Internet Marketing Tips

Receiving QUALITY links from QUALITY sites could prove to be a very helpful way to increase your ranking in the major search engines. Too often, people think that more is better. In SEO, this translates a lot of the time into black hat SEO. “Bots” are becoming increasingly more intelligent and thorough with their inspections. Below are the main link practices that should be avoided, according to WebConfs.com:

• Bulk purchasing of links. “Bots” are easily going to become suspicious of your credibility if hundreds of websites create a link to your site on a daily basis. “Bots” keep track of these link farms and will penalize or even ban your site completely.
• Link exchanges. This could be helpful as long as:
  • The other party keeps their promise
  • The other party does not change the context the link appears into
  • You do not seem to be “married” to another site and 50% or more of your inbound and outbound links are from/to this direction
• Poor link balancing. 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.

An RSS feed in its simplest terms is a type of Web feed that allows you to publish regularly changing content, such as blog entries, podcasts or news updates to people who would like to be informed every time your content has been updated. The major benefit from utilizing a RSS feed is that one can view content from multiple websites through a RSS reader, aggregator or feed reader. There are numerous readers in various platforms that will allow you to view a RSS feed, such as MyYahoo, FeedReader, Bloglines and Google Reader.

Most RSS feeds consist of a line or two of text, which contains a summary of the latest content on that page and provides you a link to view the remaining story, entry, ect. Only sites that syndicate their content will allow you to have an RSS feed. You can browse for these sites on Syndic8.

You can subscribe to a feed from an RSS icon (”“) on a browser or by directly entering the feed’s URL into the particular reader that you are using. From that point on, everything is automated and you will be automatically kept up to speed with the latest on your favorite websites.

To find out how to create your own RSS feed, syndicate your website’s content or view a RSS resource directory, visit Search Engine Watch.

A redirect consists of a status code that starts with a 3 that informs a browser to transfer a visitor from one domain to another. The main SEO purpose of a redirect is to provide one copy of each page to search engines. The redirect can prove successful if that when you type in your previous URL you are automatically redirected to your new URL. You can verify this by looking at your browser’s address bar.

One of the most popular forms of a redirect is a 301 redirect where you tell search engines that your site has permanently moved to another location. You can refer to one of my previous blogs to get more information regarding the uses and functions of 301 redirects. According to Wikipedia, the other core HTTP status codes for redirects are as follows:

302 Found: This is the most popular redirect code, but also an example of industrial practice contradicting the standard. HTTP/1.0 specification (RFC 1945) required the client to perform a temporary redirect (the original describing phrase was “Moved Temporarily”), but popular browsers implemented it as a 303 See Other. Therefore, HTTP/1.1 added status codes 303 and 307 to disambiguate between the two behaviours. However, the majority of Web applications and frameworks still use the 302 status code as if it were the 303.

303 See Other (since HTTP/1.1): The response to the request can be found under another URI using a GET method.

304 Not Modified: Indicates the resource has not been modified since last requested. Typically, the HTTP client provides a header like the If-Modified-Since header to provide a time against which to compare. Utilizing this saves bandwidth and reprocessing on both the server and client.

305 Use Proxy (since HTTP/1.1): Many HTTP clients (such as Mozilla and Internet Explorer) don’t correctly handle responses with this status code, primarily for security reasons.

306 Switch Proxy: No longer used.

307 Temporary Redirect (since HTTP/1.1): In this occasion, the request should be repeated with another URI, but future requests can still use the original URI. In contrast to 303, the request method should not be changed when reissuing the original request. For instance, a POST request must be repeated using another POST request.

This is a sample of a HTTP response that uses the 301 “moved permanently” redirect:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently

Location: http://www.example.org/

Content-Type: text/html

Content-Length: 174

<html><head>

<title>Moved</title>

</head><body>

<h1>Moved</h1>

<p>This page has moved to <a href=“http://www.example.org/”>http://www.example.org/</a>.</p>

</body></html>

A redirect is also very useful to ensure that you are not placing duplicate content on your website. Although URL’s may appear to go to the same site (www.boomyeah.net, http://www.boomyeah.net & www.boomyeah.net/index.php), the major search engine robots view these as different pages with the same content. This could create duplicate content penalties against you. Therefore, you need to ensure that your URLs are consistently identical.

A comment link is the process of posting a comment that contains a link, usually in response to a blogger’s. Commenting on blogs can yield numerous positive results including building a reputation, creating inbound links and possibly building dynamic relationships

Unless you are participating in a blog comment discussion or can provide urgent assistance, it is poor practice to input your link directly within your comment content. Also, be sure not to try to be sly and use anchor text. If you choose to use anchor text, do not abuse this opportunity. It may cause your comments to be indefinitely flagged and regarded as spam.

The best practice is to utilize the URL field that the majority of blogs provide when you choose to provide a comment. This is your free “plug” and should be taken advantage of as frequently as possible.

The URL or Uniform Resource Locater is a website’s domain name, for example: www.boomyeah.net. It is imperative to use keywords in your website’s URLs in order to inform search engines what a page is about and to help a searcher obtain information about your website’s content. If that option is not available, the next best option is to use your company’s name or the service you provide. The URL should always be relevant to the subject matter of your page.

