1 Your profile is your major weapon
As with Twitter and any other social network, if you don't make your profile interesting, you will hardly become popular. Give enough background information for you and don't forget to make your profile public because this way even people, who don't know you, when they encounter your profile, they might become interested in you and become a supporter of yours.
2Include information about your site on your Wall and in the photo gallery
Facebook gives you the opportunity to write a lot about you and your endeavors, as well as to include pictures, so use all these opportunities to build interest in you and your products. It is even better to post videos and fill in the other tabs, so if you have something meaningful to put there, just do it.
3Build your network
As with other social networking sites, your network is your major capital. That is why you need to invite your friends, acquaintances, and partners and ask them to join as your supporter. You should also search for people with interests similar to yours. However, don't be pushy and don't spam because this is not the way to convince people to join your network.
4Post regularly
No matter how interesting the stuff in your Facebook profile is, if you don't publish new content regularly, the traffic to your Facebook profile (and respectively the Facebook traffic to your site) will slow down. If you can post daily, it is fine but even if you don't post that regularly, try to do it as frequently as you can. If nothing else, updating your status regularly is more than nothing, so do it.
5Be active
A great profile, an impressive network, and posting regularly are just a part of the recipe for success on Facebook. You also need to be active – visit the profiles of your supporters, take part in their groups and other initiatives, visit their sites. You are right that all this takes a lot of time and you might soon discover that Facebooking is a full-time occupation but if you notice an increase in traffic to your site, then all this is worth.
6Arrange your page
Unlike other social networks, Facebook gives you more flexibility and you can move around many of the boxes. If you put the RSS feed with the links to your blog in a visible space, this alone can generate lots of traffic for you.
7Check what Facebook apps are available
Facebook apps are numerous and new and new ones are released all the time. While many of these apps are not exactly what you need, there are apps, which can work for you in a great way. For instance, MarketPlace widget/plugin or Blog Friends widget are very useful and you should take advantage of them. You can also use the widgets for crossposting (i.e. posting directly on Twitter from Facebook) because this saves you time.
8Use Facebook Social Ads
If you can't get traffic the natural way, you might consider using Facebook Social ads. These are PPC ads and starting a campaign is similar to an Adwords campaign.
9Start a group
There are many groups on Facebook but it is quite probable that there is a free niche for you. Start a group about something related to your business and invite people to join it. The advantage of this approach is that you are getting targeted users – i.e. people, who are interested in you, your product, your ideas, etc.
10 Write your own Facebook extensions
While this step is certainly not for everybody, if you can write Facebook extensions, this is one more way to make your Facebook profile popular and get some traffic to your site.
11Use separate profiles
Unfortunately, social networks do expose a lot of personal information and you are not paranoid, if you don't want so much publicity. Many people are rightfully worried about their privacy on social network sites and that is why it is not uncommon to have one personal profile for friends and one business profile to promote their business. You can have one single profile for both purposes, but if you have privacy concerns, consider separating this profile in two – you'd better be safe than sorry.
Facebook is changing all the time and no matter how hard you try to follow these changes, there will be new and new possibilities for you to explore. That is why it is not possible to compile a complete list of all the tactics you can use in order to drive traffic from Facebook to your site. Anyway, if you try just the basics for Facebook success we listed here, chances are that you will see a considerable traffic increase.
Monday, September 28, 2009
How to get traffic from Twitter
1Make your Twitter profile interesting
Your profile and your username are the first two things your visitors will see when they go to your Twitter page. If your profile looks boring, people won't bother to read your tweets, not to mention visit the links you post in them. You can't write a very long bio of yours, but you can enter a few words about you – i.e. your occupation, your interests, etc. You can also include a couple of keywords in your bio.
2 Pick a niche-targeted username
Your username is also very important. You need to pick a username that is targeted at your niche. For instance, if you are promoting your SEO services and want to drive traffic to your SEO site, you can choose something like SEOmaster, SEOguru, SEOservices, etc. Your username will show in searches other users make and this is why you must pay attention to what you choose.
3 Put your site/blog URL in your profile
According to some statistics, 80% of tweeters don't provide an URL in their bio! Well, maybe these people are not SEO experts/Internet marketers and they don't need this traffic but you as a SEO expert can't afford to miss it. So, don't forget to include your URL in your profile!
4 Send the link to your profile to your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances
Your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances will be your most loyal audience, so if they don't know about your Twitter page, make them aware of what they are missing. If you have their emails, or know their accounts on other networks, you can send a mass invite.
