There are so many posts out there to discuss what a SEO consultant should do, but this post will talk about what a SEO consultant must not be doing. A common myth that revolves around the developers is that,” SEO is another form of QA, SEO is just a quality checking process”.  But it is not, what SEO is. One main reason for this myth is, India doesn’t have a great  talent pool for SEO and it is not off shored as extensively as other areas, the reason sound valid, SEO is more of marketing and trust building which is very much GEO specific, unless and until you have the feel of that market you cannot do wonders. Sitting from India, it is not that easy to know how things works in European Real estate market. It need a lot of homework, it doesn’t only stop with Site optimization, it stretches beyond.

Developer’s  point of view:
From a Developer’s point of view, it still remains as another quality process, they dont know where a SEO comes in the SDLC. SEO is something, which directly involves a stake holder and a SEO guy, it doesn’t have anything to do with other roles in the Project management. And a SEO process should start from the day one of development, if not done, it is double the work for development. Just make one thing clear, before starting the development, Create sites for users, Search Engines will be attracted; if not, your site can never rise up the ladder. Search Engines, are not GODS, they are just a third party agent, who fetches you what you want. Have that in mind and create the code, make it clean and clear, that is all we need to do, SE is not expecting art out of you. In a real development environment, the first phase of SEO should be done by the developer itself, On-Site SEO must be a responsibility of a Developer. If this is carried out well, then there is no special effort need in the SEO cycle for this. Dont expect a SEO guy to instruct you for this phase, it is mandatory that you should follow these rules while development.

If SEO doesnt start in parallel with development, then it is gona be a re-work. There are some key areas where the development should be clear.

1. SEO guy will not clean the code, it should be done by the development(this whole confusion arises because of the fact that SEO is not carried out along with the development) . SEO guy will identify the areas to be improved, but he cant sit and implement that.
2. Both dev and SEO team should work hands to identify how best the SEO can be implemented for a particular project. SEO guys might not be aware of the technical feasibilities of a particular implementation, it is dev team’s work to figure that out. Say for example, lets take a site that is developed with Drupal, technically speaking, there are so many SEO friendly modules that are available in SEO which makes implementation very easy, like path module, both SEO guy and the dev team should be aware of this, how far we can utilize the path module must be known to the dev team and how effectively it can be used must be known to SEO guy. This parallel working will yield great results

Plan your SEO process, plan how this can go hands on with development. If this is done, then SEO will really work out.

Brett Crosby announced several Google Analytics features that is oncoming at the eMetrics Summit. The new update has amazing features which will be very helpful for SEO work.

Some of them include

1. Site Search Activity: This will provide a lot of information about the searches that are performed by the users in your site, with which we can actually draw a lot of info about key word and content seeked.
2.  Even Tracking : Using the new ga.js, we can explore event activities happening in your site and which will help us to know how are site is navigated and also how the components in our sites are accessed. and how well the user is utilizing our site. This is will help us to make our site more customized.
3. UI improvements on reports which will enhance the user friendly nature of the GA.

Suggestion:
Practically we face some difficulties when we practice SEO using Google Analytics(GA). I have a few suggestions, with which GA can reach masses. One of the main difficulty which we face is in the Traffic monitoring, at present thou we have good system by GA, it is manual, some one needs to sit with it and even automated E-mail delivery is not that effective. Why it is not effective is one, some one needs to assimilate and track the daily status thou they receive reports automatically and two as GA gives a dashboard, most of it turns Graphical. If i want to use these details as inputs somewhere, it is very difficult. Why cant Google provide these reports as a web service or may be in a RSS with which i can directly use them where ever i want.

We had one client, whose requirement is to get the data from GA or any other similar tools and publish that in his site in a specific style/standard. If GA provides a Web Service, this would have been an easy task for us, but since we get only email reports, some process needs to be done with that email, may be a script or a mail reader, which is not an advisable go. If GA comes up with some kind of Web Service it will ease our life.

