Search Engine Optimization Guide

I’ve seen quite a lot of disagreement on whether header tags actually help optimize web pages. I understand the skepticism, but testing it, I’ve found out that the text inside H1 header tags is displayed by the search engines. In the absence of the H1, the first line of text available to search engine spiders is displayed instead. The configuration of header tags is as follows:

<Hx> insert text here </Hx>

The value “x” pertains to the corresponding number of the header tag in the hierarchy. Commonly used header tags range from H1 to H3. Numbers beyond that, H4 to H6, could be used, though they are much less so. Each header tag in the hierarchy has its own uses. The H1 tag, for example, is used for the main web page description. Think of it as a web page’s headline — what the whole page is about. Ideally, a single web page should only have one topic, so one web page should only have one H1 header tag. H2 is mainly used for article titles and others of the same value while H3 should be used for important sections within an article.

The importance of header tags in search engine optimization lies in their corresponding numbers. The Header1 tag is deemed most important by spiders. The tag <H1> serves as the mark for search engine bots to identify an important line of text. Think of it as a marker or an underline which highlights what you want it to. The succeeding tags are of less importance though you can use them if you want to, just don’t overdo it. The significance of this finding is that it means you can place your most important keyword or key phrase inside the header1 tag for optimal results. Even if you’re skeptical about the use of title tags in SEO, I don’t see why you can’t give it a try. After all, at face value, H1 serves as the headline for a page, so it helps in page organization.

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Filed under: The Importance of Header Tags in SEO, Search, Search Engine, SEO

I’ve come across this same question in many web master forums I’m a member of. I will address the issue here for future reference. So, does changing one’s host affects one’s ranking in the SERPs? The answer depends on the situation. For example, are you really just moving to a new host and not changing anything with your domain? If all you intend to do is move your web site and nothing else, then the answer is “no” (do I hear rejoicing out there?). No, merely changing hosts does not affect your rankings. However, if moving is coupled with some other changes, then it just might.

Moving will affect your rankings if…

1. You change your domain.

I think this one’s a given. You lose your PageRank and your ranking in the SERPs if you change your domain name. One real-life observation I had, however, is that if your content remains intact and you update often (especially if your domain’s a blog), you’ll get your rankings back in due time (but not your PageRank).

2. You change your content.

If moving entails changing majority of the content you housed in your old host before, then expect a fall in the SERPs.

3. A long down-time.

If you did not plan your move properly and you experience a long down-time, you’ll also lose your rankings. You’ll gain it back in due time though but think if you can really afford the loss of traffic that results from this.

To avoid this, it’s best to upload a copy or backup of your web site to your new host first before doing anything else. After this, point the DNS servers of your domain to your new host. It takes about 24-48 hours before the DNS propagates across the internet. But after it has and you had successfully redirected traffic to your new web site, you can then finally close your old hosting plan. Just make sure you’ve downloaded all backups you need.

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Filed under: Does Changing Your Host Affect Your Rankings?, Search, Search Engine, SEO, search engine optimization

With a reported 22.1% of search traffic Yahoo is second only to Google’s 64.4% (src: Hitwise) for search user volume so it is extremely important not to forget that attaining a top ranking in Yahoo can be a big boon to the bottom line. As a result, I decided to write this update on how to attain superior rankings in Yahoo using today’s useful tools and tactics.
OVERVIEW: Optimizing for Yahoo!
Algorithmically Yahoo is Google’s much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say “boldly” I do not mean use SPAM; by nature SPAM and optimization do not mix… they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact).
The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo.

WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION

SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements:
Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in the title tag. For an example check out “car sales” or for that matter any phrase. Within the top 10 results you will notice that the majority of sites listed will include at least one incidence of the keyphrase or a crucial portion of it (i.e. “cars”). The ones that do not include the keyphrase tend to be sites that have are extremely popular so even basic title tag optimization is not required to attain a top ranking.
Meta Description Tag: Start this tag with an incidence of your keyphrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 small-medium sized word sentence clearly describing your site. Include one more incidence of your keyphrase in the sentence. Keep in mind that the description tag is often utilized as the description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to make it alluring.
Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword tags have long been considered ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so it cannot hurt to include it. The keyword tag should start with the keyphrase and then all following words or phrases should be ordered according to their relevance to your website; place the most important ones up front. The max size of a keyword tag should be 250 characters – comma-delimited. Do not over repeat words; no more than 3 repetitions of a single word within the tag.
Keywords in URL: Create keyword-based filenames that closely represent the content within the file. Yahoo rewards keyword-based filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past your competition.
Headings: Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page’s keyphrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyphrase on the page.
Alt text for images: Don’t forget to provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text must not provide information that is already written on the website. ALT text is supposed to provide a clear and concise description of what the image is. Fortunately this means that adding an incidence of the keyphrase or a portion of the keyphrase is totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility to your page score when Yahoo’s crawler (Slurp) indexes the page.
Inline Links: In the midst of your page it is beneficial to include links to related pages from related content. These links will apply relevance to the linked page; which is optimized for the same keyphrase you linked from.
Site Structure: Site structure is a vital component to ranking success on Yahoo; especially in competitive marketplaces where every advantage is required to reach the top. One method that would be successful at Yahoo (and happens to work as well on the other major search engines) is a tried and true technique that revolves around the linear progression of related content throughout the website; it is commonly known as Themeing. The following example should shed some light on this subject:
Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5” as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5” the odds of achieving a ranking for that term increase considerably.

LINKS

When building links for Yahoo concentrate on quality not quantity. Quality links would be one way links from sites that specialize in content directly relevant to the content on your own website. Building these links can be done by creating content and syndicating it to your own industry for link love and to build credibility. In addition, if your website is a worthwhile resource it is entirely reasonable to tell the world about your site in order to build links; hopefully they will link to you because they like your site so much.
Finally, there is another tactic that has mixed results; send out press releases once a month using PRWeb or an associated press release agency. A good press release can easily build the links you need in no time at all. Unfortunately the mixed results I noted occur when press releases inevitably become archived, at which point the link relevance will fade. As a result, link building with press releases is only useful as an ongoing practice and should be considered a small facet of a robust link building campaign.

SITE EXPLORER SETTINGS

Yahoo’s Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for monitoring your website(s) and running basic link reports. If you have not already done so you should create an account at Site Explorer and then validate your website (prove you own it) so that you can manage the information Yahoo has for your website. Once you have validated your website I have noted some Site Explorer functionality that may help your website perform on Yahoo:
> Make certain to create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo:
If you haven’t already done so use a XML sitemap generator to create a sitemap for your website and then submit it to Yahoo using the “Add Feed” form within your website’s Site Explorer profile.
> Removing unnecessary dynamic content from your URLs with new add-on within Site Explorer:
Does your URLs content session ID’s or other dynamic content that is unnecessary within the URL? If so, this information can be indexed by the search engines and ultimately can cause havoc with your rankings. Thankfully Yahoo has implemented a new tool within the Site Explorer domain management section called “Dynamic URLs Beta”. Here are the instructions to use the Dynamic URLs tool.

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

After reviewing our notes from current and previous Yahoo promotions and taking a look at a variety of top 10 results the following points appeared noteworthy:
> Ensure open indexing by using Robots.txt wisely
> A lot of our client’s older content appears to be sticking to top rankings with little or no monthly tweaking. As a result, I think it is fair to assume that fresh content is not currently gaining much weight in the Yahoo algorithm.
> In many cases top ranking sites have pushed the envelope and their sites border on SPAM. Considering the top ranking these sites have it appears Yahoo’s SPAM filters are far less sensitive than Google’s. I expect Yahoo will change this in the near future but then again I have been surprised how long this has been the status quo.
> One common claim throughout forums is that achieving a placement in the Yahoo Directory provides an instant boost to Yahoo rankings. Unfortunately we have not seen conclusive evidence that the annual $299 fee will increase rankings dramatically in the short term. That said, I strongly believe that a Yahoo Directory placement is a very reputable incoming link that does pay dividends in the long run at any search engine that weighs incoming links (the ones that count).
> Yahoo Search Submit was re-introduced back in February 2007 to significant criticism due to the potential favouritism to those who pay to get into the Yahoo index. Despite the negative feedback there appears to be some potential benefits to paying for submission. For one, in July I noted an interesting story where a website was banned from Yahoo and the webmaster got the site back into Yahoo’s index by paying for inclusion ([url=http://news.stepforth.com/blog/2007/07/banned-from-yahoo-just-pay-to-get-back.php]“Banned from Yahoo?”[url]). A second reason Search Submit may be worthwhile is the guarantee that your site will be indexed. Furthermore, the Yahoo’s Search Submit Pro service allows you to recommend your own title and description tags for each page submitted and to submit pages that may not normally be indexed by Slurp.

