Robots.txt isn’t something that’s often talked about in articles about website opimisation, but it is an important consideration. Most sites will have some files that they don’t want indexed for various reasons. The function of your robots.txt files, however, isn’t a simple matter of ‘allow’ and ‘disallow’.

Your site’s code plays an important role in the site’s search engine optimisation. Things like meta tags have an obvious benefit when optimised. The role of robots.txt is less obvious, but the way in which you compose this file can be the difference between being at the top of your ranking for keywords or failing to be indexed at all.

There are various ‘do’s and ‘don’ts when it comes to robots.txt files:

*Do: Examine the directories within your site in search of files you wish to disallow. Disallowing files is a handy way of avoiding duplicate content issues with the search engines.

*Don’t: Include all of your files within the disallow command. It may sound obvious, but even webmasters with a good grasp of code have been known to make this mistake. In fact, it is occasionally a good idea to inspect your robots.txt files for this kind of error if your site disappears from the index. Pranksters have been known to disallow all files deliberately.

*Do: Make use of robots.txt when you want to keep web and print versions of content within your site but have only one form indexed for duplicate content reasons.

*Don’t: Disallow the web version of your files. This is a small matter, but can affect your site greatly. Your web versions have been the focus of your websites optimisation.

*Do: Be conscientious in the information you provide the search engine spiders with in your robots.txt file.

*Don’t: List every file of your site in the robots.txt file. There is such a thing as too much information. Remember that your robots.txt files are viewable to anyone who cares to look. There may be files you don’t want competitors or the average user to see from your site.

*Do: Keep sensitive information out of the path of search engine spiders using your robots.txt files. Things like phone numbers and email addresses are information you might think twice about setting free on the search engine results pages.

*Don’t: List extremely sensitive information within the robots.txt files of your site. Again, robots.txt files keep some information private from the search engines, but they are public files.

*Do: Use robots.txt to ensure a better interaction between your site and the search engines.

*Don’t: Mess with your robots.txt without proper knowledge of what you are doing.

As you can see, robots.txt is a good method of avoiding duplicate content issues, although it’s not the only way. Robots.txt files should not be used to get around the search engine rules. Above all, remember that these files are publicly available. It is a good idea to consult an expert when using robots.txt files as part of your search marketing strategy. Seek expert advice from Peter Woolf for further information.

The Internet and in particular search engines is a numbers game - the those numbers are huge. If facts and figures scare you turn away now. If you want to learn about the sheer scale involved in Internet searching and website intrergration through the search engines, then read on.

In 2003 Google launched their AdSense program, which allowed them to expand their ad network by selling targeted ads on other websites.

Since the beginning Google has taken business decisions deploying new, innovative technology, rapidly, strategically and on terms that they choose. 1999 saw AOL select Google as a search partner. Yahoo followed suit a year later. In 2000 Google launched their popular Google Toolbar and relaunched their AdWords. In 2002 they retooled the service, selling ads in an auction which would factor in bid price and ad clickthrough rate.

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced that they had made a 10-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing" branding.

Bing (Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search) is the current version of Microsoft's web search engine (advertised as a "decision engine"), and lies fourth in the list of most used search engines after Google, Baidu, and Yahoo!. If you only include English language search engines, then the fact that Baidu largely operates in Chinese elevates the Microsoft search engine to third in the list, with Ask coming fourth.

On July 29, 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power Yahoo! Search.

Just about everyone knows what a search engine is. Whenever you have a question, want to look up the address of your favorite restaurants or need to make a qualified online purchase, chances are, you visit a search engine on the Internet.

If you’ve ever used two different search engines to conduct the same search query, then you will have noticed that the results were not the same.  So why will the same query on different search engines produce different results?

Part of the answer is because not all search engine indexes are going to be exactly the same, as it depends on what the robots find or what information humans have submitted to the database. But more importantly, not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through their databases.

An algorithm is what the search engines use to determine the relevance of the information in the database to what the user is searching for.

All search engines, including Google, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Spiders, otherwise known as bots or web crawlers, are software programs that request pages much like regular browsers do. These pages are indexed to provide fast searches.

The competition's fierce. There's only one first page for any keyword or keyword phrase, and ideally you'll be somewhere at the top of it. As well as the quality of the competition you face there's also the quantity; with over 21 billion web pages to choose from the last thing you need is to be an also-ran. Remember, of the 800 million plus search queries a day conducted by many millions of users often searching for products or services that your company may supply, if you're not there on that first page, you can forget it. Of these searchers, nearly 70% would rather click on a natural listing, with more than 50% of online shoppers primarily relying on search engines when trying to find a product to purchase online.

The simple answer is that no one (other than the search engine companies themselves) really knows how websites are positioned. Over the dozen or so years that the search engines have been commonly used to find information online, the attempts of organisations to read, interpret and to understand the nature of the engine algorithms to achieve high search engine ranking has evolved into a multi-billion dollar Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) industry.

Search Engine Optimisation (Optimization if you're Stateside) or SEO is a process by which internal and external aspects of a web site are adjusted to gain high search engine returns on key word and key phrase searches. Search returns are sometimes referred to as organic or natural.

When it comes to the major search engines such as Yahoo!, Google and MSN, you'll want to be at the top end on your chosen keywords or keyword phrases. Failure to hit the first page on campaign-critical terms can severely damage your Internet presence, your strategic objectives and your overall business health and wellbeing. To achieve high profile listings and to maintain them it's likely that you will team with a search marketing company or consultant. Together you can assess your existing strategy, define ongoing business objectives and devise and implement strategies to get you where you want to be.

The story of search engines begins with 'Archie', created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal. At the time the World Wide Web and its protocols did not yet exist. However the Internet did, with many files scattered over a vast network of computers.

