Creating backups of entire blogs!!!

Creating backups for your blogs is about the most valuable thing to do to make sure your blog is protected from being deleted by Google.

As blogger does not come with an export or download blog function, you can implement these instructions for creating single files with all yourblogs posts. Then you may publish and copy each post to your computer for safe keeping.

Note: If your intention is to continue using your preveous blog, saving a copy of each of your existing template in files on your computer. When the time comes, having your blog at hand on your computer makes sleeping a lot easier at night.

1. Log into your Blogger account, and switch into template-editing.
2. To make a copy of your blogs template, you will be replacing your Blogger template with the single page template in Step 3, but you probably don't want to lose your original template.
3. Replace your Blogger template with the following (note: you must remove the indentation from the following lines when pasting into your Blogger template):

AUTHOR: <$BlogItemAuthor$>DATE: <$BlogItemDateTime$>-----BODY:<$BlogItemBody$>-------- Optional: If you are using our commenting system, you can choose to export comments along with the posts. If you want to do this, add the following code to your template, just above the tag:
COMMENT-AUTHOR:<$BlogCommentAuthor$>COMMENT-DATE:<$BlogCommentDateTime$>COMMENT-BODY:<$BlogCommentBody$>--------

In Settings Publishing change your Blog Filename to a different filename; this will prevent you from overwriting your main index file. Make a note of your current Blog Filename so you can restore the setting after finishing. [Note: This only applies to users publishing via FTP. Free BlogSpot users will need to overwrite their existing blog page, but it will be replaced as soon as the blog is republished with the original template.]

In Settings Formatting, set your blog to display all of your posts on the main index page. There is no explicit setting for this; instead, you should change the number of days displayed on your front page (Show N days' posts on main page) higher than the number of days that you have been blogging.

In Settings Formatting set Date/Time Format to the format MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS AMPM. (Note: the format will not look like this in the menu; instead it will be the current time, formatted.) Make a note of your current setting so you can restore it after finishing.
Also in Settings Formatting set Convert Line Breaks to No.

In Settings Archiving, set Archive Frequency to No Archive. This will prevent your archives from being overwritten with the new template.

Republish your blog; you will end up with a single file with all of your posts, formatted using the above template, at the location specified in your Settings. Open this file in your web browser and save the file to your local hard drive.

Restore the previous settings (Blog filename, archive frequency, timestamp, etc.) in your blog and replace the temporary template with your saved copy. Publish the blog and view the page to check that everything is correct.

Boost your traffic with website directories

Directories are places where users go to find websites, just like they do with search engines. However, there are significant differences between the two. For people who are trying to boost the traffic to their sites, it is vital to understand these differences in order to succeed.

While search engines normally accept almost any site or page that is submitted to them without looking at its quality, directories usually only accept sites that offer quality information.

Because all sites submitted to directories are reviewed by humans, sites that are of low quality rarely get accepted.

This leads us to a logical conclusion: Before submitting your site to any directories, make sure that your site is completely ready for it! I strongly recommend that you read the "Web page design" section of this site for more information on how to prepare your site for the submission.

Remember that directories list sites, not pages. In normal circumstances, you should only submit the front page of your site to directories.

Which directories can really boost your traffic?

If you did what I suggested above, your site should now be ready to be submitted to different directories. But how does this happen? Well, first you'll of course have to pick the directories you're going to submit to.

The most important ones your site should get into are Yahoo, Looksmart and DMOZ, also known as Open Directory. You can, and should, read more about their individual features from their own sections on this site.

What about the other directories? Well, there are a few other interesting ones you might want to submit to, but they are far less important than the "big three" above. Do submit to them if possible, but focus on Yahoo, Looksmart and DMOZ, since they provide way more traffic.
OK, now you know where you should submit to. But how do you actually submit? It is relatively simple. Nearly all directories consist of different categories and subcategories, each consisting of sites related to the name of the category. You'll just need to find the category (or more often, subcategory) that best fits the topic of your site.

This can be done by either browsing through the directory or by doing a search on the keyword that best describes your site - often the directory will return a few categories that are relevant to your site and you'll just need to choose the one that seems to be most accurate.

Usually, it is best to submit to the most detailed category that applies to your site; if your site is about programming in C++, you should submit to >Computers>Programming>C++ instead of >Computers>Programming>.

It is wise to spend some time to search the most accurate category for your site, since submissions done to the wrong categories are usually just thrown out. In addition, the category you submit to will be the category you're going to be stuck with for the rest of your site's life, and getting stuck in the wrong category might cost you some heavy traffic.

The submission process

After you've found the right category for your site, it is time to move on to the actual submitting process. This is an even more delicate part than the last one, so keep on your toes. The first thing to do is to carefully read the directory's rules and instructions on how to submit.

