Top 12 Search Engine Optimisation tips for public sector websites for 2007

Public sector websites are no different to any other, when it comes to driving up usage. Online marketing is essential to getting usage, and Search Engine Optimisation is one highly crucial tool in the armoury for any local authority or central government websites. Here, SEO expert Gary R. Beal advises on 12 top tips to maximise online reach in 2007.

1. Content – Regular, frequent and high quality content produced by people with knowledge in the field, or people that you can trust to do their homework before jumping headfirst into writing it. This is crucial both at the search engine algo level and the PPC campaign design level.

And its not just a fresh article once a month. If you examine your log files you will see how often the SERP’s comeback to visit. Once you are in good with them, they hit your site 1-3+ times a day. It will only do this if it sees fresh content, via your navigation.

There is a point at which the bots will and won’t come back and crawl. They won’t if they don’t see fresh content. They will come back to your index (homepage) to find the fresh content, if they don’t find it they will leave. If they do find fresh content they will continue to navigate throughout your site via the ‘proper’ navigation mentioned in this list below.

Fresh content throughout your entire site is costly and time-consuming, but will separate you and elevate you from the rest.

2. Inbound links to your site from relevant and trusted sites – Links from trusted sites; links from pages with a higher PR(4+) and less than 50 outbound links; links from pages with a lower PR and less than 10-25 outbound links (Keyword-rich anchor text as well).

Preferably forums and blogs (or Viral Marketing) are some of the strongest referrers. This needs to be a permanent, ongoing project, and the links should be in place for at least 12-18 months for optimal effect. Getting 50 or 1000 this month, then dropping to just a few next month is a huge red flag for all the SE’s. A steady link building scheme is required to earn top rankings. This means no link farm’s.

Let me quickly explain about link farms and the way that the SE's see them.

If you are actively and voluntarily participating in a linking scheme you are trying to manipulate their results. They value natural linking in their algorithms highly so they do not look on link farms kindly now, or anytime in the future. It is one of the possible methods they have to value a website. This is why you hear so many of the pros say "content is king".

One way or the other you need to attract traffic naturally or the least make it look like you have.

3. Individual Title and Descriptions - The argument is alive and well, and continuing as it has and will for several years. Title tags are how the SE’s identify the relevancy of your page (compared to the end-users search query), not just in Organic ranking but in Paid Placement as well.
Descriptions are how (organically) the SE’s place a relevancy rating on your page.

4. Site Architecture/Navigation – This includes menus, all the way to how each section on a site’s pages are interlinked with each other.

5. Keyword Terminology - In your content, use 2 or 3 word keyword phrases that are likely to be searched for by users. Don’t over-do-it, but be sure everything is in line and included - Keyword Title; Keyword phrase in description (1st line); Internal navigation keyword links; Fresh keyword rich content.

6. Universal XML Sitemaps - Providing an XML sitemap is one of the easiest things you can do to help search engines traverse your site. Google, Yahoo and MSN have all adopted this “standardized” tool. Having a sitemap and then submitting it through WEBMASTER Central will tell you not only when the crawl (usually 1-2 days) is complete, but also if there are any errors that the bots found.

7. Rich Media – Or concentrating on utilising video, image and audio search. Google is and I believe Yahoo and MSN will be offering big incentives to move into these areas, provided you can utilize this according to your current ad structure, demographics and product or service. Flash builders are a dime-a-dozen. Utilize them to create interactive ads.

8. Web 2.0 - Utilising blogs and forums more to improve search such as www.flickr.com , www.myspace.com , www.technorati.com, www.simpy.com, and others. Also put these “public bookmarks” buttons (AddMe to Google) in your site and your articles.

9. Mobile Web - Google, Yahoo and MSN mobile are nearing and making your site accessible to all mobile web browsers is increasingly important.
Remember when Firefox and Opera came out and everything didn’t work or look right? (kinda like today on a much smaller scale). That’s all there is to becoming mobile compliant.

10. Content Relevancy - ensuring everything is neat and relevant across a site. Irrelevant links and content could be detrimental. Map your entire site in a hand-written tree and link them accordingly. Then use this to create a sitemap, and add a link to it to your homepage, and/or your navigation.

11. Constant Monitoring of Paid and Organic Analytical Information - Re-evaluation and improvements based on user stats and new industry changes.

Having an expert in this field is vital. (e.g. If you have a PPC account with a few thousand keywords that are working for you that is proving successful, great job. If you want to double the traffic whilst cutting your costs in half, then you’ll need an expert to know what these analytics mean)

12. Become a More Trusted Site – Links are great but links from trusted sites are KING. If you need to work 10 times as long writing articles, creating Charitable Ebay auctions, endorsing a football team or a fraternity, do whatever you have to do to get links such as from a .edu or .gov.