A high-quality URL:

* Is concise by limiting the number of folders deep, trailing slashes and the

amount of characters

* Accurately describes your content within your website

* Uses pertinent and precise keywords or your company name/service

* Is catchy or easy to recall

* Is under 15 characters

* Starts with a beginning letter of the alphabet or numerical system

* Uses hyphens to separate keywords

Remember by changing the URL structure, you will have to update all the links accordingly. Your webmaster can assist you with this by renaming the file names and directories on your folders. They may have to implement a 301 redirect that will allow users to be automatically directed from one webpage to another.

A 301 redirect is useful when a page:

* Moves to a different URL

* Is united with another page

* Is deleted

A 301 redirect can be implemented through your hosts’ control panel, your .htaccess file or through server-side scripting. Detailed instructions for implementing a 301 redirect can be found at Speedwagon.

According to Wikipedia, an internal link …is a hyperlink that is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on or part of the same domain of the Internet. By creating internal links, you alleviate the laborious process for the user of scrolling through an entire site and allow him/her to utilize these navigational aides to jump throughout the site.

An external link is a hyperlink that is created within your website, but directs a user to another website by using anchor text. An external link also refers to a hyperlink on another website that sends searchers to your website. By having numerous websites contain links to your website, you can drastically increase your traffic and improve your ranking. It is good SEO practice to keep your outbound links to ten or less. Also, be sure that the pages that you are linking to contain a mid to high ranking in order to build credibility with the search engine bots.

It is vital to ensure that the anchor text on both internal links and external links to your website, if at all appropriate, contain your keyword(s). Replace useless words like “Home,” “More” and “Read on” with words more suitable to your keywords. This could drastically boost you up on the search engine results page, thus increasing your website’s traffic.

To find more information about how to create an internal link, visit W3C – Internal Link. For instructions on how to create an external link, visit W3C – External Link.

Meta tags are coded elements/ page definitions used to provide the descriptive elements of a particular webpage inserted into the “head” area. Most importantly, Meta tags are vital assets to SEO. Some of the most important fundamentals of SEO, such as DESCRIPTION, TITLE and KEYWORD tags are considered Meta tags. Although there are other Meta tags, we are only going to concentrate on these three.

The TITLE is a viewable Meta tag to people who are visiting your website and is by far the most important. This tag is what will appear in a search engine’s results page as the clickable text that will direct searchers to your website. The TITLE tag should always contain your keyword and be the one aspect of not only Meta tags, but also SEO that you should put a lot of effort into creating. The TITLE tag is also the text that is used when someone bookmarks or adds your page to their favorites list. Some specialists suggest placing your company’s name in all of your TITLE tags within your site.

The Meta DESCRIPTION tag allows you to summarize the content on your page and inform the crawlers what your page is about. Some search engines ignore your description tag and allow their bots to devise their own summation. The most efficient and quickest way to add copy to your DESCRIPTION tag is to copy a few sentences from the content on that page

The KEYWORDS tag allows you to fine-tune the content into a few words that you feel are the most important about the copy listed on that page. Again, not all search engines will crawl this Meta tag, but it still can have the opportunity to improve your ranking. You should never repeat words more than three times in this Meta tag or search engine robots may penalize you for using duplicate content.

Meta tags can improve your ranking status, make your site SEO friendly and increase your organic click-through rate. However, be sure not to engage in heavy keyword stuffing, where you repeatedly place your keyword in all your Meta tags. Search engines have updated their systems to ignore this. So, be descriptive and use your keyword frequently, but do not abuse this privilege or it will cost you!

The URL or Uniform Resource Locater is a website’s domain name (http://www.boomyeah.com/). It is imperative to use keywords in your website’s URL in order to inform search engines what a page is about and to help a searcher obtain information about your website’s content.

The five main things to remember when choosing an URL are as follows:

1. Ensure that the URL of each page is consistent with the subject matter presented on that page
2. When you change a previous URL, you must update all your links accordingly by inserting a 301 redirect
3. Always be sure to include pertinent and precise keywords as a part of your URL
4. Be as concise as possible by limiting the number of folders deep, trailing slashes and the amount of characters
5. Make your URL memorable and catchy

What is a 301 redirect? A 301 redirect allows users to be automatically directed from one webpage to another. A webmaster implants one of these in order to send the current URLs to the optimized URLs when a page:

*Moves to a different URL

*Is united with another page

*Is deleted (redirect still locates a page that is present)

A 301 redirect can be implemented through your hosts’ control panel, your .htaccess file (be sure to upload in ascii mode) or through server-side scripting. It is imperative to test your server’s response headers every time you execute an alteration to your htaccess file. Detailed instructions for implementing a 301 redirect can be found at Speedwagon.

Submitting URL’s directly to search engines allow search engine bots to find your web pages faster, thus allowing your site to show up quicker on their search results. Otherwise, it may take awhile before major search engines find your website. Some search engines take months to release their spiders to find new pages. All this time, you could be missing out on massive amounts of traffic without even realizing it.

How often should you submit your website to search engines? You only need to submit your page once. Resubmitting your website will not allow your website to be crawled more frequently or improve your ranking. Google, being the number one search engine, should be your first priority. Ensure that your website is indexed and submit your URL today!

What is a broken link? A broken link is a result of an error in the URL or HTML coding. The product of a broken link is when you click on any clickable text in order to be directed to a different location and some form of error message pops up. This causes the user to overlook vital information you may be trying to convey.

Links are integral structures that allow an individual to navigate throughout your site efficiently and effectively. Without links functioning properly, your website is prone to create user frustration, thus steering them away from your site. A broken link could cost you loss of: information, graphic images or even a sales conversion.