Here are some Directory listings where you can go and submit you site address as a SEO pract.
Some of them are paid and some are free, depending upon the requirement even reports can be obtained. Here is the document containg the list
directory.doc

In order to tap into the power of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) elements, you first need to know what they are. In HTML, elements are bits of markup that tell a web browser to display or format parts of web pages. For example, <p> means paragraph, and <b> means bold - there are plenty more. These elements are used constantly when writing web pages. You should basically think of your HTML elements as the organizational and visual formatting of your HTML document.

By learning HTML, you can tap into the power of HTML elements and create a more interesting website as well as tipping off search engines as to what the most important information on your web page is. Many people starting out on the web just use ‘easy editors’ (also known as WYSIWYG for what you see is what you get) that show the page as it will appear, without ever looking at the code that the page is actually made from. This is fine if you intend to distribute and are only interested in the look of the page. Visually artistic people are often drawn to using WYSIWYG (pronounced wise-ee-wig) editors when creating their web pages because it allows them to see exactly what they are doing and frees them from the time consuming task of learning HTML.

The structure of HTML is based on logic, order, and syntax and is, therefore, relatively simple to use. To make a heading, you use the heading elements (<h1>, <h2>, <h3>, and so on up to <h6>). To start a new paragraph, you use a paragraph element (<p>). To format a list, you use a list element (start with <ul> then use <li>). In order to learn HTML it is a good idea to go to www.w3schools.com As XHTML is gaining more and more popularity among web masters (and search engines) it may be a good idea to learn that instead. XHTML is basically a more standardized version of HTML and it is worth learning. If you learn XHTML along with CSS, you will have be able to make extremely powerful web pages.

Once you understand that all you’re doing is providing these simple structures, you realize the understated power of HTML. You see, once your HTML structure is in place with the appropriate markup, you can add CSS (Cascaded Style Sheets) for visual presentation, using a graphics design program. Good elements provide meaning and structure to your content, making it simple to add whatever design you want afterwards.

That said, the most important HTML elements (also called tags) that you will run into are <title> and <h1> (through <h6>). Whatever you put between <title> and </title> is what appears in the blue margin at the top of the browser. This is also what search engines use as the link text to your site. Your title should be relatively descriptive and include as many key words as it can without becoming abrasive. Seven or eight words is generally a good length for the title of a web page.

Next are the <h1> tags. Generally, when you are trying to optimize a web page for the search engine you will use this as a subheading. Header tags (h1-h6) are all weighted by search engines as more important than regular text because the search engine assumes that you will only make text larger if it is important. This is a good rule to live by. If you place your subheading within a header tag you will probably get slightly better search results for the key words in this subheading. Remember that the difference between the way that a search engine sees an <h1> tag and an <h2> tag is minuscule so set your header numbers based on visual preference rather than search engine standards.

Another tag that is very important is the <a> tag (or anchor tag). This tag is used to link to other web pages and it is invaluable to your web page because search engines like to see relevant links on your web site. Make sure that you only link to relevant sites, and while your at it, try to get a return link so that your page rank increases.

Other tags such as <b> (bold) tags and <i> (italics) tags will also help out. You can put these around your key words or less important subheadings. These won’t do quite as much for you, but they will definitely help to some extent and should be utilized when practical.

The difference between your site and other sites of equal page rank and similar material will be how well you utilize HTML elements to exemplify your work. You can very easily modify your web site so that things stick out where they should. Solid knowledge of HTML is your best friend when you are performing SEO activities. Remember, “If you build it, they will come.”

Some Guidelines for Using HTML Elements.

While the BLOCKQUOTE element is intended for longer quotations and Q is intended for shorter quotations, the Q element causes all sorts of problems because it’s not very widely supported. You shouldn’t use it at the moment - hopefully next-generation browsers will support it.

The BR element is one of the more abused ones. If you understand how HTML works, you should realize that its use is rarely justified: use the P element for paragraphs instead of using the BR element to provide paragraph-like breaks.

