How Not to Do SEO in the Age of Penguins and Pandas

In light of Google's recent major updates, Penguin and Panda, it's a shame to see how many questionable Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) "experts" and agencies are still risking their reputations and doing more harm than good to clients by attempting to use dodgy techniques to boost site visibility and traffic. They are demonstrating precisely the kind of behaviour that Google and other search engines have been aiming to eliminate.

To avoid ending up in search engine black books, steer clear of dubious schemes and methods, and use only genuine, tried and tested means to enhance your website's SEO credentials. If looking for ideas and inspiration, visit blogs and forums with a good reputation in the marketing world, such as Econsultancy, SEO Moz, and Graywolf's SEO Blog.

If you have the budget, don't hesitate to hire a team of professionals for the best results. This form of marketing is worth investing in so don't be tricked by low prices. Quality services don't come cheap.

In brief, the Google Panda update was launched to penalise websites that look and feel "spammy", while Penguin deals with sites showcasing an unnatural looking backlink profile.

Copy

Long gone are the days when websites stuffed with keywords outperformed others in search engine results pages. This will actually damage your website's performance rather than improve its chances.

To help realise the severity of this faux-pas, put yourself in a site user's shoes. It's very easy to tell when copy has been written for search engines rather than the human eye. This really doesn't leave a good impression on most customers, and is likely to result in a high bounce rate.

Linking

Diversity has never been as important, and natural diversity at that. Paying for links and getting involved in link farms is to be avoided at all costs unless you fancy getting penalised by the likes of Google who can now smell dodgy scams from a mile away.

Instead, time should be invested in developing relationships with bloggers whose backlinks can mean a lot to sites of all proportions. Though a somewhat aged method, it's also still worth submitting sites to credible business directories.

Social media strategies can greatly assist in acquiring natural backlink profiles as people share content according to their interests.

SEO must also consider internal linking structures. Similarly to keyword stuffing, internal linking musn't be exaggerated either. Again, put yourself in a user's shoes to see whether a link seems natural, and whether the anchor text fits the context. Awkwardly positioned internal links stand out like a sore thumb to both users and search engine spiders.

5 Theories To Why Your SEO Strategy Fails   Don't Let Your Content Disappoint Your Website   SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in 4 Easy Steps for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Many Others   What Not to Do in SEO Content Writing?   How Google Penguin Affects Your Website and What You Can Do About It   Why Your Business Needs the Best SEO Expert   

Why Join A Membership Site Now? 4 Tips So You Can Get Started Now in a Membership Site

With all of the membership sites available, it really is in your best interest to join a site and just get on with your learning. Get on with your development. Here are four reasons why you need to join a membership site now:

1. You can actually get instant solutions to your problems. Any problems that you are encountering right now, someone else has probably gone through the challenges. When you join a membership site for that specific topic or niche, you will find people there who have already "been there and done that". You will be able to have access to instant solutions for some of your problems.

2. You have access to the information in the site any time. 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You don't have to rely on someone being there. You don't have to rely on being able to get a hold of someone. The information is there, readily available for you to access 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are working on something late at nite and come across a challenge, the information is right there and may be able to assist you solve that challenge right away.

3. Once you belong to a membership site, you do not have to print the documents or you don't have to save everything. You get access to that information there on the site. No more having to remember where you filed something! In some cases, you will find that you pay a one-time fee and you have access to that information for as long as that site remains valid. (I love that kind when I am learning about a specific tool or program) Those types of sites are usually not added to. When you join a site that is continuously adding information, the chances are you will be required to pay a monthly fee. So if you were to decide to opt out of that site, then perhaps you would want to go in and save different things.

4. You can access the information over and over again. You do not have to remember it all. If it's something you only do once in a while, perhaps every month or two, you'll save yourself the stress of having to remember it by just being able to go to your membership site and access it just one more time. Everything is laid out for you in an easy to access way that assists you in your learning.

