If you have done any research on SEO, there is a good chance you know about Google PR. You know it shows up on your Google toolbar, and that is has some weight in determining your search engine rankings. But, what really is it, how does it work, and what should you do about it?

Google Pagerank is yet another way the fine folks at Google try to determine the importance of your webpage and it’s place in the search engine rankings. By assigning a proprietary ranking to your web page (From PR0 to PR10), it is easier to see what the value of your page is (in the eyes of Google) and to find other link partners that will help boost your websites PR and rankings. It also lets you compare your website to your competitors subjectively and find places where you need improvement.

What is the Algorithm?

The algorithm that Google uses to determine a sites page rank is truly unknown. While many people claim to know the major components of it, hardly anyone knows the whole formula. It is generally accepted that getting links from high PR sites is the best way to increase the PR of your own site. Unlike many other search engine metrics, Google PR doesn’t seem to take many on page factors into consideration when determining the PR of a web page.

Spoofed Pagerank

More and more website owners are trying to artificially inflate their page ranks in hope of increasing their search engine rankings. The main way they do this is by building or participating in link farms. By artificially creating a net of linked together websites, you can boost your PR to a higher level, even though your website is not important.

Another thing people try is purchasing paid links from high PR sites. While this does work, if Google finds out they will penalize your website. There is no real way of knowing how Google finds out this information, or the actual amount of sites they penalize for paid links, but you should be careful when engaging in this kind of activity.

No-Follow Links

One thing that web developers can do is classify their links as “nofollow”. What this does is not transfer any of their Pagerank to the sites they link to when the nofollow tag is attached. This limits the effectiveness of comment spamming and people posting their links for their own personal benefit.

All in all, Google PR is something you should be aware of, but it is not the only important thing when thinking about SEO. There are many on page and other off page factors that determine where your website ranks in the search engines, and they should not be neglected. The best plan is to work on every aspect of your site, make it attractive to users, and in the end, Google will rank you high (hopefully..)

Some of the features this plugin has to offer:

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
• For Wordpress 2.7 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• You can fine-tune everything
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

Installation is as simple as any other plugin. Just upload the unzippped files to your plugins folder and activate the plugin in your admin panel.

You can download the plugin here.

o Getting indexed is a top priority.

o Is your site SEO-friendly?

o Keywords are your friends.

o Using tags are important.

o In terms of content, it is quality over quantity.

And much more. Please let us know if you want to see anything added in our future E-books.

Thank you!

]]> http://www.talkingseo.com/2009/01/24/talkingseocom-releases-its-first-e-book/feed/ http://www.talkingseo.com/2009/01/12/meta-tags-significance-and-use/ http://www.talkingseo.com/2009/01/12/meta-tags-significance-and-use/#comments Tue, 13 Jan 2009 01:28:48 +0000 Sean Walker http://www.talkingseo.com/?p=79 One of the better ways to get your site listed in search engine result pages is using Meta tags. Meta tags are specific formatted texts used while designing a webpage. They are generally used for writing the keywords, gist of the page and other metadata. The data of data is called the Metadata and the data within the keyword of words is usually the Meta tag.

Significance of Meta Tags

Meta Tags are used to provide information of WebPages to search engines crawlers and spiders. When a visitor searches for a website, the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) display the title of your website i.e. Meta title and the Meta description of your website. The later brings the maximum importance to Meta tags. Most of the search engines today index the whole webpage along with the Meta tags. A few of them emphasize on Meta tags. Naturally, they have lost much of their importance.

How to use Meta Tags

The selection of your Meta tags should be such that they describe the chief elements on your webpage. Too long Meta tags could be equally worthless. Try tagging within 170 words and whatever you tag must be on a single webpage. A Meta tag can be written in the following manner:

<meta name=”Page Title” content=”How to use Meta tags” />

OR,

<meta name=”Keywords” content=”meta, tags, use” />

OR,

<meta name=”Tips and Tricks” content=”Tips, tricks, secrets” />

The Meta tags used above can be an example of a webpage with a title “How to use Meta tags” with keywords like ‘meta’, ‘tags’ and ‘use’ and the description part which contains tips and tricks of using Meta tags. You can always customize your Meta tags using various other attributes like description, language, robots, noodoop and noydir.

Meta Tag Optimization Tips and Tricks

Meta tags are not for human eyes but they are made for search engines. A proper text and description of a page should be used in the Meta tags. The better your description is, the more visitors it will attract via the search engines. It is because most people click on links that have the best description suited to their needs. Use your primary and secondary keywords as Meta tags. A Meta tag for every webpage is necessary. Meta tags of current page should describe the page itself and not any other page. Each page should have its unique set of Meta tags. Meta tags should never be based on your complete website.

