Archive | June, 2010

Will the Delay with DMOZ Take a Toll on it’s Value?

Over the last year or two Google has exploded with new features for webmasters who utilize its services. But with all the changes, what impact is it having on the webmasters who rely on having their sites show up in Google searches?

Let’s say you build a website surrounding a particular product or service and have a targeted audience segment for online buyers. You’ve done your homework and found that the competition is moderate at best. After some well planned SEO work and a little marketing you are all set to see how your site is positioned on Google. Take into consideration that you are not ready to spend a lot of money on adWords until you see some results from your SEO work.

Ok, here’s the kicker…your website doesn’t even exist on Google for weeks or maybe even months. Have all the changes to Google’s infrastructure hindered the ambition or motivation of webmasters? Or, has it given new respect to patience and planning? With new tools such as Google Documents and Spreadsheets, Maps, Video, Checkout, and webmaster tools such as Base, Sitemaps, and Analytics, web surfers have all kinds of tools available to make the web a more interesting and productive place.

Many webmasters already know that getting listed in Open Directories is beneficial. But while you’re waiting on Google to index and crawl your website, you might as well go ahead and list your web URL with DMOZ. DMOZ is slowly becoming a trouble spot with those interested in getting their site listed. There are documented articles of people who have waited over 2 years to get their websites listed on DMOZ. Are they that busy? Should they hire more editors, or just more efficient ones? If this directory takes so long to get into, and is a prime source for all major search engines, what are we to think? Are webmasters losing out because of the delay? Is it still as valuable as it once was? Many webmasters who frequent SEO forums are speaking up and stating that it’s not worth the wait anymore. Will this be a wake-up call to DMOZ? Let’s hope. It’s time to make a decision and get things going.

Case in point, I own a website which has been in existence for 5 months. It has been properly built following standardized SEO practices. Oddly enough, it appears on Google, Yahoo and MSN when searching for “portal deployment”, but has yet to get listed in DMOZ. It has been submitted weeks ago, but knowing the turn-around time, it may not get listed for months or close to a year from now. Let me remind you that the SEO practices followed were “organic”, no fancy or expensive outsourcing took place. So why the listing difference? Google noticed the site and has even picked up the changes to the which happened weeks ago.

We all know the internet is growing at an exponential rate, hundreds of thousands of new domain names are registered each week, but shouldn’t companies like DMOZ be more prepared to react to the growth? If you’ve followed the steps for successful SEO and haven’t seen the result, be patient. I do believe the DMOZ will snap to attention after more and more people complain about the long delay for getting their URL listed. If you have feedback on how to expedite the process of having your website crawled or listed on DMOZ let me know. Then share it with everyone else.

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Google Vs Yahoo Vs Bing – The Major Search Engines

If you want to earn a living on the Internet, you may have to depend on the three major search engines for traffic. The three search sites are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Which search engines can deliver higher quality traffic? Here is a quick comparison.

Google search engine.

Google is the most well established search engine among the three. It is used by millions of visitors each month. The primary reason why it is so popular is that it can deliver highly relevant results in a flash. The search results are updated on a regular basis to ensure that the content stays fresh and relevant. If you make a search in Google for a keyword phrase, it’s very likely that you will find what you want on the first page of the search results. That’s how good the search engine is.

In terms of traffic, Google owns the monster share of traffic. Both Yahoo and Bing cannot match the traffic that Google can deliver. Therefore, many Internet marketers work hard to optimize their site for Google. Some even focus solely on this giant search site. A handful of lucky marketers have reported that they have been consistently earning five figure monthly incomes with traffic from Google alone. So whatever you do, don’t neglect Google. Optimize your site to make it Google-friendly.

Bing search site.

Bing is Microsoft’s new baby. The old search engine is known as MSN Live. MSN Live has been unable to deliver much traffic. But since the release of Bing, this search engine is gaining ground very quickly. Perhaps this is due to the large amount of publicity generated by the launch of Bing. Bloggers are excited about the new search site. Webmasters have always wanted a competitor for Google. Bing does look like a strong contender.

