Does your web site make search engines happy? Despite all the negative hype lately, it’s pretty easy to design a web site that search engines will accept with open arms. All it takes is 3 easy steps:
1) Follow the Search Engine Guidelines
Nearly all search engines publish their own guidelines regarding the submission of sites, the type of sites they will accept and recommendations for optimized content. Google recently updated their Webmaster Guidelines which cover the most common forms of deceptive or manipulative search engine behavior that they consider to be “spam”. They also published SEO Guidelines - advice for webmasters to heed when choosing an SEO. Google was the first search engine to publicly acknowledge search engine optimizers in this fashion.
It’s not just Google publishing anti-spam guidelines. You’ll find them at the following search engine sites as well:
- MSN Search webmaster guidelines
- AltaVista terms of use (AltaVista is a Yahoo-owned company)
- Yahoo guidelines on search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
- Yahoo definitions of search engine spam (covering AltaVista and AllTheWeb as well)
- AskJeeves / Teoma terms of service and spam policy
- AskJeeves / Teoma editorial guidelines
2) Avoid Spamming the Search Engines
Often, webmasters will use search engine spam techniques without even being aware that they are doing so. Or worse, web designers can - advertently or inadvertently - integrate techniques that could cause a site to be penalized in the site’s rankings in one or more engines, without the site owner’s knowledge of such penalties. The key to avoiding spamming the engines is research.
Keep track of the various search engine guidelines via the links above. Watch for any changes they make to these guidelines and tweak your site accordingly. Trawl the various webmaster and search engine forums regularly to ensure your site doesn’t use any of the latest methods that appear to be penalized. If you suspect your site has been penalized, remove the offending content, contact the engine concerned and ask to be reinstated.
Google actually encourage you to file a re-inclusion request via their Help Center and this post by Google staffer Matt Cutts outlines what should be included.
Alternatively, here is a sample email template you can use instead:
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Sample Re-inclusion Request Email:
Dear [search engine name],
I am the owner of [your site URL].
I did not realize that participation in [spammy method] and
[spammy SEO name] programs could cause problems for my website. I was
assured that these techniques were search-engine-friendly by [your source for using spammy method].
I now understand that the practices used are not acceptable. I apologize for having allowed them to be placed on my website. I’ve removed the questionable pages and links from the site. I promise not to repeat such mistakes.
I am asking you to please consider reinstating my website,
[your site URL] into the [search engine name] Index.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
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To assist them to provide a high quality service, search engines encourage people to report search results they are dissatisfied with. If you spot some content spam or techniques that are clearly in breach of the search engine’s public guidelines, you can report it using these links:
- Google spam report or via search-quality@google.com
- AllTheWeb relevancy problem report (AllTheWeb is a Yahoo-owned company)
- AltaVista search results manipulation report (or via Yahoo’s spam report below)
- AskJeeves spam report or via information@ask.com
3) Build Sites for Visitors Rather than Search Engines
The methodologies may have changed over the years, but the same principles have always applied to “good” or “white hat” SEO. Build sites for humans, not search engines. Make the site as user friendly as possible, avoid the bells and whistles and include high quality, relevant content.
Wherever possible, include text-based content and navigation menus with simple, descriptive, well-written copy designed to convert your visitors into customers. Include keywords and phrases your audience would logically type in to search engines to find sites like yours. Only link to sites that are relevant to your target audience and spend some time on usability, making sure all your forms and shopping carts work.
Remember that what pleases a visitor is almost always what pleases a search engine too.
About the Author:
Article by Kalena Jordan, one of the first search engine optimization experts in Australia, who is well known and respected in the industry, particularly in the U.S. As well as running her own SEO business, Kalena manages Search Engine College - an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing subjects.
If you own or manage a website, you are probably already aware of the importance of your log files or site statistics. Such data can give you insights about your site’s usability, errors in your HTML code, the popularity of your site pages and the type of visitors your site attracts. But did you know it can also highlight the success or failure of your search engine optimization campaign?
There is specific data about your web site that you should be looking at in your log files on a regular basis. Several variables should be examined monthly or even weekly to ensure your site design and page optimization is on the right track:
1. Entry Paths
Most sites can be developed and analysed around the concept of visitor pathways. If, for example, your site is a Business to Business (B2B) site and you service small, medium and large businesses, there should be pathways through your site designed for each class of visitor. An extremely simplified example would be:
Clients coming to the site through an optimized home page:
home page —> small business page —> order page —> order confirmation page
home page —> medium business page —> order page —> order confirmation page
home page —> large business page —> order page —> order confirmation page
The site entry pages for these pathways are often optimized home pages or optimized content pages. The final page of this route is often the action that you want clients to take on your site (e.g., sign up for your newsletter, buy your products online or contact you for further information). You can easily determine how effective your pathways are by tracking the entry paths on a regular basis via your site stats.