This will almost instantly boost your trust and especially your organic rankings. Other potential trust issues include GeoTrust and HackerSafe certifications or even going to a secure server.

A Word About Website Popularity - Yes, this is measured by all the search engines, and always has been. (Remember when you open your Google PPC account and it asked you about providing behaviorally statistical
information?)

Whether you use analytical and tracking tools or not, all the SE’s do. This is part of the method they used to use before the more advanced algorithms of today. Unfortunately, you can’t directly control this, but with the rest of these tips you can definitely improve it.

About the author:

Gary R. Beal has been in the Search Engine Optimization field for 10 years. He attended Ohio State University in the US and holds a Masters Degree in Biometrics and Mathematical Statistics. Gary turned his hobby into a new and successful career, playing around with Search Engines from practically day one! Working as a Freelancer in the United States, Gary came to Stickyeyes last year to “close the gap” between the US and UK in search engine optimization techniques. He has been instrumental in the development of many SEO and PPC tools as an analyst and consultant. Gary is well known in the SEO/SEM/PPC forums (a.k.a. GaryTheScubaGuy) and a Moderator at SEO Chat. He was a speaker at the most recent Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference in London, and specializes in Search, Pay Per Click, Affiliate Management and Email Marketing. He has worked for many years in lead aggregation for highly competitive industries such as Online Gaming, Banking and Finance, Insurance, Travel and Investments.

Source : http://www.publictechnology.net/

Google Custom Search Engine Gets Supplemental Results

The Google Custom Search Engine Blog announced that Google has added supplemental results to the results displayed in Google Custom Search Engines (CSE).

In addition, Google has updated the FAQs to explain that the supplemental results are shown only if one of two conditions are met:

• Your search engine includes only the patterns you specified and searches over three or fewer sites.
• Your search engine includes the whole web, giving preference to the patterns you specified.

I have confirmed spotting supplemental results in some of my Google CSEs.

Google says that this is good because now it can show you "more results" than they did before.

More information on these CSEs can be found in our Google Custom Search Engine section.

Source : http://searchengineland.com/

Finally! Google Shows us the Backlinks

If you’ve ever compared Google’s link: command to that of Yahoo or MSN, you probably know how useless it is. For some reason, at some point, some one at Google decided to filter, and only show a small selection of all links to a site. Well, that has all changed now. You can now log in to your Google Webmaster Tools account, and find a plethora of link data.

I logged in and checked it out a few minutes ago, and I must say, I’m thoroughly impressed. Links are divided into 2 groups: internal and external. If you have several links from one site, each page is listed individually. It would be nice to have the option to show only domains, and not every single page, since it can be sort of overwhelming to have to dig through hundreds of links from one site, like (http://site.com/?pid=323, http://site.com/?pid=325, http://site.com/?pid=329, etc…). They did add the ability to search for specific pages, but don’t allow you do wildcard searches. I guess the ability to export a spreadsheet of every single link sort of makes up for that though.

Here’s a link to the official announcement from Google.

Source : www.seologs.com

Free SEO Tool to Identify Google "Supplemental Results" Pages on Your Website

SEOValley Solutions Private Limited, a leading Interactive Marketing company based in India offering SEO, SEM, Linking, Web Design and SEO Product Development services and solutions today added another unique Free SEO tool to its ever growing bunch of free tools for SEOs and webmasters to easily manage their search engine promotion campaigns. This new tool as named as Google "Supplemental Results" Identifier, will list down all “supplemental result” pages on your website.

Bhopal, India, February 14, 2007 --(PR.COM)-- Google’s “Supplemental result” is driving every SEOs & webmasters crazy today. The pages in the supplemental result index of Google are not trusted much, not crawled so often and rarely rank high. If there are too many supplemental result pages on your website then it’s surely going to negatively affect your natural rankings. This tool has been created to help you determine the number of “supplemental result” pages on your website and get rid of its search engine incompatibility elements. This will make sure your website is 100% clean to achieve the desired top rankings. You can checkout this tool at

http://www.seovalley.com/seo-tools/google-supplemental-tool.htm

YouTube founders split $650 mn in Google payday

Two of YouTube's founders stand to divide shares of stock now valued at around $650 million, Web search leader Google Inc said in a regulatory filing detailing the payout from its $1.65 billion acquisition on Wednesday.

Chad Hurley, Chief Executive of the online video sharing phenomenon YouTube, received 694,087 of Google common stock worth around $326 million, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Co-founder Steve Chen received Google common stock valued at a similar amount, including 625,366 shares directly owned and another 68,721 shares held in a trust.

Sequoia Capital, the sole venture capital backer of YouTube, stands to receive around $442 million in Google shares based on the $470.01 closing price of the Web search leader on Wednesday.

