SEO is an acronymn for "Search Engine Optimization", which in laymans terms means: "Getting so internet users will find my website".

Or in slightly more technical terms, SEO means promoting websites in Google, Yahoo etc. so that they are at the top of the "natural" or organic search results for some chosen keywords or expressions. It entails making changes in and around a website, so that when people search for the main topic(s) that the website is about, that website will be displayed at or near the top of the search engine results.

Google's search algorithm includes more than 200 elements that affect the position of your website in the search engine results, and of course they don't actually tell anyone what all of these elements are (although they have been opening up a bit more, recently) ...

However, some of the most commonly agreed techniques are:

On-site Optimization:

• Optimization of your site structure, so that the search engines “understand” more about what the site is about.
• Keyword research, in order to decide with keyword(s) are going to best drive focused traffic (internet users) to your site. This basically means working out "what expressions do I think users will type into Google to find my site?". Sounds easy, but this is actually the most difficult part, since you can spend ages optimizing your site for the wrong keywords, after which changing direction is a huge pain ...
• Optimizing your site content, to incorporate the keyword(s) into your pages. This includes:
  • Title and Meta tags (elements used to provide structured metadata about a web page), in particular the "Description" tag.
  • Keyword-optimized content
• Continually adding high quality content that people will be interested to read, even if they never use your services. Your content has to be first and foremost human-user-friendly, and only after that search-engine friendly. It is more likely that other sites will link to you if you have high quality, relevant content

Off-site Optimization:

• Add high quality links from other sites in your niche/topic to your site. The more quality links the better. This is also very much intertwined with adding high quality content, since quality sites will generally only link to you if you have interesting information for their visitors.

The “Social Web”:

• SMO (Social Media Optimization) and SMM (Social Media Marketing). This involves techniques like blogging (which is REALLY good for both adding content and getting more links), joining social media networks, writing and commenting on forums, and generally building your sphere of influence.

Advertising: Google Adwords and other similar SEM (search engine marketing) systems

• PPC is an acronym for "Pay Per Click" which is a model of advertising on the internet, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an advertisement to visit the advertisers' website. Such advertisements are called sponsored links or sponsored ads, and appear adjacent to or above the organic results on search engine results pages.
• This is basically taking the tools of direct marketing and bringing them to an online audience, but unlike the traditional print audience, you’ll see results of your ads within days and in some cases, a few hours. SEM involves developing marketing campaigns for relevant keywords, developing “landing pages” for each Adwords campaign, and writing relevant ads.
• It's important to note that using Google Adwords does NOT affect the position of your site in the organic search results

That's it for "SEO in a nutshell", but do check out this nice video from Matt Cutts ( head of Google's Webspam team) with his few simple tips on promoting your website, targetted at beginner SEO and small business SEO.

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Hasta se a colgado un video donde Matt Cutts habla sobre el blog y mas abajo podemos leer que se a ofrecido a responder en los foros y hablar sobre los nuevos productos de Google.

1. Don’t make hard promises about the future.

Don’t give up that freedom by promising a feature to the outside world by a certain deadline.

2. Don’t trash talk a competitor.

Your product should be strong enough that you don’t have to diss a competing company.

3. Don’t post when you’re angry.

This is probably the most important tip. If you have to write something, go ahead, but don’t press publish until you’ve slept on the situation or had a chance to calm down completely.

Source : Ronakorn: My Speech: Thai SEO, SEM, SMM Service.

Cutts started his career in search when working on his Ph.D. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His field of study was computer graphics and movement tracking, then moved into the field of information retrieval, and search engines after taking two required outside classes from the university's Information and Library Science department. He did not complete the Ph.D. before moving to Google, but did acquire a masters degree.

Before working at the Search Quality group at Google, Cutts worked at the ads engineering group, and the SafeSearch capabilities. There he earned the nickname "porn cookie guy" by giving his wife's homemade cookies to any Googler who provided an example of unwanted pornography in the search results.

Cutts is one of the co-inventors listed upon a Google patent related to search engines and web spam, which was the first to publicly propose using historical data to identify link spam.

In August 2006, Cutts allegedly admitted to using the identity GoogleGuy in posts to web related boards, though Cutts later said he was quoted out of context.

Source : Matt_Cutts

http://too.blogspot.com/

The name “too” reflects Sergey’s additional life outside work. One of his first posts is about the fact that he might be more likely to develop Parkinson’s Disease when he’s older. That’s based on data from 23andMe, the personal genetics company co-founded by Sergey’s wife Anne Wojcicki. It’s a serious reminder that healthiness is one of the top issues for anyone.

As a fellow blogger - welcome to the club!!!

Once you've built your site, the next step is to get visitors to it.

Search engine rankings is a world of myths, out-of-date information, and big money. Chances are, if you done some research on this subject, you've found companies offering to submit your site to 1,000 search engines, 10,000 search engines, 100,000 search engines, and so on. Before we start, let's get this straight. There are around 10 search engines that matter. Their names are household names like Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc. You want to get listed with them, because they take 98.5% of the web searches (according to a Yahoo Finance Article).