They are usually displayed when you are beginning the submission process. Read them over a couple of times and follow them to the letter.

Nearly all directories will ask you to give the title of your site and a description of it when you are submitting. Put some thought in creating these, because they can significantly boost or reduce the amount of traffic you'll get from the directory.

When writing your description, don't stuff it with words like 'best' or 'cheapest', and don't use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Write a short (15-25 words) description that accurately describes your site, and try to make it sound like an impartial review.

It would be also a good idea to check how the descriptions of the other sites in the same category are written and use them as a model.

If possible, make sure that one or two of your best keywords are included in the description, but don't just stuff them there. Your description should sound like it's a natural sentence. If the editor thinks your description is little more than a list of keywords, he'll reject it and write a new one that may not include even a single keyword.

Having one or two of your most important keywords in your description often helps your site to be found when a user searches the directory instead of browsing it.

If you later decide that the description you entered the first time isn't good enough, it is possible to contact most directories and try to get your description changed to a better one. Unfortunately, it is usually very difficult and very time-consuming to get directories to change the description of your site at a later date.

Thus, it is heavily recommended that you try and get it right the first time.

Your title should be brief, it is not a place to list all your products and services. If possible, the title should include your most important keyword in it and start with a letter that is near the beginning of the alphabet. 'Automobile World' is better than 'World of Automobiles', because many directories list sites in alphabetical order and getting listed near the top can boost your traffic from the directory.

Since the title MUST be the official title of the site and it must be used on your pages, this might require you to change the name of your site. In addition to this, the title must sound like it just happens to start with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet, or it will get edited.

The actual title of this site is 'A Promotion Guide', but Yahoo listed me as 'Promotion Guide, A', since the Yahoo editor thought the 'A' was included just to get to the top of the list. The same rules that apply to the description apply to the title - no promotional hype, no all capital letters.

After you have entered all the information, remember to check it for any possible typos or errors in spelling. Be extra careful with your URL, since a typo in it would naturally result in your site never getting reviewed. Then, say a quick prayer (in the case of Yahoo, at least two prayers) and hit the submit button. Good luck!

You'll usually get an E-mail if your site is accepted, but rarely if it is rejected. It is thus sometimes hard to know whether your site has been reviewed and rejected or if it is still unreviewed. If you don't get an E-mail after a few days and your site has not appeared to the directory, don't panic.

Wait a few weeks until resubmitting your site; many directories are flooded with submissions and will get annoyed if you don't give them enough time to process the submission.

Give Your Web Site Design a Booster Shot

By Candice Pardue, editor of Web Design Weekly

Your Web site just sits there on the WWW, waiting for people to stumble onto it. Millions of people are out there, but they're not visiting your site. So, what can you do? Give your site design a booster shot to increase profit potentials! Here's how.

Put Your Site in Motion

Move things around, add more valuable content pages - keep your site moving so it stays under the radar of the search engines. Search engines like sites that are constantly updating with new information.

Every Web page you add is a new opportunity to submit your site to the search engines. Every article you write (or have ghost-written) can be submitted to article directories for more exposure to your target audience.

Test Your Site's Flow

Your site should flow when readers arrive. They should be able to enter your homepage or some other page on your site and feel right at home. Make sure every page works in unison to bring the customer to your ultimate goal - a sale or a click!

Make sure a link is included at the bottom of every page presentation for your products or services. Also, be sure all links in the sidebars are working properly.

Proofread Your Site's Presentation

You should read over your presentation several times to be sure it sounds enticing and grammatically correct. Ask a friend to read it as well. Make sure it reads smoothly and leads the visitor through the site. Every presentation page should contain the following:

*Powerful headline
*Opening paragraph with a pull to read more
*Testimonials or quotes from you
*Closing for the sale
*Order instructions or a link to read more on your site

Test for Search Engine Friendliness

Your site should have a title and description in the Meta tags that will pull a visitor in from a keyword search. Remember, when someone types in a keyword or key phrase at a search engine, your title will appear, then your brief description. This is your actual search engine listing.

Having a powerful lead-in is just as important (if not more) as your presentation when they arrive at your site. Besides, your sales presentation doesn't do a bit of good if the visitors never come!

Take a look at this example for a Meta tag title and description under the key search phrase "101 personal website ideas."

Title: 101 Personal Website Ideas - FREE!
Description: 101 Ideas for Creating Your Personal Website.
Before reading the ideas below, please sign up for our FREE Newsletter offer called the Web Design Weekly ...

Notice the title matches the key phrase, and the description re-emphasizes the phrase and leads the customer to click and read more. The description also offers a free service (subscription) from the start. This is crucial to getting visitors to your site from the search engines.

The example above is an actual lead-in listing from Google for my Web site ideas page. This one page listing brings in around 500 visitors per month to my web design training site. These are very targeted visitors!

