When you create a blog or website, if you want to get organic search traffic to it, you have to make sure that the content on your site or blog is indexable. The web content that I am talking about here is not only the text content, but also others such as images, audio and video content. Usually search engines can read plain text with no problem. But they can’t read images, audio or video. Content created with Flash or Java can’t be seen by search engines either. So what you need to do is to use “alt tag” or transcript to label these non-indexable content properly and convert them to SEO friendly content.
One free online SEO tool which can help you to find out how search engines see your blog or site is found on http://www.seo-browser.com/. At seo-browser.com, you just need to type in your blog’s URL and run the check, and it will show you what elements on your blog are visible to search engines in the result. If you found some important content on your blog can’t be seen on the result page, you will know these content may have the search engine index problem. Then you have to figure out how to make them more search engine friendly, if you really care about organic traffic to your blog.
Of course, alternately, you can also check the same thing by using Google Cache.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Basic Understanding of Search Engine Optimization
Two words are most important in SEO: relevance and importance. Relevance means that whether the content is what the search engine users are looking for. Importance means that whether the content provides valuable information.
Most important factors influencing search engine ranking results:
Different search engines have different criteria or algorithm. For instance, Yahoo said “Inbound links and content are important.” Bing said”Keywords should be contained in the content and the size of the page should be at right size.” Google said “WebPages should be for users not for me. So give your page a correct title and don’t put too many links on one page.” Of course, these are only some principles and their searching algorithms are always changing, at least from time to time.
How to fully understand how a search engine works? You can ask a search engine engineer who develop it or you can design an experiment to test it and figure it out by yourself. All the trouble shooting strategies are same. Every time you change one factor and then see what is the result. If you get the result you want, obviously the last factor that you have changed is the reason for the problem. So when designing experiment to study search engine, you can build several similar websites and each website has only one factor different from the rest of others. This may sounds easy, but when you really do it, it will have a lot of work involved. But fortunately someone else has already done this type of experiments and what you need to do is just to follow their guidance or observe carefully what they did on their own site.
Then you may ask: how can I who knows the secret of seo? It is easy. Run a simple search with some hot keywords in major search engines and those sites on the 1st page of the search results are your candidates. Do a thorough study on those sites, and you will learn a lot from them.
Most important factors influencing search engine ranking results:
Different search engines have different criteria or algorithm. For instance, Yahoo said “Inbound links and content are important.” Bing said”Keywords should be contained in the content and the size of the page should be at right size.” Google said “WebPages should be for users not for me. So give your page a correct title and don’t put too many links on one page.” Of course, these are only some principles and their searching algorithms are always changing, at least from time to time.
How to fully understand how a search engine works? You can ask a search engine engineer who develop it or you can design an experiment to test it and figure it out by yourself. All the trouble shooting strategies are same. Every time you change one factor and then see what is the result. If you get the result you want, obviously the last factor that you have changed is the reason for the problem. So when designing experiment to study search engine, you can build several similar websites and each website has only one factor different from the rest of others. This may sounds easy, but when you really do it, it will have a lot of work involved. But fortunately someone else has already done this type of experiments and what you need to do is just to follow their guidance or observe carefully what they did on their own site.
Then you may ask: how can I who knows the secret of seo? It is easy. Run a simple search with some hot keywords in major search engines and those sites on the 1st page of the search results are your candidates. Do a thorough study on those sites, and you will learn a lot from them.
Where to Find a Free Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Online
I read a new book: search engine optimization (seo) secrets written by Danny Dover. The author claims that this book is not for beginners. He didn’t bother to explain some basic SEO terms in the book, but fortunately he mentioned a website where beginners can learn some basic SEO knowledge. Here is the link to the site:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo.
On this site, the SEO knowledge is divided into 10 chapters. And they explained what search engine is and how it works. It also gives an introduction on how to do keyword research and where to find seo tools and resources. This website is very suitable for people like me who has no any seo knowledge at all. If you are already a SEO expert, you can pass this site and continue to read Danny Dover’s new book which gives in-depth explanation of search engine optimization. It even shows you how to live as a SEO consultant. It is a very interesting book and I will definitely read it once I finished the beginner’s guide online.
