Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

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Why Website Hosting Location is Important for Search Engine Position

Tuesday, December 15th, 2009

What is web hosting location?

Every website, blog or every a single webpage is hosted on a webserver that connects to the internet. A webserver is a computer connected to the internet which is owned by a webhosting company ( in most cases, unless you have your own webservers ). A webserver is a computer connected to InterNet. That computer or webserver is located in some country. It has a specific IP address, and from that IP address, it is possible to know in which country or city or town the webserver is located. The location of your webserver is known as a Web Hosting location.

Search engines ( Google , Yahoo and MSN ) know where your Web site is hosted based on your webserver location and IP details. Your site is ranked according to domain extension and web server location or the IP address location as mentioned above. Now, if you move the site or your domain to another server or a Web Hosting company you first need to know where the web server is located. The location of your webhosting company is an important factor in your search engine ranking

Let me give you an illustration of how a web hosting location can affect your search engine ranking.

Website www.ABC.com was selling shoes, hosted in USA and targeted US visitors, the domain extension is .com This is an ideal situation, where we have a USA domain extension .com targeting USA visitors and hosted on web server located in USA. Over 75 % of the traffic to this site was from search engines, namely Google, Yahoo and MSN with the high search ranking on all the three engines. Now, for some strange reason the company decides to host its site in India where it has its offshore development team. They move their site to servers hosted in India. Now, one month later, the search ranking situation is completely different:

- Google indexes site pages in Google India since the site is hosted in India it assumes that it targets Indian visitors, visits from Google.com come down by 30 – 40 % . The site in Google.com moves to 5 and 6 pages.

- Yahoo India starts to show ranking for the website on 2 nd and 3 rd page. Yahoo.com searches reduce by 30 %

Similar trends are shown by MSN.com

Now lets understand what exactly happened here and why the site showed a decrease in visits from US searches. After site IP changes, all the three search engines showed a decrease in indexed pages. The search results were lower as some of the pages were deindexed.

Site is now receiving 60-70% less traffic from search engines inspite of search engine optimization and most of visitors now are from India and other international IPs. For site targeted to USA market that is, in simple words not targetted traffic. Now, even by increasing the backlinks the site results from search engine rankings did not increase, Google started to give low value to backlinks from US sites as it did not determine it to be valuable.

Backlinks from India based sites were now more valuable to Google. Due to a small number of India based sites operating in the same niche industry, the website was not very popular even on India based search results. Onsite search engine optimization like meta tags don’t help much here as the search engines don’t understand where the site is located by reading the Meta tags but it can give you targeted traffic for a particular keyword search.

GeoTargeting
It is well known that search engines are using GeoTargeting to list sites related to visitor’s IP (country) and this is one of the most important factors in ranking. The search engines also look for language used on website and server location. For the above site, English language and hosting in India, show that the site is targeting the indian market.

So, to target USA market, .com domain, web server hosting location in USA, English language, links from sites (.com, .net) hosted in US are of prime value and importance to Google.

To target UK market, domain co.uk , English web server hosting location in UK, links from UK domains are of prime value and importance to Google.

To target Canada market, .ca domain, English web hosting located in Canada, links from Canadian domains are of prime value and importance to Google.

Targeting Local Markets
Due to cheap web hosting, many international sites are hosted in USA but this could be a problem for search engine and SERP. If you are targeting some other country, use domain with that country extension, get links from other sites hosted in that country, link to other sites in that country, use local language and keywords. The state for the hosting is not important, moving the site to a web server located in a different state can only show you a small difference.

Conclusion
The right target audience is important for your site, so target your visitors better, localize you content. Get a domain name with an appropriate extension based on your target market, host your site located in the country that you are targeting, get links for related sites and use local keywords. If you have an affiliate website or blog this becomes important. You won’t get any traffic from Google hosting your site in India and targeting US visitors.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Google Caffeine Is Coming? How will it affect the rankings of your web pages?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s next algorithm update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that Google Caffeine will be more than Google’s regular updates. It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that Google uses to rank web pages.

 What is going to change?
Of course, Google hasn’t revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google’s next index:

  • Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.
  • Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.
  • Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn’t good for your rankings in Google’s current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
  • The over-all quality of your website: Google’s new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It’s not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.

You’ll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.

Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google’s new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.

