Ok this is going to be the last post for the year 2007. I have learned many SEO lessons in that year and looking forward applying them in the upcoming 2008.
I am going to call 2008 year of SEO. Why? Because of lessons learned in 2007 from all the successes and failures. SEO is a must in today’s competitive internet. There are so many similar and competitive websites out there, and SEO remains the most cost effective solution for all specially for small businesses.
My 2008 SEO resolution is to better understand Google and its direction and keep up with all the SEO news and methods. So that is why I call this year, year of SEO. It is going to be a fun but challenging year ahead as far as SEO concerned but meanwhile I am going to enjoy rest of the holiday so I can relax and refresh.
To search engines links are like votes. When a website links to you, to search engines it means they are voting for you. But search engines do more than just counting votes. They want to ensure these votes (these links) are legitimate, so they weight the source and relevancy of the links coming to your site. If the links are coming from a website with high ranking that is somehow relevant to your site, then those links count toward your ranking and will help significantly in your website ranking.
So as a good SEO specialist, you should go beyond traditional link exchange and think of yourself more like a campaign managers for your website(s). The more presentable and resourceful your website is, and more people know about it, the higher chance of other websites linking to you with relevant contents. The point is to bait for links. This method is called “link baiting” in the SEO world. I suggest you do not go out of your way to buy or exchange links because search engines treat those paid or exchange links just as voting officials treat an dishonest politician trying to buy or exchange votes. You should try to earn your votes (your links), by making your website the website to visit for your field.
So if a site is not coming up in Google’s SERP, don’t jump to conclusion than the site is banned. Google does not ignore proxies and that has caused some issues.
It is basically a black hat trick that has been around for a while that allows third parties to effect your Google’s SERP and make your site disappear completely from Google for a period of time. Dan Thies explains this in detail in his article “Google Proxy Hacking: How A Third Party Can Remove Your Site From Google SERPs“.
According to SiteProNews, the popular search engine Google owns an SEO company. SiteProNews. Google has been a strong critical of SEO firms in the past and it often insists that its natural search results are fair and none sponsored. Google claims that it does not take money for natural search engine positioning and it does not expose its complex search algorithm to any company.
This is how it went down; Google acquired DoubleClick a while back, so it also inherited a SEO company owned by DoubleClicked called Performics. This has raised questions and doubts about Google’s sincerity about its fairness in organic search results. Google has also expressed that they have no plan of disposing the company.
So is this a simple overlook by Google? Does a big company like Google overlook such huge conflict of interest? Or is Google not practicing the words they preach and the old saying that “there is a price for everything” is completely relevant in this case?
Alt attributes also referred to as Alt tags are important for search engines when searching for images. If you have used Google’s image search and you want to find how those images come up, they are based on Google’s image search algorithm that is fairly complex but still rely heavily on an image alt tag.
Here is a free tip from Google’s very own, Matt Cutts
Today at work I had to meet with company executives and the senior management to explain the details of our SEO strategy for the company. There were much details specified in this meeting but the CFO of the company asked how much money and CPM (Chief project manager) asked how many hours. I really had no answer at the time to either one of them but the the Marketing Director came to my rescue by saying something very nice. He simply said “SEO should be considered a life style”. Not only I was relived because he said that and took some pressure off me, but I also agreed with him 100%.
SEO is a never ending project so if you are a business owner or a senior manager you have every right to demand for numbers but do consider that SEO should not be considered as one or more projects but you should understand that SEO is an ongoing refinement and optimization of your website(s), on-site and off-site. True it can be broken down to phases, projects, and tasks, but it is a never ending process for as long as you are in business. Because your competitors won’t sit back to see you succeed without challenging you as they will do everything they can to get ahead of you in all aspect business and SEO is no exception. And top search engines always change and update their search algorithm and their SERPs.
So it is important to realize and understand that SEO is an on going process and you should never stop performing SEO on your site(s). Stay on top of your SEO work and continue educating yourself about the latest SEO methods and SEO news to get and stay head.
Many SEO specialists and webmasters spend hours, days, and even weeks trying to add their websites to online free directories and do link exchange with other random or low ranking sites to improve their website ranking. It is just matter of time when they realize (and sometimes they are too stubborn to realize) that all that time was nothing but a waste.
That is because quality of incoming links to your site is more valuable than quantity of them. Google and other top search engines are always increasing the value of their search results so they want the true high ranking websites therefore they value links coming from higher ranking websites to your site more than those links coming to your site from low ranking ones.
Therefore in order to increase your website ranking, try to get a links from sites with ranking of 3 or higher. They higher the rank of that website is, the higher ranking your website will become. And if you could get those links to be text links with your keywords in those links, then even better. It would even help more if those links were coming from a high ranking website that is relevant to what you do.
Your ranking will get even better obviously if you can get more high ranking websites link to you. So don’t stop working once you get a link or two form high ranking websites. Try to get more. That is when you quantity become effective and makes a differences
So remember, first comes quality of back links. Don’t waste your valuable time with those back-links from low ranking websites. Try to get those links coming from high ranking websites. Once you get one high ranking site link to you, then it’s time to work on next one.
I was going to take the time to write a post on SEO basics and advanced SEO. And from Content SEO prospective it would make perfect sense because more contents mean more traffic, but I value my time more. So I am going to link you to brief online SEO course by Media College.
I will soon post another post on Black Hat and Gray Hat, SEO strategies.
If your company is like the company I am contracting with, then you will have multiple partners pointing to your site each one with a unique query string. Those query strings are important for your statistics, so that way you track which one of your partners’ sites your users are coming from.
But as you may already know there is an SEO problem here. Because Google treats sites with different query string as different pages/sites when it comes to ranking, your website will not get the ranking it truly deserves no matter how many partners are linking to it.
To solve this issue without rewriting your site and its logic, there are 3 options, or should I say SEO Methods that you can choose from.:
SEO Method 1: Block all affiliate landing pages from search engines. This takes out duplicate content issues.
SEO Method 2: Record the click transaction right away, then do a 301 redirect immediately to a URL without the tracking code and just pass the session as a cookie and if page a does a 301 to page b and a link goes to page a it is like having a link to page b. If it redirects using a 301 redirect.
Note: This is by far the most common implemented technique.
SEO Method 3: Convert querystring symble from “?” to “#”. Google ignores everything after # sign as comment. This will require some javascript coding and URL rewriting.
For example: domain.com/path/file.aspx#param=value
Note: I have not tried this myself but I have seen it done and also my fellow SEO experts who have tried it testify that it works:
Remember when developing websites, it is important to try to stay away from query strings as much as possible. If you MUST use query strings, then I suggest you try to keep them as short and as possible as possible. And if you have multiple partners and affiliate website pointing to your website with different query strings, then choose the best option, or “SEO Method” mentioned above that seems to be feasible for you and the one that is right for your site.
