Guide to Search Engine Optimization

The process of search engine optimization involves tweaking various aspects of your website and deals only with the organic search results. It has nothing to do with paid search also known as inorganic search or PPC. In order to improve your positioning in the organic search results, these guidelines will point out the tactics on how you can improve the visibility of your website.

Page Title:
Page title also referred to as the ‘title tag’ needs to be unique for each page of your website. This tag tells search engines and also the visitors what that particular webpage is all about. The title tag of each page should contain the business/website name followed with important information that relates to the webpage. One must avoid the following:

1. Recording a title tag that is not relevant to the information present on the webpage.
2. Recording the same title tag across all the pages of the website.
3. Recording long title tags.

Meta Description:
The Meta description tag gives both the search engines and also the visitors who perform a search on the search engine an idea on what the web page is all about. That’s why it’s important to precisely summarize the content of your webpage. It’s always safe to keep the meta description tag within 160 characters (including spaces), as the rest of it gets truncated. One must avoid the following:

1. Writing a meta description that is not relevant to the information presented on the webpage.
2. Recording the same meta description across all the web pages of the website.
3. Recording the meta description with only keywords.

URL Structure:
It’s important to create a URL structure that is friendly to the search engines as this will help in better indexing of your website. For this reason, it is essential to create appropriate filenames and expressive categories on your website One must avoid the following:

1. Recording long URLs
2. Recording the same URL across all the web pages.
3. Recording deep nested subdirectories
4. Recording irrelevant directory names.

Website Navigation:
A website that is easy to navigate can help the visitors to find the information they are looking for. It also helps the search engines in indexing the pages appropriately. It is important to ensure that all the web pages of your website are interlinked properly and also show the correct page when clicked on. The use of sitemaps both HTML and XML help the spiders to crawl the website easily and also index it. One must avoid the following:

1. Creating complex websites that are difficult to navigate.
2. Creating drop-down menus.
3. Developing a HTML sitemap in which the pages are not organized.
4. Indexing the 404 page in the search engine.

Unique Content:
The content that is hosted on your webpage needs to be informative, such that it can elicit action. Ensure that the content is not copied and is 100% your own creativity. Keep the content focused around your primary keywords and ensure that the keyword density is around 2.75% to 3.21%. It is also good to keep changing the content on your website so that the visitors can see that the site is not static but dynamic with its content. One must avoid the following:

1. Using images that serve as textual content.
2. Using long sentences.
3. Incorrect grammar and spelling mistakes.
4. Duplicate content on the web pages of your website.
5. Stuffing keywords unnecessarily.

Anchor Text:
Anchor texts are links that direct visitors to the internal pages of the website or to an external page/website. Anchor text helps the users to easily navigate between pages and also helps the spiders to understand what the page is all about, that it is linked to. One must avoid the following:

1. Using general anchor texts.
2. Using anchor text that is not related to the content of the webpage or is off topic.
3. Using long sentences.
4. Creating unnecessary links.

Heading Tags:
Heading tags are used to represent the heading of the content of the webpage. Heading tags range in 6 sizes – h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6. These tags should only be used at the appropriate places. One must avoid the following:

1. Using one heading tag for the entire content of the webpage.
2. Using too many heading tags throughout the content of the webpage.

Alt Tag Optimization:
Images can’t be read by a spider when they crawl on the website. Therefore, it is important to use alt tags for the images. It is best suggested to use the primary keyword as the alt tag following the contents that describe the page. One must avoid the following:

1. Using long filenames.
2. Stuffing excess of keywords in the alt tags.


Robots.txt File:
A robots.txt file is used to prohibit the robots to crawl a particular page based on the nature and content of information that is available. This file must be placed in the root directory of your site and also named as robots.txt. One must avoid the following:

1. Search result pages to be crawled.

Website Promotion:
You can promote your website using offline promotion, online promotion, social media sites, AdWords optimization, Google’s Local Business Center, forming groups, forums etc.
Once you have implemented or taken note of all these tactics, do use the Google Webmaster Tools that will help you in solving many of the issues that are related to your website. You can also monitor the performance of your website by using Google Analytics.

