SEO Tips To Outrank Your Competitors
While visiting some online forums many times I have seen that some website owners and also some members who are working on their client’s site often ask why a newer, smaller, or uglier site outranks their site. It’s not easy to answer this question as it’s hard to point out what’s the reason behind it because it involves lot of things and may be many reasons behind it or just a single. But here in this article you can find some points to take into consideration when a competitor outranks you. Solving these issues could play an important role for your web site to move up and to outrank your competitor.
1.Content of your Webpages:
Content of your webpage is so important and plays an important role to get higher rankings but it may also be the reason of dropping your ranking if it is not have enough good quality, not enough useful to its users, not well optimized or your competitors have better then you. So you must check for your content again. Content should have some uniqueness with useful information to its users with interesting titles so that users bound to click and visit on your page.
Avoid using too much images to make your website attractive as search engines can not read images so use it only if they needed and always remember to add a descriptive title to your images and also add alternative text through ALT attribute to your images.
2.Relevancy:
Relevancy is another important factor for your ranking. If your competitor’s site has more relevant content to the search query then sure it will outrank your site.
Suppose if the search engines, can not define your site to determine how relevant your page is to a particular search query then there’s no possibility of your site to rank well for that search query. So always make sure that your content must be relevant to the theme of the particular web page with most relevant title.
3.Structure of website:
Website structure or construction of your website also affects ranking of a website. If it is not well structured or has complex structure that is not easily accessible to its users as well as search engine spiders and if your competitor’s site is well structured and easy to understand navigation then it may be the reason that your competitor outranks your site as users and search engine spiders use structure of your site to learn what your site is all about.
4.Link Popularity:
Link popularity always plays a major role in ranking of a website. A website can never rank well without having some quality inbound links.
Also, only having large number of inbound links to your site not ensure that your site will outrank your competitor. Suppose if you have large number of low quality inbound links then your competitor can outrank you with just a little number of high quality inbound links. So always focus on getting quality links from some relevant sites having higher PR, links from authority sites, news sites and if you have some relevant natural or one way links that will be too good as natural links are always more important than reciprocals and search engines prefer them.
The other most important thing about link popularity is anchor text. Always add your main keywords in your anchor text that may sure help you to outrank your competitor.
Also having a little variation in anchor text and description of your site in inbound links will be better as in this way linking looks little natural.
5.Domain Age:
Domain age also is a factor behind ranking of your site. But it does not mean that an older domain always has better chance to rank well or outrank your site as an older domain with low relevancy and poorly structured site have no chance to rank well. So other factors like content, relevancy, link popularity are enough good then in this case having an older domain benefit you and you may have better chance to outrank your competitor.
6.Analyze your competitors:
Search engine ranking is always most important for a website and webmasters always want to see their site among top rankings in major search engines for their targeted keywords but it is not an easy task. If you want to rank well or outrank your competitor then first analyze your competitors and then decide what to do or whom to compete as ranking not only depends on the competitiveness of the keywords but also the size of your site. So if you have a site of approximately 20-30 pages then it will not be advisable to compete for a competitive keyword against a site has 10,000 pages.
In this way, there may be lot of reasons that a competitor outrank you but the important thing is to analyze and determine which reasons may be contributing factors and if you points out the reasons then it will be easier to you to tackle the problem and outrank your competitor and also to rank well on major search engines.
Author involve in research and analysis of various search engine strategies and alogrithms. For more articles by author please visit- Latest Google SEO Tips and Strategies
Essential SEO Tools - Link Popularity
You have a great website, but it still does not get the traffic you want. Besides spending $$$$$ of dollars with paid search you want to know how to take advantage of the free stuff… natural search.
Having some key information at you disposal will help guide you in your quest for search engine dominance. If you haven’t used the right SEO tools to check your sites’ performance and make the necessary changes you are missing the boat.
Get The Right Link Popularity Tool
One of he most important things you need to use is a tool that measures the Link Popularity of your site. This requirement stems from the simple fact about search engines, they calculate the page ranking for your site based on the number of back-links you have.
What is a back-link? A back-link is a link that points “back” to your site, usually from another site.