5Search for Twitter users with similar interests
You might have millions of friends, but more followers are always welcome. That is why you can use the search functions on Twitter and find people with similar interests. Find as many as you can and invite them all. These people might not be as loyal as your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances but still you will get hits from them as well. Some Twitter users report that about 1-2% of their followers visit their site a day, which means that if you have 1,000 followers, you might expect to get at least 10 or 20 visits a day to your site. This response rate might seem low but there are ways to increase it.
6 Socialize on Twitter as much as you can
When you are active in Twitter, respond to the posts of your followers and visit their links, this seriously increases your chances that you will get the same in return. In a word, actively follow those that follow you.
7 Tweet regularly
As with all other kinds of media, if you want to keep your audience, you need to feed it regularly. Writing a short tweet takes just seconds, but it is enough in order to keep your followers happy. It goes without saying, that you should tweet about useful things, so if you don't have something meaningful to post about you or your sites, it is quite OK to post a link to an article, a video, a blog, etc. you found on the Net and you like.
7Don't spam
You might feel that every single user on Twitter is interested in you and your blog/site but this is not exactly so. You might be tempted to make as many users as you can aware of your Twitter page and your latest tweets but you'd better refrain from doing this, unless you want to see if you can get a ban or not.
8Take advantage of Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is one more useful service you can take advantage of in order to increase your reach. Go to twitterfeed.com and configure your feeds.
9Make Twitter Search love you
Twitter has a great search function and its main advantage is that it offers real-time results. Google might be fast in indexing pages but its indexing is not real-time. Users are hungry for hot news and nothing beats a real-time search. Many bloggers report that they are getting more traffic from Twitter than from Google and partially this is due to the fact that their tweets are popular and users find them with ease.
10Add Twitter gadgets to your site
There are tons of Twitter gadgets and new ones are being released every day. The cool thing about Twitter gadgets is that your blog visitors can become your Twitter followers. If your Twitter followers have many followers, chances are that some of these followers will notice you and will join your network. As we already mentioned, building a large and targeted network is key to getting more Twitter traffic to your site.
These are some of the main ways in which you can get traffic from Twitter. If you are creative and if you monitor what's going on on Twitter and what new Twitter gadgets are released, you will certainly find more ways to drive traffic from Twitter to your site.
Your profile and your username are the first two things your visitors will see when they go to your Twitter page. If your profile looks boring, people won't bother to read your tweets, not to mention visit the links you post in them. You can't write a very long bio of yours, but you can enter a few words about you – i.e. your occupation, your interests, etc. You can also include a couple of keywords in your bio.
2 Pick a niche-targeted username
Your username is also very important. You need to pick a username that is targeted at your niche. For instance, if you are promoting your SEO services and want to drive traffic to your SEO site, you can choose something like SEOmaster, SEOguru, SEOservices, etc. Your username will show in searches other users make and this is why you must pay attention to what you choose.
3 Put your site/blog URL in your profile
According to some statistics, 80% of tweeters don't provide an URL in their bio! Well, maybe these people are not SEO experts/Internet marketers and they don't need this traffic but you as a SEO expert can't afford to miss it. So, don't forget to include your URL in your profile!
4 Send the link to your profile to your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances
Your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances will be your most loyal audience, so if they don't know about your Twitter page, make them aware of what they are missing. If you have their emails, or know their accounts on other networks, you can send a mass invite.
5Search for Twitter users with similar interests
You might have millions of friends, but more followers are always welcome. That is why you can use the search functions on Twitter and find people with similar interests. Find as many as you can and invite them all. These people might not be as loyal as your friends, coworkers, and acquaintances but still you will get hits from them as well. Some Twitter users report that about 1-2% of their followers visit their site a day, which means that if you have 1,000 followers, you might expect to get at least 10 or 20 visits a day to your site. This response rate might seem low but there are ways to increase it.
6 Socialize on Twitter as much as you can
When you are active in Twitter, respond to the posts of your followers and visit their links, this seriously increases your chances that you will get the same in return. In a word, actively follow those that follow you.
7 Tweet regularly
As with all other kinds of media, if you want to keep your audience, you need to feed it regularly. Writing a short tweet takes just seconds, but it is enough in order to keep your followers happy. It goes without saying, that you should tweet about useful things, so if you don't have something meaningful to post about you or your sites, it is quite OK to post a link to an article, a video, a blog, etc. you found on the Net and you like.
7Don't spam
You might feel that every single user on Twitter is interested in you and your blog/site but this is not exactly so. You might be tempted to make as many users as you can aware of your Twitter page and your latest tweets but you'd better refrain from doing this, unless you want to see if you can get a ban or not.
8Take advantage of Twitterfeed
Twitterfeed is one more useful service you can take advantage of in order to increase your reach. Go to twitterfeed.com and configure your feeds.
