Tapping into the World of Voice Search: Optimizing for Voice Assistants

 

The rapid advancement of technology has fundamentally transformed the way we interact with our devices. One of the most groundbreaking innovations in recent years is the proliferation of voice assistants. From Siri to Alexa and Google Assistant, voice search has become an integral part of our daily lives, revolutionizing how we access information and interact with technology. As a digital marketing consultant, it's crucial to recognize the potential of voice search and its impact on the marketing landscape. 

The rise of voice search can be attributed to several factors, including the increased convenience and speed it offers compared to traditional text-based searches. Voice assistants have become smarter and more accurate in understanding natural language, making it easier for users to perform hands-free searches while on the go. Voice search is also gaining popularity due to the growing adoption of smart speakers and voice-activated devices in homes and workplaces.

According to comScore, by 2020, half of all searches are projected to be voice-based. This shift in consumer behavior presents an enormous opportunity for businesses to leverage voice search as a powerful marketing channel.

Let's explore the world of voice search and uncover effective strategies for optimizing your digital marketing efforts to thrive in this new era.

Understand User Intent:

When optimizing for voice search, understanding user intent is paramount. Voice searches tend to be more conversational and long-tail in nature. People are more likely to ask questions using natural language, such as "What's the best Italian restaurant near me?" or "How do I fix a leaky faucet?" To effectively optimize for voice search, businesses must identify and target the specific questions and queries that their target audience is likely to ask.

Focus on Featured Snippets:

Featured snippets, also known as "position zero" results, are concise answers to user queries that appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). These snippets are often the answers that voice assistants read aloud when responding to voice queries. To increase the chances of your content being featured, structure your content to provide clear and concise answers to commonly asked questions within your industry.

Local SEO Matters:

Voice searches are often location-based, with users seeking information about nearby businesses and services. Optimizing your website for local SEO is critical for attracting voice search traffic. Ensure your Google My Business profile is complete and up-to-date with accurate location, contact details, and business hours.

Mobile-Friendly and Fast-loading:

Voice searches are predominantly conducted on mobile devices. Therefore, it is crucial to have a mobile-friendly website that offers a seamless user experience across all devices. Additionally, ensure your website loads quickly, as voice search users expect fast results.

Long-Tail Keywords:

Incorporate long-tail keywords into your content that align with conversational queries. People tend to use more words in their voice searches, and optimizing for long-tail keywords can significantly improve your chances of appearing in relevant voice search results.

Voice search is reshaping the digital marketing landscape and presenting businesses with exciting new opportunities to connect with their audiences. It's essential to embrace this emerging technology and optimize marketing strategies to cater to voice assistant users effectively. Understanding user intent, leveraging featured snippets, local SEO, and mobile-friendliness are just some of the key tactics to thrive in the world of voice search. By staying ahead of the curve and adapting to changing consumer behaviour, businesses can position themselves at the forefront of voice search marketing and reap the rewards of this transformative technology.

8 Tips for Better SEO for Startups

Startups are already bootstrapped and work on tight budgets. The co-founders work under immense pressure to get their idea to become a viable and profitable business. They focus more on product development and sales. Little or no focus is on website. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is more economical and time consuming. But, if perfectly done then, it will pay off in a long run.

Here are simple 8 tips which involves little or no investment but, a bit of effort for startups to promote their business online.

1. On-page Optimization: To start with the on-page optimization need to be done perfectly. Identify the right and perfect keywords. I would suggest to target more on long-tail keywords. This will help in 2-ways. One, the competition for long-tail is less and it will be easier to rank on top in search engines. Two, it will attract the right audience for you business and the conversions are easy and quick. On-page optimization the very first and important step for SEO. A mistake done here will consume lot of time to correct it. As you will be on the wrong track from the start. Note that the objective here is just not to rank on top in Google. But, the website should rank on top in Google for the right keywords and phrases.

Weston Bergmann, lead investor in BetaBlox, which is an equity-based business incubator for startup entrepreneurs in Kansas City, compares SEO to a marathon:

"The most important thing to note about SEO for early-stage ventures is it's a marathon, not a sprint. I see too many people getting frustrated by a lack of stellar results in the first couple months, when this just isn't possible. These fights are long-term ones, so buckle down and stick to the basics. Eventually you'll look back and see that you've built a monster."Search Engine Optimization Bible written by Jerri L. Ledford, is a very good book to know and learn the basics of SEO. This book offers readers about what they need to write a SEO plan and implement a successful SEO program. It also provides useful and easy tips on getting the website to the top on SERPs, The sidebars provide more information and additional resources on the topic which are very helpful to a rookie.

