John A Simpson » SEO

Some of the Common SEO Blunders That You Should Avoid

John — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:24:51 +0000

There are lots of tips available on the Internet regarding ways to improve your SEO articles and to make profit in the online business. New SEO software and SEO tools are available in the online market nowadays. Several SEO consultants and SEO companies are extending their hands to provide SEO services to the webmasters. However, you will hardly find anyone who is aware about the common mistakes that are often made while working with search engine optimization.

We often make some petty mistakes in web development as a result of which our websites cannot attain a high rank in the search engine lists inspite of our hard work. If you just take a casual look at several SEO forums available on the Internet you will be amazed to find that there are hundreds and thousands of posts from the webmasters who have become frustrated for not getting the proper Page Rank in the search engine list. All of them have tried very hard to promote their websites as best as they can and yet they fail to attain the top search engine ranks.

The search engines, definitely, bear no personal grudge against them or their websites. So, what is actually preventing them from achieving their desired position in the Internet search engine index? In most cases, webmasters are unaware of the reason. However, you need not have to worry about this as we are here to help you regarding this aspect of Internet marketing.

In all probabilities, you must have made one or more of the blunders listed below. If you can identify your mistake then you can fix it up yourself and your work will be done. The best thing about the SEO mistakes is that it can be corrected easily.

So, here goes the common errors made in SEO: -

Use of frames: – Although a few years ago, frames were being used to allow scrolling of various portions of a web page independently, however, it has been recently discovered that search engines do not prefer websites that uses frames. The best remedy against this is to redesign your web page all over again without the use of frames.

Use of Flash: – Flash is a technology that is widely used by many web designers to promote a website. As Flash makes a website very attractive and appealing to the online visitors so it has achieved lot of popularity in online business. However, the search engine spiders cannot interpret a Flash content so it cannot fetch you a good position in the search engine index. The problem will become even more complicated if you use the Flash technology for your menus because in that case your entire content will remain indecipherable to the search engine spiders.

Use of Broken Links: – You should examine your website regularly in order to ensure that it is completely free of any broken links. Websites that contain broken links often escape the notice of the search engine spiders. You can use the software Xenu Link Sleuth in order to check your website for any broken links.

Use of JavaScript: – JavaScript are imperceptible to the spiders of search engines and so use it only if you have a good text link arrangement on which search engine spiders can crawl upon.

Hi Thank you for reading my article. My name is Mark Tawney owner of http://www.allwebservices.co.uk If you would like to receive more fantastic tips and great offers please join our mailing list on every page of our website.

AWS has been running since 1999 and have a growing customer base. We carry out professional web design, SEO, web hosting, graphic design and other business services at great prices.

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6/24 Efforts toward quitting my day job…AGAIN!!!

John — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 02:25:56 +0000

I’m pissed. I wrote out this nice post with a whole list of things I did today and ScribeFire lost it.

Here it is…AGAIN:

Found additional items to post on eBay. Took pictures of all items.
Inspired by the sale of a $48.00 book today, I decided that I am going to acquire all the books that I can from FREE sources like FreeCycle, so I can sell them on half.com and Amazon.
Created new footer for posts and RSS entries on www.johnasimpson.com and www.spendingless101.com (see below).

Linkbait Titles From Copyblogger

John — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:21:00 +0000

Copyblogger’s title cheat sheet:

Who Else Wants [blank]?
The Secret of [blank]
Here is a Method That is Helping [blank] to [blank]
Little Known Ways to [blank]
Get Rid of [problem] Once and For All
Here’s a Quick Way to [solve a problem]
Now You Can Have [something desirable] [great circumstance]
[Do something] like [world-class example]
Have a [or] Build a [blank] You Can Be Proud Of
What Everybody Ought to Know About [blank]

Get more details from his original post: http://www.copyblogger.com/10-sure-fire-headline-formulas-that-work/

How To Install A WordPress Blog

John — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:27:15 +0000

I already know how to do this, but I thought this might be of some help to the novice wanting to setup a WordPress blog.