9Make Twitter Search love you
Twitter has a great search function and its main advantage is that it offers real-time results. Google might be fast in indexing pages but its indexing is not real-time. Users are hungry for hot news and nothing beats a real-time search. Many bloggers report that they are getting more traffic from Twitter than from Google and partially this is due to the fact that their tweets are popular and users find them with ease.
10Add Twitter gadgets to your site
There are tons of Twitter gadgets and new ones are being released every day. The cool thing about Twitter gadgets is that your blog visitors can become your Twitter followers. If your Twitter followers have many followers, chances are that some of these followers will notice you and will join your network. As we already mentioned, building a large and targeted network is key to getting more Twitter traffic to your site.
These are some of the main ways in which you can get traffic from Twitter. If you are creative and if you monitor what's going on on Twitter and what new Twitter gadgets are released, you will certainly find more ways to drive traffic from Twitter to your site.
Promoting Your Site to Increase Traffic
The main purpose of SEO is to make your site visible to search engines, thus leading to higher rankings in search results pages, which in turn brings more traffic to your site. And having more visitors (and above all buyers) is ultimately the goal in sites promotion. For truth's sake, SEO is only one alternative to promote your site and increase traffic – there are many other online and offline ways to do accomplish the goal of getting high traffic and reaching your target audience. We are not going to explore them in this tutorial but just keep in mind that search engines are not the only way to get visitors to your site, although they seem to be a preferable choice and a relatively easy way to do it.
1. Submitting Your Site to Search Directories, forums and special sites
After you have finished optimizing your new site, time comes to submit it to search engines. Generally, with search engines you don't have to do anything special in order to get your site included in their indices – they will come and find you. Well, it cannot be said exactly when they will visit your site for the first time and at what intervals they will visit it later but there is hardly anything that you can to do invite them. Sure, you can go to their Submit a Site pages in submit the URL of your new site but by doing this do not expect that they will hop to you right away. What is more, even if you submit your URL, most search engines reserve the right to judge whether to crawl your site or not. Anyway, here are the URLs for submitting pages in the three major search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
In addition to search engines, you may also want to have your site included in search directories as well. Although search directories also list sites that are relevant to a given topic, they are different from search engines in several aspects. First, search directories are usually maintained by humans and the sites in them are reviewed for relevancy after they have been submitted. Second, search directories do not use crawlers to get URLs, so you need to go to them and submit your site but once you do this, you can stay there forever and no more efforts on your side are necessary. Some of the most popular search directories are DMOZ and Yahoo! (the directory, not the search engine itself) and here are the URLs of their submissions pages: DMOZ and Yahoo!.
Sometimes posting a link to your site in the right forums or special sites can do miracles in terms of traffic. You need to find the forums and sites that are leaders in the fields of interest to you but generally even a simple search in Google or the other major search engines will retrieve their names. For instance, if you are a hardware freak, type “hardware forums” in the search box and in a second you will have a list of sites that are favorites to other hardware freaks. Then you need to check the sites one by one because some of them might not allow posting links to commercial sites. Posting into forums is more time-consuming than submitting to search engines but it could also be pretty rewarding.
2. Specialized Search Engines
Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are not the only search engines on Earth, nor even the only general-purpose ones. There are many other general-purpose and specialized search engines and some of them can be really helpful for reaching your target audience. You just can't imagine for how many niches specialized search engines exist – from law, to radiostations, to educational one! Some of them are actually huge sites that gather Webwide resources on a particular topic but almost all of them have sections for submitting links to external sites of interest. So, after you find the specialized search engines in your niche, go to their site and submit your URL – this could prove more trafficworthy than striving to get to the top of Google.
3. Paid Ads and Submissions
We have already mentioned some other alternatives to search engines – forums, specialized sites and search engines, search directories – but if you need to make sure that your site will be noticed, you can always resort to paid ads and submissions. Yes, paid listings are a fast and guaranteed way to appear in search results and most of the major search engines accept payment to put your URL in the Paid Links section for keywords of interest to you but you also must have in mind that users generally do not trust paid links as much as they do with the normal ones – in a sense it looks like you are bribing the search engine to place you where you can't get on your own, so think twice about the pros and cons of paying to get listed.
1. Submitting Your Site to Search Directories, forums and special sites
After you have finished optimizing your new site, time comes to submit it to search engines. Generally, with search engines you don't have to do anything special in order to get your site included in their indices – they will come and find you. Well, it cannot be said exactly when they will visit your site for the first time and at what intervals they will visit it later but there is hardly anything that you can to do invite them. Sure, you can go to their Submit a Site pages in submit the URL of your new site but by doing this do not expect that they will hop to you right away. What is more, even if you submit your URL, most search engines reserve the right to judge whether to crawl your site or not. Anyway, here are the URLs for submitting pages in the three major search engines: Google, MSN, and Yahoo.
