This is a guest post by Kate Wilson from Boston, USA.

Link building process is considered as the cornerstone of any competent SEO campaign. For many sites including the larger size websites, planning a proper link building strategy is a must and should be pretty straightforward. There are number of ways marketers and businesses employ links to promote their websites. However, at most of the time, the link building procedures can be called as complex process. The reason why this process is complicated is due to the fact that they are situational. There is nothing called a fitting strategy in link building process, what works for you may not work your business partner. However, there are several ways or strategies which can be called as common and effective as discussed below for the link building strategy for large sites.

Invest in the right web pages

The problem with the big size website is that it is has thousands of links and a majority of these (over 90%) point to the home page of the site. If you want people to simply remain on your home page for sales conversion then there is no point moving ahead within the site. However, the probability of visitors dropping off on this note is quite less since most of the websites are designed with some specific kind of conversion funnel and the fact is such conversions rarely occur on the home page.

To drive the traffic directly to your deeper and inner web pages within your website, the web page itself can benefit from finding the high ranks directly from the popular search engines. No matter how neatly your site is developed to direct the visitors to a right place by having a long tail searches, people can land into the most relevant page directly via the search engine. In fact, they will be more motivated to tread this path rather than simply visiting your home page first and then moving ahead.

This could simply speak about the basic user experience, now it’s time to head to the linking process. In order to effectively improve your ranks from these inner web pages, you need to focus link building exclusively to these places. It is true that in most of the cases the links towards your home page may prove beneficial, especially in terms of search spider understanding your specific keywords or key phrase or any topic. However, if search engine optimization is pitching a large size website then linking in the inner and deeper pages must be the plan of your strategy.

Capitalizing on your keyword strengths to get rid of weaknesses

If large size website rely on pointing too many of the inbound links to the home page of their site with a small amount pointing to the inner pages, this would certainly captivate the search engines especially talking in terms of geographic locations. You may not get the result with your specific and targeted keywords. However, some other keywords can bring in your desired results or conversions which could be closer to the targeted ones. Hence what you can do is to understand the strengths of these keywords which the search engines give good result for your website and build links on these keywords in perspective to the inner web pages.

In this way, when you adopt this strategy, you are bound to even escalate from zero ranking to the top three pages. Hence you can certainly enjoy better rankings over the search engine for a majority of your targeted keywords. The traffic levels will therefore start increasing at your website accordingly. The rest of your website structure should be competent in terms of content carrying proper keywords in various titles and description which supports your link building efforts. In this way, if you move on without any flaw the advanced level of link building efforts and strategies would help you in improving and maintaining new ranks of your website.

Link building should be as per your niche

A few people may argue that the process of link building can be regarded a cottage industry within the search engine optimization world. So when you see countless exchange networks and link sellers, it is vital to avoid the trap of these elements which can simply penalize your website. It is therefore important to evaluate the link relationship on an individual basis along with abiding by one gold rule which says to make the links useful and relevant to your visitors on the web page where it exists. If you see this absent in your strategy, then better do the needful to make the links useful and relevant to your visitors rather than falling into the trap of misleading elements who promise ranks and traffic.

The link building process is regarded as one of the most important methods for both the small or big websites. These help you in making your website more visible to your target group and thus improve your rankings over search engines. These three important tips could prove a great base while making some effective strategy for your large size website link building process.

About The Author:

Kate is a blogger by profession. She is fond of reading, writing and travelling. Recently an article on Dell Inspiron 15R review attracted her attention. These days she is busy writing an article on Bluetooth keyboard for her blog.

This is a guest post by Lillian Watson from London, UK.

Search engine optimisation London experts are full of praises about the one way link building process. They feel this is a great way to increase the ranking of any website. If you are looking to start an online business then one way link building is a must have. It is never easy to enter and then rise quickly in the cut-throat competition among online businesses. One of the best ways to beat this online competition is by thinking of more ways to get web visitors or get traffic. You can drive more traffic by making your website more popular than the rest of the lot. But you can appear in the eyes of the major search engines with the help of solid link building campaign.

