SEO Guide to improve your Search Engines Rankings

Traffic volume is the most important parameter when it comes to monetizing your blog (more visitors = more money). A large portion of traffic volume comes from search engines. To monetize efficiently, it's crucial to get your blog contents in the top list of any search engine result pages (SERP). Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps you to achieve this goal.

Photo by cambodia4kidsorg.

There are two types of search results:

• Natural (a.k.a organic).
• Paid (e.g. sponsored links in Google SERP).

We'll focus on improving your ranking for the natural search results. Getting in the first few pages of the SERP will ensure that most people will find your content.

Search engines basically need one thing to know where to put your blog on their list - your rank on the keyword(s) used to search. For example, if your blog title is Tiki Tiki Guide to Making Money, you might be ranked high if people search for the keywords 'tiki tiki guide'. But you might be far beneath the thousands of other pages on the keywords 'making money online'. The question is, which of these two keyword phrases people will most likely search for. The answer is obvious.

The key to performing SEO lies in knowing what keywords to use and how to optimize their use. Be warned that heavily searched keywords are usually targeted by millions of sites and blogs, whom you have to compete against to move up the SERP. Finding a balance between highly competitive and highly searched keywords is a challenge.

Keyword and SEO research takes time. Even professional bloggers take a few months to move up the SERP right into the first few pages. Above all, content is the heart of a blog. If the content isn't good, no SEO research will do you any good.

Target the Right Keywords
Deciding what to blog is the most critical part. You must do research on keywords prior to deciding your niche. Here are some list of what to check on:

• Search volumes on those keywords.
• Number of competitors writing in the same niche.
• Ads served based on those keywords, so that you don't blog on the ones serving very low cost-per-click(CPC).
• Variations of these keywords: their synonyms and related words or phrases (see which get searched more with less competitor).

The best tool to help you with this is Wordtracker, available at a price. The site offers free trial and limited functions available for free. There are other keyword tools available with different functionalities.

Choose Suitable Domain Name
SEO keywords begin from the URL. The best domain name is the one with keyword(s) in it. It's great to have a URL like www.yourownname.com, but you'll loose out on getting better SERP rank if it doesn't contain any keywords. Isn't it obvious that www.iwanttomakemoneyonline.com helps SEO better than www.johnjohnnyjonathan.com. Unless of course, you've built some high reputation and your name gets searched a lot.

The other perspective on domain naming is that building a brand name is better in the long run, with something easy and catchy to remember. So there's two side of the coin: you might want to flip on it. But once you've built your blog to a certain level, it's not good to change the domain name. Having a URL that's both catchy and keyword-friendly is ultimately the best. Problogger.net is both catchy and keyword-friendly. Use whois lookup to check if a domain is available.

Use Keywords in Other Sections
The idea is to maximize the use of keywords wherever you can (don't overdo it though). These are the places that you must put keywords in them:

• Blog Title - Search engines weigh your blog title heavily. Again, it's best to find a name that is both catchy and keyword-rich.
• Blog Description - This is where you want to write phrases that catches attention, but rich with keywords too. If you're ranked even at No.1, but your description is as dull as a bull, nobody is going to click to your blog.
• File Names - Use keywords to name files, pictures, photos, graphs, videos, etc that you're using in your blog.
• Internal Links - Some sites use image maps with hotspot hyperlinks, images, or buttons to navigate within the sites. This works against SEO. It's better to use text links instead of images as text links carry more weight when getting ranked in search engines.
• Tags or Labels - Each posts should be tagged or labelled with keywords to help strengthen SEO. Some prominent blog directories, like Technorati, uses these tags to identify your blog for others to search.

Blog titles, descriptions, and keywords can be enhanced by using META tags. Here's an article on how to use META tags efficiently.

Use Keywords Often in Content
How do search engine algorithms decide what each post is about? They'll scan for the the most-used keywords in the post, with different weights given to different elements. To make your posts 'acknowledged' as being related to any particular keywords, use and repeat them often in the posts. But don't do this too excessively to the point of being straight-out blunt and annoying. Having the right keyword-density in your posts have two benefits:

• Draws in more related ads to the post pages. Related ads have better click-through-rates (CTR).
  
• Contributes more towards getting higher rank on those keywords.

Build Links from External Sites
One way to get linked to is by exchanging links, commonly done in Blogrolls. Higher-ranking external sites helps your blog more in terms of SEO. Another way to do this is to submit your blog to directories (here's a tool for an automatic submission for multiple directories). Another highly trusted free directory is DMOZ. Posts can also be submitted to social media directories (e.g. Digg, StumbleUpon) that get voted up/down. Two benefits of submitting to directories:

• You're building links on external sites to your blog/posts.
• Others may stumble on your blog/posts in these directories and visit your blog from there.

