Free Seo Tools | basics seo help tips
Author: alinasasraFree SEO tools and about SEO tips
What is SEO: SEO is a technique which helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the millions of other sites in response to a search query. SEO thus helps you get traffic from search engines.
This SEO tutorial covers all the necessary information you need to know about Search Engine Optimization - what is it, how does it work and differences in the ranking criteria of major search engines.
Methods
Getting indexed
The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. Some search engines, notably Yahoo!, operate a paid submission service that guarantee crawling for either a set fee or cost per click. Such programs usually guarantee inclusion in the database, but do not guarantee specific ranking within the search results.Two major directories, the Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory Project both require manual submission and human editorial review.Google offers Google Webmaster Tools, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that aren't discoverable by automatically following links.Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by the search engines. Distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled. Additionally, search engines sometimes have problems with crawling sites with certain kinds of graphic content, flash files, portable document format files, and dynamic content.
Preventing crawling
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots. When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed, and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish crawled. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.Increasing prominence
A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to most important pages may improve its visibility.Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrase, so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic. Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's meta data, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic. URL normalization of web pages accessible via multiple urls, using the "canonical" meta tag or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the url all count towards the page's link popularity score.Backlink: Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO). The number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (for example, this is used by Google to determine the PageRank of a webpage). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.
In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web node (web page, directory, website, or top level domain) from another web node. Backlinks are also known as incoming link, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.
What is a backlink?
Any link to your site from an external domain is classed as a backlink, although in SEO terms this usually refers to editorial links (PR, blogs, articles etc) as opposed to those from search engines, banner adverts or other paid traffic sources. Despite being a source of traffic for the site, these links are vital to organic search rankings.Search engines index web pages and store them in a database, but the order in which they serve these pages is dependent on the perceived relevance of the page to the search term used; and to the quality of the site itself. The search engines use various pieces of information in order to determine this, but the most important is the volume, quality and nature of backlinks to the site and to the specific domain.
Whilst no-one really knows exactly how the search engine algorithms work, studies are regularly carried out to assess which factors have the greatest impact on rankings. The latest ranking factors survey from SEOmoz identified the following as the top most influential factors:
- Keyword focused anchor text from external links
- External link popularity (quantity/quality of external links)
- Diversity of link sources (links from many unique root domains)
- Keyword use anywhere in the title tag
- Trustworthiness of the domain based on link distance from trusted domains
Therefore, if the site is to rank highly for high volume keywords, it is imperative that the right kind of backlinks are created and encouraged throughout the internet.
What makes good backlinks?
The following describes the characteristics of the best possible backlink (in no particular order):- Relevant site – the domain/site on which the link exists is relevant to the destination site. It has appropriate and relevant content and appeals to the same target market.
- Quality and reputation of the site – the domain/site is trustworthy, popular and well respected in its field. For example, non-commercial sites such as Wikipedia will always score higher than content aggregators and directories.
- Relevant content – the editorial content of the page on which the link exists is relevant and similar to the content of the destination page.
- The link is embedded in anchor text which uses a term for which you need to rank highly. For example, "I highly recommend reading my web analytics blog if you get chance"
- The body text around the link and in the article in general uses keywords and phrases for which your site needs to rank highly.
- The destination of the link is a page appropriate to the article, context and the anchor text used.
- The sentimental context of the link is positive. Negative descriptive words around the link lead the engines to believe that the site is unpopular.
Backlink PR : Creating and improving backlinks
Links will appear naturally throughout the internet as the site gains popularity. But these links will not necessarily match the above criteria. There are several options for building new links and persuading content owners to amend or remove existing links:- Press Releases – PR that will feature on-line can be crafted and distributed according to all the above guidelines. It may even be possible to pre-populate the copy with links and anchor text which can be used by the content/media owners. If this is not possible, guidelines can be supplied along with the press release. These may not be used, but it doesn't hurt.
- Blogs (internal/affiliated) – blogs created by you or your associates on 3rd party domains can be fully crafted according to the above guidelines.
- Blogs (created by others) – if backlinks are found within 3rd party blogs, a polite and descriptive email to the blog owner can often persuade them to make small changes to the link, especially elements such as the anchor text. It is not appropriate to try to influence the editorial nature of the copy.
- Blog comments – other people's blogs almost always include the ability to make comments. If the blog is relevant to the subject matter of your site, then a comment can be made including a link to the appropriate page. Some blog sites also provide the ability to use html href tags, therefore allowing anchor text. This type of link-building should be approached with caution. Absolute transparency about who is making the comment is essential. Also, the comment should be appropriate, relevant and meaningful. Bloggers are very quick to pick up spamming and underhand link building techniques.
- Articles/editorial created by others – relevant articles and editorial content are a prime target for link building. If the article already contains a link to the site, then (as with blogs) a polite email to the webmaster or editor can often result in subtle changes being made to the link copy. If the site is relevant and does not include a link, a similar email can be crafted to persuade the inclusion of a link. Media owners may get a large volume of these emails, therefore the email must be personal, the content relevant and the link must add something to their article
- Wikipedia etc – has high kudos with the search engines. If articles can be created or contributed to, then links and/or foot references can be placed. As with other links, these must of course be relevant.
- Directories – bespoke directories for your particular industry/topic/hobby often allow short descriptions to be created along with site submissions. However, only the most relevant and well respected directories should be used. For more information go to free seo tools and basics seo help tips
A note on etiquette
Aggressive link-building techniques almost always backfire and result in lower search rankings or bad publicity from bloggers and other online commentators. Link building communications should be approached with the same respectfulness as any other marketing communication. For example, the motivation for commenting on a blog post may be to create a link, but the content and relevance of the comment itself is far more important. If the comment is not relevant and does not reflect your brand then this is far worse publicity than anything that can be incurred by lower search rankings if the link were not there. For further reading go to free seo tools and basic seo helpIt is a tutorial site of seo. It also provide some free seo tools and keyword suggestion. For more visit this site.
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/seo-articles/free-seo-tools-basics-seo-help-tips-4838666.html
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