If you have a large number of sites that provide a link to your site for a certain keyword, the search engine takes it to mean that your page must have some authoritative content. In such a situation, the page ranking for your site begins to climb.
A Link Popularity tool measures this metric and gives you a clear performance picture of the popularity of your website.
Back-link checking does not end here. You could have sites linking to your home page or they could be linking to a specific page in your site. This is called a deep page link. For obvious reasons, a deep page link is preferable to a mere home page link. Search engines weigh your links accordingly. A back-link checking SEO tool will give you specific information on this so you can create a strategic plan to convert as many of these home page links to deep page links.
Understand The Page-Rank System
As if this was not enough, all search engines employ a page-rank system where they grade websites according to links and other parameters. If your website has a number of back-links from high page-ranked websites, search engines evaluate it as more relevant and give that link a higher rating. So having links from just any site is not always the best case scenario, but having deep page links from high page-ranking sites will give your site more weight with the search engines resulting in more and higher natural rankings.
You may not be able to measure these parameters manually, because you will probably never know which websites provide links to you. However, with the right Link Popularity tool that is built for the job, you will be able to get a good indication of where you stand.
As is evident from the preceding discussion, a good Link Popularity tool will be able to tell you how you stand and how to make an early correction before market forces tell you to. Do remember however, that all Link Popularity tools are only tools. Their application is your responsibility. Your journey begins with producing a great product and bringing it to the market. If you have a great product, smart use of a Link Popularity tool can increase your chances of success.
Tom Dwyer is a former senior executive at one of the largest interactive marketing agencies and now spends his time consulting with businesses and organizations on all aspects of business life. Visit Tom at Talkin’ With TommyD
A Return to Keyword Research
Keyword research is often discussed as something that is critical, but can be a bit grueling. In truth, it should excite you. It represents the identification of potential profitable business areas.
While doing keyword research is absolutely a critical step to any online marketing effort, most people make a major mistake when pursuing it. What is the mistake? They view the research as a one time event. In truth, you should return to your keyword research at regular intervals.
Let’s look an extreme example. Assume I am opening a site selling bathing suits. Further assume I do my keyword research in late October. What am I going to find? Well, there are always going to a certain number of searches regarding just about any subject at any point in the calendar year. The data in this case, however, is clearly going to be compromised by the fact a majority of my potential customers are simply not looking for bathing suits in October. It’s a bit chilly!
It goes without saying that a far better time to perform the keyword research for my site would be in spring and summer. Ah, but I need to launch my site in October. This conundrum raises a basic fundamental lesson of keyword research. You should be doing it at least quarterly or more often. Why? Well, each season presents a different set of data regarding what your customers are searching for.
For instance, the data I derive from my keyword research in January and May will be entirely different. This is because the perspectives of my buyers are going to be different. The January data will reflect customers that were searching for bathing suits as gifts for other in November and December. The May data will reflect the perspective of people looking for bathing suits for themselves. The keyword phrases from both sets of data will have some common themes, but also a significant number of unique phrases that can be mined for top rankings and leads.
At the end of the day, it is important to remember that keyword research is not a “one and done” task. It is an ever evolving area that reflects the continually changing interests of your prospects. Stay on top of it to stay on top of them.
Sam Alucard is with AlucardSEOServices.com - providers of SEO Services.
SEO Down to the Photos
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a virtual no brainer when it comes to the long term marketing of your website. When you work to develop your website using SEO strategies you will likely focus most of your approach on the development of knowledge-based content filled with keywords or phrases that assist in positive site rankings.
Some online business owners do themselves a disservice by stopping short of full optimization. For instance site development can include adding SEO keywords and phrases to meta titles. This is information visitors will not see, but search engines will. Since they pay attention to the meta titles shouldn’t you?
Some website owners also stop before they provide a full compliment of SEO strategies in other text based areas of their website. This may include the ‘about us’ section that allow visitors to learn more about the company. Presumably your SEO keywords relate to your business. The use of those keywords in this section is very important.
Site owners can tastefully place their keywords in product descriptions and the frequently asked questions (FAQs) segment of their website.
