for those looking for the latest industry happenings and musings. While they may not always offering teachings for the noob, in any industry, staying abreast of the times is an essential element in the process. Here are the more popular websites;

• Search Engine Land
• Search Engine Journal
• Search Engine Watch
• Search Engine Guide
• Marketing Pilgrim
• Search Marketing Gurus

I like these collective publications and advise having them in your reader. They may not be all about the teaching, but can give a strong ongoing grounding in the industry.

SEO Forums
While many times forums can be filled with contradictions and more noise than signal, there is often a dialogue around real-world situations in forums. As with anything, take nothing as gospel and be sure to cross reference information with other sources. Here are some of the more popular forums out there;

• Site Reference
• Digital Point
• SEO Chat
• SEO Roundtable
• Web WorkShop
• WebmasterWorld Forum
• Internet Business.co.uk
• Google WebMaster Help
• WebPro World
• SEO Guy
• SEO Refugee
• Cre8aSite Forum
• HighRankings Forum
• IHelpYou Forum
• Search Engine Watch Forums

With a grain of salt
One thing is for certain; on hands experience is ultimately the best way to learn SEO. By taking a cross section of different methods and principles one has the power to go forth and create/test the theories.

This will be the most essential tool in the learning experience. To me there is no best way to go about it… what is important is to remain objective and open to new concepts.

Source: http://site-reference.com/

Without a doubt, search is the centerpiece of marketing on the web. Over 90 percent of internet users regularly use the top-five search engines — accounting for what’s been estimated as an average of some 6.2 billion searches per month — to find products, services and information. The Internet Advertising Bureau states it’s the single largest category of online marketing spend. Everybody’s using it and everybody’s doing it.

So is your search engine marketing strategy reaching its maximum potential to get more consumers to flock to your brand? Because sometimes it seems to me the market thinks about it backwards. You’ll hear SEM practitioners (rightly) telling you to focus on structuring sites the right way. But remember, Google’s informal corporate motto is “Don’t be evil.” Wouldn’t that mean focusing on what would be most valuable to the user? And wouldn’t that mean starting by creating good content and a great user experience, then encouraging users to share it?

Further, think about the “long tail” and how it has created new opportunities in search engine marketing. The basic idea behind the long tail is that there are a large number of search queries that are individually small compared to queries that contain product names (“HP Photosmart”) or category names (“digital camera”). But taken together, they can deliver sizable traffic to your site. And, some reports claim, these long tail terms convert far better than the more common ones. Search engine marketers are taking steps to address the long tail in their PPC spend. However, some studies have shown that over 85 percent of click volume comes from natural results, which means that long-tail PPC keywords you’ve purchased may only be appealing to 15 percent of the potential search traffic that could be coming to your site.

Luckily, there are three easy — but likely underutilized — techniques for expanding your natural search footprint. The key is to focus on creating quality, engaging content, expanding the chance users will find your site. Then you’ll be found more often.

Use engaging educational, lifestyle and category type content
The Online Publishers Association recently published a study stating that web users now spend nearly half their time visiting content, making it the most popular activity on the web. That trend creates opportunity for marketers. Brands generally provide ample content on their products, but few provide content on topics related to their products to attract those long tail searchers. For example, Motorola offers a free online course on how to personalize a mobile device, and HP offers tips and tricks on taking better photographs. Obviously this further engages consumers who are not only thinking about the category, but are likely targets to buy new units, upgrades, accessories and other complementary purchases. As a brand you want to appeal to a wide spectrum of web users, not just ones surgically searching on brand names. You not only engage consumers in a relevant, value-added way, but also add a wealth of “crawlable” dynamic content to your site. Some brands have been able to use this technique to double the number of terms they rank on in the top 30 of search engine results pages. Because you can control how this content is created in the SEO copy writing phase, you have the ability to target specific, long-tail key phrases.

Leverage user-generated content
If your site doesn’t include user-generated content such as message boards, ratings and reviews, you’re missing out on a huge source of crawlable dynamic content. By simply adding the ability for consumers to share their thoughts and experiences on your products or even the content you provide, you’re substantially increasing the crawlable footprint of your site. A desirable part of this strategy is that the content is virtually free — it’s simply passionate consumers sharing their experiences and points of view with others. Further, since these are the terms that consumers actually use to talk about your products, they are also the terms that consumers are likely to search on when they’re looking for products you sell.

Leverage the content the web creates about your brand
Word of mouth marketers often speak of “joining the conversation.” It’s about recognizing that your brand is being talked about all over the web: on blogs, on consumer review sites, at retail and in message boards. And unlike in the old days of marketing, you can’t stop it, so you might as well participate by monitoring it and contributing to it in all the places your brand shows up.