Organic or natural search engine optimisation (SEO) plays a key role as a component of any organisation's overall Internet marketing strategy. How best to conceive and deploy search marketing as part of a successful Internet presence in the future is a very important marketing question deserving of close attention.

There are approximately 1.7 billion (1,733,993,741 as September 09 - World Stats) Internet users worldwide, that's over a quarter (25.6%) of the worlds population, of whom 50% use search engines every day. Google, Yahoo! and MSN currently account for over 90% of all these searches, being by far and away the three most popular search engines in the English speaking world, (the Chinese language search engine Baidu actually ranks third in terms of numbers of users and searches overall).

As long as search engines have existed, a debate has raged over white hat and black hat search marketing techniques. Some website owners and search marketing companies are willing to go as far as is necessary in the pursuit of high search engine placements, while others take a more long-term 'ethical' approach to representing their websites and their clients.

There are two types of web page optimisation techniques that will determine your website's standing with the search engines. They are, On-Page search optimisation and Off-Page search optimisation. On Page optimisation is what can be done on website pages to maximise search engines performance for target keywords in direct relation to the on page content.

On-page search engine optimisation is a vital element in gaining good search engine rankings and cultivating a healthy online presence. What you're doing essentially with on-page optimisation is defining and honing aspects of your web sites presence directly under your control and making sure that your website is as search engine friendly as possible. Without paying attention to your websites optimisation you stand far less chance of getting good results in the search engines - neglect leading to neglect. On-Page is a process that surprisingly few organisations complete as thoroughly as they should. The name of the game is to create a synergy with your site content, on-page optimisation should offer themost holistic application of semantic space as defined during the requirements analysis and keyword definition stages.

In all walks of life there are always plenty of people out there happy to take your money in exchange for empty promises and few regrets - Search marketing is no exception. Guaranteed search engine rankings, massive ROIs, the moon, they'll promise whatever they feel you want to hear to get you to part with your cash.

When Amit Singhal says, "Search over the last few years has moved from 'Give me what I typed' to 'Give me what I want'", he should know. Amit Singhal after all is a Google Fellow. Working with the company since 2000, the a 39-year-old elite engineer is in charge of Google's ranking algorithm - the formulas that determine which Web pages best answer each user's question.

As search engines compile their indexes, they calculate a number defined as (in Google's case) 'PageRank' for each page it finds. PageRank measures how many times other sites link to a given page. More popular sites, especially those with links from sites that have high PageRanks themselves, are considered likely to be of higher quality. They are deemed to have authority.

Search Marketing is a multi-faceted and holistic discipline; a crossover where keyword, key phrase, audience and semantic space research and definition, SEO copy-writing, link building and code optimisation all merge in harmony (hopefully) in an attempt to address a variety of search engine ranking factors and deliver defined business objectives. Programming the website in a way that allows engine spiders to access, categorize, and index the content to ensure your other SEO tactics fulfil their potential is also an important aspect of SEO best practice. Put simply, organic search engine optimisation boils down to two things:

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was established in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing the Internet. The main international standards organization for the World Wide Web (abbreviated WWW or W3), it's proclaimed mission is, "To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the web".

The whole point of search engine optimisation (SEO) is not to exploit or try to take advantage or trick search engine rankings. It's to match the most relevant content to a search audience. Search marketing experts apply numerous on and off-page techniques in order that their clients' websites are in the mix when it comes to matching web users search requirements.

It's a war out there - the search engine companies throwing massive resources and working 24/7 to deliver the most relevant results. The accuracy, usefulness and relevance of search results are their currency, their lifeblood and their core business differential. Top search engine placements are the holy grail of search marketing professionals and website owners; high positioning means high visibility, and therefore high traffic and potentially enormous returns. As well as numerous, legitimate White Hat techniques that comply with search engine optimisation guidelines, there are so-called Black Hat techniques that seek to trick the search engines into assigning unwarranted relevance and authority to sites. It's the Black Hat techniques that the search companies strive to nullify in order to maintain the integrity of their business models.

Domain age has emerged an extremely important aspect of search engine optimisation (SEO) - the fourth most important factor according to a recent SEOmoz.org poll of search marketing experts to determine the most influential components of successful website optimisation. In their assessment they defined domain age as not the date of original registration of the domain, but rather the launch of indexable content seen by the search engines. This can change if a domain switches ownership.

When Google was launched in 1998, co-founder Sergey Brin tried unsuccessfully to market their PageRank technology. History tells us that nobody at that time was interested in buying or licensing their search technology.

SEO is not just about your site's homepage. For better or for worse, it's about every page of your site. Every individual page stands on its own merits and can fly or die based on its unique interaction and relationship with other internal and external pages, it's content and it's structure. It's this fact that makes full site search engine optimisation (SEO) such a potentially rewarding marketing option. You're not limited to a narrow range of keywords or keyword phrases; you can sculpt and mould content to meet your specific business objectives, attracting and guiding traffic while all the time using your strongest pages to power the rest. Approaching SEO as a site-wide, page-by-page discipline will, if applied intelligently with planning and insight, yield successful and long lasting benefits.

Meta tags are used to provide structured data about data. In the context of search engine optimisation, people normally tend to think of the meta description and meta keyword tags - HTML codes, invisible to the browser, that are inserted into the header on a web page after the title tag. Information that a human visitor may not be concerned with. They take a variety of forms and serve a range of purposes, for example telling a browser what 'character set' to use or a robot whether to index the page information or not, or even how a web page rates itself in terms of adult content.