Use Keywords to Anchor Hyperlinks
Don't use the term 'click here' to anchor hyperlinks - use keywords instead. Hyperlinks are valued more by ranking algorithms than the normal content text. Keyword anchors contribute better to SEO compared to the clickhere anchors.

Create Efficient Site Navigation Map
How to influence your readers to stay longer in your blog? Make it easy for them to see what's in your blog. To do this is to build efficient site map, something like an Archives or Categories lists. Even better is to list Related Posts items at the end of each post. Use keywords to anchor all links. This practice helps SEO as it build links to your own blog using keywords, albeit internally, and helps spiders to crawl up your pages easily.

This article has been adapted from an article by Randy DuerMyer at About.com (Alexa rank: 144). The main key points was summarized to shorten the text and expanded to include new and valuable information not available in the original article. The new article (1134 words) is much shorter by 40% compared to the original article (1880 words).
[Via Dzelque]

Technorati in Blogger Beta

Technorati is the search engine for blogs and hence no blogger can afford to go without it in his/her blog................

Google is the generalized search engine for the web. Technorati is a search engine which is specialized for blogs. Blogs in contrast to other web sites have ever changing content and Technorati focuses on them by searching them for keywords. Each blog is indexed and individually ranked among the 50 plus million blogs in today's blogosphere. The major differences between the two are outlined below :

Search Engines Compared

GOOGLE	TECHNORATI
Generalized Search	Specialized Search
Searches static, inactive Web	Searches Dynamic Web
No Focus	Focuses on Blogs
Infrequent visits to site	Immediate indexing of content
More sites to cover	Less sites to cover increasing efficiency
Covers World Wide Web	Covers World Live Web

Just as you have to submit your site to Google and the other search engines you have also to 'submit' your blog to Technorati so that other bloggers/readers can find your blog in the blogosphere. Also by doing so you can analyze your blog traffic, backlinks and find out your blog rank.

To register with Technorati go to Technorai.com and click on Join link at the top or click here. After registering you have to 'claim' your blog which is like submitting your site. To do this go here. Claiming your blog establishes that you are the (co-)author of the blog and allows you to use other Technorati services to help increase the visibility of your blog.

During the claiming process Technorati will give you a snippet of code which you have to paste in a Html/Javascript Page Element in the sidebar. To do this go to Page Elements subtab of Template tab and click on Add Page Element in the sidebar. In the new window choose Html/Javascript option and paste the code in contents and save. Having done this go back to technorati and click on Verify so that Technorati spiders your blog. Automatic robots known as "spiders" are released by Technorati to discover content on your site and its feeds. Technorati uses RSS feeds to track updates to millions of blogs. After updating your blog or after every post you have to ping Technorati to let them know that fresh content has been added. It then sends the spiders to index the content.


Each blog you claim will be listed on the Your Blogs page. To make sure the world can see it on Technorati, click the "Configure Blog" button and check to make sure that "Include this blog in Technorati's Blog Finder" is checked. This includes your blog in its Blog directory.


Technorati receives alerts from the Blogger servers whenever a user updates his or her public weblog. To set this automated ping go to Settings---->Basic----->Add your blog to our listings----->Yes---->Save Settings. Blogger will now ping Technorati automatically whenever content is updated.


Technorati breaks up your weblog's home page into smaller sections such as posts and sidebars. You can help Technorati's spiders properly identify a unique post and its proper link destination by adding a link with a defined relationship of "bookmark" for each post. For example:

<a href="http://blog.bloghost.com/post1" rel="bookmark">Post title</a>

Technorati also uses tags to index your blog. A tag as a simple category name. People can categorize their posts, photos and videos with any tag that makes sense. For example if you have a post about films you can tag it with the tag 'film'. Another post about family matters can be tagged as 'family'. Thus you can have posts on various subjects within your blog all neatly categorized using tags. In Beta Blogger tags are called as Labels.

There are two types of tags recognized by Technorati. Post tags are tags added to your posts and they allow your posts to be listed in Technorati's tag search here. To add the tags, add the below code for each tag you'd like add to your post into the body of your post.

<a href="http://technorati.com/tag/[TAGNAME]" rel="tag">[TAGNAME]</a>

Publishing a tagged post in Blogger automatically pings Technorati about updated content. If your blog software supports categories and RSS/Atom feeds just use the included category system and make sure you are publishing RSS/Atom feeds and your categories will be read as tags.


Blog Tags are tags added to your blog on Technorati's Blog Configuration page here. These tags allow your blog to be listed in Technorati's Blog Finder and Explore feature.