Now that you’re armed with some simple information, you should consider learning more about HTML and how to use it. You used to need to learn HTML before you could create a web page, and that gave a lot of people the edge when it came to more advanced web design and development later on. If you want to catch up, you need to know what you’re doing on the technical side of things.

As a part of sequel post, now i would like to share the value of links.

The Value of Good Link Partners.

As you already know, good link partners are vital to the growth of your website. Without good link partners you won’t be ranked highly in the search engines, and you won’t receive the traffic you need to gain new customers and make new sales. Building high-quality links to your website helps it to succeed.

Websites that maintain good incoming links will get many targeted visitors from their link partners. These link partners are also a good source of information and can offer value for the visitors that come to your website more often. The idea behind link partners is to find web sites with complementary content so that you enhance your web site. For example, if you sell computers, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to link to a site that sells printers.

Linking to your competitors is much more dangerous. The fact of the matter is that when you link to your competitors you are handing them your business. They may be handing some of theirs back to you, but the trade off simply isn’t worth it. If you are in a situation where it is your product or theirs, do not link to them. Aside from the obvious issue of losing business to their site, you may even lose the returning link if you don’t keep an eye on it.

When dealing with link partners, there’s virtually no point unless you get reciprocal links. These links make your website look good, as well as getting you targeted traffic from users clicking on the links. When you are optimizing your site for key words, however, it is important to link to sites that provide more information regarding the content that you have provided. In cases like this, the link is already helping you. If you get a returning link in addition it’s like killing two birds with one stone.

With good-quality incoming links, you will benefit greatly from the increased traffic to your site. Most major search engines’ rankings are at least partly based on the number of quality links pointing to your website. Google, HotBot, AltaVista, MSN, Inktomi and more all use link popularity in their formula for calculating rankings.

The value of your link partner’s sites will be very important, as many of the search engines use this in determining how relevant your site is to the terms that are being searched on. A site with a page rank below three generally isn’t worth exchanging links with. Then again, if the site is on its way up, it might be a good idea to get in on the ground floor. If you are curious as to whether a site is going to be accumulating a higher page rank in a short period of time try going to http://www.iwebtool.com/rank and punching the site’s URL into the “backlink” tool or the “page rank predictor.” These will show you how many links the site has going to them and will let you know what the page rank could be within the next three months.

You must always keep an eye on the value, and use value-for-value exchanges only. Make sure that your link doesn’t get removed from any sites you link to, and remove your own link to them if it does. Many people will agree to link with you and then remove your link after a week or two. If you leave your site linked to them, then they’re the only one benefiting.

Good link partners are hard to find, and it will take some time for them to respond. You may have to contact them more than once, and probably won’t take you seriously if you just ask them to trade you links. It is important to provide them with information relating to your company and let them know why your link will be worth while to them. If you are serious about SEO, you will be able to let them know that you expect your page rank to explode within the next few months and you may be able to accumulate links this way.

It’s important for to make sure that you links are checked on a regular basis. Of course you don’t have much control over the incoming links, but you can still do whatever you want with the outgoing ones. You should immediately remove any links that don’t work, as they can and will bring your search engine rankings down.

By understanding how link partnering works and maintaining good quality links on your website, you can increase your targeted traffic and improve your sales. After all, isn’t that the whole point of having an online business? Just remember that your website, like any other business, takes time and effort to make it succeed, and any little way you can speed up the process is good - as long as it’s not against the rules, of course.