Effective search marketing requires the application of many key techniques applied in concert. Each component, when adopted meticulously and with proper planning and forethought makes a vital contribution to the overall project. The end game is ideally to develop a comprehensive solution where the whole weight of authority and relevance generated by your website becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It's a defined standard based on XML with the specific purpose of delivering information and updates of your web-based content. Developers and website owners create RSS files that contain and deliver dynamic information such as headlines, product descriptions and other forms of fresh content. Web users subscribe to feeds that interest them and use RSS readers and news aggregators to supply them with the information.

The navigation system of a website is one of the fundamentals of strong web usability and one of the cornerstones of professional and effective search engine optimisation.

A properly planned and considered application of navigation techniques and website structure serves two main purpose for search optimisation.

1. Search engine spiders properly crawl sites and index them.
2. Your visitors get improved web usability.

Search Engine Optimisation doesn't just happen. It's conceived, it's crafted, it's honed. It's the product of much research, development, experience, insight, creativity and application, There's only one top spot for any given keyword or keyword phrase - there's only one first page. If you're not on the first page on your chose search terms, you will struggle. If you're not on the first three pages, then forget it - back to the drawing board. The world of search engine search returns is a competitive space, especially in the more popular industry sectors and with the more popular search expressions.

Blogs and blogging has evolved into a huge phenomenon over the last few years. Technorati, a U.S. based blog search engine, is currently tracking over 112.8 million blogs, a number excluding the more than 75 million Chinese blogs acknowledged by The China Internet Network Information Center.

An often-overlooked component of thorough, professionally applied search engine optimisation (SEO) is web hosting. Hosting plays an integral part in search engine optimisation for a number of reasons. Whilst website owners and SEO professionals direct their efforts almost exclusively at on-page factors and link building, most will spare little thought (if any at all) to the actual hosting of their website. When ranking differentials, especially on popular keywords and keyword phrases are incredibly marginal, you will appreciate any SEO assistance you can squeeze out of the scenario. Where you host your site can potentially offer that all-important distinction and might be the difference between flying high on page one of Google for competitive phrases or languishing in the lower reaches of the Google returns, out of sight, out of mind.

For web sites that have enjoyed thorough and professional on page SEO, (search engine optimisation) time is a great friend - the greatest friend perhaps. The only thing between the implementation of the SEO and rewarding search engine profile is a little time. If all's well at the outset, time will deliver results.

Content is more than King, content is everything. Content is the Internet, it's whole raison d'être. No content, no Internet. Poor content, no Internet. Why would anyone bother? Life's too short. We enjoyed perfectly rewarding and satisfactory existences before the Internet. The Internet through it's content is obliged to deliver to earn it's keep. It doesn't exist for it's own sake; it exists as the mechanism, the vehicle and the provider of content, the product of content. Where's the value in a library full of books, all with blank pages, or worse, only references to all the other books (each containing reference to all the other books)?

A little over a decade ago Search Engine Optimization was still in the embryo stage, it did not even have a name yet. Some people happily wandered around the Internet and are excited at the interesting things they could find, while others became increasingly frustrated at wasting time in trying to find what they were looking for.

Stripped down to its most basic components, Search Marketing is all about relevance and authority. The best search engine optimization campaigns will concentrate on ensuring that both are relevant and visible to the search engines to get the best search engine results. Happily, one of the natural side effects of this, is that visitors will also perceive that your pages are relevant and authoritative, thereby improving the likelihood of converting into customers.

A number of different factors in the analysis of a website reveal how and why a site ranks for a number of phrases. Site structure, internal and external links, how old the domain is, the amount of topical information on the subject, and the degree of authority the site has developed through momentum and search engine trust.

Since the inception of Internet Search Engines in the mid 90's webmasters and content providers have been optimising their sites in an effort to get to the top of the listings - hardly surprising, as 70% of search engine visitors will click on the top 3 search engine rankings.

Search Marketing requires patience and constant updating of website contents by researching keywords and information to add to the website to get a more informative website. After updating of the website, one of the most time consuming process is playing the waiting game with the search engines.

Today, social bookmarking and search engine optimisation are being increasingly mentioned in the same breath. Social bookmarking has emerged of late as an extremely popular activity on the internet, presenting unprecedented socio-cultural as well as economic dimensions. This increased and effective communication has brought with it great opportunities, a development which has consequently spawned a surge in internet marketing activity aimed at extracting monetary benefit out of this elusive medium.

Search engine optimization is about making your website as ’search engine friendly’ as possible, thus achieving a high page rank when people do searches. There are so many pages on the web that you cannot rely on your website being found with a hit and miss strategy. Even if it is indexed in a search return, there may be thousands of returns – and people are not going to wade through them all. The contest is to get into the top ten, or even the top twenty.

Googlebot

Googlebot is the web crawler used by Google. It crawls the web searching for pages, and then passes them on to the Indexer, which sorts every word and then stores those pages for future searches. It starts with a list of URLs, then investigates hyperlinks on the page, and adds them to its list of URLs to search.

Two of the main problems for search engines are the huge number of pages on the web, and the fact that fresh information is being produced all the time. For that reason Googlebot has two versions, the Deepbot for deep searches, and the Freshbot, which only looks for fresh content.

Googlebot discovers pages by investigating the links from every page that it searches. For it to find a web page, it needs to be pointed there from a link on an existing page that it visits.

Searchable content

Because of the way the crawler works, it is important to use a number of links to other sites, and to other pages on your site, to point the crawlers to your page. It is particularly useful to have links to sites that achieve a high page ranking. Reciprocal site links are understood to be less effective than One Way Links; therefore interaction with other sites is advantageous but only if they are of excellent quality to the user.

Meta tags and keywords are important too, so that the indexers can clearly distinguish the pertinent content on your page, in order to sort it for search queries. However, pointless keyword usage to maximise keyword density can have a negative effect, as it looks like spam and your site can be ‘blacklisted’ by the crawler. More important is to have good quality content, with only necessary keywords.