Source : Expressindia.com

Watch the sunrise on Google Earth

Today, Google added a new feature to its Google earth that brings the sun's ascent right to your computer screen. You can also see video drawn from Discovery HD Theater's "Sunrise Earth" program.

To view the videos, open Google Earth and select the Sunrise Earth layer under Discovery Networks. Follow the links in the pop-up window to experience the sights and sounds of one of nature's most beautiful phenomena. Google Blog

No Cost For Index Website By Search Engines

Yes, like everyone else who venture into internet business and own websites, we want to know the best options to get website indexed as soon as possible which of course means more business. Well, allow me to share a little strategy of here, one of the fastest way is actually by writing and publishing articles and press releases, and get it distributed all over the internet.

Are you being surprised on such simplest way? Or you were expecting me to explore some long boring, and complex options? Hey, I'm not that techie, so do most of others. We are here just to earn so income, that the reason we go into business right? So let's get to the ground and examine this simple way further.

One of the best ways we can do to generate more traffics to any of our website is to obtain inbounds back links from others right? Allow me to clarify here, what we are looking for are those one way links back to our site which are of higher quality to the SE. Reciprocal links are alright still, but one fine day the search engines would be catching up on that! Don't just rely on this strategy and put your online business at potential risk.

There isn't a real value in Reciprocal links except more on "Virtual Business Trading". You see, if you could achieve hundreds if not thousands of relevant one way links channeling back to your website, you are getting best of both world! You are going to get traffics coming from the one way links channels, and also from the increased ranking or search position in SE. Would that be truly great?

Are you getting excited and rushing to get started on this strategy? Hold on first, before anything else, you have got to realize that writing, publishing and distributing articles is not just a one time work. It is in fact a continuous and recurring task. It will be part of your business strategy plan, your business marketing plan!

As with your business activities, you must practice article writing and related tasks on daily basis. Somehow you might wonder, is the time spent worth it? By sitting down and start typing, how would you gain? Well, be assured that this would be time well spent for your business! Rather than cranking your head deep down with those complex strategy and tactics, why not get yourself with this simple and effective strategy?

In fact, there are a whole bunch of article directories out there. They are in real hunger for content! If you got a well written article, I bet you that they will start to chase for you! And With RSS technology, you would be surprised if they are all set to draw contents from your sites almost instantly whenever you update a new content. In my own experience, some of my articles get published as fast as within 2 days, and it get indexed sometimes later on the same day being published. If my articles are published in well established sites, the link back will bring my website showing up in the major SE as fast as the following day due to the SE are crawling the site on daily basis!

So my dear friend, this surely beats waiting for months in doing some complex or techie thing like SE Optimization right? And if you are like me whom am totally off hand in SE Optimization things, I bet it will cost you money just to get your site optimized by some expert.But then you would be wondering, "How on earth could I submit to whole hundreds bunch of those article directories?" Of course, under normal situation, one would really have to spend thousands of hours in doing that. But there have been many great tools available on internet, there are also some kind of automated article submitting software to help make the submission task easier! Furthermore, there is also a wide selection of article distribution service available of which you could tap into their good network.

In my case, I utilize a combination of these article distribution services. Again, with ZERO advertising budgets to spend, I could only utilize their Free Service with limited distribution range. But hey buddies, I have seen my site back linking increased from about 50 to more than 500 within 2weeks! What else I could ask for more for a free service?

Now, for the second option on Press Release strategy, it is another great tool for marketer's Marketing Secret Weapons. Not only in brick and mortal traditional business, this strategy could work wonders too for online business!

Of course, just as with articles publishing and distribution, it can't be a just "One Time" work also. But, unlike article publishing strategy, you don't need to do Press Releases on daily basis. Doing it on either weekly or bi-monthly basis would be much sufficient for that kind of marketing effect. It will also go a long way in generating the traffic while getting your website indexed fast.If you combine the above 2 methods in promoting your websites, you will be able to experience much quicker indexing than other methods. In the same time it also drive traffic to your websites fast almost instantly as readers who feel interested in your articles or Press Release will click thru and reach your website.

What's next? Don't wait, get your self start in doing the above 2 simple strategy! Little to your awareness, your website might just be indexed the next day!


