It is not hard to be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to getting search engine traffic because there is so much out of date information being circulated.

That is why it is always best to also learn many other traffic generation methods like viral marketing for example.

Not only is there out of date or invalid SEO advice getting around, there is also information which if acted upon, can result in your pages being banned.

The SEO tips below should assist the reader in forming a basic understanding of how to create human friendly web pages which are easily understood by the most popular search engines.

Know this. There are thousands of search engines but only two of them will bring you most of the traffic. They are google and yahoo. Another search engine that brings me a little traffic is msn but I do not focus too much on tactics for that engine.

Focus your attention on the engines that will bring you the most visitors first and work your way down.

Basic SEO

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about. The title tag is located right at the top of your document within the head tags. Inserting a keyword or key phrase will greatly improve your chances of bringing targeted traffic to your site.

Make sure that the title tag contains text which a human can relate to. The text within the title tag is what shows up in a search result. Treat it like a headline.

2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site. This is especially useful if your site contains many pages. The more keywords that link to a specific page the better.

3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page. It is unwise to have keywords in the title tag which are not contained within the body of the page.

Adding the exact same text for your h1 tag will tell the reader who clicks on your page from a search engine result that they have clicked on the correct link and have arrived at the page where they intended to visit. Robots like this too because now there is a relation between the title of your page and the headline.

Also, sprinkle your keywords throughout your article. The most important keywords can be bolded or colored in red. A good place to do this is once or twice in the body at the top of your article and in the sub-headings.

4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website. Search engine robots might determine that all your pages are the same if all your title tags are the same. If this happens, your pages might not get indexed.

I always use the headline of my pages as the title tag to help the robots know exactly what my page is about. A good place to insert the headline is within the h1 tag. So the headline is the same as the title tag text.

5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag. SEO pros all agree that these tags are not as important today as they once were. I just place my headline once within the keywords and description tags.

6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods.

7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.

8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides. This is like the alt tag for images.

My site contains navigation menus on the left and right of the page. The menu consists of links not images. When you hover over the link with your mouse, the title of the link appears. View the source of this page to see how to add this tag to your links.

9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag. This will help search engines that index images to find your pages and will also help readers who use text only web browsers.

10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software. Doing so could get your site penalized or even banned.

Here is the submission page for google: http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Submit only once. There is no need to submit every two weeks. There is no need to submit more than one page. Robots follow links. If your site has a nice link trail, your entire site will get indexed.

My site has a nice human friendly link trail which robots follow easily. All my pages get indexed without ever submitting more than the main index page once.

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What is Search engine optimization (SEO)? An Art or Science?

SEO has always been perceived as a science of effective usage of Meta tags, positioning of keywords organically in body text, and careful analysis of keyword density using popular SEO software tools and techniques. But organic search engine optimization and search engine rankings are driven by a natural instincts of a TOP SEO specialist who not only has the right SEO strategy and information on search engine algorithms, but also has a natural sense of organic SEO.

We at media143 & Buzzspider stand to announce ourselves as a Reputable Dubai SEO company which promises guaranteed SEO services at the cheap and affordable price.

Alexa is a search engine that records visits to each site from its toolbar, which must be installed on the Internet browser. The statistics shown are updated every week.

Using Search Status, we know the position of a site on the Web by moving the mouse on the blue bar, it displays a numerical value that is the rank of the site on the Web. For more details, you go on the site of Alexa, click on “Traffic Ranking” at the top of the screen, you enter a domain name and click on “Get details.”

Alexa is also at the origin of archives.org that stores all websites over time, and it was bought by Amazon in 1999.

How to interpret the values given by Alexa?

Sandbox for directories in Alexa graphs

Search Status displays a blue bar, which represents the average position for the past three months. This is the rank and is given primarily on the Alexa panel .
The traffic rank is a geometric mean of the number of unique visitors and the number of page views.

Then the page width is occupied by a graph, whose peried may be defined (six months in the example below), which represents changes in position. The value in the y axis is the percentage of visits for a site on Internet. By giving multiple site names, we can compare the curves.

Three tables are then drawn up over three periods: the last day, last week, and the last three months (here we retrieve the value at top of the panel), with also changes as compared with the previous three months.
The last column (3 ms change) show the difference between the last three months and the three previous three months.

