I have recent started a few search engine optimization campaigns for a few of my sites. Discussion of results and methods used can be discussed once the results start coming out. What I really want to talk about tools that can help you check or track your rankings, SERPs and keywords that may have been targeted during the campaign. There are many free tools out there but I have not been satisfied by any of them as 90% of the times they do not work and if they work they don’t give the correct results. Offcourse, there are premium tools like SEOMoz and OpenSiteExplorer but they charge too much, hell no way i am going to pay $50+ a month to check a campaign on which I have invested $200 only.

My main concern was to test/check my keywords and SERP rankings. I use a free tool PaRaMeter by CleverStat. I am an avid user of this FREE tool. So while browsing their site I came across their new tool Accurate Monitor for Search Engines.

The thing I about CleverStat is that they provide a free trial of every of their software. I went ahead and downloaded their software. And OMG was I shocked. Here are a few features that I am proud to tell you guys:

Track your results on 15+ Search Engine, oh yes, I had originally intended to check my rankings on Google and Yahoo but tracking results on these other search engines had help me improve my campaign and improve on traffic.

Adwords Tracking, I can now check my keywords on Adwords and other paid directories where I have started my campaign.

FREE Keyword Suggestion Tool is one of the best tools that is offered free with this tool. How great is this. No need to register for any other premium Keyword suggestion tool and service.

Save Money with this Accurate Monitor for Search Engines. Yes, the license only costs $99. I can track unlimited campaigns with this tool. There is no LIMIT on using this tool

SEO or Search Engine Optimization, one of the most searched word on search engines. Today, I have compiled a few pointers that are going to help you get better optimization so search engines could index your blogs/websites faster and you may get a better ranking. On Page Optimization also helps you get better results when you run a backlink campaign.

seo-101

Keyword in URL

Google’s Matt Cutts posted a recent video answering a question about the position of the keywords in the URL. The question asked, does the order of the words in the URL make an impact on one’s ranking at Google? Matt Cutts said one should not obsess about the order of the words but he said keywords in the URL “does help a little bit.”
Read More

Keyword in Title

I have a ton of information that can be posted here, but i would like to share this post on Use Keywords in Title

Keyword in H1, H2, H3 Tags

Here is an depth guide of using heading in a page. Headings in SEO. Using these heading tips will help you get better search engine hits

Keyword Density 1% ~ 2%

Getting a good keyword density in your content is really important, here is an article and a video by Matt Cutts

Outbound link must be nofollow

An article by SEOMoz:The Role of Outbound Links will sort out all questions on what an outbound link is.

At least 300 words of Unique Content

I would like not to share an article here but an InfoGraphic: Why Content is King for SEO

Image file name or alt text with keyword

Images are important for SEO. And using them in a correct way is very important so in short Image optimization

Other Tips

Meta Description
Other on-page Factorys

Don’t expect to receive the world and give nothing in return. Because your blog has not built up its own fan base yet, you’re going to have to rely on other individuals, websites and blogs to put in a good word for you. The more you give back, the more you will receive.

Blog Networks
Even if your blog is not yet complete, it’s never too early to start forming relationships with the blogging community. This is one promotional technique can be done even before your blog goes online. As I mentioned earlier, you can join blog networks such as MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. To get started, you can go to http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/ and browse for some blogs that interest you. Visit some of the blogs that you see there and join their MyBlogLog community.

Commenting
Usually when you comment on a blog, you have the option to enter your URL to be displayed along with your comment. Use this to your advantage! As you discover blogs that interest you, be sure to leave meaningful, quality comments. Just for the record, I’m not talking about spamming a ton of blogs. Read the articles that have been posted and leave quality comments that give something back to the blog you’re visiting. Each time you leave a comment, you will be leaving a link to your URL for all others
to see. You will also begin to form a relationship with the owners of the blogs you frequently visit, and you can never make too many friends in the blogging community. At times, a link to SiteFever.com has shown up on blogs which use the top commentator plugin I mentioned earlier just when Technorati decided to pay them a visit! +1 for my Technorati authority!

Chat rooms
Don’t forget about reverting back to the stone age of the good old fashioned chat room! If you have a Yahoo! or MSN ID, you can search for chat rooms pertaining to the subject matter of your blog. Let those whom you chat with know about your blog, being sure to post an active link to your site. Using chat rooms, you can inform hundreds of people within a very short amount of time about your blog.