In addition to search engines, you may also want to have your site included in search directories as well. Although search directories also list sites that are relevant to a given topic, they are different from search engines in several aspects. First, search directories are usually maintained by humans and the sites in them are reviewed for relevancy after they have been submitted. Second, search directories do not use crawlers to get URLs, so you need to go to them and submit your site but once you do this, you can stay there forever and no more efforts on your side are necessary. Some of the most popular search directories are DMOZ and Yahoo! (the directory, not the search engine itself) and here are the URLs of their submissions pages: DMOZ and Yahoo!.
Sometimes posting a link to your site in the right forums or special sites can do miracles in terms of traffic. You need to find the forums and sites that are leaders in the fields of interest to you but generally even a simple search in Google or the other major search engines will retrieve their names. For instance, if you are a hardware freak, type “hardware forums” in the search box and in a second you will have a list of sites that are favorites to other hardware freaks. Then you need to check the sites one by one because some of them might not allow posting links to commercial sites. Posting into forums is more time-consuming than submitting to search engines but it could also be pretty rewarding.
2. Specialized Search Engines
Google, Yahoo!, and MSN are not the only search engines on Earth, nor even the only general-purpose ones. There are many other general-purpose and specialized search engines and some of them can be really helpful for reaching your target audience. You just can't imagine for how many niches specialized search engines exist – from law, to radiostations, to educational one! Some of them are actually huge sites that gather Webwide resources on a particular topic but almost all of them have sections for submitting links to external sites of interest. So, after you find the specialized search engines in your niche, go to their site and submit your URL – this could prove more trafficworthy than striving to get to the top of Google.
3. Paid Ads and Submissions
We have already mentioned some other alternatives to search engines – forums, specialized sites and search engines, search directories – but if you need to make sure that your site will be noticed, you can always resort to paid ads and submissions. Yes, paid listings are a fast and guaranteed way to appear in search results and most of the major search engines accept payment to put your URL in the Paid Links section for keywords of interest to you but you also must have in mind that users generally do not trust paid links as much as they do with the normal ones – in a sense it looks like you are bribing the search engine to place you where you can't get on your own, so think twice about the pros and cons of paying to get listed.
Static Versus Dynamic URLs
Based on the previous section, you might have gotten the impression that the algorithms of search engines try to humiliate every designer effort to make a site gorgeous. Well, it has been explained why search engines do not like image, movies, applets and other extras. Now, you might think that search engines are far too cheeky to dislike dynamic URLs either. Honestly, users are also not in love with URLs like http://domain.com/product.php?cid=1&pid=5 because such URLs do not tell much about the contents of the page.
There are a couple of good reasons why static URLs score better than dynamic URLs. First, dynamic URLs are not always there – i.e. the page is generated on request after the user performs some kind of action (fills a form and submits it or performs a search using the site's search engine). In a sense, such pages are nonexistent for search engines, because they index the Web by crawling it, not by filling in forms.
Second, even if a dynamic page has already been generated by a previous user request and is stored on the server, search engines might just skip it if it has too many question marks and other special symbols in it. Once upon a time search engines did not index dynamic pages at all, while today they do index them but generally slower than they index static pages.
The idea is not to revert to static HTML only. Database-driven sites are great but it will be much better if you serve your pages to the search engines and users in a format they can easily handle. One of the solutions of the dynamic URLs problem is called URL rewriting. There are special tools (different for different platforms and servers) that rewrite URLs in a friendlier format, so they appear in the browser like normal HTML pages.
There are a couple of good reasons why static URLs score better than dynamic URLs. First, dynamic URLs are not always there – i.e. the page is generated on request after the user performs some kind of action (fills a form and submits it or performs a search using the site's search engine). In a sense, such pages are nonexistent for search engines, because they index the Web by crawling it, not by filling in forms.
Second, even if a dynamic page has already been generated by a previous user request and is stored on the server, search engines might just skip it if it has too many question marks and other special symbols in it. Once upon a time search engines did not index dynamic pages at all, while today they do index them but generally slower than they index static pages.
The idea is not to revert to static HTML only. Database-driven sites are great but it will be much better if you serve your pages to the search engines and users in a format they can easily handle. One of the solutions of the dynamic URLs problem is called URL rewriting. There are special tools (different for different platforms and servers) that rewrite URLs in a friendlier format, so they appear in the browser like normal HTML pages.