Fresh content on your site is crucial. Once your site has been discovered and is being listed for visits, regular Fresh Content will ensure more regular visits. The more popular the site, and the higher the page ranking, the more regularly the Freshbot will check it.

SPAM and what not to do

If your site is identified as spamming, it will be excluded from further crawls. Keyword density for the sake of it could easily result in your site’s exclusion.

One may have to protect one’s site from other people’s spamming, too. For example, there’s a known practice of people leaving comments on your site purely for the purpose of creating a link back to theirs. If one suspects this practice, one can follow a “no-follow” strategy, whereby you specifically tell the crawler not to visit those links.

OK its a small insight and something that we have all known in the industry for a while but basically Maile Ohye, who works for Google has written a blog post in which she explains the power of an inbound link, the result: Links that aren’t relevant are not counted. Simple.

Google is the main search engine that website owners and search marketing concentrate their optimisation efforts on. This is because they have a significant market share, in the UK and for worldwide search figures, and ranking well in Google for your most relevant and targeted keywords can mean masses of highly targeted traffic to a website. In fact, in June of this year, Google was used to conduct 75% of the 3.9 billion searches that UK web users conducted. While the other major search engines shouldn’t be completely ignored Google is the big one that demands the most efforts.

Search Engine Algorithms

Search engine algorithms change regularly, and the search engines never give away exact details of any of their releases in order to prevent pages being manipulated too heavily that they only appeal to the spiders. With that said, professional search marketing services know of what it takes to rank well in Google and they know the secrets to getting these results quickly, effectively, and ethically.

Link Profiles

The biggest and most influential factor in Google search indexing is the link profile. This is essentially a measure of the number and quality of inbound links that point to a particular page. The more links and the greater the quality of these links, the better ranked a page is likely to become. While on page optimisation will help identify the most relevant keywords and can also help generate excellent long tail search results, it’s the link profile of a page that will ultimately determine its success for competitive keywords.

Relevance

Link relevance is essential. This means that a link should not only come from a page on a similar topic but that the keyword used in the anchor text should be a main keyword or semantically related keyword. The more relevant the link, the more favourably Google will view it and the better this will serve your web page.

Variation

As well as relevance Google will attempt to determine whether the link was gained organically or artificially. Reciprocal links still offer great value with some search engines (for now, at least) and used to work well with Google but they have been largely devalued as an indication of how popular a page is. Similarly, site wide links will only truly give the value of one single link. To a degree this is also true of links from pages with the same class C IP address. So, as well as considering relevance, it’s important to check that there is good variation in the links a site receives.

Search Optimisation for Google And Links

Google has long considered links to be a sign of how beneficial a web page is. The principle is that the more high quality links a page has, the more authoritative and therefore beneficial that page is. Organic links from relevant but varied pages will help build a strong and very powerful link profile that will see a web page climb the rankings and receive more and more targeted traffic from Google. Considering the massive market share that Google has, this makes linking one of the most important parts of an SEO service.

The days of increasing the potential of your website through the process known as ‘keyword stuffing’ are well and truly over. Effective search marketing has developed on from this lack-lustre technique, realising that the best way to develop a site that is bot-friendly and more likely to be recognised by the major search engines is to produce one that has well written, relevant and, above all, reader-friendly copy. Content optimisation is the new buzz-phrase, and a professional search marketing consultancy will recognize this ground-shift. Keywords still have their relevance, but it is now as part of a collective package, rather than as a stand-alone feature. This is where a good keyword suggestion tool will come into its own.

There's a common consensus amongst Search Marketing professionals that the most important part of website optimisation actually takes place off the page, with Google and the other major search engines these days largely determining the importance of sites based on Links From External Sites.

The major search engines search algorithms are constantly evolving in the pursuit of relevance, their fundamental value residing in their ability to rank accurately. Relevance is the life-blood of the Internet. Relevance as defined by Google is particularly important.

‘Off-page’ search marketing is becoming increasingly important as the search engines continually adjust their algorithms in their never-ending quest for relevance. It’s surprising how few search marketing professionals are acknowledging this gradual yet inexorable shift by evolving their search marketing models to take into account new and more sophisticated ‘off-page’ strategies. It’s interesting to note that a rule of thumb now being applied to the relative efficacy of ‘on-page’ and ‘off-page’ search marketing values the contribution of ‘on-page’ search marketing as having only 20% of the total influence on ranking.

Search Marketing is a holistic, integrated process. A multi-disciplined skill, blending a range of technical, creative and business approaches. It is necessary that each search marketing component is applied in a thorough, considered and empathetic way to fulfill the overall business objectives - the whole is greater then the sum of the parts.

Why is winning friends and influencing people such an important skill these day? In their shift from ‘on-page’ to ‘off-page’ factors being the determining influence on search engine ranking, the search engines are taking search marketing and relevance factors beyond the direct control of web masters and search marketing professionals, placing them in the hands of third parties, other website owners, optimisation experts and marketers. It’s not how you see your site that’s important, it’s the assessment of your site’s worth by others that really influences relevance and subsequent rankings.

Directory submissions as part of ‘off-page’ search marketing have long been considered a valuable exercise, if approached correctly. Traditionally, directory submissions have been one of the most important ways to build incoming links to a website (especially niche directories) and have always played a vital role in the development and direction of the web.

Press releases – there’s more involved in their creation than you might think, especially in defining how far the label ‘press release’ now stretches. They’ve evolved in the ways they are composed, in the audience they are intended for and in the purposes they serve. Your aware of the world of Web 2.0, welcome to PR 2.0.