So how do search engines work?

The truth of the matter is that no-one knows exactly. Most of what we know about Search Engine Optimization is derived from our own experiences, so different people will have different advice. Here's a basic overview of the common things that search engines like:

Got links?

Most search engines today (the ones that matter anyway) work as spiders, crawling links on the internet. In other words, they read web pages, looking for links to other web pages. The more links they find to a web page the more important that page must be. There is often no need to submit your site to them if other people link to your site, because the spiders will follow them to you. If you don't have other folks linking to your site, then submitting to the major search engines is still a good way to get the spiders started.

There are two types of links. Inbound and outbound. Inbound links are from another site to you, and act like 'votes' for your site. Outbound links are from you to someone else, and act like votes for someone else - you don't feel any benefit from it. If you have too many outbound links it might even negatively affect your ranking. So what you really want is for hundreds of people to voluntarily link to you. Depending on who you are and what your site contains, that probably won't happen, so you're going to have to arrange to make it happen!

Many people will be prepared to exchange links - they link to you in exchange for a link back. This is a good way to get your sites name out there, but ultimately you want one way links to you.

Directories are also a good way to get links to your site. Some charge, but there are many free ones around. The Open Directory Project (also known as the ODP or DMOZ) is one of the most important, if not the most important. Why? Simply because it's mirrored everywhere by other people in different countries, which gets you lots of backlinks from one submission. It also powers the Google Directory.

Forums are another option, but don't go round posting random posts like 'visit my wonderful new site at my.com'. This is usually considered very impolite--spamming... Some forums will allow you to link to your site in your signature. If you have useful content on your site you could link to it in a relevant discussion on a forum - e.g. if someone posts asking for information on a technique that you've used, you could post a link to that site as part of your answer.

Content?

The spider then reads the page, looking for keywords. You've probably heard a lot about putting keywords into your meta tags to get search engines to list you. You don't need meta-tags to get listed with the main search engines. You need content on your page. If you do use meta-tags then you need to make sure they really match your content - otherwise search engines might get the idea that you're trying to cheat.

The best way to get people to link to your site is to provide useful content. Articles for instance, like the one you're reading now! Chances are you got to this site either through one of the 209,000 links to HTML Goodies (at the time of writing), or through a search engine which followed those links.

Are you sure you've got content?

I know you're giving me funny looks through the screen, but this is important. You see, search engines don't see your site like Internet Explorer does. They see text. So you need to check your website can be read properly by search engines.

Things to watch out for include:

1. Javascript: You might have the most wonderful JavaScript powered menu in the world, but search engines don't usually read JavaScript. So make sure your menu is useable without it.
2. Images: there is a property for images called 'alternate text'. You see it used like this: <img src="somefile.gif" alt="some file or other"> Make sure you use it - it's all the search engine will see of your wonderful graphics, and that makes it important!
3. Clean code: If your site uses the first 500 lines just setting up your nested tables and rollover JavaScript effects, the important stuff gets pushed further down the page. Most search engines appear to stop reading your page after a certain point - usually a file size limit. If your site is listed, you can click the 'cached' button on most search engines to find out how much of your page it has read.
4. Structured code: Make sure your headings are marked up as headings (using <h1> etc) not a mix of bold and font tags. Heading tags are ranked as more important than bold tags, so use them and get your keywords into them. Don't forget you can use CSS to style the heading tags exactly as you want them, so you don't lose anything in terms of formatting.
5. Fancy fonts as images: Many people use images to get fancy fonts into their headings. If you're one of those people, you can markup your code as follows: <h1><img src="heading.jpg" alt="HTML Goodies.com - the place to learn HTML"></h1> (swap the h1 for the level of heading you need)
6. Title: There is a title tag buried in the head section of your page. Use it and make sure it's relevant - most search engines will use its content as the title of your listing.

Submit to Search Engines

As we've already mentioned, submitting isn't really necessary, but most search engines offer the option to submit your site. Here are the main URLs:

• Google - powers AOL, Netscape etc.
• Yahoo (Free Registration Required) - powers AltaVista, AllTheWeb etc.
• MSN

Three Steps to Search Engine Optimization

So, to conclude, there are three main aspects to SEO.

1. Start with your code: you need to optimize your code to make it easy for the search engine to see what your page is about.
2. Next you need content: make your site worth linking to, and finally:
3. Get people linking to you!

Good luck, and hopefully I'll see you in the search engines!

Source: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/reference/article.php/3603646

Whilst never seen to be overly condoning SEO, Google and Matt in particular has always worked closely with many within the SEO community. The interview above follows on from his USAToday piece, where he highlighted his five top tips to getting your site positioning in the search engine (yes yes yes, very basic)

• Spotlight your search term on the page.
• Fill in your tags
• Get other sites to link back to you
• Create a post and blog often
• Don't overdo it

You never know - we may one day get account management like many paid search couterparts do (and then again maybe not...)