All these factors working together will help build traffic to your site and turn your visitors into paying customers. This is one booster shot where a needle is not necessary!

About Author

Written by Candice Pardue, editor of Web Design Weekly. If you'd like to learn Web design, the process is simple.

Adsense Video Ads

Google announced it's releasing on video ads with adsense, and they also indicated that something big could be about to happen. Video ads that look like television commercials could well change many of the strategies that we currently use to maximize our revenues.

In case you haven't seen them, the video ads are available in three formats: medium rectangle (300 x 250), large rectangle (336 x 280) and square (250 x 250). They begin with a static image and require the user to press the Play button to run the video.

You can either get paid by impression or per click -- but that's per click on the link or on the screen when the ad is running, not on the Play button.

At the moment, Google's video ad inventory is pretty small, but it's only going to get bigger. It's just so easy these days to create and edit a short ad, that there's no reason why even a small company can't create its own television-style commercial and send it out across the Web.

What are these ads going to do for your AdSense revenues?

It's too early to tell exactly. I think it's pretty likely though that they're going to prove to be popular and grow in popularity as advertisers figure out what works best.

Best of Luck!

Create custom reports to simplify and save time

When you've designed an experiment, it'll save time to design a custom report for that experiment. Custom reports enable you to customize and save the specifications for a report for quick access in the future, so you can avoid the lengthy process of generating the same detailed report over and over. You can save preferences like date range, any variation of channels or aggregate data, and whether you'd like to view page impressions or ad unit impressions. To create a custom report, simply follow these instructions.

After you've created a custom report, you can access it with one click from your Overview page, by using the drop-down list on your Advanced Reports page, or by having it automatically emailed to you when you use emailable reports.

Setting up a schedule to have any custom report emailed directly to you takes just a minute. On the Report Manager tab of your account, just select the custom report you want emailed to you, the frequency you'd like it sent, and file type you prefer.

Learn more from Google on Adsense...

Test your success with channels

Wondering whether a certain ad placement, format, or color will be effective on your pages? Run a test to find out. Experimenting with AdSense can help you discover what will work best for your site, and channels are the perfect tool for your experiments.

Any time you make changes to your site, take advantage of channels to measure and observe the effects. Whether you want to track a specific type of ad placement or an entire site, custom and URL channels will help you determine what'll be most successful.

Testing will also help you make smart decisions about your ads. If you're considering implementing one of our other optimization tips, we encourage you to test it out with channels. The more you test, the better you know the effects of the ads.

The better you know the effects of the ads, the faster you'll realize your revenue potential.

Tip for channel users: When you create a custom channel, give it a detailed name so you can easily identify it later in your reports. For example, "ArticleRightWideSkyscraperOpenAir" could represent your wide skyscraper ad unit with the Open Air palette, located on the right-hand side of your article pages.

Learn more for yourself from Google on Adsense...

Tip 4: View Other People's Sources

If you like a Web site and want to know how it was created, view the HTML source.
Most browsers include a View Source menu selection that shows you the HTML source of the site that you're viewing. Some browsers put the View Source command on a menu that pops up when you click the right mouse button.

If your browser doesn't support View Source, just use the File Save As command to save the HTML file to disk. Then open the file in your favorite text editor.

You don't have to wonder how the magician performs his tricks - just view the HTML source!

Tip 3: Create Simple Pages

There are several reasons why you should create simple web pages.

Simple pages download faster, and make an immediate impression on the reader. This is extremely important on the Web, where people will leave your site (click off) if your page doesn't come up fast enough.

Simple pages give a "clean" look, which often makes a nice visual presentation. (If you are trying to create a wild, busy look, please ignore this tip.)

Simple pages are also easier for you to create. Be happy with your simple efforts!

Tip 2: Get Several Web Browsers

If you're reading this page, you already have a Web browser. But one browser isn't enough! The reason is that different browsers display HTML differently. As an HTML author, you need to know how your pages are going to look on the different browsers.

Why do different browsers display HTML differently? Because HTML is not a layout language and it does not always specify how the browser should lay out the page. Ugh! This is a drag, and you'll just have to get used to it.

In my opinion, the most practical solution is to get a copy of the two most popular browsers, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. This should cover about 85% of your viewing audience. Whenever you create a page, view it in both browsers and make sure it looks the way you want before you put it up on the Web.

And don't panic - you'll get the hang of writing HTML for a variety of browsers faster than you think!

Beginners Tips for Web Design

HTML means (HyperText Markup Language). HTML is a simple language that just adds a few bells and whistles (called tags) to a normal text file. HTML tags basically allow you to add graphics images and hyperlinks to your document. Hyperlinks connect your document to other documents on the Web.

The good news is that you don't have to learn too many tags to create an HTML document. The bad news is that HTML doesn't give you a lot of control over how the document is laid out (unlike most word processors and desktop publishers). Don't worry about it.