One of the most important benefits of using one way link building to promote your website is more targeted traffic to a website. Activities in your site will be followed by only those interested. Though the online world is very competitive but many marketers have made money which they couldn’t imagine. In order to get high returns on your investment you have to simply think of ways to make your site visible in search engine result pages. This will boost your rankings and earn a lot of traffic. Though gaining such results seems quite easy, but there are various difficulties all along the way.

One way link building services from the search engine optimisation London experts is a great way to get quality backlinks placed on your website. Quality backlinks can significantly boost the popularity of any website. Experts know the sources to derive backlinks that belong to your niche. Posting backlinks randomly will not bring in any positive results for your website. There is need to consider the Page ranks of the sites and their niche before placing any backlinks. Thus searching and then placement of backlinks is a time consuming process.

One of the best ways to get quality backlinks is to write and submit articles online. Professional SEO services in London will offer article writing and its submission to relevant article directories. This will also earn you good backlinks. In this instance the quality of articles posted should be given a lot of stress. Some of the marketers also engage in guest blog and forum posting or video distribution to various websites. If you can handle some or all of these promotional acts then you are sure to get a lot of backlinks which will in turn improve the ranking of your website.

Though most link building campaigns are two sided, but online business owners can reap more advantages from one way link building. In the one way link building links come into your website without any obligation for link back. Many websites will provide such links for bulk link backs. You have to be very careful that there are no Black Hat SEO techniques used in the process. Site using black hat SEO has a chance of being banned on being caught in their act.

Author Bio
Lillian Watson is a freelance content writer by profession. She finds immense pleasure in writing SEO related article including Search engine optimisation London.

Google have been in news recently for many things, whether it is a logo change as you type or adding new courses to Adwords Online Classroom, things have geared up well after the caffeine update.

Well, the latest of them all is Google Instant, according to Google:

“Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.”

According to Google’s Marissa Mayer at Google Search Event, Google Instant will save 350 million hours of users’ time per year.

Here is the official video from Google:

Search Results Page Real Estate

Have a look at the screen shot of today’s morning. I just typed in “cheap” and Google interpreted it as that I am looking for flights, tickets, hotels etc.

Click on the image to view full size image

If you look at the SERP closely, you will realize that organic listings have moved further down due to instant suggestions by Google. The first three spots are occupied by adwords ads as usual; the right side is all full of sponsored links, the left side is options for universal search and more, where is the organic listings?? This screen shot is taken with firefox, and Google toolbar installed. Let’s assume that normal web users don’t have Google toolbar installed, but still there won’t be more than 3 organic listing visible in the first fold.

I hope you get the idea what this leads to! More monetization for Google, oops I said it…

Impact on SEO

I think Google instant will change the SEO game forever. As mentioned above, organic listings are going deeper than ever, so top 3 results will have some value; apart from this there is no point even if you are on first page and ranking below the first fold. These are just my personal thoughts, and have nothing to do with promoting my PPC Consultant Services.

Jokes apart, this will change the people search on Google. Google Instant will change the search behavior of users. I wonder how this will affect the local seo. As mentioned by Google earlier, search results are shown different to different users according to their personal search data, their physical location, ip address and more; the local ranking will become more important than organic listings. Have a look at the screenshot of local listing below:

Click on image to view full size image

I am sure you would notice that there are no organic listing showing up. What do SEO Professionals do now? Hang themselves?? Don’t consider this as ranting (even though I know it is a rant) and please don’t hang yourself.

According to Steve Rubel, “no two people will see the same web. Once a single search would do the trick – and everyone saw the same results. That’s what made search engine optimization work. Now, with this, everyone is going to start tweaking their searches in real-time. The reason this is a game changer is feedback. When you get feedback, you change your behaviors.”

Chris Crum on webpronews.com considers Google Instant as the end of SEO, but I think SEO will never end. SEO Experts will always find the way to get traffic from search engines doesn’t matter what is changed.

Effect on long tail searches

I came across an interesting article on Search Engine Land which says that Google Instant will kill the long tail, but I have different view on long tails. Long tails are searches made by mature users who know what they are looking for. Users looking for specific information or product will do long tail searches no matter what Google changes.