You should have some idea of the main pathways that clients take through your site, both for monitoring the effectiveness of your page optimization and conversions, and for the purpose of subsequent site redesign(s). A good starting point to track the pathways through your site is via the graph or chart called “Entry Paths” in your log files / site statistics.
2. Top Exit Pages
These are pages from which most visitors click away from your site. Why is it useful to track these? Because exit pages can tell you:
a. If there is a technical problem with the page that is causing visitors to leave your site. For example, if there are broken links, or the form on the page is not working properly etc.
b. If your site design is breaking the strategic pathway, for example, you may have links to external sites that are inducing clients to click away before buying your product or signing up for your newsletter.
c. If there is something on these pages that is encouraging visitors to leave your site. For example, an unprofessional design or confusing layout.
In your log files / site statistics, the graph or chart called “Top Exit Pages” is the place to learn why visitors are leaving your site.
3. Single Access Pages
These are entry pages that are viewed once before the visitor clicks away from your site. Similar to Top Exit Pages, Single Access Pages can tell you a lot about why people are not staying on your site for long.
Have a close look at the search terms used to find your site. Single Access Pages can often indicate that your target search terms are too broad. For example, you may be getting a lot of traffic by targeting “printer cartridges” but if you only stock a particular brand of cartridge, then people seeking other brands are not going to find what they truly seek when they arrive at your site so they will leave immediately. This can be resolved by narrowing down your search terms to be more targeted and focused on your niche products and services, for example, by changing “printer cartridges” to “HP printer cartridges” and so on.
To see what pages of your site are viewed once, look for the graph or chart called “Single Access Pages” in your log files / site statistics.
4. Most Requested Page(s) and Top Entry Pages
Tracking these pages is key to measuring the success of your SEO campaign. If your optimization is effective, the Top Entry Pages and Most Requested Pages should be those that you have optimized for target keywords. The Top Entry Pages are particularly relevant as you consider the pathways through your site. Do the most popular entry pages have any relationship to the start pages for your plotted visitor pathways? Or are visitors entering and navigating your site via ways you didn’t intend? You can use this information to continually tweak your page optimization to guide visitors to the right pathways.
To see your most requested pages, look for the graph or chart titled “Most Requested Pages” in your log files / site statistics. Also look for “Top Entry Pages”.
5. Page refreshes
Why are visitors refreshing pages on your site? Are the pages not loading properly? The “Page Refreshes” variable is another one to monitor on a monthly basis via your site stats to ensure that there are not site usability issues for visitors.
6. Referring Domains and Referring URLs
Where are your visitors coming from? Are they coming from sites that are linked to yours? Are blog authors or forum members talking about your site? Referring Domains will tell you what sites are linking to yours, while Referring URLs will list the actual pages where the links are located. These can be little gold mines because you can often find valuable sources of traffic via links to your site that you didn’t even know existed.
In terms of an SEO campaign, these links can all add to your site’s overall link popularity, an important factor in the ranking algorithms of many search engines, particularly Google. Monitoring these metrics can tell you if your site requires a link-building campaign or help you measure the effectiveness of various online and offline advertising campaigns.
In your log files / site statistics, Look for the graph or chart titled “Referring Domains” and “Referring URLs”.
7. Search Engine Referrals
How many of your visitors are coming directly from search engines? What percentage of overall traffic does this represent? This is a good variable to track to help you keep up with how many search engines are listing your site (both free submission and paid submissions), how much traffic they bring and whether to renew your paid submissions. It can also tell you whether you need to increase the number of search engines your site is submitted to in order to build on your link popularity. As a a very rough guide, you should be receiving at least 30 percent of your site traffic via search engine referrals.
To see search engine referrals, look for a chart or graph called “Search Engines” within your site statistics.
8. Search Phrases
This topic is related to search engine referrals generally, but gives added insight into what terms you were actually found for in the search engines. Do these terms match what your site was optimized for? Are there any surprising terms that you might want to develop site content for? Some log file analysis programs will even break down what specific phrases your site was found for in which particular search engines. The more detailed the data you have, the more closely you can tweak your optimization campaign to your precise market.
To see the search phrases your site was found for, look for “Search Phrases” or “Search Phrases by “Search Engine”.
9. Landing pages for PCC Campaigns, etc.
If you run a pay-per-click campaign or dedicate specific pages to advertising product specials, you may use special landing pages or tracking ids to monitor your traffic and conversions. Your site logs can help you track these by showing you how many visitors they each had and what they did after they visited those pages.
10. Metric values that show a radical change from developing trends
Any site metrics that show a dramatic change from one month to the next could pin-point a problem with your site or with your optimization campaign. For example, if your search engine referrals have dropped dramatically, it could indicate that you have been penalized in a search engine (or more than one). Noticing changing trends early gives you the chance to investigate problem areas and make adjustments if necessary.