Your home page should also include SEO strategies. The truth is you should pay attention to every single page and every text entry you place on your site. This includes any forums or blogs you might host on your site.
One area that is often overlooked when it comes to Search Engine Optimization is the photos you might display on the site.
Visit virtually any website and roll your cursor over a picture. In most cases a small yellow box will pop up and a series of words will pop up to describe the picture. Most visitors do not use this function so enterprising web owners will use photos to increase their SEO exposure since search engines do pay attention. You can use the name of the website or the primary key phrase you are using to enhance search engine placement.
There are other areas where SEO principles apply, but the above principles should help you fully develop a website that is inviting to a system that can do more for the long-term marketability of your site.
SEO principles are not the stuff of overnight success. In fact it can take several weeks for search engines to crawl and index your website to improve your website’s placement in overall search rankings.
Think of SEO like you might a mutual fund. You invest in SEO, but the accumulated interest can take time to mature. Ultimately it is a sound investment, but your interest is always drawn later than your investment. It also has the potential to return more than you invest.
It always surprises me to see web owners who refuse to consider the use of SEO because they believe that the merit of their business is based exclusively on marketing skills that may be best applied in a brick and mortar environment.
The problem is the skills associated with online marketing operate on a different platform. You will help yourself, search engines and best of all your potential customers by making sure your site is optimized for search engines - all the way down to the photos.
Use the Website Builder with HighPowerSites.com or the Easy Website Builder at BuildAGreatSite.com. Make Money and Sell Ebooks at BooksWealth.com.
8 Simple SEO Techniques Every Webmaster Should Know
Every webmaster should have some basic understanding of these simple SEO techniques if they want to achieve Top Rankings for their site. The more you know about these Search Engine Optimization techniques; the better your web pages will fare in the different search engines, especially Google.
Optimizing your pages for the search engines should be your main priority because conquering and dominating your chosen keywords is often cited as one of the major determining factors in the success of your online site or business. You must have a rudimentary grasp of how SEO can work for you and your site.
These simple SEO Tips will help you understand the basics and help you reach your online goals.
1. Title Tag
The Title Tag is located at the top of your html page and it tells the search engines what your page is about. When you open your page in a browser these are the words at the very top of the screen. Despite its simplicity, the title tag is crucial to ‘on-page optimization’; it should include your main keywords and it should be 63 characters or less if you want your title to appear in full on Google.
Many SEO experts create web pages in a three-prong approach. They place the title in:
- the title tag
- on the webpage itself
- and in the URL for that page.
Sometimes they will just pick the main keywords from the title and place them in the anchor url instead. For example: www.yourwebsite.com/keywords.html
3. Meta Description Tag
The Meta Tag contains the description for your web page. Your description will show up in all the search engines so you have to be careful to write precisely and objectively. It should be about 140 characters or around 20 words. Make sure to include your keywords but don’t spam; don’t repeat your keywords more than twice, using variations is helpful.
Keep in mind, successful webmasters make their descriptions stand out from the crowd and entice the surfer to click their link. It is also the first contact with your potential visitor or prospect so make a good first impression.
3. Anchor Tag or URL
The anchor tag is used to form links within websites or from site to site. This tag should have your title or the main keywords from your page title to be the most effective.
Anchor text is also important to know, these are the underlined, clickable text or words in a link. <*A href=”url”> anchor text <*/A>
If you want to check Google for all web pages containing your keywords in the anchor tags.
Just type into Google Search: allinanchor:yourkeywords
4. Finding Backlinks
One of the keys to higher rankings is building quality links from relevant related quality sites. The search engines, especially Google, counts each link as a “vote” for your site or content. Many experts suggest you include your main keywords in the anchor text of these inbound links in order to rank high.
If you want to find the number of backlinks your site has.
Just type into Google Search: link:yourURL
and it will give you the number of backlinks you have.
Google doesn’t give you all your existing backlinks, so you can try Yahoo! to find a more exact number.
Just open Yahoo! and type in: linkdomain:yourURL
5. Checking Indexed Pages
If is very important for you to know what content the search engines have indexed from your site. You can also check to see how your links are displayed and to see if any titles or descriptions are missing from your pages.
You can see how many of your pages are indexed in Google by using the site command.