Matt Cutts throws some lights on the new updates and adds, “A key insight behind Google Instant is that if we want to get people answers and solve their problems faster, we can help with that by improving our UI to help you formulate queries more quickly (and then doing a bunch of hard work under the hood to answer that query too). Google typically returns search results in milliseconds, but it takes several seconds for you to type a query. In other words, the limiting factor on a typical search is you. With predictive search and instant results, you can often get the answer you want much faster.”

Here I would like to show a video by Matt Cutts which shows that it is not the end of SEO and it will be there for years to come:

I would love to hear your views on this. Do you think SEO is here for longer?? Let me know in comments why do you think SEO is not over yet!

I have been hearing complains of traffic loss from some of the friends and clients since last month. At first sight it looked like normal client ranting, but this time they were right. Some of the clients had lost significant amount of traffic and that too Google organic traffic suddenly. This sudden website traffic drop happened at the end of April, 2010. I am going to explain this with live case study of one of my client. Client has an ecommerce store in the hospitality industry.

Live Case Study of Google MayDay Algorithm Update for Longtail Keywords
Here is the screenshot of one of the client’s Analytics account. You can clearly see two arrows pointing sudden website traffic loss from 30th. April, 2010 to 12th. May, 2010.

SEOs who work on client projects would understand the feeling of client getting angry and giving all kind of threats (BullSh***) to you when something in analytics is not right! Luckily the traffic started coming back from 13th. May, 2010; but not up to the mark.

Obsevation

Here are some of the points I was noticing during the tension period (I call it tension period when client is on my back):

• Client’s Google ranking for major keywords were as it is.
• I could see that all the competitors’ were in the same place for major keywords, so it wasn’t an algorithm change (this is how it looked like in the first place).
• Because of traffic loss, obviously conversions were down as well.

Conclusion

• Head keywords (main two phrase keywords) ranking was as it is.
• Traffic loss was mainly on the longtail keywords. Due to this, individual product pages were not ranking at all.
• Conversions were down because people were not able to find individual products directly.
• Google has gone back to basics and were focusing more on phrase keywords, e.g. when you search for “catering equipments” in Google, the websites who have targeted this keyword in title as the exact phrase are ranking higher rather than websites having these two keywords in the title but not necessarily in the same order.

Solution

• We continued building link in the same manner as we were doing earlier.
• We changed the Google Analytics code and implemented the new code. (Don’t know if this has any effect on the tracking or not).
• We implemented a new section on the homepage of the website which included links to inner pages and will tke visitors directly to product detail page.

Reactions from the leaders

There was thread at Webmasterworld which started discussing exactly this on May 1. I was following this thread closely but not much came out from this.

I came across an article from Vanessa Fox on searchengineland on May 27 which confirmed that it was an algorithm change from Google for Longtail keyword searches.  This is what she has to say:

This change seems to have primarily impacted very large sites with “item” pages that don’t have many individual links into them, might be several clicks from the home page, and may not have substantial unique and value-added content on them. For instance, ecommerce sites often have this structure. The individual product pages are unlikely to attract external links and the majority of the content may be imported from a manufacturer database. Of course, as with any change that results in a traffic hit for some sites, other sites experience the opposite. Based on Matt’s comment at Google I/O, the pages that are now ranking well for these long tail queries are from “higher quality” sites (or perhaps are “higher quality” pages).

The video on may 30 from Googler Matt Cutts made it confirmed that it is a permanent change in the algorithm. Here is the video for you to watch:

Ecommerce growth has been tremendous in this decade. As we are very near to the end of this decade, the steep growth and advancement in ecommerce field is eye dazzling. When we talk about retail business, the online ecommerce store has become inseparable part of any successful retail marketing strategy. The greatest example is America’s largest online retailer, Amazon.Com which started as online books and CD store, but soon diversified into different channels and now has almost three times more sales than its closest competitor.

Search engine optimization (SEO) for an ecommerce store can be a tough task. Heavy coding of backend and template driven approach makes it really difficult to make little changes in the ecommerce website. The main intention of the online shopping store is to increase sales and generate more revenue. The ecommerce stores are useful for users or rather I should say “Potential Buyers”, but doesn’t offer much value to the search engines as they have very little useful content, copy-pasted manufacturer product descriptions, almost no unique or user generated content with very poor linking structure.