Technorati indexes the home page of your weblog assisted by the content of your web feeds. If the home page of your weblog contains summaries or plain-text with no links Technorati may not recognize and index your full posts.


If you use the Atom syndication format to publish the content of your weblog Technorati can still index the full text of your post regardless of your content choices on your weblog home page. Just include your entire post within the content element of each entry and we will recognize this content as the full content of your post.


HOW TO SEARCH TECHNORATI :

You can search Technorati Blog diectory.

How to Add a Google Search Engine to a Blog

You can add a Google Custom Search Engine to your blog............

like I have done at the top of the right sidebar. A Custom Search Engine can be used for the following purposes :

• To place a search box and search results on your website.
• To specify or prioritize the sites you want to include in searches.
• To customize the look and feel to match your website.
• To invite your community to contribute to the search engine.
• To reflect your interests and knowledge.
• To make money from the resulting traffic.

To create this search engine go to http://google.com/coop/cse/overview and click on Create a Search Engine Button. There are only two steps to follow. First specify the Search Engine Settings. Here you give a name and description to your search engine. add keywords and specify the language. Also specify the sites to search and whether these sites are to be emphasized inthe search or solely searched. Lastly specify who can collaborate and check the Agree to Terms of Service and click Next.

In the next step you can try it out and customize it further. After doing so click Finish. You will be taken to a page where all your search engines are listed with links to manage them. Click on the 'control panel' link in front of the name of your search engine. Click on Look and Feel link to further add a logo to your results page. Paste the url of yourlogo in the 'Provide the URL for your logo: ' text field and Save. Now when your readers enter their queries into your search engine they will get a results page with your logo at the top. See image below (click on it to magnify) :




Try it out by entering a term in the search engine at the top of my right sidebar and pressing Search.


You can make money with the new search engine using Adsense by clicking on the 'Make Money' link in the control panel. In the next window add all the details of your Adsense accountso that the Ads. start appearing in the results page.

Click on Code link in the control panel to get the code for your search engine. Copy all the code in the Search box code for your website and paste it into a Html/Javascript Page Element in your sidebar.

You can also syndicate your Custom Search Engine by adding a Add to Google button to your webpage. When users click on the button your Custom Search Engine will be added to their personalized Google homepage as a Google Gadget. Get the link code for it by clicking on code link in control panel and paste it similarly as above in your sidebar. It will look like this :

How to Ping a Blog

Pinging is a process of attracting the search engines for indexing your blogs....

A Blog is a special type of website which has dynamic content constantly being updated as opposed to a static website. A static website's content does not renew itself constantly. Hence it is difficult to attract the search engines repeatedly to index the site. It may take upto two months for a static website to get indexed while blogs are indexed almost immediately. Blogs, because their content constantly renews itself attract the attention of search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Ping is the process by which a blog notifies a search engine that new content has been added and the search engine responds by sending its spiders which are automated bots or programs which crawl the site and index its contents. You can automate the ping proces s by going to Settings----->Publishing------->Notify Weblogs.com------->Yes------>Save Settings. You can also ping multiple search engines with one click at Autopinger.com or Pingoat.com or Pingomatic.com.

You can ping feedburner at http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/ping.

You can ping Technorati at http://www.technorati.com/ping. To get Yahoo to index you faster create a My Yahoo Account.

After publishing a post ping the search engines with the URL of your post and not the URL of your blog.

At the bottom of your My Yahoo click the Add Content link. In Find Content box clickon Add RSS by url link next to Find Button. In the next window paste your Beta blog Feed url into the text box and click Add.
The URL of your beta blog's feed is

http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full
http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Substitute your actual blog name instead of 'yourblogname' in above links. This will add the content of your blog to the My Yahoo page and Yahoo will send its spiders across faster. To ping Yahoo faster go to http://www.technobloggie.com/ping-yahoo.cfm. Type in your blog url and click on Create Yahoo ping code. A URL link is generated. The link will be of this type :

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping?u=http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/

Bookmark this link in your browser and at the end of publishing any post just click on this bookmark to ping Yahoo.

Pingback is a process by which Web authors request notification when somebody links to one of their documents. Blogger does not currently support pingbacks or trackbacks.

Blogger instead has the Backlinks feature which enables you to keep track of other pages on the web that link to your posts. For example if someone else posts on a topic similar to yours and links back to your post then your post will automatically show a link to the other post. To enable Backlinks go to Settings------>Comments----->Backlinks------->Show--------->Save Settings. These links are shown under the posts with the title "Links to this Post" next to the Comments link. Clicking that link takes you to the post page where all the backlinks are shown under the post and the comments.