Myspace
If you happen to have a MySpace account, be sure to talk about your blog on your profile page. Make as many friends as you can and send out a bulletin whenever you post something you think that your friends would enjoy reading.

Email Signature
How many people do you email in a day, a week or even a year? Use your email signature to promote your blog to everyone you send an email to. Be sure to include a live link to your site to make it easier for the recipient to visit your blog.

Blog Announcement
Write an honest, well written article about your blog. Describe the overall subject matter and its purpose. Include 2 or 3 links to your site along with a link to your RSS feed. Send that article to every blog owner you have formed a relationship with asking them to publish it either on your grand opening date or at their leisure. If the blog owner is smart, they just might hang on to your blog announcement for one of those days when they just can’t think of anything to write. Don’t be bashful- the worst they can do is say “no”!

Blog Reviews
Along the same line as a blog announcement, you can contact another blog owner asking them to write their own honest review of your blog. In return, you write a review of their blog. Preferably, both reviews would not be published on the same date. It would be best for one of you to post the first review and the other to wait for at least a week before posting the review of the other blog. Blog reviews always work out for the best when they’re kept honest. Try not to “beef up” a review just to make the other blog owner happy. Your visitors will see right through it and before you know it, the review will turn into an advertisement.

Forums
If you’re a member in any webmaster-related forums such as http://forums.digitalpoint.com, be sure to let members there know about your blog! If your blog is new, you can create a thread in a “review my site” forum informing the members that your blog is new and you would like an honest review of your site. Who knows? You just might find something out about your blog that you never knew! You can also use your forum signature and avatar to promote your blog. These are a great promotional tool because they are displayed each time you make a post within the forum, and will remain there indefinitely.

Link Directories
There are literally hundreds of thousands of link directories out there that you can submit your blog to- many of which are free. To aid you in finding them, you can again check out some webmaster-related forums and look for a board dedicated to link directories. Many link directory owners are trying to find people to add a link to their site. Be sure when doing so, you submit your blog to the most relevant category pertaining to your site so that anyone who sees your listing will be looking for what you offer.

Freebies
Everyone loves the word “FREE”. If you’re in need of a quick solution to boost your traffic, find a blog you would like to be featured on that receives about the same amount of traffic as you do. Contact the owner and let them know that if they would be willing to mention you in one of
their posts, you would be happy to give them a certain advertising space on your blog for free. For example, you can offer them a link in your sidebar or a small banner somewhere on your blog for 30 days. Best of all, you’re giving out something that doesn’t cost you a penny- the space was there anyway.

Guest Writing
Many blog owners will allow guest writing from time to time. Guest writing is where someone writes an article and has it published on a blog that they do not manage. Every few weeks, write an article on a topic that you believe would generate a lot of buzz. Be sure not to write an advertisement for your blog, but rather, a neutral well written article would work better. When
you do mention your blog, be sure to keep it brief, with possibly only one link back to your site. The more neutral the article is, the higher your chances that someone else would be willing to publish it on their blog.
Once your article is written, email it to a handful of people whose blogs you feel would benefit from it. Let them know that you are sending the article to them as a guest writer and that they are free to publish it on their blog. You may be surprised as to how many people are willing to do this. One blog comes to mind and that is http://carlocab.com where they are always taking submissions from guest bloggers who submit well written articles.

Bartering
With your new blog comes tons of room for link love! Find some blogs with similar subject matter to yours and email the owner asking them if they would like to swap links with you. You can also ask that they write a post reviewing what they think of your new blog (after you start posting), and in exchange you’ll do the same for them. Being listed on sites such as Technorati will come in handy at times like this because you can let them know that at the very least, their Technorati authority will increase by 1.

First of all, why do you want a high page rank? Just what does this give you?

 You want your high page rank because it gets you noticed. You want it because it will drive visitors to your web site. This has a greater possibility of happening when your page is ranked high within Google and other search engines. There is a ranking mechanism that ranges from P1 through to P10. Your goal is to be at P10. So, how do you get to one of these lofty positions? What gives you a P10 ranking within the search community? You do it by having text links to other pages on the web.

You can link to many pages, and this will drive up your ranking, but you must also pay attention to the quality of the pages you are linking to. In other words, have text links from your pages, to pages that are already linked high within the Google ranking system. This association will eventually get you the ranking you desire.