2. Mobilize, Localize and Socialize: If your business is focus on your local area, try to have the content more relevant to the local area. It is always better to be on all the Google properties like YouTube, Google+, Google Places... Have a mobile friendly website / webpage as well. 

 

3. Launch Blog and Keep Writing: I am sure this is the one which will be ignore by most of the startups as this is more time consuming. But, this step is the next step for effective SEO after the #1 above. Search engines want to see more of fresh and quality content. Make sure the topics, titles and the posts again include the right keywords as far as possible.

Secondly, it is not necessary that the co-founders should only write the articles and post it. You can assign and pick someone within the organization or have a freelancer to write.

Lastly, have an option to share the blog articles over the social media. As the more the articles are shared and viewed, the more help it will do for SEO. For more details refer my article 'Is Content Still King?'.

 

4. Social Media Marketing (SMM): The content / webpage which is more talked and discussed about in the social channels is of more help in SEO. Be it a blog post, video, image, website link or a post in the social channel. Having something viral in the media will boost the search engine rankings. This does not just mean that you make a few post daily and it is done. One needs to check the followers, respond to comments. Also, need to see the mentions of the name of the startup or the business and initiate the conversation. The mentions in the social media are the right signals for the business.

I understand, this eats away lot of the valuable time. But, keeping aside an hour of your daily time for this will be beneficial for a long run. I would suggest not to outsource this to any agency as I believe, you are the one who knows the business well and understand the customers. Thus, the timely interactions can be properly done by you and will be effective. An hour a day is what is required.

Do not miss to read 'The Four Important Steps to Start Social Networking for Business'.

Also, one can answer related questions to their industry and business on Quora.com. Not only answer but, can ask relevant questions as well. Never know from where we can get traffic and customers. 

 

5. Startups Directories: There are many directories were the startup can be submitted. There are tons of them. But, I would suggest just pick the top few ones and submit your startup to them with a proper description and tags. Joining sites like Angel.co and Crunchbase.com will help. There are other few directories like Betali.st, Erli Bird, CSS Mania and more. Comprehensive list and experience of a startup is nicely given by RivalFox in the article 'Startup Directories: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly'

 

6. News Media: When your product is almost ready and you are ready to spread the news about the startup do take help of the news channel. The timing needs to be right. Just do not be too early to disclose the idea and attract competition. Like directories, we have many news websites which give news related to startups and most of them do it for free. Here as well just focus on few good ones like Mashable, Venturebeat, Startupbeat, YourStory, Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com, Alltop....

 

7. Guest Blogging: Apart from the news channels, there are other bloggers who are interested to write about startups. It is just not about startups, but bloggers who write about the industry related to your business will also help.

Weston Bergmann of BetaBlox opines about guest blogging and he had this to add:

"Recently I've heard a lot of people say that guest blogging is dead. Well it's not. What's dead is spammy and manipulative link building techniques. What's more important than ever is high-quality guest blogging and thought leadership. If you're sharing high quality and exclusive content you'll be rewarded, not punished. Also, guest blogging shouldn't be a one-and-done thing; aim to write for the same publication multiple times."

 

8. Analytics and Metrics: Do not forget to analyze the traffic stats and the sources of these traffic. See which traffic is being converted and focus on generating more traffic from these sources. Google Analytics is the best free tool available and to start with the numbers which it provides is apt. If the numbers are read and interpreted well then, it will save lot of efforts and cost to the startup. This step is always ignored by most of the businesses.

 

Whether it's for a startup or a new business, these simple 8 steps will help your SEO or digital marketing efforts to be more successful. Of course, once you launch a business the keywords and content your care about may change, but the game remains the same.

Work at a startup? Ask questions or share your own experiences in the comments!



 

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible

SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible written by Jerri L. Ledford, is a very good book to know and learn the basics of SEO. This book offers readers about what they need to write a SEO plan and implement a successful SEO program. It also provides useful and easy tips on getting the website to the top on SERPs, The sidebars provide more information and additional resources on the topic which are very helpful to a rookie.

The main topics covered include –

• Creating an SEO plan
• Identifying and managing keywords
• Maximizing pay-per-click strategies
• Understanding the best practices for link building
• Regarding search engine robots, spiders and / or crawlers
• On-going process in SEO
• Tracking and generating useful reports

 If you want to make SEO work for you, this is the book you need to succeed.

About the author, Jerri L. Ledford: She has been a freelance business technology writer for more than 10 years. During that time, over 700 of her articles, profiles, news stories and reports have appeared online and in print. Her publishing credits include: Intelligent Enterprise, Network World, Information Security Magazine, DCM Magazine, CRM Magazine, IT Manager's Journal. Jerri also authors corporate collateral -white papers, case studies, web content, and presentations. Her corporate clients include Switch & Data, The World Health Organization, FujiFilm, Coco-Cola, and NaviSite.