Above The Fold

John — Tue, 13 May 2008 08:58:00 +0000

Wikipedia describes the term “Above The Fold” as “a graphic design concept that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. Most papers are delivered and displayed to customers folded up, meaning that only the top half of the front page is visible. Thus, an item that is ‘above the fold’ may be one that the editors feel will entice people to buy the paper. Alternatively, it reflects a decision, on the part of the editors, that the article is one of the day’s most important. By extension, the space above the fold is also preferred by advertisers, since it is the most prominent and visible even when the newspaper is on stands.” (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Above_the_fold)

As it relates to the Internet, it means anything placed on the very first screen, such that no scrolling is necessary in order to get to the information. Since different people run their screens at differing resolutions, a rule of thumb, when it comes to being above the fold on the screen, is to make sure you content shows up one the first screen, assuming the screen resolution is 800X600.

In SEO, it is important for the content that will capture the user’s attention is “Above The Fold”.

Using SEO Keywords In Your Page Title

John — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:00:00 +0000

To increase your website’s ranking with search engines, it is very important to use keywords you have chosen in the title of the page concerned. A title tag is of course not the same as a meta description or keyword tag, but it is still a very important factor to consider in the overall optimization of your web page.

Any text you insert in your title tag will be viewed in the title bar of browsers at the time they visit your site. To take advantage of this, plan your keywords and theme carefully. You may also find that some browsers will add their own name as an appendage to your own text.

As one of the most important deciding factors in how search engines chose to rank your page is the actual text you have placed in the title tag, spend time and thought over your choice of words. The major web spiders will normally use the text of your title tag as the text that is used for the title given to your site in the listings.

This text will act in much the same way as a newspaper headline, and draw your prospective client to look at your site, while also setting the theme and topic.

Consider also that if your site has been constructed as a series of sites, or linked pages, then you will need to apply these search engine optimization techniques to each page individually. The keywords used in the text of each page title will be the magnet that draws traffic to the site.

You should ensure that you avoid the use of stop words such as “at”, “and” and similar in the crucial first three positions for keywords. Care taken here will dramatically increase your results in the rankings.

Your choice of text should be aimed at producing a unique combination of your chosen keywords, phrases, and content. Ensure that you capture every keyword or phrases you need to highlight for each service, product, or information page.

It is always important to strike a balance between including sufficient keywords in your text, and at the same time avoiding becoming a keyword spammer, which will have a detrimental effect on your page rankings.

A key mistake often made by inexperienced business owners when designing their initial website is to use their firm’s name, or business name, in the title of each page. Most potential clients will have never heard of your company before they come to your site, so the chances of them using your company name as a search word are remote.

It is a very good idea to have your business name in the title of your home page, but after that it may well be a waste of important space and keywords to include it on each individual page on the website. By using your chosen important keywords instead, you will find your site will be displayed nearer to the top listings on the search engines.

Search engine optimization is a constantly developing art, and it is important to get advice from people with proven results, rather than waste your time, money, and energy making avoidable mistakes. A little good advice can save a lot of anguish at a later date.

Alan Thomas is a successful internet marketer, and runs a business which helps people develop and expand their own home business. To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: APTeamBuild.com

Published At: www.Isnare.com

Permanent Link: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=246576&ca=Internet

SEO Now Includes Friends and Family

John — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Did you ever think of SEO as a social activity? Typically, it’s people posting to social networking sites, posting to blogs, submitting to directories, and tweaking away at the site code. It turns out that SEO is becoming a social activity. Aaron Wall put out a video on this very subject. I highly recommend it. There is a lot of good information there.

301 Redirect for SEO

John — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:00:00 +0000

A 301 redirect is a method of redirecting a request for one particular page to an alternate URL. This method indicates to the search engines that the redirection is permanent. This is as opposed to a 302 redirect (temporary redirect). 301 redirect is of benefit to the site owner because the search engines will not look upon the redirection as a trick or duplicate content. It will see it as a valid redirection and it will go to the new site to pick up content.