Source : seoarticles4u.com

Promotional Articles Increase Your Web Site Traffic

One of the most effective methods of getting targeted traffic to a site is by using promotional articles. There are several reasons why articles are effective and examining them will help us understand this subject a little better. To start with, it is useful to remember that most people come online looking for information. They are usually already aware of the fact that this information is available in web sites and they are eager to find sites that are packed with the information that they are looking for. If they find a promotional article covering the subject that they are seeking information on, they will eagerly read it and if they like what they see, they will then visit your web site. Promotional articles are therefore a great way to attract attention to yourself and your web site. Unlike traffic that directly originates from search engines, visitors who arrive at your site after having read your promotional articles will not only be highly targeted, but they will also already be prepared in that they will have a very good idea of what is available at your site. This means that they will usually be much easier to convert into paying clients. In other words much smaller number of readers arriving at your site through promotional articles will tend to be much more profitable to you than bigger numbers arriving via any other web site promotional method you can think of using. Then there is the fact that a single article can continue to pull in traffic for your web site for years to come without you having to invest any more time or money on it. For instance a good promotional article distributed to article directories, web sites and blogs will tend to remain online for years. In effect it will continue to be available to persons interested in the subject, and a good number of them will end up at your web site. This is a huge advantage. These are but a few of the many reasons why articles tend to be more profitable than many other forms of web site promotion.

About the author : Terry Detty, 42 years old, internet guru who finds internet marketing his passion. In addition to internet marketing he reads history, and occasionaly gets out for a short walk. He generally likes to have his hands occupied.

Source : seoarticles4u.com

Benefits of a Search Engine Optimization Company

Successful business professionals will tell you that the best businesses start with great marketing. This is the case with internet businesses, as well. If you are going to be successful with an Internet business, it is imperative that you make it easy to find your resource on the Internet. Having a terrific website is great, but it means absolutely nothing if people cannot find it. Imagine owning a Ferrari or a Lamborghini and having no gas to fuel it. The good news is that there is a fuel out there for your website. It comes in the form of a Search Engine Optimization Company. These incredible marketing companies can tunnel potential clients to your website and get your business off the ground in no time.

As internet search engines continue to be the primary tool used by internet users in order to find information, it will always be important for companies to have a strong search engine ranking. Given all of this information, it is only fair to conclude that the only way that your company will bring in visitors to your website and gain success is through having very searchable content. The best way to ensure that a website is "search engine ready" is to hire an SEO company to optimize your website's content. These Internet marketing agencies employ many experienced and talented individuals including copywriters who can deliver great articles and other forms of content that will be searchable in the search engines.

Instead of worrying about how and when people will find your website on the Internet, it may be best to leave it to the professionals to make sure that this happens. By hiring an SEO company, your website will be constructed with the search engines in mind. These companies understand what search engine rankings are all about and they know exactly how to bring your company's web page right to the top. In order to score a high ranking, a website must have a good amount of keywords and more importantly, those keywords must be strategically placed. Effective keyword placement is something that most website owners do not ever consider even though it is a very important factor in determining the success of a website.

While it is certainly important that these companies create top-notch content for your website, many of them also offer other marketing services. You can easily find a company that will be excited about marketing your website.In addition to optimizing your company's website for search engines, some of these companies offer link building services which can be critical to getting higher search engine rankings.Most search engines rely on link popularity and quality inbound links to help determine the importance of the website when ranking them in the search results.So be sure to choose an SEO service that includes a solid link building strategy.

Instead of leaving your company's future to chance and luck, consider hiring professionals to do the job. Not only will they take some of the stress off of you in running your business, but they will drive enough business to the website to jumpstart your venture. Don't be intimidated by the Internet and all its workings by deciding to promote your business on your own. Instead, focus on what this great resource can do for your business after you hire a search engine optimization company to help your business rise to the top.

Source : promotionworld.com

SEO - The Development of Page Ranking Algorithms

By Christopher Angus

Google, which is the gold standard for all page-ranking systems (including PageRank as it is called by the industry) was started by two Stanford University Students - Sergey Brin and Larry Page (no pun intended.) These two students (now billionaires) invented the Google algorithm now known as PageRank.
All PageRank is really is a formula, not unlike the FICO score that is used to calculate credit. Only in this case the formula takes in a lot of variabilities to see if a page is worthy of being included at the top of search engine rankings. This concept weighs a page's importance based upon the incoming links. In essence PageRank is a type of prediction, but one that can make a great deal of difference to the credibility of your business. It is the estimation of the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who is randomly surfing the web. This popularity is measured by how an individual might have followed links from one page to another. This of course makes some links more valuable then others and it is your goal as a web master to use SEO techniques to make your links valuable in terms of the PageRank system.

Another genius element of the PageRank algorithm is that it keeps link results relevant to what the person is searching for. The fact that PageRank keeps searches on the Internet accurate (for the most part anyway) has made it the most emulated and popular algorithm in use by search engines today.

Of course the Google PageRank system is not invulnerable to exploitation. There are many ways of fooling the algorithm, usually through the buying and trading of links which is known as white hat SEO. There is also black hat SEO that as mentioned before uses techniques frowned on by Google to boost a web page's rankings in the search engines.

Source : seoarticles4u.com