Content Is King
If you are new to SEO, it might be a surprise for you that text is one of the driving forces to higher rankings. But it is a fact. Search engines (and your readers) love fresh content and providing them with regularly updated, relevant content is a recipe for success. Generally, when a site is frequently updated, this increases the probability that the spider will revisit the site sooner. You can't take for sure that if you update your site daily, the spider will visit it even once a week but if you do not update your contents regularly, this will certainly drop you to from the top of search results.
For company sites that are not focused on writing but on manufacturing constantly adding text can be a problem because generally company sites are not reading rooms or online magazines that update their content daily, weekly or monthly but even for company sites there are reasonable solutions. No matter what your business is, one is for sure – it is always relevant to include a news section on your site – it can be company news or RSS feeds but this will keep the ball rolling.
1. Topical Themes or How to Frequently Add Content to Your Site
If you are doing the SEO for an online magazine, you can consider yourself lucky – fresh content is coming all the time and you just need to occasionally arrange a heading or two or a couple of paragraphs to make the site SEO-friendly. But even if you are doing a SEO for an ordinary company site, it is not all that bad - there are ways to constantly get fresh content that fits into the topic of the site.
One of the intricacies of optimizing a company site is that it has to be serious. Also, if your content smells like advertising and has no practical value for your visitors, this content is not that valuable. For instance, if you are a trade company, you can have promotional texts about your products. But have in mind that these texts must be informational, not just sales hype. And if you have a lot of products to sell, or frequently get new products, or make periodical promotions of particular products and product groups – you can post all this to your site and you will have fresh, topical content.
Also, depending on what your business is about, you can include different kinds of self-updating information like lists of hot new products, featured products, discounted items, even online calculators or order trackers. Unlike promotional pages, this might neither bring you many new visitors, nor improve your ratings but is more than nothing.
One more potential traffic trigger for company sites are news sections. Here you can include news about past and coming events, post reports about various activities, announce new undertakings, etc. Some companies even go further – their CEO keeps a blog, where he or she writes in a more informal style about what is going in the company, in the industry as a whole, or in the world in general. These blogs do attract readers, especially if the information is true, rather than the official story.
An alternative way to get fresh free content are RSS feeds. RSS feeds are gaining more and more popularity and with a little bit of searching, you can get free syndicated content for almost any topic you can think of.
2. Bold and Italic Text
When you have lots of text, the next question is how to make the important items stand out from the crowd – for both humans and search engines. While search engines (and their spiders – the programs that crawl the Web and index pages) cannot read text the way humans do, they do have ways of getting the meaning of a piece of text. Headings are one possibility, bold and italic are another way to emphasize a word or a couple of words that are important. Search engines read the and text and get the idea that what is in bold and/or italic is more important than the rest of the text. But do not use bold and italic too much – this will spoil the effect, rather than make the whole page a search engine favorite.
3. Duplicate Content
When you get new content, there is one important issue – is this content original? Because if it is not, i.e. it is stolen from another site, this will get you into trouble. But even if it is not illegal, i.e. you obtained it for free from an article feed, have in mind that you might not be only one on the Web, who has this particular stuff. If you have the rights to do it, you can change the text a little, so it is not an exact copy of another page and cannot be labeled “duplicate content” by search engines. If you don't manage to escape the duplicate content filter that search engines have imposed recently in their attempts to filter stolen, scrapped, or simply copied contents, your pages could be removed from search results!
Duplicate content became an issue when tricky webmasters started making multiple copies of the same page (under a different name) in order to fool search engines that they have more content than they actually do. As a result of this malpractice, search engines responded with a duplicate content filter that removes suspicious pages. Unfortunately, this filter sometimes removes quite legitimate pages, like product descriptions given from a manufacturer to all its resellers, which must be kept exactly the same.
You see, duplicate content can be a serious problem. But it is not an obstacle that cannot be overcome. First, you need to periodically check the Web for pages that are similar to yours. You can use http://copyscape.com. If you identify pages that are similar to yours (and it is not you who have illegitimately copied them), you could notify the webmaster of the respective site(s) to remove them. Also, you could change a little the text on your site, hoping that this way you will avoid the duplicate content penalty. Even with product descriptions, you can add commentary or opinion on the same page and this could be a way out.
Try the Similar Page Checker to check the similarity between two URLs.
For company sites that are not focused on writing but on manufacturing constantly adding text can be a problem because generally company sites are not reading rooms or online magazines that update their content daily, weekly or monthly but even for company sites there are reasonable solutions. No matter what your business is, one is for sure – it is always relevant to include a news section on your site – it can be company news or RSS feeds but this will keep the ball rolling.