Top 10 Probable Trends in 2010 for Online World

Here is my early guess work of the trends that can be expected in the online and internet world during the year 2010. All may not be true and damn sure to happen… but, we can just expect it. So, here are the predictions:


1. Social Media may replace email to a certain extent: Social media may reduce the usage of communication through emails. Facebook, Twitter… are providing access to your friends and like-minded people much easier and faster than email. The usage of email communication can reduce a lot among friends and personal communication. More about this has been discussed in my earlier post Email Vs Social Networking Sites.
2. Facebook you friend: People will not be searching for personal details of their friends on Google first. They will try to find it on social sites like Facebook, Twitter… So, the new verb will be Facebook your friend and try to find his/her personal details. “Hey Bob, can I have your phone number?” “Dude, Facebook me and you will get it”. Yes, this is the way it goes. Social search will be important in the coming year.
3. Branchless Banking: The trend of online shops is matured. Now, banks will not boast of the number of branches they have and the footprints they have all over the country or the world. Online banking will be the trend. They will assure of high security and will stick to the regulations and will have customers who will operate their accounts only online. You do not need to have to go to the bank at all.
4. mCommerce: eCommerce is on internet. mCommerce is through mobile phones. Mobile phones are being used for money transfers and bill payments. They have been hardly used for retail payments. The trend will be that users will use only their mobile phone to make payments instead of entering their credit card number in it. This may work for downloads, apps or other upgrades.
5. Draw money from POS machines: You just need not use your card at POS machines to pay for your purchases. You can as well as the retailer to give you cash after swiping the card. For this you do not have to go to the ATM machine again to draw the money. I am sure if this comes, then there will be certain strings attached to it by the bank.
6. Outsourcing will lead to Crowd Sourcing: Business will try focusing on crowd sourcing as it is an open call to a group of like-minded people and they expect to get better ideas. Business will look out to develop new technology or would like the community to test it out. This is already being used by Google and will extend to other business as well. Not only this, political parties will try to use this for canvassing; Ad agencies will find this very lucrative. This will be the best way to collect donations from the masses as well.
7. Social Media Analysis and Stats: Organizations will jump in this social media to keep the brand buzz alive here as well. But, they will also like to get the analysis and stats for the same. The same way as we have for the website. Agency will provide these services and more tools like radian6, buzzgain, Filtrbox will come up to help the organizations to get more filtered and useful data to help them analyze and plan the strategy.
8. Video driven communities: We have seen YouTube. Now, we will have communities driven by the videos which will lead to conversations. Momversation, sponsored by Target, is driving conversation and community around the issues of moms.
9. Leveraging Offline meets with Online Connections: People will tend to meet offline with the like-minded people whom they met online. Networking groups will lead to such meet-ups. More and more websites and people will come-up to have such meet-ups. Businesses will also have to plan a strategy as to how to leverage offline to online connection. Something needs to be done to get it reversed.
10. Semantic Web: This buzz was earlier as well and will continue in 2010. It will offer a wide range of possibilities to build more applications with deadly features, which can enable users to use it.

How to discover the value of a Google rank

Why is Google so Valuable?

Have you ever wondered why Google is worth over a hundred billion Dollars? Or why a single click from Google can go for as high as $50? The reason is the precise targeting offered by search engine marketing.

How Most Advertising is Broken

Most ads try to club you over the head and beat you into submission. SEM is a completely different form of advertising because rather than trying to tell you what to do, the searcher requests to see the ads and views them as relevant to their wants, needs, and goals. Advertisers bid to show up where they are relevant - when they are irrelevant. If they bid for irrelevant keywords they lose money on every click.

 Approaches to Marketing

Ads on websites with no targeting can have little to no value. Search traffic, which is laser targeted, is worth over 30x as much. For display advertising, Credit Suisse estimated that in 2009 the average CPM will be $2.39, down from $2.46 in 2008. As for paid search, JPMorgan projected that for every 1,000 searches, $75.33 would be generated from ads in 2009. Would you rather hunt for customers, or make yourself available to customers hunting for you? SEO allows you to tap the value of search, with your customers finding your business when they need your products & services!

Research the Market Value of Any Keyword

The cool thing about SEM is not only is it so targeted, but it benefits search engines to share valuable keywords with prospective advertisers. This means you get to spy on the relative search volumes of different keywords, and how much your competitors are willing to pay for keywords. Using the Google Traffic Estimator Sandbox you can view how much Google's estimate the of keyword value at.