Following on from this was a post from Quadzilla over at BlackHatSEO.com examined the possibly of black hole SEO (A phrase I have to be honest I do quite like). According to the blog a 'black hole site' is

"A black hole site is created when an tier 1 authority site ceases to link out to other sites. If a reference is needed, the information is rewritten and a reference page is created within the black hole. All (or virtually all) external links on the site are made nofollow.

The first example of a black hole site was the wikipedia. The internal links formed a network that passed link juice from one page to another allowing obscure articles with no external links to rank number 1 in the SERPs. This #1 ranking begets natural links from external links. When a webizen wants a quick reference, they consult Google and link to one of the top results. This causes more link juice to flow into the black hole and the body’s trust becomes more and more massive over time.

1. Link juice flows in, but it can never escape.
2. External Sites lose link juice at the expense of the black hole.
3. The relative link juice mass of the black hole expands exponentially"

This to me raised an interesting scenario. I am not privy to what happened with the Twitter/Google situation however one thing is clear - that Twitter have indeed created what Quadzilla termed a blackhole. If indeed Google did 'influence' this decision it does raise some interesting thoughts of what it could be life moving forward.

One of the fundamental parts of Google's algorithm is the reliance on linkage to determine relevancy and influence. Search marketeers cottoned onto this fact and subsequently used this to influence the search engine rankings. It was further to this that Google erm... highlighted the use of the nofollow attribute in order to 'control' the benefits potential links could pass, and give webmasters a way to control 'webspam'. Now one may (rightly or wrongly) argue that this is a case of throwing the baby away with the bathwater, however to be honest some degree of moderation was required, and I would suggest used in moderation and in the right context (such as the one Matt Cutts uses in his nofollow post) is a highly useful tool.

I would though add that the overuse of the nofollow attribute raises a completely different concern. (There is no doubting that sites/services such as Twitter would be nothing without the general public helping raise its profile - and I would suggest many SEO's have been central to this. However in this context I would suggest there were better ways to control the level of webspam and exploitation.) What would happen if nofollow became a standard tactic, and webmasters decided to hoard internal weighting to themselves. This potentially could have a similar effect to that of paid linkage - in terms of the inbalance created by this lack of linkage between sites. Many websites are already highly guarded regarding 'leaking' PR from their websites, utilising advanced redirects aimed at minimising PR loss, and subsequently influencing relevancy as a result, by not giving credit where credit is due.

Surely there is a possibility this sort of activity influences relevancy as much as paid links do?

I can't help but feel that whilst nofollow has been effective in controlling linkspam, there is a limited timespan to the reliance on this to manage linkage. Obtaining prominent rankings within organic search results is a fundamental part of many organisations marketing campaigns, and whilst this commercial interest in natural search remains, there will be a 'pushing' (and stepping over) of the mark (or testing of the boundaries), in order to obtain these key commercial wins.

[ This post from Peter Young's blog contains only his personal opinions. ]

The “web” link has long been a nofollow link, but the bio links passed popularity until Dave Naylor exposed it, which alerted Matt Cutts (a Google engineer) who sent a tweet to @ev (a twitter founder) about Dave’s forementioned post and *poof* bio links were nofollowed.

Full Article Did Twitter Lay Down for Google?

Mentre ammiravo il nuovo browser Chrome di Google sono rimasto abbastanza stupito dal non aver potuto riconoscere subito la classica Toolbar con la solita finestrella del pagerank.

Google Chrome senza pagerank?

Sembrerebbe infatti che Google voglia tener fede a quanto ha annunciato riguardo le caratteristiche di questo Browser che é stato studiato per essere utile all'utente. Sembra quindi che Google non ritenga importante per la navigazione del suo utente l'esposizione della finestrella del pagerank.

È veramente cosí? O nella fretta i programmatori hanno dimenticato una cosí tanto famosa funzione? Se ricordiamo le parole di Matt Cutts riguardo al pagerank ci sembra di capire che Google stia pian piano allontanandosi da questo strumento. Matt Cutts infatti diceva testualmente:

Personally, I wouldn't mind removing the PageRank in the Google Toolbar or swapping it with some other indicator, but that would be a large undertaking. Maybe that can be a long-term goal for me. :)

 

 

Non mi sembra quindi che in realtá fosse convinto di fare un passo del genere ma mette in probabile, la sua partecipazione ad un progetto a lungo termine come lui stesso lo definisce che é quello di togliere o rimpiazzare il pagerank con un altro strumento.

Sarebbe interessante sentire l'opinione dei Seo's italiani su questo tema. È secondo voi arrivato il momento di fare a meno di questa benedetta (o maledetta?) finestrella, o é sempre secondo voi uno strumento utile del quale non vorreste doverne fare a meno?