Some uses for 301 redirect are:

You purchase a new domain and you want to move all of your blog’s content there. In order to not lose your search engine ranking, you should 301 redirect all existing URLs to the respective location on the new site.
You want to split the content up on one site into multiple sites. The specific content going to new sites should be 301 redirected.

301 redirects are easy to set up. Learn how to set up 301 redirects for multiple platforms over at DailyBlogTips.com.

Word of the Day

John — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 14:37:00 +0000

Spammy-Crap – OK…it’s two words, sort of. I was listening to a podcast on podcast.neo1seo.com and Carolyn Shelby used this word (term) to describe a certain type of content and I just cracked up laughing.

So you decided to host an in-house SEO training bootcamp. What now?

John — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:50:00 +0000

If you have decided to host an in-house SEO training bootcamp, I say “Great!!!”. You may have people that don’t know much about SEO right now, but with some training, you will end up with expert SEO people who are actually dedicated to making sure the SEO efforts work; not just the bottom line and the move to the next project. Your newly-trained SEO’ers will be dedicated to SEO specific to your company.

Check out this YouTube video posted by wwwreachd:

50 of the SEO Blogs I follow

John — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:17:00 +0000

Actually, I have never counted the number of SEO blogs that I follow, but the number seems to increase daily and I know it is over 50. 50 was the first number that came to mind for the title. Regardless, I just wanted to give credit where credit is due and highlight some of the SEO blogs I follow. In the interest of time, let me tell you about 5 of the SEO blogs that I follow (in no particular order):

The reason I do this is my thirst for knowledge. I have always been one to do methodical research into a subject that I wanted to know about, but the list of blogs, posts, and web sites that I want to read seems to be far greater than the amount of available time. I am using a Firefox plugin called BookStack to keep track of everything, which seems to be working out pretty well, but I still can’t seem to catch up.

I must be OCD or something because not only is my reading list long, but my list of things to do seems to be growing out of control also. It is currently 4 legal pad pages long and growing. Calgon, take me away!!!

Why should you cancel an SEO experiment?

John — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:01:00 +0000

The answer is if you just don’t have time on a consistent basis to make the results usable…which is where I am now. Sorry people…have to cancel it again.

SEO Experiment: Day #3

John — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 23:59:00 +0000

I fell behind and did not get a chance to do anything on 3/6 and 3/7. I did some things yesterday (3/8), and here they are:

Posted 2 blog entries
Left 1 blog comment
Submitted several of my posts to social bookmarking sites to the tune of 94 times.
Joined EntreCard

Since I lost two days, I am going to try to make those up before the end of the experiment.

By the way, this blog’s link popularity is 1298.

Should you trust SEO to an in-house person?

John — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:26:00 +0000

SEO and site promotion are important if you want your company to be successful on the Internet. I pointed this out in my January 8, 2008 post because I had just been released from a company where I was actually making progress with SEO. They did not consider SEO to be important enough to even have anyone doing anything towards that end. Once I left (and, of course, removed the links to their site from all of my sites and social networking accounts), their site plumitted in the SERPs. I guess I was actually making some progress.

Once you have made the correct decision, which is that SEO IS imporant to your company, who is going to do it? Before the who, I can tell you that it will take a long time so you should expect to have someone doing this job full time…if you want good results.

You should be careful who you having doing this job. In Scott Buresh’s article in WebProNews, he indicates that if you have someone on yout IT staff do this for you, it may have a negative impact on your site’s position. The IT person will most-likely not be up on the white-hat vs. black-hat tactics being used and they may decide to do something that will be hard to undo down the road.

On the flip side, Scott indicates that if you do go out and hire someone for this job, be prepared to pay a pretty penny. These guys are expensive. “…if you were looking to hire someone with more than five years of
experience in search engine marketing, you could expect to pay between
$100,000 and $200,000 per year.” I’ll do it for around $125,000/year, or $75/hour.