10 Techniques to Optimize Images for Website

Here is the list of few techniques which can be used to optimize the image file size for the websites. This will not only help in loading the web page and image faster, but it is also a good practice for SEO.

1. Crop images contextually to show only the most relevant parts of the image. This will help in faster download and higher impact.
2. Resize the images to actual pixel size as required. And always use width and height attributes for the images apart from the ALT tag.
3. Try to use .png images where ever possible instead of .tiff, .gif or .jpeg. .png extension images are efficient and can be easily downloaded with much costing you the bandwidth.
4. Embed images into the web pages with data URLs. This will reduce http requests. This is a good technique if you do not have to change the image more frequently.
5. If you are using .jpeg image then try to blur the background. This will not only optimize the image but, gives a clean and simplified image appearance when the no-critical details are blurred.
6. Use CSS borders or backgrounds instead of embedding borders in images. Use a tightly cropped image combined with a coded background color. Ensure you do not leave blank background boarders.
7. Overlay text using CSS or by using a transparent .png or .gif instead of embedding text in the image. This will help in fewer http requests.
8. Minimize noise to maximize graphic and video compression.
9. Minimize dithering and bit depth for .gif and .png.
10. Reduce or eliminate drop shadows. Drop shadows make images appealing, but also increase the file size. Try adjusting the different layers of images in Photoshop to reduce the width and depth of drop shadows to make the image more compressible.

Do let me know if I have missed anything.

How Google's Rankings Algorithm Has Changed Over Time

Rand in his blog has clearly represented the algorithm changes of Google over the past few years in a graph. This clearly shows the trends that happened over the years. It is a great way to communicate the changes with this small graph which says all. As it is said – pictures tell a thousand words.

According to Rand, Domain Trust/Authority is playing lot of role in SERPs. My question here is how does Google measure the website’s domain authority? I guess an authority domain is generally one with large number of pages, is popular with more visitors, has lots of inbound links, its content is frequently updated and re-indexed. This means to achieve domain authority, you need to do the other SEO techniques mentioned in the graph as well. All other techniques lead to domain authority.

And I guess no one exactly knows how or at what stage a domain or website acquires authority. If an article is published in such authority website, it will generally start ranking for its keywords relatively very fast compared to something similar published in a non-authority domain. So it boils down to what matters is where the content or link is published rather than what it is.

The New "Brand" Algorithm of Google

There are all sorts of speculation about the signals Google using to define a site as being a brand will deserve a boost in SERPs. It seems overnight many big brands came up to the first page on Google without any SEO tweaks done to their website. Last month Aaron Wall from SEOBook posted his opinion about the change in the algorithm. The few examples which he has referred are about American Airlines, Delta and North West Airlines have come to the first page of Google for the search keyword ‘airlines tickets’ which was not the case earlier. Even Hallmark.com recently started ranking on first page for the keyword ‘gifts’.

If Aaron is correct then - Is Google giving more credit to the brands? Is it considering that only big brands have original and quality content? Do people look only for brands when they want to search? If I wanted to search for a website of certain brand, I would rather type the brand name as the keyword in Google and directly go to the website. Instead of ‘airlines tickets’, I would rather type ‘Delta airlines’ or American airlines’ and go to their website. I will not rather search for just 'airlines tickets' and check for Delta.

In India SearchMasters 2009 which happened recently in Bangalore, India, Adam Lasnik did mentioned in his Q&A session that, in the title tag, it is always good to use the Company’s name and location where it offers the products and services to be mentioned. I am wondering if he was pointing it to this algorithm change. If we add the company or brand name to the title tag are we not wasting the main real estate here? Adam Lasnik says no. Google considers stuffing of keywords in title tags as spamming. I believe if the brand is well known then it makes a lot of sense to put your brand in the page title or meta description tag. It might help to get clicks and even when it does not at least it helps aid awareness. On top of that, if it builds good CTR then it will help in personalized search.

Another sad news and set-back I see for small players is that they have to build their brand image to beat these brand company’s websites in Google’s result pages. The fact is that it’s just plain hard to define the strength of a local brand using an algorithm or a robot visit.

Few tips to minimize the effect of this change in the algorithm (these are just my guesses now and I have never experimented them). Follow them at your own risks.

1. Frame your title tag with your company’s name and in short provide the product or service you are offering. If possible mention the local area as well. Example: Company Name: Your product/service description and location. Something like - Northwest Airlines - Airline Tickets, Plane Tickets & Airfare.
2. Have a short and meaning full description which clearly summarizes the page content/product/service which you have on that page. If description tag is missing and/or is not relevant to the content that is available on that page, Google will take the description for your website which is on DMOZ.org (if at all your website is listed there).
3. Never use the same title and description tag for all the pages of your website - as usual.
4. Focus on long-tail keywords as this is more advantageous now. eMarketers.com research showed that more and more people are using long-tail and this will increase in coming months.
5. Concentrate on local search optimization.