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How to Ensure Your SEO Campaign's Success

Every business needs to have an online site even if it is just for getting contact information into customer's hands. Some sites are constructed to have electronic shopping carts so that customers have the convenience of online shopping. No matter how detailed a site is, or is not, if a webmaster does not use proper SEO strategies there will be no traffic from which the business owner can benefit. There are a large number of SEO techniques which can be useful in optimizing a site. Sometimes the trouble is in selecting the ones that will be most beneficial for the current site. There are a few that are unquestionably necessary to ensure the success of an SEO campaign. Here are the techniques that should be used every time.

Keyword Research

Every time a project is started or a new site is being constructed, keyword research should be conducted. There are some free versions of some of the most popular tools used for doing this research. The paid versions are exceptional tools to help you isolate the keywords that are appropriate for your project, but the free versions can be beneficial as well if you are on a tight budget. Using the right keywords can be one of the most important factors to launching an SEO campaign. When selecting them try to think like someone would if they were trying to find your product or service.

Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Every page of the site needs to have a page title; this is perhaps one of the most important of all the on-page SEO strategies. It is highly unlikely that a page will have a high ranking for a primary term if it is not part of the title. The meta description tag isn't going to help the page ranking in itself. However, when the site's URL is displayed as a result of a search, the meta description will be displayed beneath it. Because it may be the first impression a person gets of your site or page it is important to write it carefully and strategically using your main keywords.

Choosing a URL

Many people just look for a catchy phrase for their URL. While this can be cute and some people will remember it you really want to concentrate on using a main keyword or something that is very simple for users to remember. You can use hyphens but do not use underscores. It is important to not have such a difficult URL that users cannot remember it after they have left your page, especially if you want them to return. Do not overdo it with the URL; keep it simple and to the point. If you use too many hyphens or extremely long names it can look spam and there are many users who will not be eager to click on it from the results pages.

Site Map Page

If the pages cannot be crawled, then the spiders cannot index them. It is very important to have a site map so that the spiders will be able to find all the pages of the site. You also need it to set up the hierarchy of the site. It will also come in very handy if there are any parts of the navigation menu that has difficulties. For sites which are extremely large it is beneficial to make several different site map pages. Each of these site map pages should be less than 100 links. Just to stay on the safe side, I would keep it at about 75.

These are four of the most important features of an SEO campaign which should be incorporated into every site. While these are not all of the techniques available or that should be used in any one campaign, they are essential to every SEO campaign.

Don't Let Your Content Disappoint Your Website   SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in 4 Easy Steps for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Many Others   What Not to Do in SEO Content Writing?   How Google Penguin Affects Your Website and What You Can Do About It   

The Role of Web Design and Marketing in Ecommerce

Ecommerce is a growing trend in today's market where one can enjoy their shopping on the Internet. The progressive technology today is boosting the marketing of many industries' products and services through the availability of well-designed websites that are effective in drawing interested web customers.

It is proven that a higher sales and profit has been recorded with a good web design site that showcases the retailer's wares; this is now a desired tool in the new era of marketing for most business ventures today.

Playing field

The latest technology that encourages the best of web design for marketing has flattened the playing field for all commercial parties; everyone who wants to indulge in commerce can get started quickly through Ecommerce options. This includes embracing the latest technological tools and gadgets in building a good website through attractive web that bring more web traffic to the site.

Hence, it is not just the big boys in the industry that steal the show today but any party that is innovative and determined to enjoy the benefits of technology.

Website appeal

It is important to have a great website to showcase the products and services so that more web consumers would come to the website for a closer look. A good web design attracts one to check out the wares and offerings.

A great web design includes color, fonts, pictures, video and information that are current and relevant. There must be the well positioning of these entities that form a great web design to make the web customer stay longer and browse more before selecting items into the electronic cart and checkout.

The web design for the website must not be too cluttered with information or flooded with entities that make visual difficult. Overcrowding the website with too much information would draw web consumers away quickly from the site as these potential customers would not find the site appealing.

Site development

Hence, it is crucial to have a well-designed website to promote the products and services to the web audience. Good web for effective marketing purposes can be achieved through creative and innovative skills which many individuals can pick up from web design schools and training centers.

