Nowadays more and more people are getting interested in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). As always, if there is a demand, there is a supplier. To run a quick search on Amazon.com or other online book stores, you will find tons of books cover this topic. Some of them are for beginners, others are for advanced users. Before learning advanced SEO techniques, you must have some basic knowledge first. For example, you have at least to know how major search engines work. I found the basic knowledge is important for better understanding those advanced tips and tricks. If you are interested in this topic, you may want to read the beginner’s guide of search engine optimization offered at seomoz.org. It is a free web-based content. You don’t need to buy anything or register any account to access it. As long as you get an internet access, you can read the guide online. Here is the link to the free guide: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
It contains 10 Chapters. Each chapter is focusing on one topic.
1. How do search engines work?
2. How do internet users interact with major search engines?
3. Why is search engine marketing important?
4. How to design a search engine friendly website or blog?
5. How to do keyword research?
6. What factors can influence websites’ SERP rankings?
7. How to get links and popularity for your website?
8. What are the search engine tools or services that you can use?
9. Other important aspects of search engine.
10. How to know whether the SEO of your site works?
The information provided in it may not be comprehensive, but it is useful at least for beginners. If you have time, you can read it. It is free any way.
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label seo. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2011
3 Tools to Check Keyword Density and Relevancy
When performing search engine optimization (SEO) for my site, I consider to factors: importance and relevancy.
The followings are 3 online tools for checking keyword density and relevancy, which I just came across. These tools can help you find out how relevant your webpage is to your targeted keywords.
Dave Naylor's Keyword Density Tool at http://tools.davidnaylor.co.uk/keyworddensity/
To use this tool, you have to enter the URL that you want to check and several keywords. You can also try the advanced options to customize your search filter.
SEOmoz's Term Target Tool at http://www.seomoz.org/term-target
Ranks.nl Keyword Density & Prominence Analyzer at http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
When using this analyzer, you enter the URL starting with http:// and you answer the Captcha. You don't need to register to use it.
The followings are 3 online tools for checking keyword density and relevancy, which I just came across. These tools can help you find out how relevant your webpage is to your targeted keywords.
Dave Naylor's Keyword Density Tool at http://tools.davidnaylor.co.uk/keyworddensity/
To use this tool, you have to enter the URL that you want to check and several keywords. You can also try the advanced options to customize your search filter.
SEOmoz's Term Target Tool at http://www.seomoz.org/term-target
Ranks.nl Keyword Density & Prominence Analyzer at http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html
When using this analyzer, you enter the URL starting with http:// and you answer the Captcha. You don't need to register to use it.
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.
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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