1. Topical Themes or How to Frequently Add Content to Your Site
If you are doing the SEO for an online magazine, you can consider yourself lucky – fresh content is coming all the time and you just need to occasionally arrange a heading or two or a couple of paragraphs to make the site SEO-friendly. But even if you are doing a SEO for an ordinary company site, it is not all that bad - there are ways to constantly get fresh content that fits into the topic of the site.
One of the intricacies of optimizing a company site is that it has to be serious. Also, if your content smells like advertising and has no practical value for your visitors, this content is not that valuable. For instance, if you are a trade company, you can have promotional texts about your products. But have in mind that these texts must be informational, not just sales hype. And if you have a lot of products to sell, or frequently get new products, or make periodical promotions of particular products and product groups – you can post all this to your site and you will have fresh, topical content.
Also, depending on what your business is about, you can include different kinds of self-updating information like lists of hot new products, featured products, discounted items, even online calculators or order trackers. Unlike promotional pages, this might neither bring you many new visitors, nor improve your ratings but is more than nothing.
One more potential traffic trigger for company sites are news sections. Here you can include news about past and coming events, post reports about various activities, announce new undertakings, etc. Some companies even go further – their CEO keeps a blog, where he or she writes in a more informal style about what is going in the company, in the industry as a whole, or in the world in general. These blogs do attract readers, especially if the information is true, rather than the official story.
An alternative way to get fresh free content are RSS feeds. RSS feeds are gaining more and more popularity and with a little bit of searching, you can get free syndicated content for almost any topic you can think of.
2. Bold and Italic Text
When you have lots of text, the next question is how to make the important items stand out from the crowd – for both humans and search engines. While search engines (and their spiders – the programs that crawl the Web and index pages) cannot read text the way humans do, they do have ways of getting the meaning of a piece of text. Headings are one possibility, bold and italic are another way to emphasize a word or a couple of words that are important. Search engines read the and text and get the idea that what is in bold and/or italic is more important than the rest of the text. But do not use bold and italic too much – this will spoil the effect, rather than make the whole page a search engine favorite.
3. Duplicate Content
When you get new content, there is one important issue – is this content original? Because if it is not, i.e. it is stolen from another site, this will get you into trouble. But even if it is not illegal, i.e. you obtained it for free from an article feed, have in mind that you might not be only one on the Web, who has this particular stuff. If you have the rights to do it, you can change the text a little, so it is not an exact copy of another page and cannot be labeled “duplicate content” by search engines. If you don't manage to escape the duplicate content filter that search engines have imposed recently in their attempts to filter stolen, scrapped, or simply copied contents, your pages could be removed from search results!
Duplicate content became an issue when tricky webmasters started making multiple copies of the same page (under a different name) in order to fool search engines that they have more content than they actually do. As a result of this malpractice, search engines responded with a duplicate content filter that removes suspicious pages. Unfortunately, this filter sometimes removes quite legitimate pages, like product descriptions given from a manufacturer to all its resellers, which must be kept exactly the same.
You see, duplicate content can be a serious problem. But it is not an obstacle that cannot be overcome. First, you need to periodically check the Web for pages that are similar to yours. You can use http://copyscape.com. If you identify pages that are similar to yours (and it is not you who have illegitimately copied them), you could notify the webmaster of the respective site(s) to remove them. Also, you could change a little the text on your site, hoping that this way you will avoid the duplicate content penalty. Even with product descriptions, you can add commentary or opinion on the same page and this could be a way out.
Try the Similar Page Checker to check the similarity between two URLs.
Metatags
A couple of years ago tags were the primary tool for search engine optimization and there was a direct correlation between what you wrote there and your position in search results. However, algorithms got better and today the importance of metadata is decreasing day by day, especially with Google. But still some search engines show metadata (under the clickable link in search results), so users can read what you have written and if they think it is relevant, they might go to your site. Also, some of the specialized search engines still use the metatags when ranking your site.
The meta Description tag is are one more way for you to write a description of your site, thus pointing search engines to what themes and topics your Web site is relevant to. It does not hurt to include at least a brief description, so don't skip it. For instance, for the dog adoption site, the meta Description tag could be something like this:
A potential use of the meta Keywords tags is to include a list of keywords that you think are relevant to your pages. The major search engines will not take this into account but still it is a chance for you to emphasize your target keywords. You may consider including alternative spellings (or even common misspellings of your keywords) in the meta Keywords tag. For instance, if I were to write the meta keywords tag for the dog adoption site, I would do it like that: . It is a small boost to search engine top ranking but why miss the chance?