Software to Generate Meta Tags

If you feel uncomfortable to select the Meta tags yourself, let software do the work. You can use the Taggen Office software from http://www.hisoftware.com/taggen.htm. It has also a trial version which you can test. You can also use Dubon core Meta Tag generator at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/. This site generates Meta tags for you based on Dublin core but the problem is that it generates too many Meta tags.
Although Meta tags are not the only weapon behind a successful search engine marketing but they do have a great value in SEO. Being a Search Engine Optimizer, every small and big aspect should be covered. A complete optimization can give you the best ranks.

Does SERP Contain Only Relevant Results?

Relevant results with titles, Meta descriptions and snippets are the main focus for a SERP. But, there are many other things that fill up the SERP.

i)    Sponsored listings are seen in almost every SERP. They are ads relevant to your searches.

ii)    Besides that, image, videos, maps, definitions and books are also present in a SERP.

iii)    Search refinements are suggested in specific search engines. They refine general spelling mistakes and suggest common searches.

iv)    There are also special customized SERP’s that give you results from a specific website or a group of websites.

Technologies Used to Create SERPs

Every search engine has a unique way of searching. In the beginning, search engines used various search techniques like sequential and binary search. Today, search engines use innumerous algorithms to search for your pages. They use powerful query caching technologies that improve the performance sharply.
Meta tags are used to analyze webpage contents and matched tags form the results. The minimum time a search engine takes to bring the maximum amount of results, the more efficient a search engine is. Many Search engines offer Advanced Searches that help you to narrow your search and give you the most relevant results.

Search Engine Ranking Positions

The position of a link in a SERP determines the number of visitors following the link. Naturally, the links in the beginning are likely to be followed the most. To bring the links to a better position proper Search engine Optimization is needed.  This is also called Search engine marketing. Sponsored Listings through SERP’s could be an option but optimizing your websites is the best option. Keywords, Inbound Links and Seniority are also some important aspects that greatly affect your SERP ranking.

SERPs Hide Many Things from You

It may be for faster searches, classified information or keeping logs. Search engines hide many things from you. Today, the most advanced search engines like Google keep track of many things that are invisible to you. They insert tracking codes into SERP’s. These track the type of searches you make and sort out relevant searches that you could make in the near future. This increases the performance. They also keep logs of specific searches.

Too many similar searches could make you pass through a Captcha code. They use this to stop bots from performing searches and decreasing performance. Even there exist several pages that search engine spiders are not allowed to crawl on. These pages are generally the password protected ones and classified ones. You should not expect to get such pages from search engines.

The technology and algorithms behind creating a SERP are so vast and various that it could be a separate field of science today. A small piece of info from me: There are many careless webmasters out in the market who forget to secure their sites properly. You could use search engines to sneak into them.

Wondering what ‘key word density’ is? It is a tool that optimizes search engine results. It measures the number of times a keyword or phrase occurs on a web page in comparison to total number of words on that page. It is always expressed in percentage terms.

Formula

Key word density value is calculated using this formula: specified keyword or phrase/ total words in the web page under consideration X 100. This formula tries to measure the relative proportion of the keyword or phrase you specify in a web page to gauge whether that page would furnish you the information you are looking for.

The Acceptable Range

Search engines recommend a keyword density between 5-10 % as the ideal density. This density value is applicable to each page in your site. This is a ‘Comfortable density value’ that will ensure that the web page text flows freely and is easy to read and comprehend as well or the searcher will not read the page or buy the product that it markets.

The Bad Range

You are now probably wondering whether there is an upper limit to the keyword density value, which should not be crossed? The answer is yes. A keyword density value above 10% is unacceptable to search engines. Technically keyword/phrase overuse in web pages is termed as ‘keyword stuffing’; it renders the web content incoherent and overwhelming to the user.

Apart from running down web page content quality, keyword stuffing will also invite penal actions from the search engine companies against your website. Your web venue may be downgraded in search outcome; your search engine ranking will fall and as an extreme step the search engine may ban your website by flagging it as a spam site.

How to Ensure Correct Keyword Density in Your Web Page?

The silver lining in the cloud is that you can plan your web content to include the right number of keywords or phrases at significant places so that your keyword density is not unnaturally high to invite a search engine penalty.

You don’t have to go through laborious manual keyword density calculations either. A plethora of software designed to help you automate this process, are available. Keyword density checker calculator, Keyword density analyzer and live key word analysis are some of the popular tools used for this purpose. These analyzers save you much effort and time.

Keyword density value may make or mar your web site content. So next time you set out to showcase your creative masterpiece on the internet, do take utmost care to keep the use of your keywords in moderation.

Check your Keyword Density with our tool

Search engine Marketing or SEM is Internet Marketing that helps improve your rankings on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s). The maximum part of traffic when delivered by search engines gives the highest traffic count for your website. The better the page rank you have in the SERP’s, the better visitors find your site via search engines.

Background of SEM

It was about mid 90s when search engines were developed to make searches for websites worldwide. Pay per Click programs came into view since Open Text and Goto.com started offering such services from 1996-1998. Google entered this arena from 2000 via their Adwords program.