How can you adjust your web pages to Google’s new Caffeine index?
Although Google’s Caffeine update hasn’t been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google’s new index:

  • Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
  • Check your website design and the navigation of your website. Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders.
  • Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google’s current algorithm and that role might increase.
  • Check your links. You shouldn’t link to websites that look like spammers. It’s better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible. 

Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google’s new index will be online.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Are SEO Tactics for Low and High Competition The Same?

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Depending on the keywords for which you want to get high rankings, you have to employ different tactics. Keywords with less competition require different tactics than keywords with high competition.

The effect of different SEO tactics on the position of your website in the search results

If you target long keyword phrases with little competition, then the relative value of on-page web page optimization is very high.

For example, if you want to be listed for the search term “buy black adidas samba sneaker in knoxville” then it is enough to optimize one of your web pages for that search term because the competition for that search term is not high. You don’t need many inbound links to get high rankings for that keyphrase.

The more competitive the targeted keyword is, the higher is the effect of inbound links on the position of your website in the search results:

 

The importance of an SEO tactic is not the same as its relative effect on your search engine positions

By taking a look at the chart above you might get the impression that web page optimization is not important to get high rankings for very competitive keywords. That is not the case. Optimizing the contents of a web page is the essential basis for high search engine rankings.

By optimizing a web page for a keyphrase, you tell search engines that the web page is relevant to that keyphrase. If more than one web page has been optimized for that keyphrase (which is usually the case) then the web page with the best inbound links will get the highest position in the search results.

For example, the website www.cnn.com has 46,600 inbound links according to Google. Although CNN.com has so many inbound links, they do not rank for the keyword “buy black adidas samba sneaker in knoxville” because the website has not been optimized for that keyphrase.

If you want to get high rankings for a keyphrase, the first step is to optimize one of your web pages for that keyphrase. Then work on the links that point to the optimized web page to outrank other websites that have been optimized for the same keyword:

 Which tactic should you use for your website?

1. The best web page optimization tactic:

When you optimize your website, optimize different pages of your website for different keyphrases. Start with longer keyword phrases that don’t have much competition and then proceed with more competitive keywords.

For example, start with the keywords “buy sneakers in knoxville”, “buy cowboy boots in knoxville”, “buy pumps in knoxville”, “shoe shop knoxville”, etc. When you have managed to get high rankings for many of these keyphrases, Google will know that your website is relevant to the topic “shoes”.

As soon as Google knows that your website is relevant to the topic, it will be much easier to get high rankings for more competitive keywords such as “buy shoes” or even “shoes”.

The more pages of your website you optimize for different but related keywords, the better.

2. The best link building tactic:

It’s not always necessary that you have more links than your competitors. You need better links.

Try to get links to your website that use the targeted keyphrase as the link text (also called anchor text) and that point to the web page on your website that has been optimized for that keyphrase.

Don’t focus on quantity, focus on quality. Getting hundreds of links from a link farm won’t help your website as much a few dozen links from relevant web pages with authority.

If your website has both optimized web pages and good inbound links then it will be easy to outrank web pages that only have one factor.

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Why Links Are Important? How to Get Them?

Wednesday, November 11th, 2009

The links that point to your website are one of the most important factors that influence the position of your website in Google’s search results. The better the links to your website, the higher the position of your website in Google’s results.

High rankings without good inbound links?

It is possible to get high rankings with only a few links if you want to be listed for keywords that don’t have much competition. As soon as more than one website competes with you for the same keywords, the website with the best inbound links will outrank the other websites.

If you want to get high rankings for competitive keywords, you have to go out and encourage people to link to your website. It’s not necessary to get as many links as possible. It’s necessary to get better links than your competitors.

Relatively easy: finding the right websites for link building

The Internet has plenty of websites for every category. The following websites can be good link partners:

  1. Websites that are listed for the keywords that you are targeting can be good link partners. If a website has high positions for the keywords that you are targeting and if the website is not a competitor, you should contact the owner of that website.
  2. Some websites have content that is related to your keyword. If these websites have no examples or references, they could link to your website.
  3. There can be many websites that contain a review or a comment about your company without linking to your site. These websites will often link to your website if you ask.
  4. If another website links to your website and only uses your domain name to link to your website, ask the owner of the other website to link to your website with your keyword.
  5. Blogs that deal with the topic of your websites are often willing to link to your website.
  6. If a website links to one of your competitors, it is likely that they will also link to your website if you offer a similar product or service.