Just type into Google Search: site:yourURL
Another way to look at your pages in Google is to type in “http://yoursite” and “www.yoursite” with the quotation marks to see the exact number of listings for each.
6. Checking Google Cache
You can also check to see the Google Cache of your site by using the cache command. You will also discover when it was last retrieved.
Just type into Google Search: cache:yourURL
7. Finding Associated Keywords
Keywords are the heart of the Internet, you must dominate the search engines for your chosen keywords if you are to succeed online. You must be able to find variations of your keywords to completely conquer your targeted niche. To find what other keywords Google has associated with your main keywords, just use the tilde ~ command to find associated phrases in Google.
Just type into Google search: ~keywords
Variations will be highlighted in bold print.
8. Finding Titled Keywords
If you want to find competing sites that have your keywords in the title just use the allintitle command.
Just type into Google search: allintitle:yourkeywords
In summary, if used consistently, these basic SEO techniques should help improve your rankings and keep you in the picture with regards to your standings in the search engines. Your site’s stats or raw traffic logs will also confirm the rise or fall of your keyword rankings. You must have complete knowledge of both your site and your keywords in the search engines, especially Google. Since Google will deliver most of your quality traffic, you must optimize for it and be aware of what is happening to your site and keywords within Google. This is yet another example where knowledge equals success.
The author is now a full-time web marketer who regularly sells 1000’s of dollars worth of affiliate products/services online each day. He runs two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools or Marketing Tool Guide
Getting Started With SEO - Keys To Getting Your Website Found
If you want to get more visitors to your web site you need to optimize your website for the search engines. When your website is search engine optimized you will start to climb in search engine rankings and you will get more visitors to your website.
Once your web site is ranked on the first pages of search results you will get much more search engine traffic. The time invested in search engine optimization is well worth it.
Here are five keys to get you started with search engine optimization or SEO
- One of the first steps to SEO is to brainstorm and research the keywords potential visitors use to find what you have to offer. You can’t afford to guess the keyword phrases that your visitors will use to search. If you build your pages around keywords that your potential visitors don’t actually use, you will wallow in the search engine doldrums and remain invisible to your target market.
- Once you know the keywords your target market use to search, build your pages around those keywords and make sure that you include the keywords in
- the file name
- title tag
- description
- keyword tag
- headings
- throughout the text
- in anchor text
- in alt image tags
- Another very important aspect of search engine optimization is links. You need a good linking structure within your site. Make sure you link your pages to each other with anchor text.
- You also need links from other websites, the more links you have, the better. Do make sure that the links pointing to your site are from relevant sites and try to make sure that you have links that use your keywords in anchor text.
- Make sure that once your visitor lands on your site that they have good reason to stay. You need good quality information, attractively laid out with lots of white space. Look at your site through the eyes of a visitor and make sure that it is user friendly or they will just click away.
If you want to rank well in the search engines so that you can have more than your share of free traffic, I invite you to start by downloading the first chapter of Optimize Your Website for free.
http://www.seoissimple.com/optimizeyourwebsitefreechapter.html
Optimize Your Website is a step by guide to Search Engine Optimization written for non techies. It simplifies the process and gives you links to the tools you need to Optimize Your Website
Search Engine Optimization
Optimize Your Blog For Search Engines:
While optimizing your blog, it should be realized that you don’t want to optimized for all web search crawlers but you want to optimize your blog for Google. The question arrises how to drive traffic. It is clear that all of us want targeted traffic, and it is natural, because without traffic our blog is worthless and we cannot earn. SEO depends on two things. 1) onpage search engine optimization. 2) Off page search engine Optimization.
Onpage optimization depends on 1) Blog Layout (URL, blog title, Blog description, Sidebar headers and other things added to blog lay out) 2) Post Layout - (Post Title, Post Header, Sub headers and content of post).
Off page one depends on these 1) Back Links (which comes from high Page Rank site, Relevant site, site having relevant keywords).