The point is, make sure you have the right person performing SEO and site promotion duties for your site.

SEO Experiment: Day #2

John — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:59:00 +0000

Didn’t do much this day either, but for some reason the Alexa rank went up to 671, 679. Went up about 200,000.

Posted 3 blog entries.

There has been a lot going on, but I will make up for it on the weekend.

SEO Experiment: Day #1

John — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:59:00 +0000

I didn’t get to do a lot yesterday because I had to get my tax paperwork together. I completed the following:

3 blog comments
1 blog post

Tomorrow is another day…

SEO Experiment #2: The Beginning

John — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 08:23:00 +0000

I’ve been thinking it’s about time to restart my site promotion experiment. The whole point of the experiment was to see how much I could increase the visibility/traffic of a site in a week. To that end, I have to have a starting point for the site.

Google	Not Found
MSN Search	Not Found
Yahoo!	Not Found
AltaVist	Not Found

I don’t even rank in these search engines…

The actual AltaVista rank is 884,578.

Here we go… Today is day #1 and I’ll give a report at the end of the day.

How much is an SEO worth?

John — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 01:24:00 +0000

If you are thinking about hiring an SEO expert to increase the visibility of your site, how will you know if what the person is going to do for you is worth the expense? If one SEO charges $40/hour and another one charges $80/hour, does the more expensive SEO do more for your web site? Hiring an SEO expert to increase your site’s visibility is a big decision. Plenty of research needs to be done before you make the decision. If you do decide to hire a professional, you will need to figure out the SEO ROI & Conversion Rate, meaning weigh the cost against the benefit (or at least the promised benefit). That will determine whether or not the investment is worth it. There are formulas for this type of decision-making. Find out more detail by clicking the link above, and be careful. There are a lot of scammers out there that are just waiting to take your money and run.

SEO Fixes For Older Web Sites

John — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 12:47:00 +0000

Written By: Joe
Flitner

For a lot of my clients, older sites that were once
high ranking, have disappeared off the radar. They chalk it up to more
competition and lax SEO upkeep, but oftentimes, the websites themselves
are the culprit. I found a relationship between older coding methods
and the breakdown between title/url/header content and actual body
content. I wanted to take a few minutes to address some issues with
older sites and how obsolete code may be hurting their rankings.

Tables

5-15
years ago, if text, data and graphics had to be aligned in anyway, most
people were using tables. They’re still using them, and as search
engines become more sophisticated, they are starting to read all of the
table code as content, and this is shooting websites down by the
hundreds.

A client of mine brought me a website that was created
about five years ago, and sure enough, it was riddled with tables and
all the set up code required to facilitate them. The code to content
ratio was 34k to 3k. A keyword density check revealed that six of the
top ten keywords were actually from the table code. Ouch.

The
website in question had been tanking in the rankings for sometime, and
this was my chief concern. With the development of CSS and PHP, it
isn’t necessary to clutter up a page with formatting on the page
itself. His problem was solved by overhauling the website with a new
design (at his request) and all of the layouts and navigation were
organized using CSS and PHP to get the same visual results without
making the code such a mess and making a nightmare of the SEO.

ASCII and HTML Codes

Tricky
symbols oftentimes make it necessary to insert ASCII or preferably HTML
codes into a web page in place of an alphanumeric character.
Unfortunately, much like the code from tables, ASCII and HTML code get
read literally by spiders and can artificially affect the best keywords
on the page.

The most common culprit is ™. Commonly entered
multiple times on a page where a trademarked product is mentioned for
keyword emphasis, this symbol (either

Promotion Effort Summary – 2007-02-19

John — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:28:00 +0000

Here is what I did to promote this blog on Tuesday, February 19, 2008:

I submitted my RSS feed to 16 feed directories
I submitted this blog to 7 blog catalogs

I did not get to do as much as I wanted to today, but I will do better tomorrow. I was able to get another job, so I am basically on vacation for the rest of the week.

John A Simpson » SEO

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