Ogni opinione e gradita!

Alla prossima... ;)

Angelo Palma

"Personally, I do think creating clean code that validates and works on many different browsers will be an important skill for webmasters and web designers."

Matt Cutts September 2, 2008 @ 3:21 pm · Filed under Chrome, Google/SEO

Google SEO guru Matt Cutts said something interesting yesterday, but so far it seems pretty quiet on the blog front, so maybe it went unnoticed or maybe no one cares. However, for me it was a small "attaboy" that spoke to something I have always secretly suspected (and drawn odd glares for when articulated): code matters! Not only does it matter, but Matt Cutts just verified that we need to be aware that it matters…and my guess is fairly soon.*

Now, this is not just any code, but good valid W3C compliant code. Yes, I am aware this has been a debate in the community for years. Even for me, though I know Google has said in their guidelines that code matters, every time I asked an engineer I was always met with a firm, "It has no bearing at all." I kept thinking, But it must. Google has it in the guidelines that it should not only be compliant, but accessible (Lynx Browsers are accessibility browsers).

So with this in mind, I went to conferences and talked to Google Engineers who all told me that code validation was not part of the algorithm. I was told repeatedly that valid W3C compliant, accessible code did NOT factor into the ranking of a site, but I never quite believed it – as a person who not only works in SEO, but is actually an integral part of creating sites from beginning to end I noticed something about sites that are compliant, accessible and SEO friendly. They often did better than others despite not having much in the way of links or sometimes even content and always with lower PR.

Nevertheless, the engineers said no and so I went merrily on my way still doing compliant accessible code, but for my own sense of well-being more than for anyone else. I worked and I believed what the Google engineers told me until one day I created a site, loaded it on the net and went home. Just before bed I decided to see if it was in the index yet. I did not expect it to be there, however I had heard Google was crawling sites much faster. I was just curious how fast. Well, to my surprise (and shock) the site was in the top 10 on some important keywords. Were these highly competitive keywords? No, of course not, but my site was ranking, in the top 10, 12 hours after launch. At PubCon I asked a Google Engineer if he could explain it and he just looked at me dumbfounded. He said. "I knew we were crawling faster, but even I cannot explain that." So, he took the site name and told me if he found out why, he would let me know. Of course, that went into the ether and I was left to wonder what makes this site different?

So what did make our site different? Why would it rank so fast during the time of the Google "sandbox"? I had to ask myself: Is it content? Doubtful, as the site had less than ten pages. Was it links? No, the site had none as it was only 12 hours old. Was it domain age? Maybe partially as the domain had been purchased about five years earlier, but this would not explain why the site ranked in the top 10 for some main keywords. So what could it be? Am I just an SEO rock star that did not know it? Of course not! So I thought and thought and I developed a theory about these sites quick rise to the top: code matters! Still, I had to wait until the launch of my latest site to prove it to my befuddled brain.

If anyone was at SES San Jose and sat in the "white hat – black hat" session, they might have heard Dave Naylor talk about a girl he met in a bar and her assertion that her site was ranking only a couple of weeks out of the box purely for content. That was my site. Dave was kind enough not to mention our name, but we are a flooring information site called FindAnyFloor.com who only uses "white hat" SEO practices. No paid links, no black hat, just 1500 pages of unique original well-written content. Dave went on to say, much as he hated to, as it was so cliché, that maybe content was king or at least prince and maybe links were not as important as we all thought. Well it is two weeks since that session. The site is still gathering top 10, and number one, rankings averaging a few hundred visitors a day from being found on over 1,800 organic terms -- all within three weeks. So I have to agree with Dave. With barely a link to our name and only three weeks of face time with Google, content is still a category killer for SEO these days. However, there is something else unique about our site. Something that I know most SEOers will say is unimportant, but I believe Matt Cutts might have just changed all that with his blog this week. Our site is W3C compliant and accessible** to those with disabilities: Two of the Google guidelines that are most often overlooked. And though I had always secretly suspected, I think I can confidently say now, content may be king, but compliant code may just be about to become prince!

Our site's code is clean and getting cleaner every day as we find our way out of the BETA launch. I do not think it can be overlooked as a factor anymore. But why would it matter? Why would Google care about compliant or accessible code? Well Google is a business and as a business they have business concerns: resources, competition and monetization. So why would Google care about compliant sites? Do we even know they do? Well of course we cannot be sure, though I suspect Matt Cutt's words were selected very carefully. But if you give me that they do, then I believe I can tell you why they would. It is really quite simple to me.

Top 3 Reasons Google Cares About Your Code

Ok, I have no crystal ball and am only theorizing here, but if I were Google this is why I would care.