These are just the two cents. And it is too early to suggest any solutions about this change. I am just trying to guess the relationship between what Adam Lasnik talked during the session and this algorithm change.

Latest Important Update: Matt Cutts of Google made a video talking specifically about this change. Matt said, they made a "change" but he wouldn't call it an "update", but rather a "minor change." In fact, in Google they call it the Vince's change. In short, he said this impacts a relatively small number of queries, not the long tail ones and it is more about "trust," the "quality" of the page, the page's "PageRank" and "value" then about brands.

One example he gives at 2m12s) is that if you type in eclipse into Google, the first result is not from Mitsubishi. So he says it is not "brand" focused but more about trust.

Tools To Analyze Competitors’ Website Traffic

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Here is a list of websites/tools to analyze other websites' traffic and traffic sources. Few of them also provide additional details like traffic trend over a period of time, link popularity... A couple of them provide you details of keywords used in Adwords by your competitors. So, go ahead and use them for SEO and PPC and kill the competitors if you can :). If you don't beat the competition using PPC or SEO then you are giving business to your competitors. So, better know the competitor website's performance and then analyze your online marketing strategy to over shadow them. More over these tools are still free to use.

Alexa.com - Compare traffic and trends of websites up to three websites. Provides Alexa rank, reach and page views of the websites. But, I guess it takes data only from the visitors who have the Alexa toolbar.

Google Trends – use commas to compare unique visitors to multiple sites.

Quantcast – Will be helpful if at all the competitors are “quantified”. Also, you need to register to get the complete report.

Spyfu – One can know the keywords the competitor is bidding on Adwords.

Compete.com – They claim as - Competitive metrics for every site on the web powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry. Here again the competitors need to have considerable traffic for Compete to track it down. Basic numbers are free, but to get more traffic details you need to purchase monthly subscription ranging from $199 to $499 depending on the data you want.

comScore - Is definitely not cheaper and not completely accurate either. I think they use an aggregate data, based on what is available to them.

Hitwise - Hitwise reports offer a concise analysis of market trends in any one of Hitwise's 160+ industry categories or on thousands of categorized websites. Again it is not a free tool. You can contact them with your specific needs and numbers you are looking for and they can very well make a customized report for you. One can try for it in case you have the budget.

Popuri.us - A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more. This tool may not provide updated results.

MarketLeap – Is a leading provider of integrated digital marketing solutions. They have three different tools to check the link popularity trends, search engine saturation and keyword verification. Of course this can be had manually using Google, but using these tools you can see the trend and compare websites.

Website Grader by HubSpot - Website Grader is a free seo tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website. It provides a score that incorporates things like website traffic, SEO, social popularity and other technical factors. It also provides some basic advice on how the website can be improved from a marketing perspective. This can be used as a reference to know how websites have performed over a period of time.

dataopedia.com - Gathering together data from more than 50 sources, dataopedia.com is an aggregation web service that lets its users find out all the valuable facts about any website, such as traffic, online buzz, contact information, popularity in social bookmarking services…in short, all the essential facts about every website you can come across on the internet. dataopedia.com has been conceived as the one-stop-resource for finding website facts.

It's always better to use a composite of all the sites above, to give you a general sense. None of them are completely accurate. dataopedia.com summarizes most of the stats and trends from various sources (compete.com, Alexa..) at one place and it is very easy to see the performance of various sites on one screen/browser.

Let me know if I have missed any good websites here. If so, I will add them as soon as possible so and it will help all of here in the online marketing world.

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Can a small card solve your problem?

Yes, a small plastic card was my most loyal and dependable thing in the journey which solved my major problems.

I just wanted to share this with you all folks... may be this is a bit deviated from the main purpose of the blog. BUT, I just wanted to share how searching on Google solved my problem. Thanks to Google.

The card I am talking about is the calling card purchased online from a UK Calling Cards online shop.

I landed in UK and the main purpose of my travel was to give a surprise to my friends. So, they really do not know that I am already in London. When I landed, to my surprise, I found I was out of money and my debit card has only a balance of 20$.

I just thought that I am pauper now and I did not have anything than open my laptop and browse through. What I did - I went to Google and searched for cheap calling cards. Yes, I used cheap because, you should understand my problem. And I reached a website which has a vast variety of calling cards. More over, I can call from UK.