 However, the above can be a costly and lengthy process, so it is advisable to look into other ways you can get these links. Your sole purpose is to get to a higher position and there are alternate ways to do so. Here are a few recommendations:

 Blogging – Are you a blogger? Do you know successful, or well-read bloggers? Are you yourself a well-read blogger? Do you have a lot of followers? Do you write interesting and well thought of clogs? Linking to other bloggers, the more successful the better, and providing reciprocal links to your blogs, is one way of moving up in page ranking.

Page content – What is in your pages? How interesting is it? How unique is it? The more interesting and unique your content, the more chances that it will receive a higher ranking within Google. Plagiarizing other sites will not do it for you. You cannot just copy huge chunks of text from another site and think this will help you move up in the rankings. It won’t. You need to have a uniqueness of your own so other sites will provide links to you.

Social Networks – We all know, or should know by now, the power and breadth of use on the Internet when talking about social sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Get noticed on these sites, get people to refer to your pages and you will create an avalanche of links and you will soon realize what a powerful resource these sites are.

Buy Your Way to the Top – If you want to get the top in a more direct manner and with probably more speed, you can buy links from companies that specialize in page ranking sales. You will have to be very careful though. You can pay a lot of money, in the $1,000’s, before realizing your goals. You night get that ranking you desire, but if you have bought your way to the top and your site is not engaging, you will have missed an opportunity.

 These are just a few of the ways that you can use to increase your ranking. So take some time to plan what you want to do. Work your network. Become someone who has something interesting to say. Have a site that people want to link to, and you will be one your way the ranking you covet.

Unique content is something that is always in demand, buzzing around all known web pages. Everyone involved with internet has heard at least once that the unique content is a key to success, but not everyone seems to acknowledge its true importance, until traffic starts piling up and the website starts ranking well. What are the true benefits of writing unique content in your blog.

1. Quality content and original posts can attract people and visitors to your website. They are the ideal way to create a solid and steady reader’s base. Interesting and entertaining posts can attract people’s attention, much more than a bunch of dull sentences dropped in an article. Giving people something interesting, that can make them think, wonder, even doubt, can prove to be very helpful for you. Provoking reactions and sentiments is the key to an interesting article. Even a controversial post can be good, provided that it is original and inspiring. Quality content should be straightforward and a little entertaining; do not afraid to make your readers smile. It doesn’t diminish your seriousness or credibility; on the contrary it makes you look more approachable.
   
    
2. Unique content attracts both readers and other websites or blogs. You can create a long list of back links this way, which will affect your rankings in the most positive way.
    
3. Quality and unique content can build your credibility with your readers. You can prove that you know what you are writing about and that you are trustworthy and dependable. People trust those who seem to be well informed and educated on a particular subject.
    
4. Unique content prevents you from several penalties imposed by search engines – mostly for duplicate content.
    
5. Unique content can make you stand out from competition. Today, there are numerous websites that feature the same subject, more or less. Originality is limited and the chances to sound unique can increase your chances to attract more visitors and create a base of loyal readers.
    
6. Unique content is associated with valuable resources. Everyone wants to find people and articles he can trust. Offering personalised information can help you increase your readability and exposure.
    
7. Unique content offers three of the most wanted and desired elements online today: information, entertainment and exposure. If you can ensure all three, your chances to thrive are increased.

Creating unique content can be a daunting task, but it’s highly compensative, thus, it should be your top priority when writing a blog.

If you want to attract more visitors and make your blog popular and visible you need to have it ranking high in search engines. Optimizing your blog for the search engines is, thus, mandatory. Let’s see eight ways to SEO your blog effectively:

Get links and back links

It is known that one of the most effective ways to get more traffic and rank high in Google and other engines is link building. There are numerous ways to get more links: you can do some article marketing, write lists, how to’s, and post comments on other people’s blogs. You can write reviews or add quick links to blog posts from time to time. Link building is one of the most daunting but crucial tasks you need to do during your search engine optimization campaign.

Make sure that your blog is keyword friendly

Your blog should be based on several keywords which are the cornerstone of your business or niche. You need to have a blog title that contains your basic keyword and that summarizes your content. There are many tools you can use so as to generate the proper keywords, or estimate the value of your existing ones. The Word Tracker or Google Adwords are just some of them.