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo.
On this site, the SEO knowledge is divided into 10 chapters. And they explained what search engine is and how it works. It also gives an introduction on how to do keyword research and where to find seo tools and resources. This website is very suitable for people like me who has no any seo knowledge at all. If you are already a SEO expert, you can pass this site and continue to read Danny Dover’s new book which gives in-depth explanation of search engine optimization. It even shows you how to live as a SEO consultant. It is a very interesting book and I will definitely read it once I finished the beginner’s guide online.
How to Check My Site's Google Supplemental Index Ratio Online
First, you don't want your site or pages on your site in Google's supplemental index, because once your pages in it, they will not get any good rankings in Google organic search result.
What is the common reasons why my pages are in the supplemental index?
1. Google thinks that the content on your page is not good. For instance, your article is too short.
2. Your content has the duplicate issue. They are similar to other pages on your site or other web-pages on other people's website on the internet.
3. Your content doesn't have any external link.
4. Or other mysterious reasons make Google don't like your content.
How to know how many pages of your site are in the supplemental index?
1. You need to know how many web-pages on your site has been indexed on Google search engine.
Run a search "site:www.yoursite.com" in Google, which will give you the result of the total indexed pages of yoursite.
To see the pages on your site in the main index, search with "site:www.yoursite.com -inallurl:www.yoursite.com". Alternatively，you can search for “site:www.yoursite.com/*”.
Then to get the number of pages in the supplemental index, you simple use the total number minus the number of pages in the main indexed.
To make the whole process easy, you can find some online tool which can help you calculate the supplemental index ratio directly.
There are a lot of sites offering this kind of tools. The one that I come across is http://www.seonlinelab.com/supplemental_index_ratio.php.
It may not be the best one, but it works for me. What you need to do is just to type in the domain name that you want to check and then it will show the result that you want to see. It is easy.
To prevent your pages or site getting into the supplemental index, you have to add content with high quality into your site and/or get high quality links to your site. High quality inbound links are those from sites with high Google page rank and with the “dofollow” tag. Usually new site tends to have more pages in the supplemental index. If that is the case for your site, what you can do just keep building your site and wait patiently. No matter what you do, patience is a virtue.
What is the common reasons why my pages are in the supplemental index?
1. Google thinks that the content on your page is not good. For instance, your article is too short.
2. Your content has the duplicate issue. They are similar to other pages on your site or other web-pages on other people's website on the internet.
3. Your content doesn't have any external link.
4. Or other mysterious reasons make Google don't like your content.
How to know how many pages of your site are in the supplemental index?
1. You need to know how many web-pages on your site has been indexed on Google search engine.
Run a search "site:www.yoursite.com" in Google, which will give you the result of the total indexed pages of yoursite.
To see the pages on your site in the main index, search with "site:www.yoursite.com -inallurl:www.yoursite.com". Alternatively，you can search for “site:www.yoursite.com/*”.
Then to get the number of pages in the supplemental index, you simple use the total number minus the number of pages in the main indexed.
To make the whole process easy, you can find some online tool which can help you calculate the supplemental index ratio directly.
There are a lot of sites offering this kind of tools. The one that I come across is http://www.seonlinelab.com/supplemental_index_ratio.php.
It may not be the best one, but it works for me. What you need to do is just to type in the domain name that you want to check and then it will show the result that you want to see. It is easy.
To prevent your pages or site getting into the supplemental index, you have to add content with high quality into your site and/or get high quality links to your site. High quality inbound links are those from sites with high Google page rank and with the “dofollow” tag. Usually new site tends to have more pages in the supplemental index. If that is the case for your site, what you can do just keep building your site and wait patiently. No matter what you do, patience is a virtue.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
9 Free Online Keyword Density Checkers
The followings are several top free online keyword density checkers. You can use these tools to check keyword density of your web-page.