Please note that all log file analysis and site statistics programs are different and use slightly different terms to describe the metrics listed above. If you’re confused, ask your site admin or hosting provider to highlight these for you.
Remember, your log files are gold mines filled with nuggets of information about your optimized web site. If you keep digging on a regular basis, you’ll eventually strike it rich with success.
Copyright © 2005 by Kalena and Jerry Jordan. All rights reserved under U.S. and international law.
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The above article may be re-published as long as the content remains unchanged and the following paragraph is included at the end of the article, including the URL links:
Article by Kalena and Jerry Jordan. As well as running their own SEO business Web Rank, Kalena and Jerry Jordan manage Search Engine College, an online training institution offering instructor-led short courses and downloadable self-study courses in Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing subjects.
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A web directory is an excellent way to get high-quality one-way links to your site that could boost your PageRank and improve your SERPS, so you are assured of your site getting more targeted traffic. You can find general and niche directories that could suit the requirements of your site or business. For a web master it is important to understand that a web directory is very different from a search engine though the format of the results generated may seem similar.
Search engines generate their results using programs called bots or search bots. They comb through the Internet to find and update all the web pages that exist on the Internet and index them. In case the bots don’t recognize your site or find relevant search terms there is a big chance that your site is going to be ignored and is not listed in the Search Engine Directory.
Whereas web directories are generally manually operated and scanned for including the best quality links so if your site is indexed in a web directory that is popular and has a high PR there is a great chance of drawing attention and traffic to your site. But there are just so many web directories out there and these search bots regularly look up only highly ranked web directories in order to populate their search lists you can be assured that your link if placed on such a directory can be assured of getting the same benefits. Thus a web directory listing is a far smarter choice as compared to just indexing your site with search engines.
If you are on a quest to find good web directories to add your site to, let me recommend elira Link Directory. It is web directory with a difference which is completely human edited so you can be assured that your site will be placed amongst other top quality sites. There are a range of links and you will find regular links, featured links and reciprocal links.
You may also come across free directories but most of the time, free directories are just a front for up-selling native webmasters paid submissions. At Web Directories, a very modest price ensures that your site will be included in the directory across a multitude of categories. If your category does not exist, they also offer to build a new category in order to customize your site into their directory and also guarantee faster inclusion. Please remember that a high quality web directory listing can get you better and faster results with very little investments whether personal or monetary and you just need to sit back and watch your rankings go higher.
They have a very clean and easy to navigate interface which makes surfing through the directory really easy and the desired results are very easy to get to with a minimum amount of time and effort. For more publicized listings in the directory you may also look up shopping and as their maxim goes- They list your priorities and make it their own.
Tags: directory, Web Directory
A web directory is an excellent way to get high-quality one-way links to your site that could boost your PageRank and improve your SERPS, so you are assured of your site getting more targeted traffic. You can find general and niche directories that could suit the requirements of your site or business. For a web master it is important to understand that a web directory is very different from a search engine though the format of the results generated may seem similar.
Search engines generate their results using programs called bots or search bots. They comb through the Internet to find and update all the web pages that exist on the Internet and index them. In case the bots don’t recognize your site or find relevant search terms there is a big chance that your site is going to be ignored and is not listed in the Search Engine Directory.
Whereas web directories are generally manually operated and scanned for including the best quality links so if your site is indexed in a web directory that is popular and has a high PR there is a great chance of drawing attention and traffic to your site. But there are just so many web directories out there and these search bots regularly look up only highly ranked web directories in order to populate their search lists you can be assured that your link if placed on such a directory can be assured of getting the same benefits. Thus a web directory listing is a far smarter choice as compared to just indexing your site with search engines.
If you are on a quest to find good web directories to add your site to, let me recommend elira Link Directory. It is web directory with a difference which is completely human edited so you can be assured that your site will be placed amongst other top quality sites. There are a range of links and you will find regular links, featured links and reciprocal links.
You may also come across free directories but most of the time, free directories are just a front for up-selling native webmasters paid submissions. At Web Directories, a very modest price ensures that your site will be included in the directory across a multitude of categories. If your category does not exist, they also offer to build a new category in order to customize your site into their directory and also guarantee faster inclusion. Please remember that a high quality web directory listing can get you better and faster results with very little investments whether personal or monetary and you just need to sit back and watch your rankings go higher.
They have a very clean and easy to navigate interface which makes surfing through the directory really easy and the desired results are very easy to get to with a minimum amount of time and effort. For more publicized listings in the directory you may also look up shopping and as their maxim goes- They list your priorities and make it their own.
Tags: directory, Web Directory