Use long tail keywords

 Long tail keywords are the ones that offer specific information. They can also ensure a strong placement in search engines, so they are really beneficial for your blog.

Use the right blog platform

Although there are many blog platforms out there, some of them are far more renowned and appreciated by search engines. WordPress is one of them. Starting a blog in a known platform can be very beneficial in SE.

Add Blog update options

Blogs are supposed to be frequently updated, thus, you need to allow search engines to have the information of your update as soon as possible. Adding a ping option is mandatory, as this function can notify the engines every time you add something new.

Use images

Images and videos, or media of that kind are an eye candy not only to visitors but also to search engines. If you are writing on WordPress you can use the image tag so as to properly tag your newly added picture and use proper picture or video labels.

Add a Sitemap

Adding a Google sitemap can help your page be crawled faster and easier. Search engines have trouble indexing dynamic websites, so a sitemap can really help.

Update your blog often

A blog is, by default, a page that needs to be updated often. You can write something every day, if you can, or at least 4-5 times a week. Try to add quality and informative posts, because the content is extremely valuable for search engines. 

One of the best ways to increase your ranking in search engines and attract more traffic for your blog is to have numerous back links. This is one of the most proven SEO methods for blogs and websites, but it seems that people have a serious problem getting enough back links for their sites.

Let’s see five ways to gain more back links for your blog:

Submit articles.

Article submission is one of the most effective and efficient online marketing methods. Today, there are numerous places online where you can submit articles, on something you are familiar with. If your blog refers to a particular niche, it is good to create article with a pertinent content. You can even use your first blog as an article, or something new that can be interesting and gripping. If you are not writing the blog posts by yourself but use a ghost-writer, ask him to create a new article of 400-450 words for you. You can post it to EzineArticles, GoArticles or Contentdesk.com. All these websites get some serious traffic and they can give you valuable back links.

Press Release Distribution

If your blog refers to a small business, an online home based business, you can create press releases and send them to the online press release websites. Press releases are easy to write and they are very popular. You can write a press release about your business blog and website and include a resource box with your link. Many people underestimate the importance of Press Releases, or consider them to be very limited, but the truth is that back links coming from press release websites are very important.

Directory submissions

Submitting your blog to directories is important, both because it can give you many back links, but also because they can increase traffic. Blog directories function the exact same way as the website directories: people can find an entire list of blogs for all possible subjects and niches.

Leave comments on other blogs

A great way to create back links is to leave positive comments on other people’s blogs. Leaving some serious, quality and positive comments will make people want to find out what you have to say. Your comments will directly link back to your blog.

Team with other bloggers.

Many bloggers try to team up with other bloggers so as to get more links to their blogs. This way they can have either one way or reciprocal links to their blogs. Blog rolls can work miracles so as to raise your blog’s rankings and get more back links at the same time. 

If you are a website owner and your site gets little traffic, then this is a serious cause for concern. Traffic that comes from major search engines, like Google or Yahoo is free, which means that if you don’t receive as much as you should, or as much as you would like, you should consider the reasons. 

Here are the most common reasons for which people do not know about your website.

• People do not submit their websites to search engines. It may sound absurd but many website owners think that once they put their website up, they will have traffic automatically. Submitting a website map to Google is a great idea, to start with. If people cannot find your website, they cannot visit it. It’s that simple.
• Lack of SEO. Poor search engine optimization is the main reason for which a website doesn’t get enough exposure or high rankings from the major search engines. This is more serious than it sounds, because it could also mean that your content is poor and your website code inflated. Using interesting and unique content is something that can help you improve your rankings and, thus, gain exposure
• Lack of promotion. In today’s competitive world, you need to make use of all the available tools. For instance, you have to create a Squidoo page, an account to Facebook or Twitter, or simply a blog. Websites like Digg or Del.icio.us are great sources of traffic. All these websites have their own particular followers and fans, who have their unique demands and preferences. If you can target well, you can gain significant traffic in no time. Marketing and advertising is your major goal; you need to make sure that people see your name and your link often: post comments in blogs, write articles, participate in online communities, and reply to answers online. These little things can make you thrive in no time.

The generation, publication and huge number of pages in the major portals and Web sites poses many challenges that the management systems of web content (or CMS, Content Management System) have tried to solve in recent years.