How to Remove No Follow Attribute in Comments

All Blogger templates have the Nofollow attribute built into their comments. This is done to discourage comment spam. However you can, especially if you are a new blogger, encourage people to comment on your blog by removing this attribute. The Nofollow attribute instructs the search spiders not to follow the link thus preventing the spread of "Google Juice"...........

You can encourage people to comment on your blog once they recognize that links in comments are being followed. To discourage spam enable comment moderation in your Settings---->Comments. Also put a prominent text widget in your sidebar proclaiming that links in your comments are followed by the search bots. This will act as a freebait by sharing your link juice with fellow bloggers.

MODIFYING THE TEMPLATE

To do this login to dashboard and click on layouts of your blog. Then click on Edit Html subtab of Template tab. First backup your template by clicking on the Download Full Template link. Put a check in the Expand Widgets Template Checkbox at the top of the Edit Template text box. This expands the Blog Posts Widget Code within which is the comments code. Then scroll down till you come to :

<dl id='comments-block'>
<b:loop values='data:post.comments'var='comment'>
<dt class='comment-author'expr:id='"comment-" + data:comment.id'>
<a expr:name='"comment-" +data:comment.id'/>
<b:if cond='data:comment.authorUrl'>
<a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'><data:comment.author/></a>
<b:else/>
<data:comment.author/>
</b:if>
<data:commentPostedByMsg/>
</dt>

Delete the words in red in the above code : rel='nofollow' and save the template.

TEXT BOX WIDGET IN SIDEBAR

Click on Add Page Element link in sidebar on Page Elements subtab of Template tab. Choose Text widget and add following text in it :

COMMENT POLICY
Comments on this blog are made DOFOLLOW for the Google Spiders.
Comments are moderated.
Spam will not be tolerated.

Save the widget and place it in a prominent position in your sidebar.

How to Submit Site/Blog to Search Engines

To submit your blog/site to other Search Engines............
Here you should know that there are free submissions and paid submissions. Copy and paste the following URLs to the address bar of your browser to go there and submit your site to them.

For Yahoo go here. It is free but you need to have a Yahoo account which is also free. After logging in to yahoo.com click on "My Yahoo" button just under the Yahoo name.

TO VERIFY YOUR BLOG WITH YAHOO YOU ARE REQUIRED TO UPLOAD A FILE TO YOUR BLOG. SINCE THIS IS NOT ALLOWED THIS CANNOT BE DONE WITH YAHOO.

This will take you to a customised My Yahoo page. Scroll down it and click on "+ Add Content link right at the bottom of the page in the center. On the Add Content page click on "Add RSS by URL' link next to the Find button. In the text box add the link for your blog's RSS feed url. In Beta Blogger this is :
http://yourblogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

Add the name of your blog instead of 'yourblogname' above. Click Add. This will add the content of your blog to Yahoo and its spiders will visit your blog more often.

Add your site to Yahoo Site Explorer by going to :
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/


For MSN go here. This is also free.

For Open Directory dmoz. go here. This is also free but you will have to drill down into all the directories until you find the end directory for your subject. Then submit site URL.

For SearchIt go here. This is also free.

For Exalead go here.

For JDGO go here.

For Mixcat Directory go here.

For IceRocket go here.

For free Website Directory go here.

For Walhello go here.

For AllFreeThings go here.

For Aeiwi go here.

For AddUrlFree go here.

For Sahfor go here.

For Vxbox go here.

For ExactSeek go here.

For All the Web go here.

For Altavista go here.

For Scrub the Web go here.

For Sympatico go here.

For True Search go here.

For Lycos go here.

For Ask Jeeves go here.

To make your site more friendly to the search engine robots limit the content of you web page to 100k. Large Web pages rarely do well in search engines usually because of keyword saturation so be on the safe side and insure your Web page is robot friendly to all major search engines.
Your Title tags should contain maximum of 60 characters. These are the characters between <TITLE> and </TITLE> at the top of your template. The Meta Description Tag at the top of your template should contain keywords and keyword phrases that are important to your site. This tag is of this form :

<META NAME="Description" CONTENT="Describe your website" />

There should be 150 characters maximum included in "Describe your website". The Meta Keywords Tag contains keywords and keyword phrases that are important to your site. The recommended maximum number of characters for this tag is 874. This tag is of the following format and is also placed at the top of your template :

<META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="Your main keywords seperated by commas" />

Do not repeat the keywords placed as that is considered as spamming by the search engines.

METATAGS GENERATORS which generate the tags based on your input are located here :

http://www.addme.com/meta.htm

http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Meta/

http://vancouver-webpages.com/META/mk-metas.html

http://www.anybrowser.com/MetaTagGenerator.html

Just input your blog name and keywords and click Generate.

IMPROVE YOUR METATAGS at :

http://www.bluechillies.com/details/27