To explain all this let us pick one key word “Search Engine Optimization “. Blog Layout - Best URL for this keyword will be searchengineoptimization.(dot)com. If it is available other wise you should take use url containing your key word . Our blog title should be “our keyword”. Our side bar should also have the same in its titles. The blog description should be filled with your keywords as you can see above in my page. Besides that we can create our sidebar titles and fit our other keywords there.
The Google bot crawls your page from top left, then left column, then second column and end up at lower right corner of your web page. It only wants to know only what your page is about. No where between your URL and your comments bot should run into any confusion, do not include any previous post link, any home page link, any thing that does not tell what your page is about. when search engine reaches your actual post, it would have read your keywords in your URL, your blog title and description, till than it would come to know what your blog is about. This is SEO.
Post Layout - The post is a bonus, because search engine has indexed you for your main keywords before reading your post. After reading the post bot will have added a good many long terms categorize your blog under as well. Write your posts in such a manner that it could cover maximum number of your keywords, do not forget to bold, italicized and underline the keywords. If you do not describe clearly, and post with lot of keywords in your posts, none of them is highlighted then bot would pickup unnecessary keywords which you do not require. Do not forget to write once again your main keyword at the end of post.
NILESH MISHRA
How Can SEO Help Your Business The Facts
I have been reading a blog post recently about how SEO can help your business.
Now to be honest the blog article is just surface noise in my opinion - it starts off well enough, sounding out that the creation of a site alone won’t get you found in your niche. Then begins to wobble some when using an example of a website selling ’shoes’ and stating that:
… when there are 558 million pages resulting from a search for shoes in the UK.
That’s an illusionist talking. Making the competition sound more than it is. That figure is showing how many pages are indexed by Google containing the keyword ’shoes’ within its body text. If you wanted a true sample of competing web pages that are within the ’shoes’ market you need to be more specific with your search function in Google.
To simplify things good search engine optimisation is the process of having your search term, in this instance ’shoes’, found in three main areas: the Title, the body text and within the anchor text of inbound links pointing to that page.
Now, once you understand this you can get a better assessment of competing pages that have been optimised for the search engines with the keyword ’shoes’.
Our search function looks like this : intitle:shoes; intext:shoes; inanchor:shoes
Now it returns 1,360,000 pages that have the keyword ’shoes’ in the Title, in the body text and in the anchor text of inbound links pointing to the site. 1,360,000 pages is still a lot but compared against 558,000,000 in the original article we can start to see past the smoke and mirrors spiel.
If anyone is interested in using the above function but want to use it for 2, 3 or more keywords then wrap the double quotes around your keyword phrase as follows in this 2 keyword phrase example:
intitle:”blue shoes”; intext:”blue shoes”; inanchor:”blue shoes”
My take on SEO nowadays is that it reaches far beyond getting a site to rank for numerous keywords. Its more about conversion and return of investment. Being ranked number No.1 is not the be all and end all. Never mind the fare share of tyre kickers or time wasters that will frequent your site.
A quality SEO Company goes beyond just ranking, especially if your selling on-line.
Marketing an e-commerce site is a black hole in itself but there are some good guidelines that you should be following and also questioning your SEO company about. Here are just a few:
- Data Feeds, easy to build, easy to submit, the good ones are optimised of course
- PPC - never take your finger off the button when it comes to Pay Per Click advertising, just because your running SEO shouldn’t mean that any PPC campaigns get binned - SEO & PPC together are extremely effective
- Understand that people who buy on-line do research first, they may visit 5 - 10 sites including yours before they purchase - if your price driven then no matter if your prices are cheaper than everyone else - if your site looks cheap or unprofessional and doesn’t build consumer confidence you still won’t get a sale
- Unique Selling Point - if you don’t have one then get one - could be special offers, free delivery, returns policy etc …
- Allowing those that purchase to leave feedback against your products - also gives you unique content on your product page
- Do not copy products descriptions from other sites - its just lazy and unprofessional will also get your page tagged as questionable for having duplicate content
- Site navigation, probably just as important as your look and feel
- Site statistics, so your SEO Company sends you though a monthly report on your keyword positions, big deal. How is that supposed to show how your site is performing? Where are the top exits points in the site is one I would be interested in straight away, just for starters …
These are just a few guides and questions that you can throw back at your SEO Consultant / Expert next time you hear the “Shoe Competition” story on how SEO can help your business.