I had hard time optimizing one of the client’s online store. He was using one of the open source shopping cart software (I don’t want to name which open source shopping cart) in PHP, which was pathetic if you look at it from SEO point of view. Although it had all the ingredients needed to make the best online shopping cart, it didn’t have the facility to insert different meta title and meta description tags for different pages. The URL structure contained numerous wild characters (&, +, = etc.) with category ids, rather than showing category name. There was no facility to insert image alt text. I hope this is enough of ranting!

So, when I sent all the onpage changes to PHP developer, it took him almost the same time as building a brand new shopping cart. The client was so obsessed with the store admin and backend administration that he didn’t wanted to change the shopping cart software even after making him understand that how unfriendly it was for search engines. So, it is my humble request to all the online retails to consider SEO when choosing their ecommerce shopping cart software.

In this ecommerce SEO series, I will be covering all the aspects related to search engine optimization for ecommerce site (Ofcourse my ranting will be there). This is the first article in the series which covers onpage SEO factors to consider when you are building your online store.

Keyword Research

As an SEO expert, you must be knowing the importance of keyword research in the SEO process. For keyword research of ecommerce sites, you need to target keywords which can convert visitors into customers. This kind of keywords is called transactional keywords. Even though transactional keywords may have less search volume, they are very likely to convert visitors. E.g. rather than targeting generic keyword like “Shoes”, you should target “Shoes Store Online”; which is more likely to attract visitors who are willing to buy.

There are many transactional keywords which can be used to determine the user’s intent, e.g. buy, for sale, cheap, new, discount, warehouse, store, online store, retail, price etc.

There are many keyword research tools available, but I only prefer few of them:

Google Adwords Keyword Tool
Wordtracker
SEMRush
SEO Book Keyword Tool

Content

Content plays very important role in search engine optimization. Content is king as they say, can help you in ranking better in the search engines. Ecommerce shopping sites always lacks the availability of fresh and unique content. The retailer is always tempted to copy – paste the product descriptions from the manufacturer’s website, but you should be having unique product descriptions. It should be atleast re-written in the proper format to make it unique from the manufacturer’s website. It is understandable that product features and other content can be changed as it is always similar on hundreds of sites, but proper and compelling description can really help in conversions. Also it is advisable to add generic keyword rich content on homepage and category pages. This will not only give proper information to your site visitors, but also help search engine crawlers.

It is also advisable to have blog on ecommerce site, to constantly provide fresh content. The blog can contain latest industry news and updates, and new product development information. This helps in building trust amongst the website users as they think that the company is aware of the new happenings and developments in the industry.

URL Structure

The most common problems with CMS (Content Management System) and ecommerce sites is their linking structure. The more easier you make it for search engine crawlers to crawl your site, the more beneficial it will be for you to rank better. Having product and category ids in the URL, won’t make any sense to your potential customers. Also if the navigation structure is not search engine friendly, it is hard for search engines to crawl actual product pages. It is very important for individual product pages to rank well as all the transactions are going to start from product pages. If the product pages have good content, they can rank for several long tail keywords, but for this to happen, they should be indexed properly in search engines.

Generally product pages are two (2) to three (3) levels deep down in the URL hierarchy. E.g. it can be like www.domain.com/category1/subcategory1/product.php, so it is hard for product pages to get the actual Google Pagerank they deserve, so if possible all the product pages should be at the root to get better exposure. E.g. it can be www.domain.com/product.php.

Now you will think that it might create duplicate content issue as the same product page will be on two different URLs. Both the URLs mentioned above will have the same content. In this case we can use newly introduced canonical tag. The following canonical tag should be placed on www.domain.com/category1/subcategory1/product.php URL:

<link rel=”canonical” href=”www.domain.com/product.php” />

This will notify Google which page to use in their index, and which page should have the Pagerank.

Also it will be useful if you use keywords in the product page urls, e.g. www.domain.com/keyword-search-phrase.php.