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Filed under: Search, Search Engine Submission, How to Optimize for Yahoo!, Meta Tags, Search Engine, link building, SEO, search engine optimization

What are the best ways to boost your position in search engines? What keywords should you use on your web-pages? And which tools should you use to improve the quality of backlinks, link popularity and Google Pagerank? We deliver answers. Here is the list of the most useful SEO-tools you might be willing to use, developing and optimizing your next web-site. Our personal choice: 156 Seo Tools - one of the most comprehesive lists with essential SEO-references and tools. For even more resources check out the SEO section of The Web-Developer’s Handbook.

Alexa

• Alexa-Ranking
  Alexa page-rank-and-rating-results
• Alexa Web Rank Checker
  Check your site’s current Alexa Web Rank, Incoming Links, Reach Rank & Average Reviews

Backlink

• Anchor Text Backlink Checker
  This tool is to check your backlinks and the anchor text used in those backlinks.
• Backlink Analyzer
  Research and analyze websites for link quality. Checks for Indexed Pages, Links to Website, EDU & .GOV Links, Domain Age & Expiration, Google PageRank, Alexa Traffic Rank, DMOZ Listing
• Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer
  This tools help you determine the backlinks of your website and link text used by your backlinks to Link to your website
• Backlink Builder
  Building Quality backlinks is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization…

Domain Popularity, Domain Stats Tools…

• Domain Age Tool
  This tools displays the approximate age of a website on the Internet and allows you to view how the website looked when it first started
• Domain Dossier
  Investigate domains and IP addresses
• Domain Popularity
  This tool shows you all backlinks for the given domain, including up to 10 subpages per backlinking domain, host IP and Google PageRank
• Domain Stats Tool
  This tool helps you get all kind of statistics of your competitor’s domains. The statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc.
• HTTP / HTTPS Header Check
  This tools allow you to inspect the HTTP headers that the web server returns when requesting a URL. Works with HTTP and HTTPS URLs
• View HTTP Headers
  This little tool lets you view the HTTP headers for a HTTP request
• View HTTP Path
  This little tool lets you view the path/redirects a request takes to get fulfilled

Google Page Rank Checker, Adwords Keyword Tools,Google Banned Tools…

• Advanced Google searches
  Use this tool to search google in many special ways. A useful resource for search engine optimization (especially keyword research) among other things
• Check Google Pagerank
  Now you can check the Google PageRank of any web page without installing the Google toolbar
• Check PageRank by Google data center
  With this tool you can check the PageRank from different data centers
• Free Google Adsense Keywords & YPN Keywords Search Tool
  With the ability to search a growing database of tens of thousands of high-dollar Adsense keywords, Iotaweb allows publishers to find the keywords and key phrases that will allow them to focus their content to monetize their site most effectively.
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
  Keyword tool from Google that provides Specific and Similar keywords.
• Google Banned Tool
  This tool uses two methods to check to see if a URL you enter is in the Google database. Its a great way to check to see if you have been banned by Google for various reasons….
• Google Keyword Ranking Tool
  Search with list of keywords from differnet Google search sites
• Google Page Rank Checker
  Instantly check the PageRank of any website or web page
• Google Page Rank Checker
  A simple tool that checks and your PageRank so you can display it on your website
• Google Sets
  Automatically create sets of items from a few examples.
• Google Synonyms
  Type in a keyword to get Google’s synonyms using the “~keyword -keyword” method.
• PageRank Authenticity Check
  This tool shows you the PageRank of a given domain. Also the PageRank will be checked of authenticity
• Page Rank Tool
  Our PageRank Tool will query and return the Google PageRank values for submitted URL from various Google datacenters…
• Poodle Predictor
  See your site like Google does. Simulate search engines and predict your Google listings
• Visual PageRank
  The Visual PageRank - Tool shows all links and there corresponding PageRanks