Webconfs
http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php
This keyword density checking tool is very easy to use. You just enter the URL of the web-page that you want to analyze and it can generate a keyword cloud for you. It also reports single word's keyword density. They offer HTML codes so that you can put this tool on your site.
Ranks.NL
http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
This is not only a keyword density checker, it can also analyze web-pages backlinks, outboundlinks and google ranks.In the result that it returns, it shows single word, 2 words, 3 words and 4 words phrase keyword density. It also predicts that which words or phrase the page is optimized for. It is quite impressive. I definitely want to go back to check it out.
SeoBook
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/
This is a pretty popular online keyword density tool. It has been mentioned in many places. It can also report multiple words containing phrase density.
SEOchat
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
This is another popuplar online keyword density checker. It has the option which allows you to include Meta, Alts and Title into the analysis. Bookmark it and you will need it later.
iWEBtool
http://www.iwebtool.com/keyword_density
This is just a simple online keyword density checker that you can use it for free. It is a very basic one and it only shows the single word density. But it also generates tagcloud for you. If you need to create tags for your content, you may check it out. But for tag generation, I will use http://tagcrowd.com/ instead.
motoricerca
http://tool.motoricerca.info/keyword-density.phtml
This one is simple but looks like powerful. It allows you to filter out the stop word.
gorank
http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php
It is also a simple but good one. But personaly I don't like the result layout.
googleranking
http://www.googlerankings.com/kdindex.php
This one is OK. But it is a little bit stupid. You have to manually remove the "http://" from your webpage's URL.
Submit Express
http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/
This is a META tag analyzer.
Webconfs
http://www.webconfs.com/keyword-density-checker.php
This keyword density checking tool is very easy to use. You just enter the URL of the web-page that you want to analyze and it can generate a keyword cloud for you. It also reports single word's keyword density. They offer HTML codes so that you can put this tool on your site.
Ranks.NL
http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
This is not only a keyword density checker, it can also analyze web-pages backlinks, outboundlinks and google ranks.In the result that it returns, it shows single word, 2 words, 3 words and 4 words phrase keyword density. It also predicts that which words or phrase the page is optimized for. It is quite impressive. I definitely want to go back to check it out.
SeoBook
http://tools.seobook.com/general/keyword-density/
This is a pretty popular online keyword density tool. It has been mentioned in many places. It can also report multiple words containing phrase density.
SEOchat
http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/keyword-density/
This is another popuplar online keyword density checker. It has the option which allows you to include Meta, Alts and Title into the analysis. Bookmark it and you will need it later.
iWEBtool
http://www.iwebtool.com/keyword_density
This is just a simple online keyword density checker that you can use it for free. It is a very basic one and it only shows the single word density. But it also generates tagcloud for you. If you need to create tags for your content, you may check it out. But for tag generation, I will use http://tagcrowd.com/ instead.
motoricerca
http://tool.motoricerca.info/keyword-density.phtml
This one is simple but looks like powerful. It allows you to filter out the stop word.
gorank
http://www.gorank.com/analyze.php
It is also a simple but good one. But personaly I don't like the result layout.
googleranking
http://www.googlerankings.com/kdindex.php
This one is OK. But it is a little bit stupid. You have to manually remove the "http://" from your webpage's URL.
Submit Express
http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer/
This is a META tag analyzer.
Monday, June 13, 2011
How to Change Permalinks in Wordpress
In Wordpress, changing the permalinks structure is very easy. There are several options that you can choose from, such as http://yourdomain/2010/05/30/sample-post/ and http://yourdomain/archives/123. The default one is http://yourdomain/?p=123. If you like, you can use any one of them. But they are not optimized for search engine optimization(SEO) purpose.To get the best SEO permalinks, you have to use the "custome structure" function.
Here is the way to change permalink structure in Wordpress.
1. go to Settings-->Permalinks
2.in the common settings, you can choose from "default", "day and name","month and name","numerica" and "custome structure".For instance, you can set your custome structure as /%postname%/.
Here is the way to change permalink structure in Wordpress.
1. go to Settings-->Permalinks
2.in the common settings, you can choose from "default", "day and name","month and name","numerica" and "custome structure".For instance, you can set your custome structure as /%postname%/.