Just give it a try!

My favorite list of HTML commands is Sizzling HTML Jalfrezi, which has an easy-to-use alphabetical listing of the commands and has clear and simple explanations. Check it out.

Now you need to get serious about learning HTML. Use the Web as your first source of information about HTML.

For alternative resources to learning HTML, we recommend:

W3Schools: http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp
HTML Goodies: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/primers/html/
HTML Code Tutorial: http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/

Also, check out a book on HTML, like Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in a Week, by Laura Lemay and Arman Danesh, ISBN #1575213362.

15 Shades of SEO Spam

By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
January 17, 2006

Spam, in almost any form, is bad for your health. The vast majority of web users would agree with that statement and nobody would even think of the finely processed luncheon meat-product made by Hormel.

Even the word itself is infectious in all the worst ways, being used to describe the dark-side and often deceptive side of everything from Email marketing to abusive forum behaviour. In the search engine optimization field, Spam is used to describe techniques and tactics thought to be banned by search engines or to be unethical business practices.

While writing copy for our soon to be revised website, the team put together a short list of the most outrageous forms of Spam we had seen in the last year and a short explanation of the technique.

Please note, we do not encourage, endorse or suggest the use of any of the techniques listed here. We don’t use them and our clients’ sites continue to rank well at Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. Also, since Google has been the dominant search engine for almost five years, most of the spammy tricks evolved in order to game Google and might not apply to the other engines.

1. Cloaking
Also known as “stealth”, cloaking is a technique that involves serving one set of information to known search engine spiders while displaying a different set of information on documents viewed by clients. While there are unique situations in which the use of cloaking might be considered ethical in the day-to-day practice of SEO, cloaking is never required.

This is especially true after the Jagger algorithm update at Google, which uses document and link histories as important ranking factors.

2. IP Delivery
IP delivery is a simple form of cloaking in which a unique set of information is served based on the IP number the info-query originated from. IP addresses known to be search engine based are served one set of information while unrecognized IP addresses, (assumed to be live-visitors) are served another.

3. Leader Pages
Leader pages are a series of similar documents each designed to meet requirements of different search engine algorithms. This is one of the original SEO tricks dating back to the earliest days of search when there were almost a dozen leading search engines sorting less than a billion documents. It is considered SPAM by the major search engines as they see multiple incidents of what is virtually the same document.

Aside from that, the technique is no longer practical as search engines consider a far wider range of factors than the arrangement or density of keywords found in unique documents.

4. Mini-Site networks
Designed to exploit a critical vulnerability in early versions of Google’s PageRank algorithm, mini-site networks were very much like leader pages except they tended to be much bigger.

The establishment of a mini-site network involved the creation of several topic or product related sites all linking back to a central sales site. Each mini-site would have its own keyword enriched URL and be designed to meet specific requirements of each major search engine.

Often they could be enlarged by adding information from leader pages. By weaving webs of links between mini-sites, an artificial link-density was created that could heavily influence Google’s perception of the importance of the main site.

In the summer of 2004, Google penalized several prominent SEO and SEM firms for using this technique by banning their entire client lists.

5. Link Farms
Link farms emerged as free-for-all link depositories when webmasters learned how heavily incoming links influenced Google. Google, in turn, quickly devalued and eventually eliminated the PR value it assigned to pages with an inordinate collection or number of links. Nevertheless, link farms persist as uninformed webmasters and unethical SEO firms continue to use them.

6. Blog and/or Forum Spam
Blogs and forums are amazing and essential communication technologies, both of which are used heavily in the daily conduct of our business. As with other Internet based media, blogs and forum posts are easily and often proliferated. In some cases, blogs and certain forums also have established high PR values for their documents.

These two factors make them targets of unethical SEOs looking for high-PR links back to their websites or those of their clients. Google in particular has clamped down on Blog and Forum abuse.

7. Keyword Stuffing
At one time, search engines were limited to sorting and ranking sites based on the number of keywords found on those documents. That limitation led webmasters to put keywords everywhere they possibly could. When Google emerged and incoming links became a factor, some even went as far as using keyword stuffing of anchor text.
The most common continuing example of keyword stuffing can be found near the bottom of far too many sites in circulation.

8. Hidden Text
It is amazing that some webmasters and SEOs continue to use hidden text as a technique but, as evidenced by the number of sites we find it on, a lot of folks still use it. They shouldn’t.

There are two types of hidden text. The first is text that is coloured the same shade as the background thus rendering it invisible to human visitors but not to search spiders. The second is text that is hidden behind images or under document layers. Search engines tend to dislike both forms and have been known to devalue documents containing incidents of hidden text.