Below are some of such factors:

 1. To facilitate the generation and editing content for the Web by personnel without specific training in programming.

2. To ensure a uniform appearance of all content and its presentation according to a corporate design and editorial line with a predefined.

3. Maintain consistency in the structure of Web sites, allowing the incorporation of new content in the appropriate sections after approval and the preliminary screening of the persons listed.

4. Avoid the existence of duplicate content (different URLs that show the same content), an orphan content (files left on the server unnecessarily because they are pages that no longer suggests any link or image files or multimedia to be shown on pages deleted) or broken links, pointing to pages that do not exist on the server.

Due to all this many reasons and objectives, CMS companies such as Joomla, WordPress, Drupal are started up to satisfy this up roaring demand. Upgrades and improvement of each individual software are also deployed to keep the trend going on.

CMS are software tools that allow decentralize the work of maintaining the content of a portal, so that non-technical staff from different departments of an enterprise can add, edit and manage their own content on a corporate Web.

However, despite its obvious advantages, the traditional approach of such tools has focused on providing the best content management by streamlining production processes, approval and publication of the same, rather than to generate Web pages properly optimized to be competitive in the search engines.

Among the problems, from the viewpoint of optimization for search engine positioning include the following:

Dynamic URLs:

Search engines sometimes limit the number of dynamic variables in the URLs that indexed. The pages generated by many managers frequently contents include a large number of dynamic variables in your URL.

Unique Titles:

The title of a page is one of the most important factors when it comes to positioning well in a content search engines. However, many content management systems do not allow users to assign a single relevant to each page.

Lack of support for Meta tags:

CMS does not have many specific fields for the user to specify the contents of the Description and Keywords Meta tags. Although not as important as the way to achieve a good position in search engines, these labels are still playing an important role in the choice of the user to click on our site on a search results page.

Lack of keywords in the URL:

Dynamic URLs generated by many content management systems tend to be somewhat friendly to both the user and for the search engines, and do not include search terms that contribute to a better positioning.

Unable to post an optimization:

The process of producing content that imposes the use of a CMS system makes it very difficult to optimize post-generated content.

If you are a web developer, or you are in mist of developing your own CMS, stay tuned by subscribing to the feeds now. We will be discussing about various ways where you can make your CMS the best SEO tool in one of the post in the coming few entries.

Today, being the owner of a website without visitors is equivalent to having a point of sale of sand in the middle of the desert. It is definitely no use, that’s why we must do something to remedy it.

But not all is lost my friend! Let’s see how you can increasing your  traffic of your website.

The first thing to remember is that the popularity of your site – As we dictate the Almighty Google-is directly related to the number of links inbounds to your site. In other words, a greater number of other sites that display links to yours, the higher the ranking position in the Google search engine, hence our chance to appear at the top of searches is higher.

In truth, achieving this kind of linkage is one of the decisive factors for success in our task. Focus in this regard, and follow these tips that will help you on your way to the top.

(i) Keep in mind that the quality of links is more important than quantity. It should therefore be linked to Web sites of quality and avoid those with poor content or poor reputation (with objectionable content, adult or illegal). Another important issue is to try to establish links with other sites related to the theme of your website. Linking a page dedicated to the Rugby with a typical American Cooking is not the most suitable combination.

(ii) Be honest with your visitors. Do not drift into pages that are not related to the search just performed. For example, if you type in the title of your home page “Learn the secret of happiness. Click Here! “And then your visitors will encounter an online store selling vitamin supplements for orchids, you will most likely not only not over but never again, that any person aggrieved even complain about the maneuver unethical.

(iii) The key word is “reciprocity”. I add a link to your site, and you do the same with mine. The fact adds the link prior to contact with the administrator of possible new contact, usually predispose best for the person to the exchange. It involves give confidence to say “I already did my job and is in sight, has nothing to lose by adding a link to my site because theirs is up and running.”

(iv) Do you have ease of writing? If so, you have already travelled halfway. Just as you’re reading these tips on web promotion, you could write an article about some interesting topics that dominate on the boards and publish articles etc. Many visitors will be interested to read what I have to tell or teach, and some of them will want to visit your site (linked to the end of the article with biographical details) to delve into the subject or simply out of curiosity.

A campaign to link exchange is a slow and somewhat tedious but if done conscientiously surely reap the benefits within a reasonable time.