Basic SEO: What Search Engines Love
This article will give you a beginner’s guide to optimizing your site for search engines. It will focus specifically on what the search engines will be looking for when reading and indexing your site. These are things you will definitely want to utilize, or at least consider. So if you are a novice web designer, or just want to refresh some of the basic concepts, come join us.

Hello SEO Experts,

I know most of the SEO techniques, but one important factor as we all know is pagerank, and to have a higher pagerank we should get inBound links to our site.
My question is, can we make our site appear in top Search Engine Results, without having any inBound links? even for challenging keywords?

Everything related to SEO seems very logical to me, but the most important thing is to have inBound links to your site. It’s really time consuming, to send emails to web masters and ask them for a link. I know a good website will result people to link to us without we ask for, but what if my site is a personal site for example, and it is a normal site, I don’t think people will link to me just like that in my case ! Does that mean I will never be in first page? (Note that I am now in page 10, but I’d like to be in page 1, for a challenging keyword).

By the way, I have submitted my site to some free directories, but I am not sure if this will help my pagerank (currently I am 0/10 and i published my website 4 months ago)

Please advice and let me know how should I go on from now, because concerning the content of my site, I assume it is * VERY WELL * optimized for Search Engines, the only thing remaining is the PageRank issue.

Best regards,
Wassim

Forum discussion continues at HighRankings Forum.
Is SEO Possible Without Inbound Links?

Pay Per Click or PPC is an advertising model wherein advertisers pay only whenever a user clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s site. This is cheaper than conventional advertising in a sense that the advertiser doesn’t have to pay for a fixed monthly cost to place an ad in a website (impression based). And with the right keywords, PPC gives you instant traffic and many potential profitable clients.

Keywords are words that a user types in a search engine to find relevant web sites (think Google, Yahoo, MSN). Keywords may contain a word, a phrase or an alphanumeric term, some refer to keywords as “Tags”. Tags are a popular form of keywords nowadays which even non-experts use on a daily basis. PPC is the most profitable and valuable targeted audience you can buy for your website.

Advertisers bid on relevant keywords which best describes the website or product he/she is advertising. When someone types a particular keyword in a search engine or browser, the list of advertisers’ link will appear by order in which the highest bidder is placed first (i.e.: mortgage, diet pills, anti virus software etc…) To stay ahead of competitors, advertisers try to find keywords that are not yet bid on by anyone else. Keywords are the SOUL of Pay Per Click advertising, which could be said to be the the best form of advertising model ever created.

Typically the most frequently searched keyword garners a much higher bid price and most competition. The higher the demand, the higher the bid price (typically).

Advertisers should choose wisely on which keyword to use and keep your bids within the reach of your advertising budget, don’t get obsessed with being #1. The main idea is to select words or phrases that are relevant to your target market and thus makes it most effect to use for your web site. Researching for the right keywords is essential for a productive Pay Per Click campaign. Advertisers must identify words and phrases that would most likely get quality traffic to your site. They should look for words that are specific yet effective. To do this, the marketer must know and understand what his target audience is and what search terms they are using.

Good keyword selection and implementation will improve your “Quality Score”, thus giving your campaign more mileage and better relevancy. The right words and phrases can generate steady traffic to your website at an affordable cost. Keywords are important to make your Pay Per Click campaign a success, so avoid any irrelevant keywords, you not only lose potential audience, but waste money as well. So what did we learn today? Without the proper keywords, your PPC marketing campaign is worth nothing.

Pay Per Click could mean a lot to your business - we mean Cash money! With Pay Per Click or PPC, advertisers only pay for users who click through their website, this makes PPC the cheapest and most effective way to advertise in the Internet (vs. CPM advertising). Not only that, PPC is by far the safest way to generate traffic for your site, and the most effective method in bringing in a truly targeted audience. With PPC, advertisers easily reach out to their target market in an instant. Moreover, advertisers would have a global market once their campaign starts.

To have a successful and profitable Pay Per Click campaign that can create traffic and revenue to your site, you need to keep these simple tips in mind.

First step is to do intensive research on relevant keywords for your product - I cannot stress enough the importance of finding GOOD keywords in the beginning. Then find additional words or phrases that could lure targeted traffic to the site, use PPC Experts call this “concatenation” sets/exercises. Good keywords are usually the name of the product, question-type phrases or the URL of the website.

To generate the FASTEST return on investment (ROI), you must work on a tight budget and track EVERYTHING (Don’t spend one dime until the tracking is right!). Bid on a keyword that you think would best be beneficial and what your consumer is looking for in the long run. Some keywords have high demand (more query volume) so as a result they will demand a much higher bid price. Look for keywords on a lower price range but you think could be serve a similar or same purpose - we call this the LongTail.

After selecting a good set of relevant keywords, the advertiser must create an advertising campaign that contains the Ads which are well written. The Ads are made up from Titles and Description (T&D’s), these should immediately catch the attention of the product or sites target audience. The Title should be catchy as to arouse the curiosity of the audience thus making them click the ad (CTR). The ad should contain the keyword so that precisely the potential client could search it thus has a high chance of ranking high among other ads.

Negative keywords also help “trim” out unwanted users (i.e.: unsecured vs. secured borrowers) and help you really bring in genuine targeted traffic to your site. You could select keywords, when searched, so your ads wont’ be displayed. By using negative keywords, your campaigns will be more targeted thus giving a faster return of investment for you would not be paying for unnecessary clicks on your ads.