How to Submit Your Wordpress Blog to Major Search Engines
When you create a new Wordpress blog, you may want other people to read it. Then you need to promote your blog online and/or offline so that other people can know that your blog exists and where to find it. One way to get traffic to your blog is through search engines. The traffic coming from search engines is referred as “organic traffic”. You may be interested in knowing: how can the search engines find your blog? To let your blog get indexed on major search engines, usually you don’t need to do any extra thing except keep posting new content to your blog. But it may take longer time for the search engines to find your weblog through this passive way. If you want to get it quicker, you can submit your blog to them. The followings are URLs for big search engine submission pages.
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/au/free/submit
Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
Baidu: http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html
Sogou: http://www.sogou.com/feedback/urlfeedback.php
Soso: http://www.soso.com/help/usb/urlsubmit.shtml
Youdao: http://tellbot.youdao.com/report
Coodir: http://www.coodir.com/accounts/addsite.asp
Nowadays there are so many search engines out there. But you don’t need to submit your site to all of them. If you have limited time, you at least have to submit your site to Google, Bing and Yahoo, the 3 biggest ones.
Usually it takes a while for your site to be indexed. So after the submission, you can wait and post new articles to your blog. After a while, you can check how your blog is indexed. There are many ways and many websites through which you can check. For instance, you can check at http://indexed.webmasterhome.cn/.
Google: http://www.google.com/addurl/
Yahoo: http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/au/free/submit
Bing: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSitePage.aspx
Baidu: http://www.baidu.com/search/url_submit.html
Sogou: http://www.sogou.com/feedback/urlfeedback.php
Soso: http://www.soso.com/help/usb/urlsubmit.shtml
Youdao: http://tellbot.youdao.com/report
Coodir: http://www.coodir.com/accounts/addsite.asp
Nowadays there are so many search engines out there. But you don’t need to submit your site to all of them. If you have limited time, you at least have to submit your site to Google, Bing and Yahoo, the 3 biggest ones.
Usually it takes a while for your site to be indexed. So after the submission, you can wait and post new articles to your blog. After a while, you can check how your blog is indexed. There are many ways and many websites through which you can check. For instance, you can check at http://indexed.webmasterhome.cn/.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Top Poll and Rating Wordpress Plugins
If you run a wordpress blog, sometimes you may want to know your readers' opinion about the issue that you mentioned in your web-blog. The best way to get feedback from your readers is to hold a poll on your blog. Then you may need a wordpress poll plugin. The followings are top poll plugins.By installing the poll plugin, you can let your aundience vote on your blog.
WP-polls
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-polls
This one seems extremely popular. But the image shown on the screenshot page is not very attractive.
MicroPoll
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/micropoll
This one is lacking updates.
JR_Poll
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jr-poll
FlashPoll++
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flashpoll
This poll builder is a Flash-based one. But unfortunately they don't provide a demo or screenshot on wordpress.org.
PollDaddy Polls & Ratings
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/polldaddy
As its name indicated, it can be used to create both polls and ratings. So it has two functions. I like it. Both paid and free version available, but you have to register at their website before you can use it.
SodaHead Polls
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sodahead-polls
It is just another plugin that you can use to generate a poll on your site.
WP Quick Polls
http://wpquickpolls.com/
This one looks nice but unfortunately it is not free. If you want to use it, you have to pay for it.
WP Easy Polls
http://wpeasypolls.com/
It is free, simple but good.
Vote-The-Post
http://www.1800blogger.com/word-press-voting-plugin/
This one has been mentioned on webdesignbooth.com as a professionally-designed computer application.
Star Rating for Reviews
http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/star-rating/
It seems that the latest version of this plugin was released in 2007.
Democracy AJAX Poll
http://blog.jalenack.com/archives/democracy/
The last time that this plugin was updated is more than 5 years ago. So, obviously I will pass this one.
GD Star Rating
http://www.gdstarrating.com/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gd-star-rating/
It has a professional appearance. It is a very popular plugin for building single, multiple and thrumb ratings on your wordpress blog.