Other onpage SEO tips for Ecommerce sites

• Make sure all the pages including homepage, category pages and product pages have proper meta tags. Page Title plays an important role in search engine optimization, so it is advisable to use important keywords in the title tag. Having generic keywords in the homepage’s title and relevant keywords on category and product pages will increase your chances of ranking for generic as well as long tail keywords.
• All the product images must include image alt tags to identify what the image is all about. After all who doesn’t like little more traffic from image searches?
• Keep the products pages two to three clicks away at the max, so visitors landing on your homepage doesn’t find it difficult to find what they are looking for.
• Robust product search and advanced search should be always handy in the ecommerce layouts, so that people don’t waste time finding a particular product.
• Putting product reviews by customers is a great way to have user generated content on the product pages. That way you gain confidence of potential customers and it will help in search engine rankings as well.
• Try to use important keywords in heading tags (H1, H2 etc.) to give more importance to them.
• Show your featured products on homepage, so that they can easily get crawled in search engines, and your visitors can know any special discounts or deals directly from the homepage.
• Don’t stuff the keywords everywhere; use it wisely where appropriate, if search engines can’t find out about your keyword stuffing, users can.
• Link to your internal pages with static links; don’t put links in JavaScript or flash.
• Use nofollow tag for not so important pages, so that PageRank can be distributed amongst important pages.

I have tried to cover as many onpage aspects as possible. In the next article I will be discussing more on the off-page strategies and link building for ecommerce sites. If I am missing something, let me know in the comments below.

I would consider last week as Social Media week. News sites and internet marketing blogs haven’t had enough of Bing’s Twitter and Facebook deal along with Google shaking hands with Twitter for another great deal, now we have Google Social Search.

What is Google Social Search?

Google social search which is still in beta can be opted in through Google labs. It is nothing but an amalgamation of updates from your social network status updates in one place. e.g. if you are searching for “New Zealand”, Google social search will show updates, twits and photos of your friends who have had their last vacation in New Zealand.

According to Google Blog:

A lot of people write about New York, so if I do a search for [new york] on Google, my best friend’s New York blog probably isn’t going to show up on the first page of my results. Probably what I’ll find are some well-known and official sites. We’ve taken steps to improve the relevance of our search results with personalization, but today’s launch takes that one step further. With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. When I do a simple query for [new york], Google Social Search includes my friend’s blog on the results page under the heading “Results from people in your social circle for New York.” I can also filter my results to see only content from my social circle by clicking “Show options” on the results page and clicking “Social.”

I was searching for “Bajaj Pulsar” and got a blog page of one of my colleague Jaydip Parikh. Here is the screen shot:

How Does it all Work?

Now, you will think that how does Google know your friends and connections? Here are some of the main sources that Google counts to connect to your friends according to Matt Cutts:

• Google Public Profiles

The most obvious source for Google to look into their own data. Here they can find your other social network profile links, blog links etc, which makes it possible to find your other contacts on twitter, facebook or myspace.

• Google Talk Connections
All your gtalk connections will be added to your social network and updates from them will be shown to you.

• Google Reader
If you have subscribed to some blog in your Google reader, the updates from blog will be shown on the search results.

• Extended Network
If you are friend with someone and he / she has 10 other friends, there is a good chance that some of them might know you as well. So, this extended network friends’ update will be also be shown to you in the search results.

Here is a video from matt cutts, that show how does it work?

I think this will really change the SEO game. The real time search craze is getting heat and will change how the sites are ranked, although the social search is turned on only when you are logged in to Google.

Do you think Search engine optimization experts now will have hard time getting the ranking or they will find a way through as usual? Do you think social media will be spammed now like never before in order to get ranking on Google?

Hey All,

I know I’ve been really busy with things, so couldn’t update the blog. Here is the little update that I wanted to post today. New search engine called Bing, from Microsoft had some issues showing up in Google analytics. It was showing as general referral site instead of search engines, so webmasters couldn’t track the keywords through which they were getting traffic. Now, Google has resolved the issue and it is showing as Search Engine with traffic from different keywords.

Here is the screen shot from one of my new client’s Google Analytics, which is showing Bing as Search engine.