PPC Networks or Paid Search Listings

SEM can be performed using effective campaigns like Pay per Click (PPC) or sponsored links and organic links. When you type a search in Google or Yahoo the shaded links on the top or right side of the page are the sponsored links and the rest of the page contains the organic links. Both the campaigns are useful but each one has its gain over the other.
Signing up as an Advertiser at Pay per Click programs has proven to be a successful marketing strategy. Google Adwords and Yahoo Overture are good PPC programs where you can choose your ads by defined keywords related to your website. PPC programs like adwords also helps you in geo-targeting a specific group of visitors. Your ads are placed on relevant websites and the visitors in those websites get directed to your website by a click on your ad for which you agree to pay a fixed price.

Organic Links and Sponsored Links

Organic links are better than sponsored links as they have a huge base of web users. They are the actual results. Users are more likely to accept them easily. At the same time the effect of sponsored links cannot be denied. Positioned at the top of the page it also earns quite a bit of traffic. For sponsored links, the webpage linked to has to pay a certain price for the click that leads a user to their webpage. You should use both the campaigns for successful marketing.

Inbound Links

Getting your website linked from other websites is an effective way of SEM. When highly ranked websites link to your website, the web crawler takes a note of this and your webpage gets increased visibility and impressions via the search engines. You can do this via Directory submissions. Free submissions to Web Directories like DMOZ and to paid submissions like Yahoo can be very helpful.

Search Engine Optimization Software

You can also try some bulk submission software like WEBCEO that automatically submits your website links along with keywords and descriptions to thousands of directories around the world. This makes your work even easier. WEBCEO also has an update feature and it updates its database periodically. It is extremely useful Search Engine Optimizing software that really gives the results you expect.
Ultimately, your Search Engine Marketing depends basically on 3 rules: Keyword, Seniority and Inbound Links. The more optimized your keywords are the better you capture the market. The older a website is, higher are than chances for a high page rank. The more inbound links, the more effective your website will be.

Choosing the Right Keywords for Your Website

You need to identify the obvious keywords for your website. Phrases are better than single words. You should identify a primary keyword that most visitors are likely to use in their search. Optimize your webpage according to the primary keyword you selected. Selection of a set of secondary and tertiary keywords would also help in widening the search scope for your website. Maximize your focus on the primary keyword. Identify the set of secondary keywords and lastly your tertiary keywords, if you have any.

Keyword Analysis Tools

Selection of your keyword should be precise, keyword analysis tools could be very helpful for this. You can take a look at the current log files from your website and the keywords used in general to help get an idea on what you should use. If you use Google Webmaster tools, also look at the current keyword traffic. Wordtracker.com has a paid keyword research tool that can analyze your website in an advanced way, It generates the most remunerative keywords. There are also various keyword research tools available online like WEBCEO and WEBSEO which you can check out.

Narrowly Focused Keywords

Times have changed. Now there is a tough competition for the most probable keywords. That’s why you need to examine your competitor’s keywords and be specific in your keyword selection. Use keywords that are narrowly focused to face less competition. But, be sure that your keyword reflects your website. Try to use highly searched keywords with the minimum competition. The less competition you face the more traffic you derive.

Geo-Targeting via Keyword

Localizing your keywords for geo-targeting a group of visitors would be very useful. Use Geo-specific terms like “San Diego Wal-Mart”. It would also be useful to be acknowledged with words with same meaning used in different locations. Target your keywords accordingly. You should also focus on the rate at which visitors come to your site through your keywords and the rate at which they turn into consumers of goods or services.

Specifically Formatted Keywords

You should specifically use the name of your company or the products or services offered by you, as keywords. Using anchored tags, meta-tags, bold and italic keywords helps the search engines recognize targeted keywords better. Finally, you should test your optimized pages and keywords using Google, Yahoo and other mostly used search engines. This process might be tiresome but you need to get the tested results or you might end up using useless keywords.
Misspelled and Hyphenated Keywords

Anticipation is one of the biggest weapons in Search Engine Marketing. You should give a trial anticipating your targeted visitor’s needs and try to meet them. You should also include the misspellings of your selected keywords. Over 20% of all searches contain misspellings, neglecting them could have sufficient setbacks. So, target some misspelled keywords including singulars and plurals and hyphens.

Thank you

Talking SEO Forums, SEO Forums

Most webmasters ask: “Why not give us a list of IP’s to help identify the bots?”. Read Googles response below.

“Telling webmasters to use DNS to verify on a case-by-case basis seems like the best way to go. I think the recommended technique would be to do a reverse DNS lookup, verify that the name is in the googlebot.com domain, and then do a corresponding forward DNS->IP lookup using that googlebot.com name; eg:

> host 66.249.66.1
1.66.249.66.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer crawl-66-249-66-1.googlebot.com.

> host crawl-66-249-66-1.googlebot.com
crawl-66-249-66-1.googlebot.com has address 66.249.66.1

I don’t think just doing a reverse DNS lookup is sufficient, because a spoofer could set up reverse DNS to point to crawl-a-b-c-d.googlebot.com.”

Visit Google’s blog