The first table shows the percentage of users of the Alexa toolbar who visited the site.
The following is the rank of the site on the Internet for its traffic.
The third table provides the number of pages viewed by visitors for the same periods.

Then are given the visitors by country as a percentage of the total number of visits, the rank in each country, and the distribution for subdomains if there is ones.

The limitations of the system

According to the search engine Alexa itself, values given are more relevant as the number of visitors is more important. In fact only the first 100000 sites have a graph displayed because it is estimated that the lower values are unreliable.

Moreover statistics come from the Alexa toolbar, which must be installed. The theme can influence. Certain categories of netsurfers use rather the Google toolbar and visit more often some sites whose position is undervalued.

Assessing traffic of a website

The traffic is a logarithmic function of the position. In fact to get closer to the top it is necessary that the traffic increases exponentially. To pass from the rank 400000 to the rank 200000, for example, one must not double the traffic, but triple it (this is an example, not an exact ratio).
In fact you need to properly assess the traffic statistics by comparing with a site of the same rank. Yet the comparison is valid only if both sites have a high rank. You can not use Alexa in connection with the acquisition of a site based on traffic, because it is very easy to manipulate those numbers, either by visiting the site frequently with the Alexa toolbar installed, or by using a script. You should rather ask the person who sold the site the statistics to evaluate it, and you should verify the origin of traffic.

New Algorithm

On 16 April 2008, Alexa has changed its algorithm, which was based on visits counted on the Sparky toolbar, to expand the statistical sources. That changed the general classification, without making it more exact, on the contrary.

Over the last few years web-developers have written many articles about CSS and developed many useful techniques, which can save you a lot of time – of course, if you are able to find them in time. Below you’ll find a list of techniques we , as web-architects, really couldn’t live without. They are essential and they indeed make our life easier. Let’s take a look at  CSS-based techniques you should always have ready to hand if you develop web-sites

1. CSS Based Navigation

2. Navigation Matrix Reloaded

3. CSS Tabs

4. CSS Bar Graphs (CSS For Bar Graphs)

5. Collapsing Tables: An Example

6. Adam’s Radio & Checkbox Customisation Method

7. CSS Image Replacement

8. CSS Shadows (CSS Shadows Roundup)

9. CSS Rounded Corners Roundup (Nifty Corners)

10. Drop Cap – Capital Letters with CSS

11. Define Image Opacity with CSS

12. How to Create a Block Hover Effect for a List of Links

13. Pullquotes with CSS (Automatic Pullquotes with JavaScript and CSS

14. CSS Diagrams

15. CSS Curves

16. Footer Stick allows for the footer of a Web page to appear either at the bottom of the browser window or the bottom of the Web page content – whichever is visually lowest.

17. CSS Image Map

18. CSS Image Pop-Up

20. CSS Image Replacement for Buttons

21. Link Thumbnail

22. CSS Map Pop

23. PHP-based CSS Style Switcher

24. CSS Unordered List Calender (CSS Styled Calender)

25. CSS-Based Forms: Techniques

26. CSS-Based Tables: Techniques

27. Printing Web-Documents and CSS

28. Improved Links-Display for Print-Layouts with CSS

29. CSS-Submit Buttons

30. CSS Teaser Box

31. CSS Tricks for Custom Bullets

32. Ticked Off Links Reloaded

33. CSS Zooming

34. Creating a Star Rater using CSS

35. The ways to style visited Links

36. PDF, ZIP, DOC Links Labeling

37. Displaying Percentages with CSS

38. Image Floats without the Text Wrap

39. Let visitors decide, whether or not will they open link in a new window

40. Simple accessible external links

41. Zebra Table with JavaScript and CSS

42. Vertical Centering with CSS (Horizontal and Vertical Centering with CSS

43. Unobtrusive Sidenotes

44. Image Caption with CSS (Styled Images with Caption)

45. Dynamic Piechart with CSS

46. Format Footnotes with CSS

47. Hierarchical Sitemap with CSS

48. Snook’s Resizable Underlines

49. Switchy McLayout: An Adaptive Layout Technique

50. StyleMap: CSS+HTML Visual Sitemap

51. Custom Reading Width

52. CSS Alert Message

53. CSS Production Notes

Last month we teamed up with Enquiro Search Solutions to produce an article on some of the trends we have noticed on the web. The article also includes some of the strategies you can use to ensure that your business is able to stay successful during these troubled times. Below is the article published on February 12, 2009.