There are many professional web designers in the market who are available to develop the required website for a fee for those entrepreneurs with web business ventures. The advent of Ecommerce has sprouted many creative and innovative individuals in this arena.

Don't Let Your Content Disappoint Your Website   SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in 4 Easy Steps for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Many Others   What Not to Do in SEO Content Writing?   How Google Penguin Affects Your Website and What You Can Do About It   Why Your Business Needs the Best SEO Expert   

5 Theories To Why Your SEO Strategy Fails

Being the most important process involved in SEO, link-building - only if done the right way - can improve your SEO rankings, significantly. But unfortunately, many website owners do not get great results despite having persistence on ethical link-building. Are you getting disappointed because your time and energy isn't paying off? Even if you have avoided illegal link-building techniques like paid linking, link tribes, reciprocal linking, link spamming, etc., here are 5 possible factors why link-building still isn't working for you, and many others, too.

1. You're getting links from sites with zero PageRank

Even if you have created many hyperlinks, you will not get any significant results if they're all coming from websites with a PageRank (PR) of 0. These are low excellent hyperlinks which will be of very little or no help to your SEO campaign. So, get your hyperlinks from websites with a moderate or high PageRank. Your link-building initiatives will be effective if you get hyperlinks from websites with a PR of 3 and above. Keep in mind that the greater the PageRank of a website, the better the quality of the back-link you will get from it.

2. You're getting links from sites with the "nofollow" tag

Because hyperlinks from great PR websites are very weighty, website owners and blog owners spare no chances of getting them. So, they keep comments on as many as possible great PR websites, with hyperlinks to their blogs or websites. This, ordinarily, would have enhanced their SEO positions significantly. But unfortunately, hyperlinks from many great PR websites have the "nofollow" feature attached to them and, therefore, are ineffective for SEO purposes - though they can help drive more traffic to your website.

To save your some time to energy, examine if any website has the "nofollow" feature by viewing the HTML web page source. To locate this feature tag, use the "find" command and type "nofollow" in the pillar. If you look for the tag within the HTML code for the website, it means hyperlinks from that website will not help your SEO endeavours.

3. You're getting links from sites unrelated to your blog

Most blog owners commit this mistake. While developing hyperlinks to your website on irrelevant weblogs will not hurt if you do not have SEO in mind, doing the same in the name of link-building will not be effective. It's pointless when you make hyperlinks from a travel weblog to your health weblog, or from a pet care weblog to your fashion weblog.

So, for your link-building initiatives to deliver outcomes, get hyperlinks only from relevant, related blogs or websites.

4. You're getting links from pages with many links

The more the number of outgoing hyperlinks on a web page, the lower the quality of each. This explains why hyperlinks designed via blog commenting may not be good enough for SEO, especially when thousands of comments are published on the same web page. Similar is when you have your back-link on another website's "links" web page - on which thousands of hyperlinks are listed.

To get top excellent hyperlinks, make hyperlinks only on webpages with few confident hyperlinks. A weblink on a web page with just three confident hyperlinks exceeds that placed on a web page with about 20.

5. You're getting links without your keyword in anchor text

If you really want to position highly for any keywords, use them in the anchor-text when developing hyperlinks to your website. Skipping this deprives weblink contractors of great outcomes. So, enough of generic core text messages like "click here", "my blog", etc. (But use them once in a while because they make your hyperlinks seem more natural to Google and major look for engines)

Now, you have discovered 5 common link-building errors that keep most blog owners and website owners disappointed. Have you been committing any of them? Now, you can correct yourself, and you will start getting the outcomes you wanted. And if you are just planning of starting your own SEO campaign, prevent these errors, and you will get great outcomes, quickly.

Don't Let Your Content Disappoint Your Website   SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in 4 Easy Steps for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Many Others   What Not to Do in SEO Content Writing?   How Google Penguin Affects Your Website and What You Can Do About It   Why Your Business Needs the Best SEO Expert   Buying High Quality Links After the Penguin Update - How to Do It