                          SEO - Search Engine Listing - PageRank - SEM
These are the Buzzwords which rocks the WEB 2.0 generation, almost everyone is blogging, almost everyone is involved in e-Commerce by one way or the other. Search Engines has become our Legal Consultants, we know everything from them. From Bussiness point of view, its very important for a vendor to get himself rated among the TOP in Search Engines, Unless your are rated, you are mated.Thousands and Thousands of Proucts, Lakhs and Lakhs of manufacturers, amomg them you have to hit the top or else you are out. So What can be done? Will SEO be a right Solution for this, Ofcourse it is not the ONLY soulition, but it should be the foremost solution, if you want to be there, you should have this.First Impression is the Best Impression! here it is first Click is your Best Click, if it favours you, then Good luck! else you have to suffer.
I dont go with clasiic economics or Bussines science, which says retaining a customer is harder than getting a new one. In WEBsense, eerything lies in getting te customer, making him open your page, that will do, it will pour you revenues. What can be done from your side to get that? its pretty Simple. You can actually order Search Engines to Crawl you page,after all that is what for they are designed.

Its not only for Commercial Sites, even for blogs this applies, even if you blog is a free blog, hosted by Blog Engines, some SEO stuffs can be implemented, Which i have tested with my blog and it have yielded amazing results. So Bloggers , i think you know the value of Clicks and ratings, Make everyone read what you have written about everything.

Here is one nice oppurtunity, you can test you site for SE compatibility. I will do that for you, Yeah, its completely free. I will give you a detailed analysis and a full fledged report for your Site/Blog.No hidden charges, All you have to do is, just contact me here with your details for your Complete Report

Search engine rankings are an important factor to consider when you have a website that needs more traffic. If your website doesn’t have a good position in the rankings then no-one will find it, so you need to make sure that your website is ranked highly enough to be seen. The other important quality to getting high traffic to your site is having a nice arsenal of links. The more links that you have to your site the more traffic you will get, but also, the more links to your site the more search engines like your site. Keeping a nice supply of links pointing at your site requires similar precautions and practices as getting high search engine listings.

Although no SEO company can guarantee a high ranking for your site, here are some tips for raising your search engine ranking. Using these tips will not get you to the top unless your site is the best out there, but they will at least put you into the positioning that you truly deserve. After all, the internet is basically a free market. You will naturally flow into the place that you deserve and many search engines try to insure that you do not rise above or fall below this position. This is why they are so strict, and this is why you must keep yourself on good terms with them.

1) Content is an important factor in high search engine rankings. Make sure that you have plenty of content throughout your site with your target keywords in the articles. It’s also worth doing a search for websites similar to yours and taking a look at their articles for ideas. The more content you have the better. It is generally a good idea to have between three hundred and five hundred words per page, but more important than a quantity of content is the quality of the content that you are providing. You cannot just put out three hundred words of jargon and expect your visitors to find it interesting and stick around for the long haul.

2) Your website’s URL can help you rank higher with the search engines if it contains your keywords. However, don’t think that naming your site after your keywords will always help your rankings - you need to do more than just that.

3) Search terms should be written out in text, instead of graphics. If you do use pictures, be sure to give them alt tags. The alt tags in your pictures are almost as important as text. It’s also a good idea to put some of your key words in links to other pages. In the eyes of a search engine it is almost as good to have a link to a page full of the content that the visitor is looking for as it is to have the content that the visitor is looking for on your page. If a visitor is looking for something that you are linking to and he or she finds your page, they may look around your site on the way through.

4) The title of your page is very important, and making sure that you choose it wisely will make a big difference. Terms such ‘free article on safe children’s toys’, or ‘contact the children’s toy expert today’ are good to use as titles, for example - they would get you a high ranking. The title area is the most important place to include your keyword phrases, so make sure that you put them all in.

5) The navigation menu that appears on each page of your website should include your page’s title.

6) Don’t just use the most popular keyword phrases - the market is so competitive that you should be sure to include some niche keywords too.

7) Make sure that you don’t have a lot of irrelevant links on your site. The more closely related to your site your links are, the better your chances of being ranked in a higher position.

You need to periodically update the content of your website, even if it’s only a slight change, as websites like sites that are kept updated.

9) You need to consider the fact most search engines don’t like automatic submissions or multiple submissions - submit once, manually.

10) Always be on the look out for SEO news - staying up to date and using the latest techniques will help you stay one step ahead of your competition.