9. Useless Meta Tags
Most meta tags are absolutely useless. The unethical part is that some SEO firms actually charge for the creation and insertion of meta tags. In some cases, there seems to be a meta tag for virtually every possible factor but for the most part are not considered by search spiders.

StepForth only uses the description and keywords meta tags (though we are dubious about the actual value of the keywords tag), along with relevant robots.txt files. All other identifying or clarifying information should be visible on a contact page or included in the footers of each page.

10. Misuse of Directories
Directories, unlike other search indexes, tend to be sorted by human hands. Search engines traditionally gave links from directories a bit of extra weight by considering them links from trusted authorities. A practice of spamming directories emerged as some SEOs and webmasters hunted for valuable links to improve their rankings. Search engines have since tended to devalue links from most directories. Some SEOs continue to charge directory submission fees.

11. Hidden Tags
There are a number of different sorts of tags used by search browsers or website designers to perform a variety of functions such as; comment tags, style tags, alt tags, noframes tags, and http-equiv tags. For example, the “alt tag” is used by site-readers for the blind to describe visual images. Inserting keywords into these tags was a technique used by a number SEOs in previous years. Though some continue to improperly use these tags, the practice overall appears to be receding.

12. Organic Site Submissions
One of the most unethical things a service-based business can do is to charge clients for a service they don’t really need. Charging for, or even claiming submissions to the major search engines are an example. Search engine spiders are so advanced they no longer require site submission to find information. Search engine spiders find new documents by following links. Site submission services or SEO firms that charge clients a single penny for submission to Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask Jeeves, are radically and unethically overcharging those clients.

13. Email Spam
Placing a URL inside a “call-to-action” email continues to be a widely used of search marketing spam. With the advent of desktop search appliances, email spam has actually increased. StepForth does not use email to promote your website in any way.

14. Redirect Spam
There are several ways to use the redirect function to fool a search engine or even hijack traffic destined for another website! Whether the method used is a 301, a 302, a 402, a meta refresh or a java-script, the end result is search engine spam.

15. Misuse of Web 2.0 Formats (ie Wiki, social networking and social tagging)
An emerging form of SEO spam is found in the misuse of user-input media formats such as Wikipedia. Like blog comment spamming, the instant live-to-web nature of Web 2.0 formats provide an open range for SEO spam technicians. Many of these exploits might even find short-term success though it is only a matter of time before measures are taken to devalue the efforts.

Search engine optimization spam continues to be a problem for the SEO industry as it tries to move past the perceptions of mainstream advertisers. When under-ethical techniques are used, trust (the basis of all business) is abused and the efforts of the SEO/SEM industry are called into question. Fortunately, Google’s new algorithm appears to be on the cutting edge of SEO Spam detection and prevention. Let’s hope 2006 is the year the entire SEO industry goes on a Spam-free diet.

Bad SEO Techniques

Avoid Obvious Tricks - Don't try These at Home

Avoid using cheap tricks to get search rankings. If you see anothersite ranking high using one of these tricks do not assume that they will be stillbe ranking high next month. Over the years, the search engines have improved theirskills at identifying attempts to spam their listings.

The engines will continueto improve their algorithms in the future.

Do not use a font color that is the same or very close to your background color.
Do not use too much font size one (1) text as the default text size as many searchengines consider tiny text to be spam.

Do not add a bunch of meaningless keywords to your page. It may help you rankhigh for a while but but it not worth the risk of being penalized by the searchengines. The integrity of your site could also suffer if you have unnecessary texton your site.

Avoid participate in obvious link farms or link exchange programs. The searchengines often refer to these as bad neighborhoods and will penalize or ban yoursite for linking to them. One definition for link farm would be: a site whose onlypurpose is to artificially inflate link popularity by exchanging links.

Don't payfor links unless you know how they will provide them.
Avoid using deceitful re-direct techniques. The integrity of your site will sufferif your users expect one thing and find something else.

Google has a page to reportspam. We are not sure how diligent Google is at investigating these reports,but the option is there if one of your competitors is gaining an upper hand throughdirty SEO techniques.

Names - Domain Names, Images, Alt

1) Whenever it Choose a domain name that includes your keyword phrase. The search engines don't really care if it .com or not. Try different extensions such as .NET, .ORG or .INFO.

2) The major search engines view characters like hyphen "-" as a space. Register domain names with the keyword phrases separated by hyphens.

3) Include an ALT (alternative text) attribute in image tags. Include the most important keyword phrases. Do not overdo the use of ALT text. If your overall keyword is getting too high reduce the number of these. Do not overuse this technique.

4) Name web pages after your most important keyword phrase. Separate the keywords using hyphens or underscores. I do not recommend spending time renaming existing pages. Example: free-directories

5) Name directories after your keyword phrases, using hyphens or underscores to separate the keywords.