Yahoo search engine.

Yahoo used to be second in the race. However, in recent months, it has been overtaken by Bing. Webmasters complain that Yahoo take too long to update its search indexes. Marketers do receive an occasionally trickle of traffic from Yahoo. Hopefully, Yahoo will improve on its search algorithm and make a comeback.

Fortunately, SEO techniques for all 3 search engines are rather similar. When you optimize for one, you are likely to rank in the others as well. You don’t have to optimize for each search engine. For instance, all 3 search engines count your back links as “votes”. The more back links you have, the higher you will rank in the search results.

If you are unsure of how to optimize your site, check out Google’s webmaster guidelines. These guidelines may be released by Google, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t apply to other search engines. If you create a search engine friendly site, all the three major search engines will send you traffic. Try not to get yourself penalized by Google by observing the guidelines. Google does represent the biggest amount of traffic you will receive from the search engines.

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Using the Right Keywords in a New Domain For Great Google SEO Results and Fast

Using the right keywords the name of your new domain name can have great results in Google SEO and fast. Normally if you use an arbitrary name, like ABCSomething.com, in the domain name for your new website, say, about computers, it can take a long time for you to get rankings established.

If you are in a hurry to get quick traffic to your new web site, take the following steps:

1) Find the general topic of your site. If you sell widgets, you want to do some keyword research for widget on Google’s keyword tool.

2) Pick the highest volume keyword that best describes your product, concept or idea.

For example, if you are selling widgets, and widgets get 100,000 monthly searches, and the domain name is available, widgets.com would be great, but any domain extension will do… The content is more important than the so don’t be discouraged if you cannot secure a.com,.net,.info,.all work well worldwide, and.us works in the U.S.A.

3) If your topic is specialized, don’t be scared to add more words into the domain name: best-blue-widgets.com or bestbluewidgets.com will do the same thing. Google is smart enough to discern any new words and will score them similarly.

Do a little research and find the right keyword for your website’s name, then use descriptive page titles following the same guidelines provided in this article. Don’t be scared to add separators in your new domain name (-). In the end people don’t really look at the domain name when selecting to view the contents of a website.

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A Quick Look at the Professional SEO

When it’s a hit, it must be good. It is no secret that the SEO, now referred to as “search engine optimizers”, has made web surfing more enjoyable and stimulating for us “netizens”.

First off, SEO is the process where your website undergoes redevelopment to effectively communicate your keywords to search sites and design your sites to become more interesting. These improvements enable your site to have a better chance of getting quality traffic via natural or unpaid search results. On the other hand, others use Search Engine Marketing (SEM), which is paid. It is believed that when you are ranked higher or when your site appears earlier or higher in the search results list, you tend to get more visitors.

With the spread of Internet like wildfire, SEO Marketing Agencies found a way to make use of their expertise in computers as well as in marketing to upgrade websites for a certain amount, and it proved to be a lucrative Internet marketing strategy. This also allows them to target different markets that gives a website better web presence.

In the beginning, webmasters and content providers submit the address of a page, or the “URL”, to the various engines. These engines will then send a spider (also called a “robot” or “crawler”) through the internet to a site to gather and index the pages the site contains, and then takes the information back to the central database of the search site.

After this, early search engines’ algorithms relied on the information provided by the webmasters. But they suffered because many indexed files proved to be unreliable and inaccurate. Many irrelevant searches ranked in the search engines, where it suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation.

Therefore, search sites responded by developing more intricate ranking algorithms, which made use of mathematics, to minimize mistakes. Now, search engines have incorporated undisclosed factors to reduce the impact of link manipulation. And in an effort to minimize the damaging effects of these aggressive web content providers, their clients’ websites were banned from the search results.

With less problems between the search engines and webmasters, both are now having a more harmonious relationship. Search engines are now even frequent sponsors and guests at seminars and conferences. That is why it is of utmost importance that you know your Professional SEO so that everything you do with you website will be trouble-free. And better, use SEO Marketing Agencies to improve your site.

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