The last step is to launch your campaign and test out all your hard work - YAY! But remember the work does not end here, after launching, you must continuously monitor your PPC campaign. PPC providers can send you reports as to what keywords get the most clicks through.

With Pay Per Click, your ads will only be shown to users who are looking for what you offering therefore each click on your ad could be a potential client.

Good luck and drop me a email if you have any questions. Cheers!

Search engines are said to operate on Democratic principles. A link to a site from another is said to equal a vote. The more links or votes a site has for it, the more popular it is perceived to be, and thus it should stand higher in the search results and ranking pages. But all votes are not considered equal in this system. A domain itself will be ranked by the search engine algorithms from 1 to 10, with higher values being preferable. Thus a vote or link from a PR 10 web site would be ten times more valuable than a vote or link from a PR 1 web site. Some web sites may have no PR value at all. Usually it takes a few months for a web site’s PR value to be calculated, and it may take a few months of SEO link building before the PR value begins to rise. There are various software programs and third party browser plug-ins that will allow you to check the PR value of a site automatically.

Links, particularly one-way links, are the time honored, most important aspect of SEO campaigns. A SEO campaign can add a hundred or a thousand links per week to a web site. But since the value of spam links is marginal, the need is to focus on building quality links. For this many web site owners will look for one way links from sites with high PR values. The search engines will elevate your own site’s PR value if it has many of these links. If your site does not generate blogging activity, forums, or press interest generally, then you will need to blog your own site and create links through an SEO campaign. To do this you can create simple announcements of services offered and place them on various bulletin boards. If you post a lot in forums on different sites, make sure your signature includes a link to your home page. This kind of basic activity is excellent to create links.

To create a back link in a post, you may be able to use a WYSIWYG editor to insert the link automatically, or use an html editor to insert a link tag. The basic html code for a link should be:

<a href=”http://www.example.com/”>link</a>

With this tag you can create anchored links in any web page, blog, forum or bulletin board post. Html link tags will also work in most emails.

Many people figure that when the design work is completed on a site, it is finished, and either sits and serves information publicly or begins to function as a business, community, or resource site. Yet that is when the Search Engine Optimization work really begins. The final stages of a web site’s construction should be based on an SEO overview and refinement. Usually this is coding meta tags for every page, refining text and titles with keyword research, and submitting the site to many search engines and directories automatically or by hand. Registering the web site with many search engines by hand will ensure a permanent link in the appropriate level of the directory. This is a different section usually from the search engine results pages, but will also help your site build Page Rank.

The next step is to promote the site on the web through forum posts, blogs, comments, announcements, press releases, and articles. You may also submit your site to link exchanges, banner exchanges, or PPC advertising sites during this stage. Basically the goal is to build a wide network of relevant links that describe and lead visitors to your information. As this web develops, your traffic and page rank will increase naturally. This is an SEO campaign in a manner that can be set up as a regular part of your domains development and maintenance. SEO is becoming more necessary as sites increase their evaluation of search engine algorithms to influence their results. Most SEO strives to create sites and campaigns of promotion that are in harmony with the way the search engines algorithms are calculated and how users browse information. For this reason there are many different types of SEO companies which use different methods for the same results.

Another increasingly common practice with blogs and content management systems is the automatic submission of XML site maps to search engines whenever a site has been updated. This automatic submission keeps the site indexed as dynamic content is created and expands. A site map that includes a text link to every page on the site is important to ensure that all pages in the domain are indexed and cached by the search engines. Content management systems should also be set to clean URL settings where possible, and use automatic generation of URLs from titles to build keyword density. CMS owners should also make sure to set the meta tags and descriptions on their sites for every page distinctly, to make the site more accurate in search engine index and results pages.

When planning an online marketing company a good thing to know is what do users mainly look for on the site – product or information. What are the distinguishing behavioral features of 2 types of users (buyers and information seekers)? How can their decision be influenced?

A user behavior research performed by De Vos & Jansen Market Research and Checkit explores the manner of performing a search, the reasons that make a user click the result as well as the difference between of ways of searching.

What main reasons motivate people to click on a search result:

1. The familiarity with and reliability of the website or organization. Keywords which refer to a brand are therefore very important2. A high position in the search results also creates trust and suggests to the respondents that the information is recent

3. A third important reason for clicking is the presence of the keyword in the search results

4. Consumers are also looking for certain website services such as the opportunity to read user experiences or to compare different products

5. (Indirect) price information is important: especially keywords which refer to “low costs”

6. The announcement that there is a large variety of products can also be a reason for respondents to click on the search result

7. Finally, consumers seem to avoid results with aggressive advertising

Now it’s time to determine why did a user click the result – is he going to buy anything or looking for information? The summarized signs of user behavior that could help distinguish his goals are the following:

• Buyers view more search results (10) and take more time to view the results (11,4 seconds).
• Information searchers view less search results (8) and spend less time on a result (9,4 seconds).
• Buyers pay more attention to brand names relative to information seekers.

Only 50 searchers were tested and they were between the age of 17 and 24. But this information seems to be very helpful.

To determine the transaction potential of your site or to find out what are thekeywords that are more likely to convert you could want to use Microsoft Detecting Online Commercial Intention Tool. While it doesn’t give the exact estimations of conversion rates for URLs/queries its estimations can serve a criteria for choosing most effective keywords for you SEO or PPC campaign. The tool reflects “your customers’ intention to purchase products or acquire information”:

The Online Commercial Intent (OCI) demo calculates commercial intent on a scale of 0 to 1. Any site whose core is greater than 0.5 is considered to have commercial intent.