6) If you use an image map, include HTML links, as some search engines do not follow image map links. Plus image maps do not offer search engines any link text to index. So, try to avoid the use of image maps as they do not help with your search engine optimization efforts.

Creating Spider Friendly Sites

Ensure that you do not have any HTML errors on your page, especially your indexpage. HTML errors, even minor one, can prevent the spiders from spidering your wholesite. Even though your page displays great you may still have errors. Use an HTMLvalidation tool to check your important pages.

Include all your pages on a text based sitemap so that your pages can be easilyfound by the search engine robots.

Avoid very big pages. Generally, the pages should not exceed 150kb.
Move Javascript code to a separate file, or to the end of the HTML document afteryour closing BODY or HTML tag. If you move the JavaScript code to a separate file then add the following in the heading:

The separate JavaScript file reduces your HTML file size, and therefore your downloadtime. It allows you to reuse the code on future web pages/sites.

Title & Meta Tags

Place the TITLE first, directly after the HEAD tag. Spend the most time writing the text of your title tag as it is given the most weight of the META type tags. For SEO purposes, your company name may be the least important thing to have in your title.

Include your most important keyword phrases at the beginning of your title.

Include a META DESCRIPTION tag. Include the most important keyword phrase as close to the beginning of the description as possible.

Note: The description is sometimes used in search engine results so ensure that you describe your site attractively. The description is now given no real ranking weight in Google rankings. Usecan use our Meta Tag Generator to get the format of meta tags.

Include a META Keyword tag. Although most of the major search engines do not use keywords in their rankings you should add keywords. Ensure that you at least have keywords on your home page as directories / search engines sometimes use your title, description and keywords to populate their listings.

If you use a META REFRESH tag, make sure it is set to refresh after 30 seconds.

Remove other meta tags (like author), unless you know for sure that they are necessary. The keywords meta tag is good to have, at least on your home page, as some directories get their information from your keywords.

Web Page Content

The best time to start optimizing your website is when you are in the planning stage. If possible, choose the keywords you want to optomize before you design your site.

Try to achieve a word count between 300 and 750 words on each page. Shoot for a keyword density of between 2% and 3%. If you are optimizaing for a competitive industry and you are not high in the rankings then you can try pushing the density higher.

Do not optimize all your pages for the most popular keywords. This advice applies most for new sites. The search engines use link popularity as a key ranking factor and it takes a while to compete effectively with established sites. You are better off being on the first page of a less searched term than page 20 of a very popular keyword phrase. Very few people make it past page 2 of the search results.

Use a keword suggestion tool to find appropriate kewords.

If feasible, create separate pages for different types of informaton (e.g. themes, categories, product lines, products).

Use one or more header tags in your main page body and include your most important keyword phrases. Use header tags and you can use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to alter the appearance of your header tags so that you don't have to change the look and feel of your site.

Use the different versions of your keywords, when possible. The search engines have improved their use of word stemming. Word stemming describes taking the stem of a word and generating common variants of it. The search engines can find search results that include keywords that extend beyond what you searched for.Keyword: submission Possible stemming results: submit, submissions

Try to have your content be the first thing that appears to the search engines. Content at the top of the page is ranked higher. In some cases, adding blank table rows can prevent your menus from appearing first.

Avoid duplicate content between your own site and others. Google is quite efficient at identifying duplicate content. Both versions of the content will not appear near the top of the search results.

The Importance of Links

All of the big search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN now use link popularity and link anchor text as the most important factors in determining their rankings.

Submit your site to directories like DMOZ. There are hundreds of directories that will give you decent PageRank and some traffic. I especially recommend it for brand new sites that usually have less success exchanging links (see point 2). Our sister site has numerous list of the best free & paid directories.

Increase the number of external links coming into your site by starting a link exchange program.

Ask sites that link to your competitors to link to your site. To find out which sites are linking to your competitors, visit a search engine and enter, "link:" followed by your competitors' domain name. Example: link:www.web-directories.ws

Find sites that accept site submissions. Visit your favorite search engine and do a search for: : "add url" "your keywords"

Add content that will attract sites to link to you. This is a harder one, but it will pay off big time in the long run. Think of it as getting free advertising.

Within your web site, ensure that you link your internal web pages to each other. Add a Site Map. Ensure that you have links to your most important pages on every page of your site. This will maximize the PageRank to your important pages.

Paid advertising is another method to gain links. If possible, you should purchase links from sites with a similar these as yours. For example, if you are a travel site then other travel sites would be the most valuable links.

Patience Required

Be patient.

It is believed that there is an aging factor on new links in some search engines and that new links do not provide their full benefit for a number of months. There is also evidence that links from older established sites are more valuable than links from newer sites. To make things even more complicated, search engines, especially Google, give more weight to trusted, authority sites. Government and education sites are a couple of examples.