The meta Robots tag deserves more attention. In this tag you specify the pages that you do NOT want crawled and indexed. It happens that on your site you have contents that you need to keep there but you don't want it indexed. Listing this pages in the meta Robots tag is one way to exclude them (the other way is by using a robots.txt file and generally this is the better way to do it) from being indexed.
The meta Description tag is are one more way for you to write a description of your site, thus pointing search engines to what themes and topics your Web site is relevant to. It does not hurt to include at least a brief description, so don't skip it. For instance, for the dog adoption site, the meta Description tag could be something like this:
A potential use of the meta Keywords tags is to include a list of keywords that you think are relevant to your pages. The major search engines will not take this into account but still it is a chance for you to emphasize your target keywords. You may consider including alternative spellings (or even common misspellings of your keywords) in the meta Keywords tag. For instance, if I were to write the meta keywords tag for the dog adoption site, I would do it like that: . It is a small boost to search engine top ranking but why miss the chance?
The meta Robots tag deserves more attention. In this tag you specify the pages that you do NOT want crawled and indexed. It happens that on your site you have contents that you need to keep there but you don't want it indexed. Listing this pages in the meta Robots tag is one way to exclude them (the other way is by using a robots.txt file and generally this is the better way to do it) from being indexed.
Links – Another Important SEO Item
1. Why Links Are Important
Probably the word that associates best with Web is “links”. That is what hypertext is all about – you link to pages you like and get linked by pages that like your site. Actually, the Web is woven out of interconnected pages and spiders follow the links, when indexing the Web. If not many sites link to you, then it might take ages for search engines to find your site and even if they find you, it is unlikely that you will have high rankings because the quality and quantity of links is part of the algorithms of search engines for calculating relevancy.
2. Inbound and Outbound Links
Put in layman's terms, there are two types of links that are important for SEO – inbound and outbound links. Outbound links are links that start from your site and lead to another one, while inbound links, or backlinks, come from an external site to yours, e.g. if a.com links to mydomain.com, the link from a.com is an inbound link for mydomain.com.
Backlinks are very important because they are supposed to be a measure of the popularity of your site among the Web audience. It is necessary to say that not all backlinks are equal. There are good and bad backlinks. Good backlinks are from reputable places - preferably from sites with a similar theme. These links do boost search engine ranking. Bad backlinks come from suspicious places – like link farms – and are something to be avoided. Well, if you are backlinked without your knowledge and consent, maybe you should drop the Webmaster a line, asking him or her to remove the backlink.
If you are not heavily backlinked, don't worry - buying links is an established practice and if you are serious about getting to the top, you may need to consider it. But before doing this, you should consider some free alternatives. For instance, some of the good places where you can get quality backlinks are Web directories like http://dmoz.org or http://dir.yahoo.com.
First, look for suitable sites to backlink to you using the Backlinks Builder below. After you identify potential backlinks, it's time to contact the Web master of the site and to start negotiating terms. Sometimes you can agree to a barter deal – i.e. a link exchange – they will put on their site N links to your site and you will put on your site N links to their site - but have in mind that this is a bad, risky deal and you should always try to avoid it.
Internal links (i.e. links from one page to another page on the same site) are also important but not as much as backlinks. In this connection it is necessary to say, that using images for links might be prettier but it is a SEO killer. Instead of having buttons for links, use simple text links. Since search engines spider the text on a page, they can't see all the designer miracles, like gradient buttons or flash animations, so when possible, either avoid using them, or provide a meaningful textual description in the tag, as described next.
3. Anchor text
Anchor text is the most important item in a backlink. While it does matter where a link comes from (i.e. a reputable place or a link farm), what matters more is the actual text the link starts from. Put simply, anchor text is the word(s) that you click on to open the hyperlink – e.g. if we have the best search engine, than “the best search engine” is the anchor text for the hyperlink to google.com. You see that you might have a backlink from a valuable site but if the anchor text is something like “an example of a complete failure”, you will hardly be happy with it.
When you check your backlinks, always check what their anchor text is and if there is a keyword in it. It is a great SEO boost to have a lot of backlinks from quality sites and the anchor text to include our keywords. Check the anchor text of inbound backlinks is with the Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer tool below. Besides the anchor text itself, the text around it is also important.
4. Link Practices That Are To Be Avoided
Similar to keyword stuffing, purchasing links in bulk is a practice to be avoided. It gets suspicious if you bartered 1000 links with another site in a day or two. What is more, search engines keep track of link farms (sites that sell links in bulk) and since bought links are a way to manipulate search results, this practice gets punished by search engines. So avoid dealing with link farms because it can cause more harm than do good. Also, outbound links from your site to known Web spammers or “bad guys” are also to be avoided.