The internet is awash with words from blogs, short stories, poetry and novels, the 'top five' this, the 'top 10' that, advertisements, facts, opinions, reviews, instructions, misguided search optimisation, poorly applied search marketing, you name it. It’s all out there. Unfortunately much of it is poor quality and not really worth spending any time over. The last thing the internet needs is even more trash copy. If you haven’t got anything worthwhile saying, then don’t say anything at all. Chances are though, with a little professional input to help tease it out, you have a great deal of interesting content that people would be more than happy to read - new product information, tips or techniques, an opinion or experience of a particular business sector, expertise you’d like to share. Information that can be crafted, formatted and submitted to suitable web resources in the form of articles.

Everywhere you look these days everyone is talking about social media, social bookmarking and rich media marketing components such as online video and audio.

Despite Wired.com declaring that blogging is ‘so 2004’, rumours of it’s demise can safely be said to be premature. The Wired article’s main assertion is that fresh, innovative, genuine content has been drowned out by a "tsunami of paid bilge", that blogs are gunging up the Internet, repositories of junk copy generated through low-rent search marketing. Wired insist that the action has moved elsewhere.

The first commercial search engines that we are familiar with today started to appear in the mid 90's - Yahoo Directory in '94, LookSmart in '95, Ask Jeeves in '97 and Alta Vista in 1995. Google was launched in 1998.

The semantic web is one that is based on topically related keywords rather than individual keywords. A page that is optimised for several topically, or semantically, related keywords will usually generate better results than onethat is heavily optimised for a single keyword. As part of the optimisationprocess, a marketer needs to consider what the search engines believe to besemantically related keywords for a page.

What Are SEPS?

A Search Engine Presumed Synonym (SEPS) is a word or phrase that is directlylinked in meaning and topic to your keyword. Google and the other search enginesuse these SEPS to help them determine whether a page offers a broad complementof information on a topic and, therefore, whether it offers real value to visitors.

SEPS Research

There are numerous tools to determine SEPS for your keywords. Some of thework can be done manually by determining those related keywords that are mostlikely to be considered related to your primary keyword. However, the searchengines themselves provide the best resource, which can be accessed using theappropriate operators.

Search Engine Semantic Indexes

Each search engine uses its own semantic index. A semantic index is essentiallya dictionary, or thesaurus, of related terms. These related terms may not bethe same between the various search engines and may be different to what youwould consider a reasonable synonym.

SEPS And Search Engine Optimisation Keyword Research

Because of the differences between search engines it can pay dividends toconduct thorough keyword research for each one. Naturally written content willinstinctively contain some SEPS, and organically generated links will usuallyoffer a good range of keywords that, again, use naturally generated SEPS. However,good keyword research should also include the appropriation of these synonymsto help elevate your search engine rankings and improve traffic levels.

Once a query has been entered the search engine's job is to determine which results are the best match for the query. Using the Engine's Search Algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) it runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. The engine then sorts these by relevance on the results pages and users make a choice about which to select.

The fact of the matter is that if your competition is both well optimised AND has a stronger number of Good Quality Inbound Links from quality, relevant websites using strong anchor text then you will be out ranked. Link popularity is now THE dominant factor in who ranks the highest within Google.

Other major search engines such as Yahoo and MSN also give a strong emphasis to back links for their ranking criteria.

Yahoo is the second most popular English language search engine, in terms of worldwide searches and UK searches. While this only accounts for around 5% of UK searches conducted that’s still a 5% share of 4 billion searches conducted every single month, representing a huge potential market that shouldn’t be ignored. All search engines use different algorithms and while Yahoo and Google do bear some similarity in their preferences and ranking methods, there are also distinct and obvious differences. While Google concentrates very heavily on your link profile, Yahoo is more willing to rank a page based on page content.

Regardless of the resource you choose, when you read a reliable piece on search marketing and search optimisation you are more likely to read about optimising for Google than you are to read about optimising for Yahoo, MSN, or even search engines in general. While the most effective and often the most successful search marketing campaigns will include a portfolio of traffic from all of the big names in marketing it is Google that we tend to concentrate on.

It's a commonly understood and agreed principle of effective search marketing that the proper use of keywords and keyword tools holds the key to not only high but also appropriate search engine ranking.

Keywords are the reasons that people discover a website. They are fundamental to the search process as the science of information retrieval (including web-based search engines like Google) is based on keywords.

Search engines love Relevance - they exist for Relevance. Nothing pleases them more than finding the most informative, appropriate and useful website to match a query. The search engine companies spend millions of pounds and working hours in attempting to formulate ways by which the rubbish can be ignored and only the purest, most useful sites returned. It's a noble quest. They work tirelessly to out-tech, head off and second guess the engine manipulators, the spamdexers, the accidentalists, those who would knowingly or otherwise abuse the integrity of search returns by working the system to return unhelpful and irrelevant pages against queries for their own ends.

Anchor text is the readable section of a text link that comes between the opening and closing HTML tags of a link. In the eyes of your reader it is the section that they can see on your page (or any other web page where they see a link) and it is the word or words that are usually underlined that can be clicked. In Website Optimisation terms, it is also one of the most important aspects of a link because the search engines will consider the words that are found in the anchor text to be an indication of the topic of the page that link points to.

An often overlooked factor in a Search Marketing campaign or optimised website design is the age of the domain name being used. Well established sites are known to fare better in search engine results and Google, in particular, is widely believed to penalise the newest of websites. In the eyes of the search engines, the older a domain name is the older and more reliable the website or we page is. Search engines will usually consider the age of the content as well as how long a domain name has been registered.

One of the primary goals for most search marketing is to rank highly in the Google search engine results page (SERP). While this might seem largely short sighted, the fact is that Google is by far the most popular search engine of them all and accounts for a majority of all searches conducted on the Internet. However, although Live Search (formerly MSN Search) is third in the league table of English language search engines it can still account for a good number of targeted visitors and certainly shouldn’t be overlooked completely when undertaking your search marketing campaign.