Each time one of our clients uses SwiftSend to release an email marketing message, SwiftSend generates a robust report.  I thought it would be interesting to share some of our statistics.

The screenshot above is an actual report generated by SwiftSend showing what Email Programs (Also known as “Email Clients”) our recipients like to use.  While it’s not really much of a surprise considering how much B2B work we do, Microsoft Outlook users take the cake with nearly 55%.   Steve Jobs will be happy to know his Apple Mail has nearly 20%.  Google’s Gmail comes in 3rd spot.  Why is this important?  Well for example, users using Outlook 2007 (15% of our subscribers) are unable to see background images built into newsletters.  The email newsletters we design and build must be adaptable for this reason.

Skipable Geek Explanation: This is a limitation due to the fact that Outlook 2007 uses MS Word to render HTML content.  Crazy I know!  Current plans indicate Microsoft’s “Outlook 2010″ is planning on doing the same.  This has those who offer eMail Marketing Services up in arms.  There are many web-based, and social media movements attempting to stop this from happening.

The “Open Rate” report is the proverbial “Meat & Potatoes” of all the statistics SwiftSend has to offer.  Often we hear the question “What is a good open rate?’

Well, in the above example (Our May Newsletter about Skunk-Fu) had an open rate of about 41%.  Not bad.  Compare that to other traditional marketing efforts and you’d be smiling.

For Open rates, there are a few general trends…

• As list size goes up, the open rate tends to fall; possibly because smaller companies are more likely to have personal relationships with their list subscribers.
• Companies and organizations that are focusing on enthusiasts and supporters, like churches, sport teams and non profits see higher open rates
• More specific niche topics, like some manufacturing areas also typically have higher open rates than emails on broader topics

Creating a twitter account, properly

It is important that you begin following people on twitter right off when you first sign up for an account. Once you you start following various people you will gain a little attention from those that follow you and possibly even new followers. The people following you will see each update you make. Depending on the type of updates you make you could discover your own little min-blog where people are expecting quirky little updates from you.

I will typically update with links I find interesting and want to share daily or interesting things I come across in web design and technology. It all depends on what I am in the mood to update with. You can update from IM or even mobile if need be, which is a big help for that random tweet. Just be sure that you don’t drunk-tweet because you can’t delete the tweet in the morning. Don’t let other tweeters drink and tweet.

Twitter as a marketing tool for your blog

You can easily market your blog on twitter by getting an audience of followers that may not know you because of your blog directly. Every time you make a worth-while update to your blog you can announce it on twitter. Just make sure that you are updating with more then links to your site for self-promotion, you will lose followers quickly. Twitter is just like any other social network. It has to be used the way your followers expect, the marketing end of things is just a bonus.

Not only can you get traffic from linking to updates on your site by your followers but there is a public timeline available that will announce each update that is made. Depending on the time of day there are typically quite a few people watching that feed out of curiosity. There is also all of your followers followers that will see your updates on the people that they are following. It seems confusing at first but really it is just a lot of exposure all within a related group of people with similar interests. This means targeted marketing is free and easy on twitter.

You have to be sure that you are doing more then just sending links, this is important because people can stop following you if you just spam them with links to your blog.

Twitter as a networking tool

There have been quite a few articles about using twitter to market a web site but there haven’t been any about using it as a networking tool. What I mean by this is that you can follow leaders in the web design, seo or web development industry and find out what they are doing regularly or learn first about something new they have created or discovered. This allows you to be better at what you do by what they share.

Not only are you going to learn from some of the a-listers within the blogging or web design industry but you are probably going to get their attention by following them on twitter. Most people on twitter, myself included, have a notification setup for when someone follows me. I like to check their twitter account out and if they have a link in their profile I will always follow it. You might even get refollowed by the people you follow, this is usually a good way to react to people following you in any case. It helps to make the networks more wide spread. Be wary though, there are spammers on twitter just like any other social network that can’t understand the delicate balance that is necessary.

Twitter can be very entertaining, not just a tool

You can usually find people venting on twitter quite a bit, or talking about their mundane day or anything really. You can even find some cutting edge news on twitter, even before it is found on some of the other social networks. I personally use the Twitterbar Firefox extension and my (new) Treo 755p to update my entries on twitter.