Keyword Analysis Tool, Keyword Density, Keyword Suggestion Tools…

• McDar Keyword Analysis Tool
  Enter URL and keyword, it will display Pagerank and Back links pages for the Top 10 websites.
• Keyword Density
  This tool shows you how often appears which word in content of given domain
• Keyword Density
  The keyword density tool is useful for helping webmasters and SEOs achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms.
• Keyword Density Checker
  Keyword 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.
• Keyword Difficulty Tool
  The keyword difficulty tool is used to analyze the competitive landscape of a particular search term or phrase, this tool issues a percentage score and provides a detailed analysis of the top ranking sites at Google and Yahoo…
• Keyword research service
  Type a keyword or phrase and get the top 10 Keyword Discovery listings
• KwMap.net
  A Keyword Map For the Whole Internet
• Keyword Suggestion Tool
  This keyword suggestion tool will help you with the choosing of the right keywords for your website. You can see which keyword combinations are more popular and also get ideas for more keyword combinations..
• SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool
  Free Overture and Google Keyword suggestion tool
• Website Keyword Suggestions
  This tools tries to determine the theme of your website and provides keyword suggestions along with keyword traffic estimates.
• Ontology Finder
  Related Keywords Lookup Tool
• Overture Keyword Tool
  This tool, based on the excellent Overture and Wordtracker keyword search tools, gives similar data, including search figures from the previous month. It also adds statistics for average searches per hour, day, week, projected figures for the next 12 months and then also a figure to see how searches may look in 3 years from now.

Link Popularity Check, Site Link Analyzer, Link Value…

• Deep Link Ratio Tool
  This tool was created to analyze how the deep link ratio of a site affects its rank in search engines. We can use this tool to compare the DLRs for the best ranking sites for a search phrase.
• Link Popularity Check
  Link popularity check is one of the best ways to quantifiably and independently measure your website’s online awareness and overall visibility…
• Link Popularity Checker
  The Link Popularity Checker tells you how many websites are linking to yours…
• LINK VALIDATION SPIDER
  Free Online Broken Link Checker
• Link Price Calculator
  This tools will help you determine the approximate amount you should be paying (or charging) per month for a text link (ad) from each and every page of the specified website
• Link Value
  This tool calculates the link value per month of a given website.
• Reciprocal Link Check
  This tool helps you ensure that your link partners are linking back to your website. It also determines the anchor text used by your link partners to link to your website.
• Site Link Analyzer
  This tool will analyze a given web page and return a table of data containing columns of outbound links and their associated anchor text…
• The Link Reputation Measurement Tool
  Reveals backlinks pointing to your target url along with the following: Link Survey - Link Reputation Score - Text used in links pointing to you - Alexa traffic analysis for the site corresponding to each backlink
• Outbound Links
  This tool shows every outgoing link from the given domain. Separated in external and internal links

Meta Tag Generators

• Meta Tag Generator
  Our Meta Tag Generator will read the page you specify, remove common words from it, and pick the most used words on the page. It will then generate a Meta Keywords tag using the words it has found…
• Meta Tag Generator
  Use this tool to generate a search engine friendly Head Tag for your web site
• Title & Meta Tags Generator
  his code generator will build the title and meta tags for your site to help improve your website’s search engine ranking using our Meta Tag Generator