The solution was using the Google power to find a UK Phone Cards shop to buy them online and make a call to a Amy (my best friend who stays in UK) and ask her to come and pick me up and help me out.

So, to summarize the story - On Google, I typed cheap calling cards, I reached the UK calling cards website - http://www.eurocallingcards.com, I used $11 from my debit card to purchase a good calling card. And I was on the go to talk to Amy.

After talking to Amy, I was surprised that I still had balance on my debit card (of about $9) and also on the calling card. I did not wait longer and I called my family in India and other friends in UK.

So, I learnt - Google and SEO can be your friends and can rescue you in times you are in problems.
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SEO Job site

Good news to SEO and SEM guys in India. Especially those who want to aspire their career in search engine optimization. There is a dedicated website only to post SEO and SEM related jobs - SEOJOBS.in

This makes me imagine, how far will SEO and SEM will go. I guess this will become the next most wanted skill set, just like software skills. Good to know that India's online marketing is spearing ahead.

Google India Search Masters'09

Glad to inform you that Google will have the Search Masters'09 in their office, at Bangalore on Feb 28. I guess it will have loads of information about the webmasters tools and we will know how to exploit the webmasters tools and resources available there. More over, they have a session on Google's new custom search which I would love to know more about.

If you are in Bangalore don't miss it - SearchMasters'09

Search Engine Marketing 2010

I have a strong feeling that local search optimization will be the real beast which will be more complex and challenging than SEO of a website or a dynamic website. I was just browsing and thought the below few points can be the tips for local search optimization.

So, here are my two cents -

Some tips here can be -

1. To have the keyword in the business name (similar to have keyword in the domain name in SEO)
2. To have a business name which is alphbetically on the top. Ex. to have a business name starting with number(s) 0 or 007 :)
3. To have multiple listings in local areas/cities where one can provide the services (this again is similar to link building)
4. To provide better customer service and request satisfied customers to rate you (I can say PageRank here)
5. In your ads on local search directory, include all the names (or different names the area is known for) of the lane or road your office is located at.
5.

SEO Basics For A Rookiee

The Search Engine Optimization process is briefly described by the following stages:

1. Keyword Research:

Proper research assures that your website is optimized around the keywords most often used by your visitors. Without proper research, Optimization is likely to yield poor results. The research phase produces a finalized set of keywords that may be anywhere from 1-150 keywords. You can use the free tool available at http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com. Prepare a set of keywords for every page of the website depending on the content that is on the webpage.

2. Identifying your Competition:

After selecting the best keywords, it is important to know which websites rank highest in the major Search Engines. Websites that appear the most often are referred to as your ‘Competition.' Comparing your website to your Competition helps to give an idea of where the initial efforts of Optimization should be focused. Identify and study the keywords being used. Check the link popularity and PR of the competitors and make a note of it. Identify the traffic the competitors’ are getting. You can use these free tools available at – http://www.marketleap.com, http://www.trafficestimate.com, http://www.alexa.com.

A detailed analysis of your website and the competition provides the details necessary to plan a successful Optimization.

3. Meta Tags: Meta-tags & Title tag, Hyperlinks, Image Alt tags:

Optimizing the HTML code includes creating Title tags, Meta description tags, Meta keyword tags, hyperlinks, and possibly headings & image alt attributes. All of these are factors in helping the search engine spiders to properly classify your site, with some being more important than others. Rather than go into detail on how to perform all of these tasks, I'll direct you to some of my previous SEO articles.

When your code is optimized, it's finally time to upload your new pages to your server. In the past, at this point we would then resubmit them to the search engines. However, these days, this is an unnecessary step. As long as you're dealing with an existing site with some links already pointing to it, the search spiders should visit and index at least your home page fairly quickly. It may take a bit longer for them to re-index the inner pages, but you can rest assured that they will.

Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. SEO pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were.

4. Content Optimization:

Once the keyword phrases are chosen for each page of the site, it's time to get down to the nitty-gritty and start utilizing them within the copy. If you're rewriting from scratch, be sure your copywriter understands which phrases need to be used, what the goals of the site are, and who the target market is. Obviously this information will affect how they write the copy, so the more they know; the more accurate your copy will turn out. If you're lucky enough to be able to work in the necessary keywords, that's your next step. Once your copy is finished and approved, you should now have a number of pages focusing on 2 or 3 keyword phrases each.

5. HTML Site Map:

Create the html sitemaps providing the links of all the pages. Have the keywords in the body text and the anchor links if possible.

6. XML Site Map:

Create xml sitemaps and submit to Google and Yahoo. Free tools are available on - http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/, www.google.com/webmasters/ and http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/.