Having an online presence is all well and good. Having a successful online presence, a profile that delivers search query listings and fulfils defined business goals such as enhancing your organisation's reputation, generating sales, votes, downloads and real return on investment (ROI) is altogether a completely different matter.

Most Search Marketing articles concentrate on how to optimise static, text based web pages so that they appear high up the search rankings. However, a page does not have to be constructed entirely from HTML and other static textual content in order to rank well in search engines. The problem with flash based websites, from the perspective of the website owner or search optimiser, is that the content within flash script can not be read by the search engines and therefore is unlikely to yield any positive search results from the usual methods of on-page optimisation.

Accessibility is about getting the right mix of design and usability whilst ensuring that the website remains compliant with your brand and the best practice guidelines, so we will ensure that your website, intranet or extranet are compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, and are constructed in accordance to the guidelines set out in W3C's Website Accessibility Initiative.

Making sure that your website is accessible, however complex it may be, is of vital importance not just to the people using your website but to the every growing array of devices connecting to your website. I work closely with my clients to guarantee the right level of compliance is set for you and your website’s users. I fully test Website Accessibility Compiance using both automated accessibility tools and manually.

Link building is not just a valuable tool to help improve search marketing results but can increase exposure, improve online brand awareness, and generally improve the perception that you are an authority on your chosen topic. Link building strategies are usually best approached as exactly that, rather than specific link building strategies, with each link being considered on its own merit.

• Will it drive surf through traffic as well as generate a little juice for your link profile?
• Does a particular link building technique warrant the time and/or money that you will need to invest in it?

These are a couple of questions that you should ask yourself before embarking on any new link building campaign.

Below is a list of 7 of the more viable methods of link building that offer some or all of the benefits listed above. It’s by no means an exhaustive list and we’re not suggesting that these are the most popular or indeed the most successful link building techniques but you should give each of them serious consideration before dismissing them.

Be Active On Social Media Sites

Social media sites continue to offer a popular attraction to many web users and you can benefit by becoming active on those that are relevant to you and your website. Unless you enjoy the privileges of more than 24 hours in day and 7 days in a week then you should probably limit memberships to a few of the most relevant sites and try to pick niche social marketing sites. Some of the broad topic social marketing sites are more popular with certain groups of people and with specific industries effectively making them worth consideration as a niche social media site.

Also, notice that we didn’t use the title Bookmark All Your Pages or something similar. By becoming an active member of the community on a social media site you will help to build a positive image of your business as well as generate links. Simply bookmarking or submitting links to your posts puts you in a very grey area of online marketing that will lose you as many visitors as it will gain.

Yahoo Answers

Question and Answer sites like Yahoo! Answers are incredibly popular. Testament to this is the fact that a lot of the social sites and informational sites are adding their own Q&A sections. A point of note worth considering is that Yahoo! Answers do not offer you any website optimisation benefits because they use the 'nofollow' attributes in their links but with good on-page optimisation (for conversions rather than spiders on this occasion) you can use Yahoo! To build active and targeted traffic which can be beneficial to your overall search marketing campaign.

Wikipedia If You Can Add Value

Who hasn’t heard of Wikipedia? In the same vein, what new marketer hasn’t tried getting a link to a new website on a Wikipedia page?

The fact is that a Wikipedia link can prove hugely beneficial, not least because it will give you the appearance of being a knowledgeable vestibule of information on a particular topic. If you offer truly useful information on a specific topic then you can try adding a link. Some will remain and therefore offer benefit while others will be removed almost as quickly as you can add them. Be honest with yourself over the value of the content you offer and, if you honestly believe a link to your page would provide insight and benefit to readers then you have a genuine argument for including your link.

Paid Directories

A lot of new and even experienced webmasters and marketers shy away from the prospect of paying for directory links but there are some extremely high value paid directories out there. The Yahoo! Business Directory and business.com are considered two of the better options. The principle benefit of paid directories is the quality – fewer people are willing to pay the £100 or so that it costs to buy a listing so low quality sites are less inclined to submit. Many paid directories are also hand edited ensuring that only the better sites make it into their listing.

Submit To Quality Article Directories

When done properly, article marketing can generate some good and powerful links. Knowing the directories that are used by popular ezines and newsletters is essential. Write an article and consider changing various aspects like the title, the anchor text and resource paragraph, and even some of the article content as you submit to each directory. There’s no point in submitting to the thousands of directories that exist online so find the most effective while also considering niche directories to be a viable source.

Submit Newsworthy Press Releases

We all have the occasional gripe about mainstream media and how media sources aren’t entirely trustworthy. However, the fact of the matter is that many people trust certain aspects of articles and reports that they do read in the media. This has further extended to a number of online media sources as well as paper and TV. Well written press releases without the usual marketing spiel can prove very popular and they may be used by other industry based sites and online news sites.

Creating linkbait content should be one of your website’s goals. While it sounds like an unethical means of search marketing, linkbait is really just high quality content that has been created with the express intent of getting others to link to you. Essentially this means employing best practices in content creation as well as writing effective headlines or creating viral content. It may take a while to master the art of creating linkbait pages but once you are well versed it can greatly reduce the efforts you need to put into the more manual methods of link building.

Chances are, if you’re already building links for your website then you’ve probably tried some of these methods but the key with each one is to do it properly. The common mistake that many website owners make is to try and build thousands of links as quickly as possible using ineffective techniques. This tends to lead to poor quality links and results in very little positive impact on your website. Get involved, stay involved, and keep learning.

Meta Tags are useful in Search Engine Optimisation because they show search engines how to describe your web pages to users in search engine results listings. This description will show the user what your website has to offer and based on the information in your Meta Tags and the way that the search engine displays that information; they may choose or not choose to visit your site.