1. Resources: While content helps Google create better search results, Google must expend many resources scraping content out of mucky convoluted code bases that would make even the most seasoned programmer weep. If content is surrounded by clean, crisp, valid code, then getting that content becomes much easier and much less resource dependent.
2. Competition: Cuil's entry into the marketplace came with more of a smirk than a frown from Google, but that does not mean there is not the next Cuil around the corner. Cuil's claim to fame was that it had collected many more pages than Google. If Google could spend more of its resources indexing clean, crisp, valid sites, its spiders would be more efficient at gathering content. More content equals better results because more content means more chances for great content. Better options help Google maintain the dominance in the industry. After all, it was not that long ago that everyone said no one could beat Yahoo. My how things change!
3. Monetization: My name is Google and I must continually expand my ability to increase monetization numbers. How can I do this? We have all heard rumors about future PPC nightmares such as Google differentiating between capitalized and lower case search terms, but there is no need. All you would have to do is start to increase the weight the algorithm gives sites that are clean and compliant. (Over 95% of sites on the web do not meet even basic accessibility requirements) Bring these closer to the top, and whoever is left will have to pay to rank were they did before. Obviously, this would not be a main point on the algorithm, but it has become a more heavily weighted one. I would tell you why I know this, but then I could damage a top ranking on my site. But you can try it yourself, and I imagine you will find the same results.

To me, it just makes sense for Google. The rewards for their business model would be exponential and there may even be a bit of manifest or latent social entrepreneurship occurring here. Use your power to create a Web that is accessible to all, disabled or not. But that may be a little too idealistic of me, thought part of me would like to think that is the ultimate plan.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

And just in case my argument has fallen short – from Matt Cutts.

"Here’s my personal take. If people like and use the web more, that’s eventually good for Google because they will do more searches. Therefore it’s in Google’s interests to make the web better, more accessible and more useful. And Google Chrome does that by making the web faster, safer, and more stable."

Matt Cutts September 2, 2008 @ 3:21 pm · Filed under Chrome, Google/SEO

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

*Google already lowers quality score for page weight.

** Mostly as we are in the final stage of BETA and running through the checkers now to make sure all pages are indeed compliant.

I was using Google’s video search yesterday and stumbled upon some of Matt Cutts’s videos. For those of you unfamiliar with Matt Cutts, Matt works for Google handling search engine optimization issues, answering many common questions on his blog as well as his videos.

Basically Matt Cutts is the gate keeper for how sites get ranked on Google search.

Although some of the videos are now nearly a year old, they are still very relevant, with a lot of helpful, straightforward information.

In one of the most interesting videos Matt reveals the top four biggest search ranking factors. From top to bottom here they are:

• Crawlability
• Sitemap
• Good Content
• Marketing

Crawlability

Crawlability refers to the ability for a search engine to read the content on your website and get through it, navigating to each page. Crawlability may not seem like it should be an issue dozens of years after the birth of the internet, but according to Matt it is still a major problem, with many sites being un-crawlable. This is definitely something we’ve witnessed with many web designers opting to create websites entirely with photos, embedding text, links, etc. in unreadable photo files - it may look nice, but to a search engine it is valueless.

Sitemap

Sitemaps are pages that reference every other page, much like a book’s index or table of contents. It is just one place for a user (or search engine) to visit in order to find everything on a site, or quickly find just one thing. Having a sitemap referenced on every page is a great search booster and very user-friendly addition to any site.

Good Content

Good content is a major factor in determining a sites value. Besides some rumors that Google has hired librarians, english professors, and is using its book scanning project to learn more about the flow and style of correct human generated text, good content is essential in attracting visitors, getting those visitors to return, and getting others to link to your site.

Marketing

Spread the word about your site, write good content (see above) and start spreading the word. You are only limited by your imagination in the number of ways you can market your site on or off line. Create plans to write articles and back them up with a supplemental print and e-newsletter. Attend local events with pamphlets on your website, include your website at the bottom of each email you or your colleagues send out. You must actively market your site.

Google finally unveiled Chrome, the beta edition of its web browser. Long ago, Google has predicted - 'The browser is the platform', keeping it in mind, it released Gogle Gears, now the Chrome. The tab button stikingly resembeles like he Yahoo toolbar, did anyone note that?? Of course, the Yahoo toolbar adds the tab functionality to older IE editions. Cold this be the next big application that will spy on people from now? I remember writing a link on how Google has exploited privacy and security of users..Wow...Is this the biggest spyware we have ever seen?? A note to Paranoids - I cant say for gurantee that Google Chrome is the official spying tool released by Google, but given its past and privacy pundits worried over Google tracking its users habits, trends etc...but in that case, I can safely say - Orkut is the biggest spyware. Enter Orkut, and you will find all fizzy stuff ranging from click trackers, url trackers, content crawlers, etc.

I suggest - take a break..Stay away from the web for some time, maintain a random click pattern that will make Google;s life difficult. ;) Install this wonderful tool, Tor

Q. What is Tor?

A. Tor is a software project that helps you defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Good luck. However, I am amazed how well this wannabe Google Spyware has found its way in news, media, blogs..did this thing really needed so much attention?? Mozilla's doing a fine job against Microsoft, the browser war isent the same one it was in 1997...Joke..! Like Apple iPhone, Google Chrome has lived its hype, and I think its one of the most successful webmedia marketting campaign we have seen recently., after the dramatic Apple iPhone..