As a SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) owner, you may want to advertise and promote your website as cost-effectively as possible. In current economical situation, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has emerged as one of the cheapest way for long-standing business promotion. A typical business owner is not likely to be conversant about SEO and its benefits. Even if an owner knows SEO, he/she is not confident enough on how to choose an ethical SEO who can get the work done at the competitive rates and within given timeframe. Choosing a SEO consultant or company for your website can be an exhausting and overwhelming experience. Every SEO specialist will boast about taking up latest SEO practices, testimonials from old clients and assurances of #1 placement on Google, but how you as a non SEO expert select a legitimate SEO consultant? Listed below, are few pointers on how to detect a fake SEO consultant.

1. #1 Google ranking for Website:

If any company or SEO Consultant guarantees you that they can place your website on number one position on Google for your keywords then don’t trust him. Its understandable that this company is desperate to get business and is willingly misleading you to get your hard earned cash. No company can make such claims as Google’s ranking algorithm is one of the best kept secrets. What SEO companies can do is optimize the on-page factors, and promote the website according to broadly known methodologies, best practices and lot of hard work. At most a company can claim that they can acquire good ranking like top 10 on Google, but even then, authenticate their past track record to guess on how they worked with other clients.

2. Very Low Prices:

Many companies charge incredibly low amount of money for quite a lot of services. As an shrewd business person, you can cleverly presume that any work that requires hours and hours of hard work, research and analysis by a team of experts cannot come cheap. Most of the times, specialists from various fields like programmers, content writers, SEO analyst, link builders etc. group their boys to make a site successful on Google and obviously SEO services cannot come as cheap as many companies charge.

3. Secret and Proprietary Technique that cannot be Revealed:

I don’t think we need explanation on this. As the owner of the website, you should be conscious of what’s happening to your site and what steps are been taken to optimize and promote it in search engines and on Internet.

4. Recommending Black Hat Techniques:

Lot of companies suggests suspicious tactics known as black hat practices to get your site up in search engines quickly. Not only these techniques have very short term benefits but they can be very counterproductive because search engines ultimately catch website following these shady practices. Many websites have been seriously penalized for using these black hat techniques. So play safe and avoid these SEO companies like plague.

5. Using Outdated Techniques:

Five years ago, techniques like reciprocal link exchange, keyword stuffing etc. were used to get good rankings. Google and other search engines have advanced their algorithms, so they rank a site for its worthiness and not just back links and keyword stuffing. Choose a company that will advise steps to make your site useful & relevant and not take short cuts.

If you keep these tips in mind while choosing a SEO company for your website then it’s very much possible that you will finally select a SEO company that knows their job and can handle your website promotion very well.

If you are having a business, you must be having a website. Although many businesses in India are still lacking the web presence, the awareness of website, internet marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) is increasing rapidly. Everybody wants to jump on this huge market that no other medium can offer, but just having the website is not enough. Just like in offline business, having the shop is not enough; you have to advertise for your shop to increase the sales, internet marketing is must for any website who wants to increase their sales through internet. Almost 80% of internet users use search engines to research for their desired products or services (According to GVU 10^th User Survey). This is where SEO Consultants come into play.

There are so many SEO Consultants available that it really confuses the company about choosing the right SEO expert. In my career, I have worked as both independent SEO Service provider and as part of SEO Company. Choosing the SEO Company or SEO Consultant highly depends on your situation, requirements, budget, time frame etc. Here are some of the quick guidelines that you can use to select the best SEO Consultant or SEO Company.

Type of techniques used to achieve rankings

It is very important to know the type of techniques used to achieve higher rankings in search engines. Some black hatters can give you quick results, but once search engines find out the malicious technique, it can get your website banned in search engines. Make sure the SEO Consultant is using all the white hat techniques which will be helpful to you in the long run.

Ask for past experience and work done

It is always good to see the previous work and achievements before you finalise the project. You need to make sure that the SEO Consultant is capable enough to get you the successful rankings and sales or not. By looking at the previous achievements, you will get the idea of the calibre of the SEO Expert.

