WIKI Page - Search Engine Optimization
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General Information
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) software is used to increase the ranking in search engines, drive more visitors to websites and increase the quality of traffic. Generally, SEO tools focus on improving the web site's content and creating back links, but there are several other aspects that need to be taken into consideration, like the web site's structure and coding.
Black Hat SEO
Taking advantage of the weaknesses in some algorithms used by search engines, some people developed unethical techniques (known as Black Hat SEO or Spamdexing) for increasing the website rankings:
- Hidden text – usually text that has the same color as the website's background therefore only visible to spiders
- Keyword stuffing – adding long lists of keywords on the page, hoping to attract more search engines
- URL stuffing – adding too many keywords in the URLs
- Generated sites – also called scraping, this technique allows webmasters to quickly create hundreds of websites in just a few minutes; since content is gathered from different sources by robots, most of the phrases don't even make sense to a human
- Link spam – probably the most popular Black Hat SEO technique involves linking to websites with help from robots in the most unexpected places
- Sneaky redirects – the users is rapidly redirected from the landing page (usually build with scraped content) to the “real” page.
- Cloaking – creating two different web pages, one for humans to see and another one for robots
Most of the Spamindexing tools are sold on the “black market”, but some are available as free, open source software. Search Engines are constantly fighting against these kinds of unethical practices.
White Hat SEO
All the search engines value
- Short loading times
- Frequent updates
- Sites that contain contact information
- Unique content
- Pages primarily designed for humans, not spiders
- Sites that link to additional sources of information
- Sites that provide secure connections, especially in the case of e-commerce sites
Search Engines
The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. However, only Google's market share is constantly growing. According to the latest statistics, Google holds 65.26% of the market compared to Yahoo’s 20.73%, MSN’s 8.46% and Ask’s 3.69%
SEO Software
SEO can be very tricky for a beginner especially because when using the wrong software any damage can be amplified. A bad SEO technique can be worst than no technique at all
SEO software packs are usually designed to help newbies. They combine multiple utilities like
- Link popularity checkers that count the number of back links in different search engines
- Ranking tools that either display or track the site's positioning in search engines
- Log analyzers that provide detailed statistics about the web site's traffic like number of visitors, number of page views, average time on site, bounce rates, referring sites, visitors profiles and many more
- Keyword research applications that crawl search engines results to find the most appropriate words and phrases to use on a website
- Code analyzers
- Meta tags generators that pick the most frequently used keywords on a page and suggest meta tags values based on the results
- Link or banner exchange crawlers that look for sites that have link exchange submission forms and check reciprocal links
- Competitor research applications that list the direct competitors web site address
- Search engine submission tools that either simultaneously add your URL to multiple search engines or help you keep track of your manual submissions
- Sitemap generators
Most of these utilities are available on the web as free hosted products
Communities
High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum - http://www.highrankings.com/forum/
Search Engine Optimization and Marketing forum - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
SEO Chat Forums - http://forums.seochat.com/
SEOmoz Blog | Search Engine Marketing News & Tips - http://www.seomoz.org/blog
Top products
It's hard to find the best search engine optimization software using just Google because all the SEO software homepages are optimized for that exact keyword :-) Most users prefer to do the SEO themselves therefore they don't spend any money on specialized tools. However, SEO tools help you accomplish your work much faster.
| Specialists usually recommend AddWeb Website Promoter 8.0. It has numerous features like a rank checker, a submitter, an advisor, a HTML validator and a search tool. You can download a free trial version on their homepage or buy the license for $69.99 |
| The second best tool is Total Optimizer Pro, a commercial software that creates a comparison between your site and the ones that belong to direct competitors. Basically it gives you all the information you need to attain top rankings. It also shows detailed statistics for offsite SEO (number of back links for each competitor, Alexa rank, Google page rank, keywords used and search engine position) |
Events
PubCon 2007, Las Vegas, December, 2007
SMX Expo, Denver, Oct. 1-2, 2007
SEO Class Workshop, Los Angeles, California, November 2007
See Also
Wikipedia article on search engine optimization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization#International_markets
Search engine ranking factors explained http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors
The Google webmaster guidelines for designing a website http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
The Yahoo! Content Quality Guidelines http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/basics/basics-18.html