SEO For Google

This article is part three of a four part series on optimizing your website for the the three major search engines. Part one, titled "SEO For MSN" covered optimizing your website to rank highly on MSN, while part two, titled "SEO For Yahoo!" covered optimizing your website to rank on Yahoo!. In this article we will cover optimizing your website for Google.

I likely don't even need to mention that Google is currently the largest of all the search engines with ComScore Media estimating this giant to be responsible for 42.7% of all online searches in March of 2006. For this reason people tend to view Google as the engine to rank on. While this point is debatable (let's remember that there's still 57.3% of searches that aren't done on Google) it's definitely an important engine to rank on. So how is it done?

The Factors

To optimize and rank highly on Google, as with any of the major engines, specific areas need to be addressed. On Google the most important of these factors are:

• Backlinks
• Age
• Content
• How it fares in the results
• Backlinks

More than on either Yahoo! or MSN backlinks are key to attaining top rankings on Google. More importantly, Google's methods for calculating the weight of backlinks is very different than either of the other two engines. Once upon a time backlink acquisition was mainly a numbers game.

If you had more links you had higher rankings, it was basically as simple as that. Today however Google has an algorithm inside their algorithm for determining which links are more valuable than others. This algorithm has a number of factors itself, however there are some that are more important than others.

They key factors that determine the value of a link in regards to its contributions to the ranking of your site are:

The age of the links - Like domains, links gain weight with age. The longer your links have been on a web page the higher their value. Basically this means that your link building efforts today aren't going to pay off for a number of months.


The weight seems to age gradually. In a month your link will hold partial weight, in two months it'll hold a bit more and so on. Links hold the majority of their weight after about 5 to 6 months.

The location of the link - The physical location of your link on the page is an indicator to Google of it's value. A link buried in the footer of a page will hold virtually no weight whereas a link near the top (i.e. where a visitor is likely to see it) will hold much more. Another location factor is how this link is situated relative to the content around it.

A link that is located within content holds more weight than a link in a typical link-page or directory format with a title and description. The inline nature of the aforementioned location indicates that the link itself is more natural.

The anchor text and formatting - The linking text used is obviously important. If you are targeting a phrase such as "seo firms" then using these two keywords in the anchor text is going to attach relevancy between your site and these keywords. Be careful though, building a thousand links using all the same anchor text is going to look suspicious. Vary your anchor text, perhaps include other keywords and you'll find your efforts rewarded. The formatting of the link is also relevant. A link that uses bold, italics, etc. is obviously meant to be seen by a visitor and is thus more highly regarded by Google.

Relevancy - The relevancy of the site linking to you is of key importance. Getting a link on a health site if you're an SEO firm is going to hold little weight whereas a link from an SEO resource site will be much more valuable.

PageRank - While the value of PageRank is arguably dropping when one is considering it's importance in link building it is still a factor. A link from a PageRank 5 page is worth substantially more than a link from a PageRank 2 page.

Age

In a patent application from back in 2004 Google told SEO firms (and anyone else for that matter) that age was an important factor. Google has since become a domain name registrar which gives them access to whois data and thus they can clearly see the age of a domain, who it is registered to, where it is hosted, etc. The older your domain is the more legitimate Google sees it and thus the more likely they are to rank it.

Additionally, domains that are registered for longer periods of time are also seen as more legitimate and thus will tend to rank higher.

Content

Google is more picky than either Yahoo! or MSN when it comes to content. While the phrase, "content is king," may be overused it is still relevant. The more content you have on your site the more likely someone is to find what they're looking for when they get there.

Thus, the more content you have on your site the more likely Google is to believe a searcher will find what they're looking for there. This does not mean that you should grab every bit of content you can find and build a 500,000 page site about potatoes. The content needs to be relevant and preferably well written.

While a search engine spider may not be able to tell if your content is truly well written it must appeal to a human visitor. The reason for this will be made more clear below.

A blog is a good option for the easy addition of relevant content provided that you can dedicate the time (generally only a few minutes per day) to post some new and interesting information on your industry.

Keyword density is not as large a factor on Google as on Yahoo! or MSN however it is a factor and in the SEO "game" any factor that holds weight needs to be taken into consideration in all but the least competitive areas. While a site targeting a phrase such as "bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere" can afford weakness in some of the areas most of us cannot.

As noted in the articles on MSN and Yahoo! it would be unwise for me to specify an optimal keyword density here as the optimal levels vary by site type, topic, and fluctuate with the algorithm updates. Keyword densities need to be reanalyzed approximately monthly or any time an update is noted.

How it fares in the results

How your website fares in the results is a growing factor and will only continue to gain importance as time passes. If your website appears in the results for a specific phrase yet no one click on is your website will drop out of the rankings.

Arguably worse, if your website is clicked however after a few seconds Google detects that the searcher has returned to the results to find a new site your site will drop.