7. Website Structure Analysis:

Website Structure Analysis actually means website architecture. It is an approach to the design and planning of websites which involves certain criteria like technical, aesthetic and functional. The main focus is on the user and user requirements in designing a structure of the website. Attention is primarily given to the web content, usability, interaction design, information and web design.

In case of search engine optimization the navigation schemes of the website should be created most importantly for use by visitors. Through usability testing we can easily determine what type of navigation schemes visitors prefer. Like for example a text based or graphics based one.

For a website to be successful first and foremost, it should satisfy your target audience. At the same time by making sites simple and easily accessible we will be providing the easiest path for the search engine robots to index our site. This strategy helps in the long run success of search engine optimization. No matter how often the search engines algorithm change the good content and simple navigation is always rewarded.

Search engine friendly design: The easier the navigation and the more text on the page the better it is not only for the visitor but also for the search engine robots. Certain points to be considered while designing a search engine friendly site are not to include long javascript in the source code, dynamically generated pages, frames and so on as the search engine robots have difficulty in crawling them.

However there are techniques to overcome the problems with indexing but the best way to assure that the pages will be indexed is to keep them simple and ensure return visits both from the search engines and the visitors as well.

8. Robot.txt file:

Many search engines use programs called robots to gather web pages for indexing. These programs are not limited to a pre-defined list of web pages; they can follow links on pages they find, which makes them a form of intelligent agent. The process of following links is called spidering, wandering, or gathering.

The robots.txt file,

• is a text file created in notepad or any text editor
• should be placed in the top level directory or root of the website or server space
• should include all lower case letters

Through the robots.txt file we can,

• exclude all robots from visiting the server
• allow complete access to all robots
• exclude robots from accessing a portion of the server
• exclude a specific robot
• exclude certain type of files from accessing by specifying the file extensions.

Here are few examples of robot.txt file. Check both good and bad practices.

Entry Meaning
User-agent: *
Disallow:
The asterisk (*) in the User-agent field is shorthand for "all robots". Because nothing is disallowed, everything is allowed.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /private/

In this example, all robots can visit every directory except the three mentioned.

More examples are available in my previous post - http://seocolumn.blogspot.com/2005/12/search-engine-robots-and-robottxt.html

9. One-way links and Directory links:

Some SEOs recommend that you do these before all the other work so that you can start getting rankings right away. However, I prefer to wait until the copy changes have been made and uploaded. The newly focused copy helps the directory reviewers to more easily understand what your site is all about, and they'll be less apt to edit your submitted description. If you submit before your site's copy is using your specific keyword phrases within the copy, the reviewer may feel these keywords don't belong within your directory description.

When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.

Where as directory submission to Yahoo, DMOZ… can happen immediately. You just need to make sure you have the details asked by these website forms are ready with you. And make sure to have the home page to have some relevant content prior to submission to these directories.

10. Reciprocal links:

As with directory submissions, I prefer to wait until the site is in perfect condition before starting to request links. You can certainly get started researching link partners before the SEO is complete; however, the better your site is, the more likely others will be willing to link to it. Link building can be done in a quick burst, but should also be an ongoing process. You should always be on the lookout for sites that are a good fit with yours and contact them about exchanging links.

In some cases, additional content pages may also need to be created as per the need of the keywords you want to rank for.

11. Article Submissions:

The fundamental base of the internet is not the page, but the link. A great way to accumulate links is to write articles and submit them to places interested in quality articles.

When you write articles for free on certain websites, you are typically given a by-line or author bio which you can link to your website. Few websites also accept links within the body text using html tags.

Few good Article resources are listed below.

http://goarticles.com/
http://ezinearticles.com/add_url.html
http://amazines.com
http://www.articlecity.com/
http://bpubs.com/
http://businessknowhow.com/
http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml
http://www.promotionworld.com/
http://promotenewz.com/

12. Adopt Web 2.0 Technologies:

Do not think that the traditional tactics of SEO – optimizing using meta tags, keyword density, prominence of keywords…more has lost the importance. They are still important and one needs to follow these for better rankings.

Here are few easy steps…http://seocolumn.blogspot.com/search/label/web 2.0

Guidelines for content writing to improve ranking in search engines

This is only for front-end content writing...

Keyword Relevancy: The more relevant the content is to a specific search term, the more likely the page will rank at the top of search results for that search query. Each page need to be targeted to a keyword / key phrase rather than all the pages for all the keywords.

Keyword Density: There is an optimal ratio of key terms to the overall amount of text that must be used for search engine optimization purposes. Keyword Density refers to the overall density of a given keyword for a particular page and is extremely, extremely important for SEO strategy.

Header Tags: This is a combination of the words found in the title, the headings on the web page and the body of the text. Each page need to have the keyword in the header tag and title tag.