As mentioned, link exchange is not a clean deal. Even if it boosts your ranking, it can have many other negative aspects in the long run. First, you do not know if the other party will keep their promise – i.e. they might remove some of the links to you. Second, they might change the context the link appears into. Third, it is really suspicious if you seem to be “married” to another site and 50% or more of your inbound and outbound links are from/to this direction.
When links are concerned, one aspect to have in mind is the ratio between inbound and outbound links. Generally speaking, if your outbound links are ten times your inbound links, this is bad but it also varies on a case by case basis. If you have a site that links to news sources or has RSS feeds, then having many outbound links is the inevitable price of fresh content.
Probably the word that associates best with Web is “links”. That is what hypertext is all about – you link to pages you like and get linked by pages that like your site. Actually, the Web is woven out of interconnected pages and spiders follow the links, when indexing the Web. If not many sites link to you, then it might take ages for search engines to find your site and even if they find you, it is unlikely that you will have high rankings because the quality and quantity of links is part of the algorithms of search engines for calculating relevancy.
2. Inbound and Outbound Links
Put in layman's terms, there are two types of links that are important for SEO – inbound and outbound links. Outbound links are links that start from your site and lead to another one, while inbound links, or backlinks, come from an external site to yours, e.g. if a.com links to mydomain.com, the link from a.com is an inbound link for mydomain.com.
Backlinks are very important because they are supposed to be a measure of the popularity of your site among the Web audience. It is necessary to say that not all backlinks are equal. There are good and bad backlinks. Good backlinks are from reputable places - preferably from sites with a similar theme. These links do boost search engine ranking. Bad backlinks come from suspicious places – like link farms – and are something to be avoided. Well, if you are backlinked without your knowledge and consent, maybe you should drop the Webmaster a line, asking him or her to remove the backlink.
If you are not heavily backlinked, don't worry - buying links is an established practice and if you are serious about getting to the top, you may need to consider it. But before doing this, you should consider some free alternatives. For instance, some of the good places where you can get quality backlinks are Web directories like http://dmoz.org or http://dir.yahoo.com.
First, look for suitable sites to backlink to you using the Backlinks Builder below. After you identify potential backlinks, it's time to contact the Web master of the site and to start negotiating terms. Sometimes you can agree to a barter deal – i.e. a link exchange – they will put on their site N links to your site and you will put on your site N links to their site - but have in mind that this is a bad, risky deal and you should always try to avoid it.
Internal links (i.e. links from one page to another page on the same site) are also important but not as much as backlinks. In this connection it is necessary to say, that using images for links might be prettier but it is a SEO killer. Instead of having buttons for links, use simple text links. Since search engines spider the text on a page, they can't see all the designer miracles, like gradient buttons or flash animations, so when possible, either avoid using them, or provide a meaningful textual description in the
3. Anchor text
Anchor text is the most important item in a backlink. While it does matter where a link comes from (i.e. a reputable place or a link farm), what matters more is the actual text the link starts from. Put simply, anchor text is the word(s) that you click on to open the hyperlink – e.g. if we have the best search engine, than “the best search engine” is the anchor text for the hyperlink to google.com. You see that you might have a backlink from a valuable site but if the anchor text is something like “an example of a complete failure”, you will hardly be happy with it.
When you check your backlinks, always check what their anchor text is and if there is a keyword in it. It is a great SEO boost to have a lot of backlinks from quality sites and the anchor text to include our keywords. Check the anchor text of inbound backlinks is with the Backlink Anchor Text Analyzer tool below. Besides the anchor text itself, the text around it is also important.
4. Link Practices That Are To Be Avoided
Similar to keyword stuffing, purchasing links in bulk is a practice to be avoided. It gets suspicious if you bartered 1000 links with another site in a day or two. What is more, search engines keep track of link farms (sites that sell links in bulk) and since bought links are a way to manipulate search results, this practice gets punished by search engines. So avoid dealing with link farms because it can cause more harm than do good. Also, outbound links from your site to known Web spammers or “bad guys” are also to be avoided.
As mentioned, link exchange is not a clean deal. Even if it boosts your ranking, it can have many other negative aspects in the long run. First, you do not know if the other party will keep their promise – i.e. they might remove some of the links to you. Second, they might change the context the link appears into. Third, it is really suspicious if you seem to be “married” to another site and 50% or more of your inbound and outbound links are from/to this direction.
When links are concerned, one aspect to have in mind is the ratio between inbound and outbound links. Generally speaking, if your outbound links are ten times your inbound links, this is bad but it also varies on a case by case basis. If you have a site that links to news sources or has RSS feeds, then having many outbound links is the inevitable price of fresh content.
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