Easy to screw up: asking for a link

Finding websites that could link to you is the easy part. The difficult part is to convince the owners of the other websites that they should link to your site.

Contact the right person and use a personal salutation. Be polite and professional in your email message. Use a non-freemail email address and include your full contact information in the email message.

Focus on the benefits of the recipient (for example, that the webmaster will offer his website visitors a good resource if he links to your site and explain why).

If you want to speed things up, use NetConneXion’s link building services to get links from other websites to your site. Our link builders find related websites, websites that link to your competitors, related blogs, websites that link to your website, etc.

We can also help you to build links through directory submission, social bookmarking services and many more tools that help you to get high rankings in the search results of Google and other major search engines.

Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

10 Tips For Creating a Brilliant Landing Page

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Building a great landing page should be on top of your priority list if you want your website visitors transformed into customers.

While a great looking website can grab the attention of your visitors, a strong landing page will keep them involved and get them to buy your products/services.

Wikipedia defines a landing page as:

The page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.

Wikipedia’s definition sums it up nicely but there is certainly more to a great landing page then relevant and keyword rich content. Here’s 10 things that you should be looking at when optimizing a landing page:

1.  Relevant Content

A landing page’s content should be directly related to organic search results, PPC campaign, anchor text in inbound links and any other targeted inbound advertising, online and offline. If people don’t get what they expect, they will be more likely to leave.
 

2.  Multiple Landing Pages

A landing page shouldn’t necessarily be your homepage. In many instances a homepage is a good landing page. However, for more targeted traffic and better results, you want a landing page to be focused on specific offer and specific call for action. To accomplish this, a given website should have multiple landing pages. Create some deep link landing pages that will focus on specific offer and your conversion rate will be higher.

3.  Focus on Functionality

More and more visitors seem to judge the professionalism and credibility of a site by its design. To satisfy this, many website owners concentrate on the design aspect instead of focusing on its functionality. A well-designed landing page is essentially worthless if the prospect can’t accomplish anything. While I wouldn’t suggest skimping on the web design, it shouldn’t be your priority. Focus on the exact steps you want your visitor to take and design a page with that in mind.

4.  Call To Action

You got visitors to your landing page, now direct them to take action. Make it clear and highly noticeable without overwhelming your audience. Whether it’s a sign-up form or a “buy now” button, make it the focus of your page.

5.  Send a Clear Message

Keep your landing page clean and clutter free so your visitors stay focused on your message. Emphasize the biggest reasons that they should carry out the applicable call to action with larger text, contrasting colors, images. Make it easier for them to scan the content by using lists and getting right to the point.

6.  Offer Incentive

Bribing your visitors with freebies and samples is a proven method of enticing them to sign up. Offer more than your competition but don’t sell yourself short either. Provide a list of reasons why your offer is better and what exactly the visitor can expect. Provide references and testimonials.
 
7.  Make Visitors Stay

Avoid sending your visitors to another page unless it is absolutely necessary. That includes any internal navigation as well as external banners. If you remove all distractions and limit navigation options, you stand a better chance of keeping your visitors around.

8.  Simple is Better

Make it easy for your visitors to complete the action you want them to. Less confusion and decision making for your visitor means better conversions rate for your landing page. Don’t offer multiple choices and throw in optional extras. Focus on the offer the page was created for.

9.  Power of Freebies

Everyone likes free offers. They are hard to resist and can be a powerful conversion tool. Whether a call to action is free or something free is received as a result of carrying out a call to action, it certainly doesn’t hurt. If your competition charges for something and you offer it for free, you’ll win the customer. Remember, just because you make a free offer doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be quality.

10.  Testing

Testing is very important in finding out what your visitors like. Testing various text, call to action forms, layouts will give you true idea what produces the best results as far as conversion.

Using a tool like Google’s Website Optimizer you can easily monitor the conversion rate, bounce rate, and tons of other useful metrics found in most modern day web analytics apps. Using these metrics you can easily figure out which version will be your optimal page, one that maximizes the results.

Creating a successful and effective landing page takes a lot of work but should be the focus for anyone involved with a website. Whether you are a website owner, web designer, web developer or a web marketing specialist you must be aware of the components that comprise a solid landing page. After all this can mean website’s success or failure.

Posted in Pay Per Click, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design | No Comments »

Google PageRank Sculpting: What has Changed?