2 years ago, I remember downloading an IE based slim browser, it was called Browzar. The site's still alive, except that it didnt get a grand attention Chrome's getting.. I think it hasent come out of its beta stage even after 2 years later I downloaded it. Browzar claims to be a paranoid web surfers friend..but as its based on IE, I wont assume anything..Wow, the date matches exactly...Take a look @ this article I had written lonng time back describing Browzar.;)

Psst..want to see Chrome crashing?? Try this link... ;)

As mentioned, a page just littered with key words and no actual concern for what the reader has searched for is NOT going to get you found.

Ohh you spotted it: key words - These are an integral part of search engine optimisation but when used correctly.

Key words are the words that essential summarise what your webpage is about. Every page can have different keywords but of course there will be some key words that are the same throughout your website.

Keywords are an important part of SEO but bare in mind that you are not going to get found for obvious generic terms.

For example say you wanted to be found for the word CELEBRITY. You have a lovely little website about all the grotty things CELEBRITYs' have been getting up to but not getting much traffic. You've littered your page with the word CELEBRITY but still no luck! Well this is because you are using a generic keyword and big companies will have experts fighting and working to get their site ranked 1st for a word like that and let's face facts, you are not going to be able to compete with this level of SEO - well not yet anyway ;)

So how do you get around this?

This is the cunning part.

It is estimated that everyday Google has to deal with and search for over 2 million brand new key words or key phrases that it has never ever seen before - yes every day!!! Meaning that everyday new words are up and out there for the taking.

Think of every words related to the keywords that epitomise your site - imagine it as the 'word association game' of the digital age - i.e Celebrity = famous person / stalking paparazzi shots / actress walking / model mother etc etc.

These more random, and SEO's say, "long tail" searches are going to work in your favour as more as more people search for words and phrases Google has never indexed before

So simply put, think about what your site is about and then think a little bit outside the box for maximum creativity and results.

Do we control the internet?

Hmm...Ok again, pretty daring statement - I know. But before you flame me, or whatever the proper term is these days*, I believe the question is valid.

So what do I mean by this? Since an estimated 85-90% of users never make it past page one in Google (or as far as I know Yahoo or MSN) AND these engines control almost all of search and WE as SEO professionals vie routinely for the top spots in these engines - then the question is - Do we control the Internet? Or at least do we control what most people view? Do users see what they see because we put it there?

Now mind you, I have no issue with this being the case. SEO is as open as professional fields come and anyone can jump into the deep end of the pool anytime they get the urge. Truly, if you wanted to take your mom and pop "blue widget" store and rank it number one for blue widgets you would have a lot to learn, but the only barrier is the time you put in and how eagerly you slurp up the information that is out there - because it is out there.

There is no truly secret sauce - in that there is no grandma safeguarding here secret recipe and no one but her knows. It as all good cooks know - trial and error - experimentation - AND of course listening to what the great chefs say. The gastronomically great already know this and that is really the only secret. So read Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts and subscribe to SearchEngineLand and talk to everyone better than you at SES and blog and read SEO for Dummies** AND over time you can be a great chef - you CAN be number one for blue widgets too.

But for those already in the deep end of the pool - for all your SEO'ers out there - what do you think? Are there enough of us out there, that for most competitive searches that we can - that we do control the users view of the net? Is there truly free space out there AND if not what do you think that will do to the face of search in the future?

Ok well - I will leave that for you to ponder as I have hit the 12 hr mark at work and my belly is yelling at me... but would be interested if anyone finds this post - what do you think? Bandy a bit with me.. and each other. I see SEO'ers mentioning how boring the net has become for us. Well - then let's start the debates again ..

Though before I go - one note to the regular internet users out there --

If your search terms return 10 MILLION results, then why do you NOT go past page one? Why do you not look beyond the surface to see what is lurking below? I hear all the time, people outside of our world, talking about how everything is paid for there is no free internet. Yet my sites rank, sometimes without a link or PR to them, they will appear in the top ten within weeks of launch. (And yes on competitive terms too, but that is another post ;)) So to all your searchers out there - spend some time - refine your results - go past page one and two and maybe even three and four. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Ok time for food! Night all!

* I work about 80-100 hrs a week, so you will have to forgive me that - well you don't have to, but it would be nice! ;)

** Note there are many amazing people in search, so do not want to overlook then - just used two of the most well known at random - there is Rand Fishkin and Jim Hedgers and Kevin Ryan and Kirsten Mangers and Dave Naylor and Greg Boser and Neil Pateil and Gregory Markel and Dave Davies and and and and... others I cannot spell their names, so I will not try ;P.. but these are all the "rockstars" of search - check them out on webmaster radio .. or SES as you can see them there (AND no I DO NOT work for SES ;)) or SMX or Pub Con -- you know the deal!