To be successful in selling on-line you need to make sure that every factor is covered or being looked at because if your not then your competition is just going to take your sales even if your in the No.1 position.
Think beyond rankings because if that’s all your SEO Company has to offer then think about getting a new one.
Paul Steven writes for North South Media a Scottish based SEO Company that also offers Internet Marketing Services for e-commerce websites.
Website Design, Off Page Optimization
The following is the important elements to off page web SEO and you should not just sit up and take notice but actively find the right link partners to create the best web structure. The off page factors include:-
Which Websites Link to you
The number of websites linking to you
The Google page rank of the websites linking to you
The page title of the website linking to you
The anchor text used in the link to you
The number and type of links linking to the website linking to you
The number of outbound links
The total number of links on the website that is linking to you
If the website is deemed and authority website
To understand how this is all done you need to analyze the top ten websites on the net for your keywords and this is not done easily. You need the right tools and to that unfortunately you need to spend money. One of the tools I use is SEO Elite but there are others and you should always not take any body’s word that a package is good or bad in this game you need to find out for yourself.
I use it and I have found that it has a great deal of good information and training that comes with it, I can only suggest that you look at the training website and then decide on the investment or not.
When you have a package like that it enables you to do a number of interesting things with this tool. The first part is to analyze your competition on the web. Some people out there are very good sites and will not yield there number one spot without a severe amount of effort. You need to understand what degree of competition you are up against.
The main idea is that if you are trying to compete for a very competitive set of keywords you are going to have to put a lot of effort in and therefore you need to balance effort against reward. The competition for some keywords is a much closed area. If however you find that your competition has only around 2000 links in then you can probably consider that site and keywords within range of a good marketer with a good plan and strategy.
You can firstly understand that one of the best ways to outdo your competitor’s sites in the top ten is to produce more unique content than them, this is the first thing to consider make or have more pages than them as this is a key factor. With some of the SEO packages on the market it can be possible to find out the keyword density for the main h1 and h2 tags this will give you the edge as you need to make your individual website content have just slightly more keyword density or prominence that your competitors.
Find the number of high ranking websites in that field and try to get them to give you a link write to them. Produce articles on that subject and submit them to high PR websites. Look at all the links that your competitors have and adjust the strategy to enhance your sites standing.
If you are new to this seek out the SEO Elite Training as this is free and gives you the best idea of what is needed to stay at number one for your keyword search terms. I wish you the best of luck with your website design and optimization.
Six Search Engine Optimization Top Tips
Are you giving your website the best chance to climb the search engines and rank well?
Here are six simple SEO tips that can have a big impact on your website. Try them today.
- Make sure all of your pages have a unique title and description meta tag. Also make sure that the keywords for the page are included in both of these tags. This is one simple change that can really make a big difference on your search engine placement.
- Use consistent keyword focused links between your own web pages. When linking from one page to another within your site make sure that the link text contains the keywords for the page you are linking to. If you can use the title for that page then that is ideal. Don’t use words like “Click here”.
- Go for quality links to your website. Avoid the temptation to list your site on every directory you can find. Concentrate on getting links from quality sites that already have a good standing with the search engines. Also avoid link farms or link partnering schemes. Ultimately the value of these links is usually low and the search engines don’t like it.
- Write some articles about your type of business and submit then to the article submission sites. Make sure you include your website address in the “About the Author” section of your article. People are always looking for content for their websites, so your article (if it’s interesting and relevant) will get picked up and published on other sites ensuring you links back to your site.
- Join newsgroups and forums for your business community. Participate actively in these groups and offer valuable input. People will soon see you as an authority and they may well link to your website. If you include your website address in your signature text for your posts then you will also get links from all your posts.
- Check your site frequently for broken links. The search engines hate sites with broken links. Not only can they not index your site properly but it also suggests that the website is not being properly maintained and so they might not want to send traffic to you. There is lots of software on the market for checking your site. Google’s Webmaster free service will tell you if it finds any broken links.
Mike Seddon is a founder of KKSmarts. Their website contains many free Website Promotion guides including a Free SEO Audio course.