Another thing you’ll hear word of mouth marketers say is “be worth talking about.” If you embrace the threefold approach outlined above, you create buzzworthy content. That means more content about your brand, not just on your own corporate.com but throughout the web, expanding your brand’s searchability.

Of course, all these suggestions assume you’ve started with industry standard best practices for an optimized site, including the implementation of search-friendly site architecture. Here’s a short checklist:

• Implement a URL structure that makes it easy for search engines to spider your content.

• Avoid using pages that will appear as dynamic to the search engines by using the wrong characters in your URLs.

• Make sure content has a permanent home so search engines have time to find it — and it doesn’t disappear once it is found.

• Ensure you’re exposing enough content to web users – don’t hide it all behind logins that search engines and users can’t find.

If you have good content and a good user experience, people will link to it, and every link furthers the reach of your site toward potential customers.

Clearly search engine marketing has become one of the most important parts of online marketing for every brand. With some planning and foresight you’ll not only be a more successful search marketer, you’ll incorporate elements of social marketing and Web 2.0 into your mix. The cumulative effect is broader appeal and more users. You’ll see that manifest as the tangible benefits of increased revenue and marketing ROI.

By Jeff Petry
http://www.imediaconnection.com/

Submit to Directories
Submitting to High Page Rank directories will definitely help boost your Page Rank. I have put together a free web directory list HERE. Don’t submit to to many at once as it will decrease your page rank due to flooding Google with your links. Submit to no more than 20 Per day! Once you have done this for a few weeks you will notice after the page rank update that your page rank will have gone up.

Back-Links
Getting back links is the most effective way of getting your page rank up. Try to get webmasters with good Page ranks to put your link on there blogroll. Try to get a few high page rank backlinks rather than lots of no page rank baclinks. Sometimes you might have to pay them a few dollars but its worth it. Before submitting your link you should check there page rank. Use this TOOL if its page rank 3 or higher then I would recommend placing your link on their site or blogroll. Try not to exchange links to many times as they cancel each other out. Normally you just exchange links for traffic!

Submit You site map to Google using webmaster tools
Submitting your site map to Google will also have a good affect on your page rank to do this go to this SITE If you don’t have a Google account then sign up. Then add your site by pasting your link in the site add section and click add site button. Once you have verified your site click the site map tab. Then Click add site map, Click the down arrow and select add General website map. Now paste your site map URL into the box provided.

Article Submissions
Find High Page rank article submission sites and write some unique content articles then post them up on there. Remember to put a few links to your site in the article you submit to them. Remember not to copy your articles on your blog as duplicating content is frowned upon by Google so make sure its all Unique. A good website is E-Zine articles LINK They have a page rank of 6 so it will definitely help you site.

Social Bookmarking
Well this can provide a big boost in traffic, it also helps with back links. Make a nice article and post it on sites such as Digg & Stumbleupon. Make sure to actually leave your link in the article don’t hyperlink a word! There are lots of high page rank social bookamrking sites try to post on a few of them because your site readers can also comment on your blog there.

Source: http://awebmastersguide.blogspot.com/

Here Is a list of 5 Key Things on how to optimize your website for search engin (seo) I have tried to make this tutorial as easy as possible due to it being for new webmasters!

Find the Best Keywords for your Blog
You need to optimise your blog with the right keywords because if you don’t then you wont get your targeted traffic! You can use Digital Points keyword suggestion tool to find you your key words Here.
There are other tools for this sub such as Google AdWords. You can no proceed to doing the rest once you are assured of what your keywords should be.

All ways use Meta-Tags
You should try and all ways use meta-tags even on your images as they might get added on the Google image search which will help you to bring some organic traffic! When your using blogger you can just type in your keywords at the bottom of every post you make and It will do them for you!

Submit To Search Engines Yourself!
Don’t try and do a lazy job, You should manually submit to search engines yourself. It may be very tempting for you if a company is offering free web submission to 20 search engines but don’t do it! Just manually submit to popular one’s. Sometimes companies offering this free service will submit your site more than once this might get your site banned so your work today will be for nothing! Here are the links for popular search engines:
Google Site Submit
Yahoo Site Submit

Site Map
Submitting your site map to Google and yahoo is a must do! You site map should contain a link to every page on your blog. Every site needs to have a site map submitted no matter whether you site has 1 article or 1000 this is a must do!
This makes it easier for the Google and yahoo bots to find all your blogs pages
Submit your site to Google by using Google webmasters tools page Here
Submit your site to yahoo by using this page Here

Use bold text
On your title or keyword I would recommend using bold words, Only bold about 3-5 Keywords this will alert the search engine to your your title or keyword. You can make your tags blog by using a html code just do Keyword,Keyword,Keyword

Source: http://awebmastersguide.blogspot.com/