Keyword Prominence: Let the header tag and/or the first word of the first line start with the keywords. Also, have the keyword in the every first line of each paragraph (the keyword needs to be in first 90 characters). The same goes for closing the content - have the keyword phrase twice in the closing paragraph as well as in the last 90 characters.

Anchor Text / Links: Link the key phrases to the appropriate pages. Even here - do not try to link all the main keywords to all the pages. Identify a key phrase for each page and link it. Treat every web page as a different website.

SEO of Dynamic Pages

Here are some things to keep in mind when optimizing dynamic pages:

1. Dynamic URLs are definitely search engine friendly.
2. If possible specify the title tag. Or use a CMS which has this option. Title tag is the most important on-page SEO factor. Most CMS's use the site name as the default title tag. The worst ones use it as the title for all pages, less worse ones use it in the form " ". Ideally, you want the page title first. And make sure that the title of that content page is well optimized for the keywords you're trying to target.
3. Specify meta tags. This is not so important for SEO, but can make a difference to your click-throughs from the SERPs (search engine results pages) - particularly the meta description. Ideally, you can specify the content for the meta description when you're creating content. Same goes for the meta keywords, but this is very minor. Major search engines don't really care anymore.
4. Proper use of heading tags. Make sure that you use h1 tag for the page heading, and use subheadings (h2 tag, etc) for sub-headers in the content. These are relatively well weighted SEO factors. If you're using a WYSIWYG editor in the CMS, make sure that it uses tags as opposed to just changing the font size.
5. Clean code. I've seen so many dynamic sites that are messily coded. Ideally, the outputted HTML code is as clean as possible and the actual content appears relatively close to the top of the HTML. Using CSS-based, non-table layouts will make a difference here as well.
6. With regards to listing all the dynamic links on a static page, that's not really necessary, though it's a still a good idea to have a sitemap - both HTML and XML.

Optimizing for Search Engines in particular country

Easy and simple way to optimize website for Google / Yahoo / Bing for a particular country - google.co.uk or yahoo.co.us.

1. The top-level domain (site.co.uk) needs to be from that country. Ex. To optimize for google.co.uk have .co.uk as extension for the domain name.
2. Host the website in the country to which geo search engine you want to optimize for. Ex. If the website is to be optimized for google.co.uk or yahoo.co.uk then have the hosting server in UK. Spiders consider the server IP to rank the websites in the geo targetted SE.
3. Know the number of backlinks you have from particular country or geogrphical area. The website needs to have enough number of backlinks from the websites of that geo area or hosted in the geo area. Ex. Easy way to swap links for UK is to have enough number of links from .co.uk domain extensions. A good free tool is available at Ekstreme.com. It shows the number of backlinks the website has from each country website.
4. Try posting the website in local directories and classifieds.
5. Have the local phone number and address in the footer of the website and contact us page.

Easy Way to Adopt Web 2.0 Technologies for Better SEO

Heard and read lot about the Web 2.0 technologies and are just wondering how to adopt for better search engine rankings. Here are the easy steps…

1. Do not think that the traditional tactics of SEO – optimizing using meta tags, keyword density, prominence of keywords…more has lost the importance. They are still important and one needs to follow these for better rankings.
2. Have a good CSS for the web pages. Usage of header tags is very important. Use the main keywords in the header tags.
3. Instead of using java scripts on the web pages use Ajax. Ajax is the best way to display more content on pages. The web page does not look stuffy but gets a professional look. Get the content preloaded in the html via CSS.
4. Content is KING. But not webmasters but the content written by the visitors. Add blog and discussion board on the website. Educate people of new things through the blog and listen to the visitors through the discussion boards.
5. Do visit wiki and read what is there and provide your feedback and suggestions. You need to be more clever about how to do this.
6. Have a short video / audio file on the website. Thanks to YouTube.
7. Use ALT tags for the images. Do not repeat the same ALT tag description for all images. Use the proper keywords for ALT tags.
8. Have press releases and articles sections on the website. Provide and submit them to newswires. Have RSS, Del.icio.us, DIGG, Technorati Reddit for the visitors to bookmark the sites.
9. Use Google widgets for showing driving directions (Google maps), time converters. You have bunch of them on Google. Use which ever you feel is best for your website.

Conversion Rate Optimization Part 1, Google Takes the Leading Role

Within the e-commerce sphere, the "mind games" between site owners and search engine designers have focused on search engine optimization (SEO). After all, you can't make a sale if visitors aren't reaching your site. However, as the web marketplace grows exponentially more competitive, attention among webmasters and site owners has turned to conversion optimization — converting site visitors to buyers.