Rating-Widget
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rating-widget/
If you need a very simple wordpress rating plugin, get this one.
Mombly Review Ratings
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mombly-review-rating/
Xavin’s Review Ratings
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/xavins-review-ratings/
It is another ratings wordpress plugin to create 5 ratings.
Comment Rating Widget
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comment-rating-widget/
Comment Rating
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comment-rating/
WP-polls
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-polls
This one seems extremely popular. But the image shown on the screenshot page is not very attractive.
MicroPoll
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/micropoll
This one is lacking updates.
JR_Poll
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/jr-poll
FlashPoll++
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/flashpoll
This poll builder is a Flash-based one. But unfortunately they don't provide a demo or screenshot on wordpress.org.
PollDaddy Polls & Ratings
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/polldaddy
As its name indicated, it can be used to create both polls and ratings. So it has two functions. I like it. Both paid and free version available, but you have to register at their website before you can use it.
SodaHead Polls
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sodahead-polls
It is just another plugin that you can use to generate a poll on your site.
WP Quick Polls
http://wpquickpolls.com/
This one looks nice but unfortunately it is not free. If you want to use it, you have to pay for it.
WP Easy Polls
http://wpeasypolls.com/
It is free, simple but good.
Vote-The-Post
http://www.1800blogger.com/word-press-voting-plugin/
This one has been mentioned on webdesignbooth.com as a professionally-designed computer application.
Star Rating for Reviews
http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/plugins/star-rating/
It seems that the latest version of this plugin was released in 2007.
Democracy AJAX Poll
http://blog.jalenack.com/archives/democracy/
The last time that this plugin was updated is more than 5 years ago. So, obviously I will pass this one.
GD Star Rating
http://www.gdstarrating.com/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/gd-star-rating/
It has a professional appearance. It is a very popular plugin for building single, multiple and thrumb ratings on your wordpress blog.
Rating-Widget
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/rating-widget/
If you need a very simple wordpress rating plugin, get this one.
Mombly Review Ratings
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mombly-review-rating/
Xavin’s Review Ratings
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/xavins-review-ratings/
It is another ratings wordpress plugin to create 5 ratings.
Comment Rating Widget
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comment-rating-widget/
Comment Rating
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/comment-rating/
Friday, June 10, 2011
What is the Best Permalink Structure for SEO Purpose
It is commonly seen people use "%category%/%post name%" as the URL structure for their Wordpress blogs. Is it the best one? Today I read a post and it said the best one is "%post name%.html". Is it true? I don't know.
It also said the shorter URL is better than the longer one. The SEO slugs plugin is recommended because this wordpress plugin can help to remove stop words like "a", "the", etc. It turns out this blogger's blog is using /%year%/%monthnum%/%post name%.html. Is it interesting? I think it is very interesting.
The permalink structure should be started with a number like "year" or "postID" and ended with either "post ID" or "postname".
If your blog's permalink structure is not optimized, you can change it anytime you want. But when changing it, you also need a permalink redirect Wordpress plugin to arrange a proper redirection from your older link to the new link. Otherwise, your reader may get a 404 page.
Even though it is quite convenient to change permalink structure in Wordpress, it doesn't mean that you should change it frequently since you don't know what search engines will response to your link changes.
It also said the shorter URL is better than the longer one. The SEO slugs plugin is recommended because this wordpress plugin can help to remove stop words like "a", "the", etc. It turns out this blogger's blog is using /%year%/%monthnum%/%post name%.html. Is it interesting? I think it is very interesting.
The permalink structure should be started with a number like "year" or "postID" and ended with either "post ID" or "postname".
If your blog's permalink structure is not optimized, you can change it anytime you want. But when changing it, you also need a permalink redirect Wordpress plugin to arrange a proper redirection from your older link to the new link. Otherwise, your reader may get a 404 page.
Even though it is quite convenient to change permalink structure in Wordpress, it doesn't mean that you should change it frequently since you don't know what search engines will response to your link changes.
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