Cada vez que Matt hace una declaración existen sentimientos encontrados, la mitad de la gente piensa que el tipo nos está tomando el pelo, porque sus lineamientos, que en realidad son los Lineamientos Google para Webmasters son por demás obvios para las personas que tienen un nivel medio a avanzado en la construcción de sitios Web.

El resto de las personas, que aún no tienen un nivel medio a avanzado, piensan que sus tips son realmente utiles y piensan, que buen tipo don matt cuts hasta que suben de nivel y comienzan a pensar que siempre se repite, mismos tips y vive haciendo las mismas aclaraciones.

La verdad es que nadie sabe que es exactamente lo mejor para un buscador, especialmente para Google que tiene un vector de ponderación lo suficientemente grande para que un leve cambio en el algoritmo produzca un desequilibrio en todos los sitios. Es importante respetar los lineamientos, pero de ahí a que sean Grandes Tips de Posicionamiento Web falta mucho, y ni Matt Cutts ni ninguno de sus amigos ván a decirnos cual es el truco de la perfección para que Google indexe tu sitio de perillas.

Algunos vale la pena refrescarlos pero creo que todos los conocen:

• Decidir las Palabras clave y utilizarlas al Principio de la Página y dentro del contenido.
• Completar los tags title y descripción. Son los snippets más importantes.
• Conseguir que otros sitios te enlacen, es uno de los factores más importantes para Google.
• Crear un blog y postear Seguido. (Como este)
• Registrarse para herramientas gratuitas. Utilizar xmlsitemaps, google webmaster, businesscenter, etc.

Bueno, como vén no hay nada raro en estos guidelines, la verdad que son bastante obvios, en una próxima entrega pondremos algo más completo, puesto que con solo esto no creo que llegue nadie demasiado lejos, aunque quien lo sabe, a veces sitios que no tienen metatags llegan a las primeras posiciones también.

Saludos y hasta la próxima. Posicionamiento Web PW3.

SES San Jose - Orion Search Panel
Originally uploaded by JoeDuck

Live (well 10 minute delay?) from the afternoon keynote here at SES San Jose. We've got Matt Cutts, Robert Scoble, Danny Sullivan, Tim Westergren, Kirsten Mangers, Rich LaFurgy here to talk about search. I'll try to add as the talk goes on...

OK, it's over and was disappointing.   All the speakers are exceptional experts, but I think this casual approach did not work because rarely did we get any of the meaty search information both Matt Cutts and Danny Sullivan generally deliver.    If I was making recommendations to SES I would have had each of these folks do separate sessions in their areas of expertise and get into more detail.   Matt, for example, is arguably the world's top search expert and Robert one of the very top experts on blogging and social communities.   No need to water their stuff down so much.

2. seomoz.org

3. searchengineland.com

4. seobook.com

5. mattcutts.com

6. seochat.com

7. searchenginejournal.com

8. seroundtable.com

9. submitexpress.com

10. seoblackhat.com

Read full Article Top 10 Search Engine Optimization Websites (AUG, 2008)

Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients. Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban. Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.

Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, chats, and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.

Getting indexed

The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results. Yahoo's paid inclusion program has drawn criticism from advertisers and competitors. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review. Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.

Preventing indexing

To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Search engine optimization knowledge

Everyone has their own definition and comfort zone for link bait, copywriters and marketers, both. I consider myself a very experienced copywriter with marketing experience, but my biggest talent lies in copywriting, so I suppose my concept of link bait is more reserved than say that of a guerrilla marketer.

Link bait, if you're unfamiliar, is any type of story, essay, etc written/created/developed to generate links to a website or particular webpage for purposes of marketing and traffic-building. Linkbait may be low-brow or high-brow, formal or informal, heavily researched or written straight from the gut.

I write a lot of link bait pieces, some successful, some not so successful. I write for clients whose interest is in building valuable and relevant links within their specific markets. I like that. My goal becomes then trying to get into the heads and hearts of a particular audience and brainstorming the issues, topics that may make them sit up and take notice, compel them to share the content with colleagues and readers based on its insightfulness or just plain excellent information-ness.

But there are other kinds of link bait. There are always the stories about the marketer whose outrageous, bombastic piece of fiction netted a client 1500+ Diggs. Big whoop. diggs--they're equal to hands raised in a classroom half-ful of idiots. Diggs DON'T in any way translate to valuable inbound links to your website. They are here today and gone tomorrow, those "avid" readers. I am so under-impressed with the Digg "metrics." If you really want to weigh in on the meaningfulness of a piece of link bait then count the backlinks generated from reputable and relevant sources within the target market, b/c those links are the real deal, the ROI that matters.

Matt Cutts on Linkbaiting for more real-world and relevant information...

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site's relevance, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site's coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms and keyword stuffing that tend to harm search engine user experience. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques and may remove them from their indices.