Conversion optimization has nothing to do with SEO. SEO is designed for spiders and bots. Conversion optimization is based on two factors only: the needs and motivations of human site visitors and persuasive site content and design to encourage humans to make a purchase or perform some other action. Any other considerations are sub-sets of these two factors in conversion optimization strategies.

Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness

SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there's no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing.

Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO.

Measuring Human Motivations and Site Effectiveness

SEO is based on the development of numbers (metrics) that are immutable. Numbers are numbers, there's no debating that. The interpretation of site metrics, on the other hand, is a true combination of art, science and testing.

Assessing conversion rate optimization must apply a completely different approach to data gathering and the accurate, actionable assessment of the cold hard facts (percentages and such) that are the basis of SEO.

The Google Website Optimizer (GWO)

Google owns SEO (sorry Yahoo). It is now moving into eyeball optimization (EBO) to help site owners improve conversion rates. It's got lots of features, it's totally flexible in designing useful tests for human reactions and it provides data using simple to read and understand charts showing what's working and what would work even better.

One key point here: after indexing billions and billions of web pages, who is going to know better what works and doesn't work for solid EBO? After all, all the Google gurus have to do is evaluate their top performing sites to develop measurement criteria and tools to improve conversion optimization. Google is going to know what works.

One other point worth mentioning — it's frëe. A flexible, user-designed test engine developed by Google and available frëe. It's a must have for any site owner, site designer, webmaster or SEO.

What Can Google Website Optimizer Do For Me & How Can It Do It If I Don't Know the Difference Between a Statistical Mean and a Statistical Average?

Multi-Variable Testing

Got to have it. When quantifying human motivations and the effectiveness of a site page, you must have data to compare - data based on site variables such as a different home page image or revised site text. There are hundreds of variables within any website. Color selections, type font, type color, navigation tools, product images and descriptions — literally an endless líst of variables.

Google's Website Optimizer allows you to design tests to compare variables to see which ones work best. Often called A/B split tests, these simply compare a change or two to see which performs best. For example, you might have a picture of your product on test site A and a photo of the product in use by a human on test site B. Simply by comparing visitors' reactions to pages A and B, you can make refinements to your site.

Another useful A/B split test to chëck the success of your Adwords placements is to create two identical ads with two different destination URLs. You'll quickly discover which placements pay for themselves and which should be dropped.

Easy Analytics

The information gathered by Google during testing is delivered in an easy-to-understand format. You'll see, in graphic förm, where visitors go and where they don't go when on site. Taking a good hard look at your bounce rates and possible paths-thru-site are essential parts of your ongoing conversion optimization diet.

Usability Testing

Real humans navigating your site. Get as many people as you can to site down and clíck around - from your computer-whiz 12-year-old to mom and dad who still use dial-up. These tests provide the reasons why visitors take specific actions — over and over again.

Eyeball Optimization

GWO shows you what attracts eyeballs but doesn't generate a clíck. It also shows what visitors miss entirely because it's misplaced or mislabeled. Every page should undergo an "EBO" to improve conversion rates.

Follow the Leaders

You can't copyright an idea so use the same features and techniques employed by higher ranking competitor sites. Then, conduct A/B split tests to see which changes show improvement in conversion optimization.

People Are Still the Same

There's nothing new about direct response advertising, which is what successful sites use. Infomercials, newspaper ads, TV 30-second spots — these are all examples of direct response advertising and the same motivators that work in other media will also work on your website. Once again, you can't copyright an idea and the principles of direct response marketing haven't changed one iota.

Determine and identify the buyer's needs; provide the solution to meet those needs. It's worked for the past few millennia and it'll work for you today.

Small Steps or One Giant Leap

Do you make incremental improvements or try to fix everything all at once. It depends on where you are right now. If you've optimized your site (or paid to have it optimized) a small step here and there can make a huge difference, and a major revamping of your site may actually set you back in the optimization race.

On the other hand, if you're just launching, run a couple of A/B splits and other analytics to see which site pages are hot and which are not. Adjust accordingly. The point here? The more optimized the site, the less optimization is needed so if you've been at it for a while, take small steps and assess improvements. If you're just starting out, launch, track and adjust as needed — whether it be small steps or the proverbial giant leap.

Create a Diagram of Your Marketing Funnel

Start with placed adverts (Adwords, paid links, etc.) Add your home page, each product page, the checkout, automated order conformation, customer care and order fulfillment. Each one of these is a component of a sale and, from the líst and with the help of GWO, you'll be able to more clearly identify holes in your marketing funnel — those areas most in need of improvement, i.e., optimization.

Now, this is just the beginning. Conversion optimization is an on-going process and there are additional steps you can take based on test results delivered by Google's Web Optimizer - steps that we'll look at more closely in part 2 of this series.

Author - Frederick Townes, CEO of W3 EDGE