Content is and always has been the key identity of the internet from the very begining. Providing a resource of knowledge that can rival any number of encyclopaedias in as many languages as you can think of is what made the internet the phenomena that we recognise it as today.

When making a major change to existing content it is important to remember that it could have knock on effects for your conversion rates and for search engine rankings and other marketing efforts. Planning and preparation, where necessary, will certainly help ensure that the change is as seamless as possible and that rankings do not drop. Changing web content is usually a safe and acceptable process but it will certainly pay dividends to track the data and ensure that ranking and traffic doesn’t drop, and conversions remain around the same level.

The search marketing of a brand-new site will differ quite a lot from the search optimisation needs for established websites. A new website has plenty of things going for it, but some unique difficulties as well. The development of yor search marketing plan will depend on your business goals and the stage at which search optimisation was first introduced.

There are many different tags used on a web page from the formatting HTML tags included within the design elements to the Meta tags that are used to purvey particular information about that site and to help browsers and spiders deal properly with the page as it is presented. Each of them has a purpose and while they may not all be required on every page of your site there are certain tags that you should always include where possible. Not only can these tags help with search engine optimisation but they can also ensure you retain high levels of accessibility and usability for all.

Search engines now play a vital role in the way that the majority of people use the internet. During December 2009 there were 2.6 billion (2,686,747,057) searches made on google.com. This statistic alone shows that many users rely heavily on search engines to find products and services, so making sure that your website is near the top of the results lists can bring considerably more traffic to your site and translate into sales. Search Marketing is a great way to raise your business profile online and make sure that you are easy to find in the results listings. Good website optimisation can make all the difference in the vast and competitive marketplace that the internet has become.

The very idea for enhancing your website for search engine spiders is to provide your website with an opportunity to be easily reached by some of the millions of internet users. The vast amount of website owners that advertise their wares or services have a constant battle to maintain a reasonably high ranking level on the search engine’s website listings.

As a good ranking means better exposure for the site, one of the main aims of a web designer is to apply every possible method to maintain or increase the ranking. As there are literally thousands of site owners that may be advertising the same product as you, the task of trying to stay ahead of the pack can only be accomplished through Website Optimization.

Those potential customers have to be able to make their way to your website if a profitable amount of business is to be generated. Knowing how to entice spiders could be a big solution to this problem.

Where are the spiders?

When the browser or client starts his search for a particular product, a Relevant Keyword is entered into the search engine. A list of web site addresses where the product can be found is provided to the browser.

This information that is displayed by the search engines has been gathered by ‘spiders’ or ‘crawlers’. These are not insects or creepy crawlies but programs or Robots designed to pick up and store information.

This information is used by the search engines. Spiders can be found roaming the web in the millions waiting for specific instructions. The instruction is executed by the search engine and the spiders help by indexing each individual site with the stored information.

Special features that will enhance the attraction of spiders

Websites can be enhanced in such a manner as to make the site more ‘spider friendly’. There are certain specific features that are used by search engines to determine the ranking of a website. Each search engine also has a unique method of calculating these rankings. An important basic feature is the use of keywords as well as where these keywords are placed in the site.

Care must be taken not to make excessive use of these words as they can be detected as spam. The search engine might choose to ignore the website or ban the site from advertising on the internet. Either way could be a big blow to the website and heavy losses can occur. Reaching and maintaining a high ranking level on a search engine is indeed a crafty affair.

Having a strong and effective content as well as strategically placed HTML and Meta Tags can make it easier for the spiders to be attracted to the content. This is also a time consuming process and once an acceptable ranking level has been reached it takes as much monitoring and updating to maintain it.
Feeding the spiders the accurate and correct amount of information will definitely make them come back for more.

You may also hear the expression "website submission" - it means exactly the same thing as "search engine submission". Be aware that simply having your site listed with the search engines does not mean that you will necessarily rank well for particular search terms. It does mean though that the search engine knows your pages exist. That said, if you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the draw.

Everyone wants to be popular. And every business wants their website to be popular too. By building up links to other sites, you can raise your profile and incorporate an effective link strategy into your search engine optimization (SEO). But how can you increase your site visibility and build up those all-important links?

Link popularity is the total number of websites that link to your own site. How many backlinks you have to your site will go towards determining your PageRank with the major search engines, along with other off-page criteria such as anchor text and keywords. Most of the major search engines factor link popularity into their relevancy algorithms. Therefore, increasing the number of quality, relevant sites that link to your site can improve your search engine ranking, moving your site higher up the listings. By giving your site this raised profile, you can begin to establish it as a credible source. As your site becomes more high profile, the engines will include it as a quality link when they check back links for other sites. It’s a self-perpetuating tool that, although may take a little time to build, pays dividends through increased exposure, and so increased potential business.

Quality vs Quantity

The common opinion is that quantity is key when it comes to the number of backlinks to your site. But it’s also crucial to remember that quality is equally as important. A backlink from an irrelevant or even a disreputable site can damage your own site’s reputation with the search engines. This is where a link popularity checker starts to come into its own.

A link popularity checker is a useful piece of software freely available from most of the major search engines as well as countless other freeware sites on the Internet. Link popularity checkers work very simply. By typing your URL address into the checker, you can bring up a list of the sites already linked to your own website, calculating how many backlinks you already have and of what quality and relevance they are to your business. Link popularity checkers will list how many links have already been ‘noticed’ by the major search engines, particularly Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, Alltheweb and Hotbot.

The web, by its very nature, is based on hyperlinks. The greater the number of relevant links, the more gravitas the site has amongst the search engines. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google in particular remembers each time it conducts a search. However, important pages, boosted by how many backlinks the page has to it, are worse than useless if they have no relevance to you and don’t match your query. So Google combines PageRank with text-matching techniques to find pages that are relevant and important on their lists.