Miscellaneous Tools

• 156 Seo Tools
  One of the most comprehensive lists with useful, essential SEO tools.
• Directory Submission Manager
  Use this free tool to track your submissions to various web directories….
• Copyscape
  Search for copies of your page on the Web
• Crazy Egg
  Get a clear picture of where your visitors are clicking and enhance your site’s results
• Site Analysis including Link Popularity
  This tool generates a complete site analysis e.g. amount of backlinks, indexed sites, Google PageRank and also if your domain is listed in DMOZ and Yahoo directory
• Sitemap Generator
  Create your Google Sitemap Online
• Browser Screen Resolution Checker
  The browser screen resolution checker shows what your web page looks like with the viewer’s monitor set to different screen resolutions
• Similar Page Checker
  Search Engines are known to penalize websites that contain Duplicate / Similar content. Your content could be similar to other websites on the Internet, or pages from within your own website could be similar to each other. This tool allows you to determine the percentage of similarity between two pages
• Speedtester
  This tool shows the duration of a given website. This value can be used for showing how long a website take to load and if it is better to optimize the website or change a (slow) ISP.
• mod_rewrite RewriteRule Generator
  Our mod_rewrite RewriteRule generator will take a dynamic url given to it, and generate the correct syntax to place in a .htaccess file to allow the url to be rewritten in a spiderable format
• URL Rewrite (mod_rewrite)
  With this tool you can generate dynamic urls to search engine friendly urls..
• URL Rewriting Tool
  Create Search Engine Friendly URLs
• User Agent Cloaking Detector
  This tool simulates the Googlebot (based on User-Agent) to detect cloaked content
• What is Hosted on that IP
  This little tool lets you view the virtual hosts on a particular IP

Search Engine Position Checker, Spider Simulator, Ranking Report, SERP Tracker

• Dogpile
  Search Comparison Tool
• Google vs Yahoo Graph
  This tool looks at the results from Yahoo and Google, finds the similarities and then gives you a graphical display of what results are in both search engines
• Search Engine Position Checker
  The Search Engine Position Checker tool will automatically query the search engines you specify and check if your URL appears in the first 50 results for your chosen keywords….
• Search Engine Simulator
  This service allows web authors to see what their pages will look like (sort of) to a search engine. This service ignores the META tags that some search engines honor.
• Search Engine Spider Simulator
  With this tool you see all informations a search engine spider receive from a website.
• Marketleap Search Engine Verification Tool
  Our verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword
• Number of pages indexed
  This tool will generate a report showing how many pages of your website has been indexed by the search engines so far. It supports all major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alltheweb, Hotbot and AltaVista.
• Search Engine Ranking Report
  Input key phrase list get Google rankings
• Serps Position
  Use this tool to find out, on which position your domain is ranked for the given keyword and compare the first 100 results by Google, search.MSN and Yahoo.
• SERP Tracker
  The SERP Tracker reports on search engine results and charts performance over time

SEO Analyzer, Scanner

• Free SEO Tools
  SEOToolSet
• Cool SEO Tool!
  This internet marketing tool checks the top 10 sites that rank in Google. After that, it checks to see how those 10 sites rank in Yahoo and in MSN….
• SEO Analyzer
  The SEO Analyzer is a FREE tool that uses a sophisticated algorithm that detects how optimized your web design is for search engines
• SEO Scanner
  An all-in-one advanced SEO analysis, tracking, and reporting tool

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Filed under: Free SEO Tools, List of Best SEO-Tools, List of SEO Tools, SEO Tool, Anchor text, Search Engine Submission, link building, SEO, Search Engine, Meta Tags, search engine optimization

A lot of people use anchor texts without even knowing its true value for search engine optimization. I know, I speak from experience. Long before I even know such a thing as SEO exists, I was already using anchor texts for my earliest web sites. In the more recent years however, anchor texts have become much more important, thanks to Google’s PageRank technology.

What are Anchor Texts?

Anchor texts are the texts you use as hyperlinks. For example, in your html file, an anchor text would appear like this:

<a href=” http://www.domainname.com “> insert anchor text here < /a>

In the web page itself, only the anchor text would be visible to visitors while the link would remain encoded.

Why Are Anchor Texts Important for PageRank?

The simplest most direct answer I could give is — relevancy of links. Think of it like this; when you link to a specific web site, Google recognizes this as your vote of confidence. Now, imagine you’re voting in the national elections. Surely, you have a reason why you vote for a candidate. It’s the same as anchor texts. Anchor texts serve as the “reason” why you vote for a particular web site. Google then analyzes this and adds your link as a point to the site for that particular keyword you used.

That doesn’t stop there, of course. Google also analyzes YOUR web site’s relevancy to the linked web site. So if your web site is about real estate and you link to a web site about Paris Hilton, the link will score much lower for Google.

The anchor text for links is very powerful because it’s one of the driving forces behind Google’s PageRank. A study conducted by seomoz.org lists anchor text by

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Filed under: Search, Search Engine Submission, Anchor text, Search Engine, SEO, search engine optimization, link building, building