It is for this reason that it is important to insure that the titles you write for your website are both search engine and human friendly. You want Google to rank it highly and you also need humans to click it or Google won't rank it highly (circular logic I know but valid nonetheless).

You also need to make sure that what people see when they first land on your page either is the information they are looking for or alternatively, clearly indicates where that information can be found. This point may seem obvious simply from a usability standpoint however the number of sites out there that violate this basic principle is vast.

As part of your SEO efforts you will want to take a look at your site from a user's standpoint or better yet, watch real users navigate it to see if they can find what they're looking for quickly.

You have about 3 seconds to get a visitor's attention so make sure that your visitor can find what they want in that time. You may need to hire experienced web designers to bring your website up to speed however the cost of this is lower than the cost of losing rankings and business due to poor design and the falling rankings that will follow.

Conclusion

Google has the most sophisticated algorithm of the three major engines and must be treated as such. Tricks rarely work and when they do they tend to work only for a short period of time. Build a strong site with lots of quality content that is easily navigated and will appeal to your human visitors and you're off to a good start. Optimize your keyword densities and secure quality links to your site and while it may take a bit of time to get past the aging delays, you will succeed on Google.

About The Author

Dave Davies is the owner and CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

1. Bad Search
Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they're unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody.

A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document's importance. Much better if your search engine calls out "best bets" at the top of the list -- especially for important queries, such as the names of your products.

Search is the user's lifeline when navigation fails. Even though advanced search can sometimes help, simple search usually works best, and search should be presented as a simple box, since that's what users are looking for.

2. PDF Files for Online Reading
Users hate coming across a PDF file while browsing, because it breaks their flow. Even simple things like printing or saving documents are difficult because standard browser commands don't work. Layouts are often optimized for a sheet of paper, which rarely matches the size of the user's browser window. Bye-bye smooth scrolling. Hello tiny fonts.

Worst of all, PDF is an undifferentiated blob of content that's hard to navigate.

PDF is great for printing and for distributing manuals and other big documents that need to be printed. Reserve it for this purpose and convert any information that needs to be browsed or read on the screen into real web pages.

3. Not Changing the Color of Visited Links
A good grasp of past navigation helps you understand your current location, since it's the culmination of your journey. Knowing your past and present locations in turn makes it easier to decide where to go next. Links are a key factor in this navigation process. Users can exclude links that proved fruitless in their earlier visits. Conversely, they might revisit links they found helpful in the past.

Most important, knowing which pages they've already visited frees users from unintentionally revisiting the same pages over and over again.

These benefits only accrue under one important assumption: that users can tell the difference between visited and unvisited links because the site shows them in different colors. When visited links don't change color, users exhibit more navigational disorientation in usability testing and unintentionally revisit the same pages repeatedly.

4. Non-Scannable Text
A wall of text is deadly for an interactive experience. Intimidating. Boring. Painful to read.

Write for online, not print. To draw users into the text and support scannability, use well-documented tricks:

subheads
bulleted lists
highlighted keywords
short paragraphs
the inverted pyramid
a simple writing style, and
de-fluffed language devoid of marketese.

5. Fixed Font Size
CSS style sheets unfortunately give websites the power to disable a Web browser's "change font size" button and specify a fixed font size. About 95% of the time, this fixed size is tiny, reducing readability significantly for most people over the age of 40.

Respect the user's preferences and let them resize text as needed. Also, specify font sizes in relative terms -- not as an absolute number of pixels.

6. Page Titles With Low Search Engine Visibility
Search is the most important way users discover websites. Search is also one of the most important ways users find their way around individual websites. The humble page title is your main tool to attract new visitors from search listings and to help your existing users to locate the specific pages that they need.

The page title is contained within the HTML

Seo Tools

Search Engine Spider SimulatorThis tool Simulates a Search Engine by displaying the contents of a webpage exactly how a Search Engine would see it. It also displays the hyperlinks that will be followed (crawled) by a Search Engine when it visits the specified webpage.

Backlink BuilderThis tools help you build a LOT of quality backlinks, it searches for websites of the theme you specify that contain keyphrases like "Add link", "Add site", "Add URL", "Add URL", "Submit URL" etc. Most of the results could be potential backlinks.

Keyword Density CheckerKeyword Density is the percentage of occurrence of your keywords to the text in the rest of your webpage. This tool will crawl the specified URL, extract text as a search engine would, remove common stop words and Analyze the density of the keywords.

Check Yahoo WebRankThis tool help you evaluate the importance of a URL as perceived by Google and Yahoo.

Website Keyword SuggestionsThis tools tries to determine the theme of your website and provides keyword suggestions along with keyword traffic estimates.

Alexa Ranking ToolThis tools allows you to get the Alexa Traffic Rankings of you and your competitors.