In today’s market, it’s crucial for every marketer to track keyword response rates. It’s simply the only way of tracking advertising results and knowing which of your keywords are working for you.

In the online marketing world, it’s just as important to track your ad results. Knowing the exact response rate to your advertisement lets you to figure out how well it performed, which can help increase your profits and lower your costs.

Don’t be afraid to change a poorly responding advertisement to try to make it work better. Pay attention to headlines, ad copy, graphics and layout, and then be sure to re-test the ad. You might also find that where your sites are running is the problem - try alternative systems. By the same token, you should test your keywords to make sure that they will work the way you want them to. They’re very similar to advertisements in that they either work brilliantly or not at all.

Tracking your ad results allows you to be sure that your ad publisher has followed through on their end of the bargain, and the information you gather allows you to prepare better campaigns the next time. The best way to track online ad results is to measure click-through rates (the number of people who clicked on your advertisement). There are other measurements such as conversion ratio (the number of people who click through and buy), but measuring click-through is a fine way to get started. There are two methods of tracking click through rates mentioned below:

CGI Scripts.

You can download CGI scripts at plenty of websites, and you can place CGI scripts in your CGI directory if your web host supports it. Try to find a small but powerful CGI script that tracks clicks on your site - do it invisibly, so your visitors don’t know you’re tracking them. LinkinLite is one free CGI script you could try, as an example, or you could have one made specially for you. Getting a custom script can be great, as long as you don’t pay too much for it.

PHP and ASP Scripts

Some CGI scripts are better than others. Basically, CGI seems to be dieing slowly but surely. It is being replaced by ASP and PHP both of which have scripts available to perform these actions. PHP is emerging as the preferred language for server side scripting and is therefore the most accessible of the group. Depending on what your hosting service offers you should be able to find free tracking software simply by Googling for the software in the particular scripting language that you need. If you are unsure as to whether your hosting service allows a particular server-side scripting language, don’t hesitate to ask. Most of these providers want all of their services used otherwise they feel as though they have wasted time and/or money implementing the service.

Online Tracking Services.

Online tracking services count click-throughs using own servers. This is usually free, although most require you to upgrade to paid versions before they’ll let you do anything useful with the statistics. The upgrades are worth while, but you should try out the free version before upgrading to make sure that you are comfortable with the user interface. Once you’ve decided on a software to use, shop around. See if there is a similar interface on something cheaper. Your money can go really far on the internet, and if you’re lucky you can take advantage of special offers.

If you’re interested in a free online click-tracking service, try Hypertracker, Statmuncher, Adminder or Roibot. These services are all relatively straightforward. They are all pretty much equal in quality. The differences between these free services are more or less personal preference. But remember, a comfortable user interface goes a long ways. If you don’t like the look and feel of the program, you won’t enjoy using it and will eventually stop using it all together.

Banner ad click-through rates are usually between 0.5% and 1%, although for e-zines it can go as high as 10%. That’s about average compared to offline marketing methods, which average roughly 2%.

If you provide a service to a niche market, you are more likely to see higher click through rates. Professionals in the area of online marketing often settle for no less than a 7% click through rate. These rates can be done and should certainly be shot for.

Regardless of which tracking methods you use, you need to be tracking your keywords and advertising results somehow - it’s essential, and it takes you a step further in the SEO marketplace. Every set of statistics lets you get to know your site’s market position better and better, and gets you one step closer to where you want to be.

For as long as SEO has been in existence, there have been all sorts of myths about it, and the situation isn’t helped by the number of so-called ‘experts’ spreading them. Here’s a list of the biggest SEO myths:

You can’t optimize perfectly for every site

There are 10,000 search engines out there

PageRank is dead

Your should repeat your keywords 100 times on each page

Search engines don’t have time to ban you for bad SEO

You should submit your site to every search engine going

You don’t need content to get ranked high

Meta tags are very important

All you need is more links

SEO doesn’t require patience

New sites can’t get listed in search engines

You should have multiple domain names

It’s good to resubmit every week or every month

If you find companies that tell you any of these things, then you should run away as fast as you can. Don’t pay attention to the myths of SEO - the only techniques you should be using are ones that are proven to increase your website’s ranking.