To negate the number of non-relevant links that may want to establish contact with your site, some link popularity checkers also incorporate a robots.txt file. This is an exclusion file that contains specific instructions for search engine robots. It gives them a list of content that they are not allowed to index. Links placed on a page that the robots would discount on a normal crawl would not be of benefit to your site. Again, by incorporating a feature like this into a link popularity checker would mean that you would be able to check back links and filter out erroneous ones that have no relevance to your site or your business. Once again, quality, not quantity is the key.

How Many Links Does a Website Need?

However, to raise the profile of your site, you do need to perpetuate a growth of backlinks on a continuous basis. How many backlinks, though, is the big question. The best way to estimate how many backlinks you actually need to increase your site’s profile is to check back links of your top competitors. Note how many backlinks they have (concentrating here on the quantity, and not how many link exchanges they may have made). This will give you a rough guideline as to how many you need to cultivate to rank alongside them in the listings. Again, this exercise can be done easily by using a link popularity checker. By typing the URL of your competitor into the checker and starting to regularly check back links to their site, you can quickly learn how popular this particular kid on the block is. By then using other SEO techniques, such as examining the body text and the use of keywords, you can begin to understand what makes their site so successful and attractive, both to readers and to the spiders that crawl the pages.

The value your web page gets from a linking page is equal to the total PageRank value of that page, divided by the total number of outgoing links on that page. Getting a link from a PR4 page that has only 20 links is better than from one that has 50. The higher the PageRank value of the link page, the greater its value to your own page.

Checking the Quality of Backlinks

There are some important parameters to consider when building up your backlinks. How many backlinks a page has is irrelevant if the content has no interest to readers or if the backlinks are irrelevant too. Search engines give high priority to links pointing to your site from related industry pages as opposed to those from non-related industries. Check back links to ensure that they will direct the kind of traffic you actually need to your site. An algorithm used by the engines called ‘applied semantics’ will determine the industry relevance of a page within a site. If the link to your page is from your specific business arena, then you are more likely to draw benefit from the link. Again, it’s not how many backlinks you have, but the quality of those links.

Check back links to see if the anchor text keywords correspond to those that are relevant to you, and that they appear in the text from the link pointing to your site. Try also to check back links that will link you to partners who already appear in indexed pages on Google and Yahoo!. Search engines are likely to detect your link more quickly on a page that already exists in their indexes.

By utilising a link popularity checker to examine how many backlinks there are to your site, you can plan your SEO to incorporate this particular strategy. Check back links on a regular basis – it is a continuous process and not a case of resting on your laurels after the initial check. Also remember to check back links of sites that are of relevance to your industry or business. Link popularity checkers are widely available on the Internet, with Google, Yahoo! and all of the other major search engines providing good quality link popularity checkers.

Integrating a blog into your organisation's web site can, if applied intelligently and with genuine insight and passion, offer an extremely powerful and dynamic component to your web presence. There are numerous reasons why Blogging and Blog Integration is an ideal way to develop a business, to promote a cause, a campaign or share new ideas and concepts.

With search engines having turned into the Internet's second 'killer ap' after email it's hardly surprising that they are attracting so much attention. Tens of millions of searches are conducted worldwide everyday (300 million search queries a day if you're Google) by many millions of users often searching for products or services that your company may supply. That said, it's a simple fact of search engine life that if you aren't on the first couple of pages returned you might as well not be in the engines at all, as people only tend to search the first 20 or so results at most.

Search engines tend to lean towards natural looking sites; those sites that have been designed, developed, and written for the visitor rather than for the spiders. The pages that they believe combine this natural appeal with appealing content are those that appear nearest to the top of their search engine rankings. The search results page is typically made up of a small block of paid or sponsored links at the top of the page followed by the natural or organic search results below those.

Link building is an integral facet of the art of search marketing. Generating a steady stream of new links to your web pages will almost certainly help improve your search marketing results because the search engines use them as an indicator of how popular your site is with visitors. However, not any link will do since the search engines consider the merit of each link individually and determine whether it is relevant and whether it is a good quality link. They consider many factors including keyword use, link placement, page relevance, and even the number of outbound links on the linking page.

Early search engine optimisation requires that you get every page of your website indexed with the major search engines. This requires that you first find a way of letting them know that your site is complete and has been populated with content. Submitting a sitemap or generating your first search optimised links are the two most common and effective methods of doing this and the latter also provides you with the perfect starting block to go on and generate those all important links to the important pages of your site.

As part of any good search marketing campaign, a website should include well written, generally appealing optimised content. This search optimised content should also be written in such a way that it will promote good conversion rates because it is appealing, well written, and generally offers visitors what they want. Fortunately, optimised content can be both search engine friendly and visitor friendly in equally large measures making the provision of high quality, well written content vital to the overall performance of your online business as well as your search marketing efforts.

Rather than listing web pages based on keywords like traditional search engines, a directory specializes in linking to other web sites listing them by category and subcategory. Categorization is usually based on the nature of the web site rather than on one page or a set of keywords, and sites are usually limited to inclusion in a limited number of categories. The more 'upmarket' and useful directories have editors reviewing each directory submission directly submitted by site owners, and evaluating the site's quality and relevance.

You are how you read. The success of a website is by and large dependent upon the quality of its content. There's little point in spending great amounts of time, energy and expenditure on a site that carries little value to visitors through its lack of interesting or worthwhile content. It's a waste of time. It's not just web users who recognise this; it's the search engines too. Where's the value in them recommending sites that offer little or no return to visitors? Where's the value for the organisation whose site can't offer any compelling call to action or provide any useful information?