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Google has changed the way it processes the nofollow attribute. These changes have an impact on how you can use the nofollow attribute for PageRank sculpting on your website.

What is PageRank sculpting?

PageRank sculpting is the attempt to control the link power of one website page to another page of the same website. For example, when Google finds a website with three links then the link power is evenly passed to all three links:

Some webmasters thought that if a web page has a high PageRank of 8 then it shouldn’t pass that PageRank power to “Terms of Service” or “Privacy Policy” pages.

For that reason, some webmasters started to use the rel=nofollow attribute for these links: <a href=”example.htm” rel=”nofollow”>Example</a>

Links that are marked with the nofollow attribute shouldn’t be followed by Google. That meant that the other links on the web page benefited more from the high PageRank of the page. It worked like that:

In this example, link 1 passes no link power while link 2 and 3 each pass half of the available link power to the target page. The result is that the linked pages have a higher chance of getting listed in the search results.

What has changed?

Google’s Matt Cutts recently made a statement about the way Google now treats nofollow links:

Link 1 still doesn’t pass any link power but the link power of that link is simply discarded.

What does this mean for your website?

The change means that PageRank sculpting with the nofollow attribute does not work anymore and that it now makes sense to remove any nofollow links that go to your own website. You’re just wasting link power by using the attribute for links to your own pages.

Do not waste your time by trying to manipulate the links on your web pages. Better concentrate on a good user experience with good web page content and an easy to understand website navigation. Websites with a good user experience usually get more links from other websites.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Web Optimization – 4 Common Problems Preventing Success

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

Anyone interested in online marketing knows that web optimization is critical to a successful business. Web optimization comprises a number of different ideas, including search engine optimization, website analytics, and design factors, among many others.

However, optimization is more than just a standard set of practices. As every good interactive marketing agency knows, it is different for each business, and within each industry.

Those differences are one of the primary aspects that make ‘do-it-yourself’ optimization without an interactive marketing agency such a risky prospect. An interactive marketing agency keeps abreast of the ever-changing landscape in order to implement best practices to achieve good positioning and visibility for a website — they are also able to conduct in-depth research to understand what your competition is doing as well.

If you are learning from scratch and implementing as you go, you can be put at a disadvantage compared to competitors who hire professionals.

In this post, we’ll walk through some of the most common misconceptions about optimization. We’ll also look at what your company can do to see real optimization success.

Problem 1: Seeing Optimization as a Project With An “End Date”

Optimization, and online marketing in general, isn’t a destination. Rather, it’s a road, one that must be constantly traveled for optimal levels of success. There is no time when your optimization is “complete”, in fact, even once your initial online marketing plan sees success, there will be other ways that you can improve your online presence. The process can always be improved.

Problem 2: Not Planning For Optimization In The Long Run

Because online marketing is a process, wise companies will plan for optimization in the long run. Don’t think of it as a short-term investment, and don’t divert resources you are only comfortable diverting for a few weeks. Think about it more broadly, and give your optimization plan the time and support it needs to be successful. Like any company initiative, if the program is understaffed or underfunded, it won’t be able to thrive as it ought to.

Problem 3: Not Monitoring Progress

In the old days, it was next to impossible to know if your agency’s plan was doing the job. But now, tracking online marketing results are easy. Think of it like cooking: you have to test the food every so often to see how it’s going. If you need to make a change, you learn about it early on, and if the food is great, you know more about how to make it the next time around.

Web optimization is exactly the same way. Keeping track of what policies bring success and which don’t will help you in the short term and in the long term. You will have more to work with when you start additional campaigns, and you’ll have real results that you can point to. So much depends on customer preference, and only when you start to get a feel for that preference will you see the best outcomes.

Problem 4: Working Alone

It is the rare person who can successfully design and implement an online marketing optimization strategy without the help of an interactive marketing agency. Optimization is a very particular process, with a number of techniques and strategies to learn. Articles like this one can help, but it takes years of experience to become a real optimization expert.

Does it really make sense for you to spend your time learning, rather than hiring the expertise of an interactive marketing agency? In almost every case, focusing on what you do best – running your business – is the best idea.

Putting it All Together

Now you know some of the most common pitfalls that make optimization programs fail. Do any of them sound familiar? If so, then you’re now equipped with the knowledge to change the problem. You can start fresh, and get the optimization results you’re looking for. You might not see them overnight, but with time the effect will be noticeable.
 

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

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