There are a lot of unethical, unprofessional business practices in the optimization industry, and you need to make sure you have enough facts on your side to compare the services you’re being offered. To have a good SEO campaign, you can’t fall victim to the kind of big promises that are always un-promised in the small print. Don’t throw away your money: invest it properly in good marketing, advertising, and content.

When inexperienced and unprofessional optimizers scam uneducated SEO customers, it gives everyone who works in the field a bad name. If anyone tells you that it’s OK to keyword stuff, or that you don’t need PageRank - well, they’re just completely wrong.

If you’re trying to make money with your website, you need visitors, and that’s where SEO comes in. SEO is important because of the amount of competition you have. When you’re competing in a worldwide market, you need to stand out

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Before you can evaluate your site’s SEO profile, you need to understand what an SEO profile is and how it works. An SEO profile for a website is just like a marketing plan or a business plan - basically, it’s a strategy document, putting your decisions into words. This is best performed on a computer program such as Microsoft Word as these programs do provide the best bang for your buck. All else aside, Microsoft does put out some excellent business oriented software so take advantage of it!

Writing your SEO profile should consist of the following:

An introduction - This should include a BRIEF description of your company as well as a purpose statement of some kind. If you can describe your company in a neat, tight format, you will be one step ahead of most in the SEO game.

Goals relating to your Search Engine Status - What do you want your page rank to be? Where do you want to be listed under specific key words? top 50? 25? 10? How many pages of your site do you want search engines to index? Do you want to pay for listings? These questions will get you started, but you must go more in-depth into your SEO goals. Also include the search engines and directories that you feel are necessities such as Google, DMOZ, Yahoo!, and MSN.

Information regarding SEO actions and achievements - This one is pretty self-explanatory. List everything that you do regarding Search Engine Optimization as well as any successes caused by these actions.

Once you’ve written an SEO profile, you can compare it from time-to-time with what’s going on with your site, before either adjusting the site to reflect your strategy or adjusting the profile to reflect a strategy change. Generally, it is wise to stick to the plan, but occasions may arise when you find that this is simply not logical anymore. In these cases, you must re-evaluate your entire plan because one change can effect the rest of your strategy.

If you have an extremely intricate strategy that depends on one thing going well, you may want to diversify your strategy. Your profile should especially focus on special things you plan to do that aren’t standard SEO practice. Standard SEO work can get you only so far. Every one of your competitors is probably doing the same things so get creative. This is one place where doing something for yourself can really push you to the top. If you already have a high-ranking site, you should use your profile to document the reasons why it has happened, to help you maintain your high ranking.

Keeping your SEO profile updated will allow you to stay current not only on what’s going on with your website, but also on what’s going on in the SEO industry. The SEO industry is very fickle. It can change suddenly without warning to reflect what a search engine or directory believes to be the opinion or benefit of the market. Remember that search engines are always in competition with one another to deliver the most results of the highest quality. If you stay on top of your quality, changes in the SEO industry will have minimal effect on you. It is still important to track these changes in order to ensure that your site gets maximum exposure.

Evaluating your website and profile regularly give you an advantage in the market - you should never let a profile get older than 3 months, and you should refer to it and update it every time you make major changes to your site. These changes include additions of services or removal of services as well as design changes and SEO work.

There is software available online that can help you evaluate your site’s SEO profile. Some of these software are very useful, others are very overrated. The difference that these programs will make in your fight for page rank and listings depends on your interpretation of the results nearly as much as it depends on the value of the software itself. In order to find some software simply google for SEO software. Reading the reviews and making judgment calls is the best way to determine the worth of SEO software. If you think that its worth going for look at the cost of it. If the cost seems to high, it probably is. You can generally evaluate your SEO profile on your own once you have learned what to look for in an Search Engine Optimized page.