You can easily make your site search engine optimized by follow 10 easy steps that will make sure everything is ready for Google to go through and understand what your pages and site are about. This can help you to get more traffic from search engines by ranking well. Once you rank well, of course, you need to make sure that you are persuading the visitors to actually click on your search listing. The relevant and quality traffic is why we all have web sites and want to rank well in search engines, right?

The 10 Great SEO tips for your site

#1 Content

As cliché as it sounds this is the number one for any search marketing strategy, it is impossibly important to ensure that you have content worth viewing. Without this one simply step to ensure that there is a reason for someone to be on your site, everything else is useless. There are a lot of great sites to find inspiration for writing great content that works.

#2 Incoming Links

A link is a link is a link, but without the simplest form you aren’t going to do well in search engines. The more links you have the more often you are going to be crawled. It is also important to make sure that you have the proper anchor text for your incoming links. The easiest way to gain quality links from other sites is to link to sites to let them know your site is there and hope for a reciprocal link. It is also important to make sure that you have content that is worth linking to on your site.

#3 Web site title

Making sure that you have the right web site titles for your pages is extremely important. The keywords you place in your title are important in order to ensure that your topic is understood by Google. One of the primary factors for ranking is if the title is on-topic with the search results. Not only is it important for robots to index and understand the topic of the page either. It is important for click-through rates in the search results. Pay attention to what you click on when you are searching in Google, I know that I don’t always click the first results. Using great titles and topics on your site will bring you more traffic than a number one listing. Most of the time it is within the first page, but I skim through the titles to see which looks to be more on-topic for my search query.

#4 Heading tags

When you are laying out your site’s content you have to be sure that you are creating the content flow in such a way that the heading tags are based on prominence. The most prominent of course being the h1 tag, which says “this is what this block of copy is about.” Making sure you understand heading tag structure is very important. You only want to have one (or two) h1 tags per a page. It is important to not just throw anything into an h1 tag and hope you rank for it.

#5 Internal Linking

Making sure that your internal linking helps robots (and visitors!) to find the content on your site is huge. Using relevant copy throughout your site will tell the robots (and visitors!) more effectively what to expect on the corresponding page. You do want to make sure that on pages you don’t want to rank in Google that you add a nofollow tag to ensure that the ranking flow of your site corresponds with your site’s topic and interests. No one is going to be searching Google to find out what your terms of service or privacy policy are.

#6 Keyword Density

Ensuring that you have the right keyword density for your page and sites topic is paramount. You don’t want to go overboard and use the keyword every 5th word but making sure it “comes up” often is going to help you rank better in search engines. The unspoken rule is no more then 5% of the total copy per a page. Anymore then this and it can start to look a little spammy. Granted, you aren’t shooting for 5% every time. It is really all about context and relevance— just make sure it is good, quality copy.

#7 Sitemaps

It is always a good idea to give search engines a helping hand to find the content that is on your site. Making sure that you create and maintain a sitemap for all of the pages on your site will help the search robots to find all of the pages in your site and index them. Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask all support sitemaps and most of them offer a great way to ensure that it is finding your sitemap. Most of the time you can simply name it sitemap.xml and the search robot will find the file effectively.

#8 Meta Tags

Everyone will tell you that meta tags don’t matter, they do. The biggest thing they matter for is click-through though. There will be a lot of times when Google will use your meta description as the copy that gets pulled with your search listing. This can help to attract the visitor to visit your web site if it is related to their search query. Definitely a much overlooked (as of late) ranking factor. Getting indexed by search engines and ranking well is just the first step. The next, and biggest, step is getting that visitor that searched for your keywords to want to click on your search listing.

#9 URL Structure

Ensuring that your URL structure compliments the content that is on the corresponding page is pretty important. There are various methods to make this work, such as modrewrite on apache.

#10 Domain

It can help to have keywords you are interested in ranking for within your domain, but only as much as the title, heading and content matters. One very important factor that is coming to light is that domain age is important. The older the site or domain, the better it is not spam and can do well in search results. The domain age definitely isn’t a make or break factor but it does help quite a bit.

What SEO tips help you the most with your site?

I’m sure there are some debates about the order I placed my list here, but all of these are definitely the best techniques to use. These aren’t in the order that you would do them necessarily but more in the order of importance for optimizing your site for search engines. What order would you put your list for best SEO techniques?