Ask for previous client references

Previous client references are the best measure that can be used to show the efficiency and quality of the work. If his/her clients were happy with the work and results, it is highly possible that SEO Consultant will be able to deliver the same. It also gives you a chance to enquire about his customer service and turnaround time.

Improvements to expect in terms of traffic and rankings

You should know what kind of improvements to expect from the SEO Expert in terms of traffic and rankings. We all know that SEO is a long-term process, and you can’t see the results overnight, but you need to have some sort of assurance.

Timeline to see the results

You need to make sure that SEO Consultant gives you a rough idea about when you start to see your website ranking on the first page for at least low competitive keywords. We can understand that highly competitive keywords can take real good time but at least you can go for some low competitive keywords and mix it within your campaign to start getting some traffic. Beware of the SEO guys who tell you to get quick rankings as they might be using some black hat technique to get the rankings.

It is not 100% sure that you will get the best SEO Expert after checking him / her on these parameters, but at least you won’t get some so called SEO who doesn’t even know the basics. Also it is very important to check the language proficiency of SEO person when you are outsourcing your SEO Work to countries like India, China, Philippines, Russia etc.

I hope this post will help many of the companies select the best SEO Consultant or SEO Company according to their requirements.

Recently I’ve seen some changes in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page), especially the product based keywords are now showing many of the big brands. The war between SEOs and Google will never end. It seems Google is now ranking big brands ahead of many of the powerful, high pagerank and popular (link popular in the eyes of Google) sites.

Now, how do Google differentiate Big Brands from other smaller brands or websites?? There is a very interesting discussion going on at sphinn that might reveal some of the insights. It can be bounce rate, social media presence, high authority domain, link saturation or any other thing that we are not aware of.

There is a very hot discussion at WebMasterWorld. People describing all sorts of possibilities that can be considered for “Brand Power”. While giving preferences to brands, Google is encouraging smaller business to brand themselves. The best to way to brand your business as you may have guessed is Google Adwords.

Aaron Wall over at SEOBook has also spotted this change. He has mentioned some very good examples of SERPs in his recent article.

Whatever may be the reason for ranking change, SEOs will find one or the other way to rank well. Let’s see who wins the game.

When this all Search Engine Optimization thing started, webmasters realized that it was important to have incoming links pointing to their site, for better search visibility and increased traffic. Free directories were the easiest way to get one way links to their site in the early days. As there was not much of a competition, they used to get their site approved quickly in free directories, but this scenario changed when everyone started doing this.

After stuffing the keywords on pages, webmasters used to submit their site to thousands of free directories in order to get backlinks. Even they had some semi automatic directory submission tools which still exists.

Slowly and steadily Search Engines realized that it was easy for anyone to rank in the search engines after submitting to bunch of powerful directories, so the value of links from directories were downgraded. Although some of the powerful directories still maintained their status, and they still provide powerful backlinks.

Google was behind paid links providers, so the directory owners who provided paid links with checking the quality of the site were gone. Yahoo directory on the other hand still charges for submission of the website, but still provides powerful backlink because their editors check the websites carefully and include only genuine good websites.

Still useful or not, it’s good to submit your site to directories. Here are some of the guidelines or checklist to refer to get the best result of directory submission.

Before the submission:

• Choose proper directory list to submit the site. (addurl.nu or directorycritic.com are good examples)
• Check directory pagerank and their presence on major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Live etc.
• Check whether the directory has Search Engine friendly URL structure.
• Check if the directory provides dofollow static text link, some directories provide nofollow links, which can’t be much of a use in the eye of search engines, especially Google.
• Check if the directory is maintained regularly, so that you can get your submission approved quickly.
• Check the Alexa rank of the directory.

While doing the submission:

• Include important keyword or website name in the title
• Use descriptive language for description, don’t stuff description with keywords. (atleast 250 characters for almost all the directories).
• Use different industry related keywords in the keyword field, but don’t repeat the same keywords again and again.
• Check the character limit of all the fields and submit values accordingly.
• Double check the submitted URL.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all to my new blog, where I will be sharing news, updates, latest developments in SEO, SEM field. You can also expect some personal posts.

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