The initialism "SEO" can also refer to "search engine optimizers", terms adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, URLs, and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

History

Webmasters and content providers began optimizing sites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a page, or URL, to the various engines which would send a spider to "crawl" that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed. The process involves a search engine spider downloading a page and storing it on the search engine's own server, where a second program, known as an indexer, extracts various information about the page, such as the words it contains and where these are located, as well as any weight for specific words and all links the page contains, which are then placed into a scheduler for crawling at a later date.

Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results. They also recognised that the higher their site ranking the more people would click on the website. According to industry analyst Danny Sullivan, the earliest known use of the phrase search engine optimization was a spam message posted on Usenet on July 26, 1997.

Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag, or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provided a guide to each page's content. But using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable because the webmaster's account of keywords in the meta tag were not truly relevant to the site's actual keywords. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags caused pages to rank for irrelevant searches. Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.

By relying so much on factors exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. Since the success and popularity of a search engine is determined by its ability to produce the most relevant results to any given search allowing those results to be false would turn users to find other search sources. Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.

Graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed "backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links. PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web, and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random surfer.

Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design. Off-page factors such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis were considered, as well as on-page factors, to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaining PageRank. Many sites focused on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming. In recent years major search engines have begun to rely more heavily on off-web factors such as the age, sex, location, and search history of people conducting searches in order to further refine results.

By 2007, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation. Google says it ranks sites using more than 200 different signals. The three leading search engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Notable SEOs, such as Rand Fishkin, Barry Schwartz, Aaron Wall and Jill Whalen, have studied different approaches to search engine optimization, and have published their opinions in online forums and blogs. SEO practitioners may also study patents held by various search engines to gain insight into the algorithms.

Webmasters and search engines

By 1997 search engines recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank well in their search engines, and that some webmasters were even manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms in an effort to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.

Due to the high marketing value of targeted search results, there is potential for an adversarial relationship between search engines and SEOs. In 2005, an annual conference, AIRWeb, Adversarial Information Retrieval on the Web, was created to discuss and minimize the damaging effects of aggressive web content providers.

SEO companies that employ overly aggressive techniques can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients. Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger Aaron Wall for writing about the ban. Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google did in fact ban Traffic Power and some of its clients.

Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry, and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, chats, and seminars. In fact, with the advent of paid inclusion, some search engines now have a vested interest in the health of the optimization community. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with site optimization. Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website. Yahoo! Site Explorer provides a way for webmasters to submit URLs, determine how many pages are in the Yahoo! index and view link information.

Getting indexed

The leading search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results. Yahoo's paid inclusion program has drawn criticism from advertisers and competitors. Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review. Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.

Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.

Preventing indexing

Main article: Robots Exclusion Standard

To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.

White hat versus black hat

SEO techniques are classified by some into two broad categories: techniques that search engines recommend as part of good design and those techniques that search engines do not approve of and attempt to minimize the effect of, referred to as spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods, and the practitioners who employ them, as either white hat SEO, or black hat SEO. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.

An SEO technique is considered white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines, but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see.

White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the spiders, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility, although the two are not identical.

Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines, or involve deception. One black hat technique uses text that is hidden, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking.

Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms, or by a manual site review.

One infamous example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for use of deceptive practices. Both companies, however, quickly apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's list.

As a marketing strategy

Eye tracking studies have shown that searchers scan a search results page from top to bottom and left to right (for left to right languages), looking for a relevant result. Placement at or near the top of the rankings therefore increases the number of searchers who will visit a site. However, more search engine referrals does not guarantee more sales. SEO is not necessarily an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be much more effective, depending on the site operator's goals. A successful Internet marketing campaign may drive organic traffic to web pages, but it also may involve the use of paid advertising on search engines and other pages, building high quality web pages to engage and persuade, addressing technical issues that may keep search engines from crawling and indexing those sites, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure their successes, and improving a site's conversion rate.

SEO may generate a return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantees and certainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors. It is considered wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic. A top-ranked SEO blog Seomoz.org has reported, "Search marketers, in a twist of irony, receive a very small share of their traffic from search engines." Instead, their main sources of traffic are links from other websites.

International markets

A Baidu search results page

The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches. In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and Google remains the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007. As of 2006, Google held about 40% of the market in the United States, but Google had an 85-90% market share in Germany. While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.^[44]

In Russia the situation is reversed. Local search engine Yandex controls 50% of the paid advertising revenue, while Google has less than 9%. In China, Baidu continues to lead in market share, although Google has been gaining share as of 2007.

Successful search optimization for international markets may require professional translation of web pages, registration of a domain name with a top level domain in the target market, and web hosting that provides a local IP address. Otherwise, the fundamental elements of search optimization are essentially the same, regardless of language.^[44]

Legal precedents

On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."

In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. Kinderstart's web site was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007 the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend, and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization