What is SEO Spam?

What Constitutes SEO Spam?

So, if SEO spam is so hard to define, how do you know whether what you’re doing is right or wrong?

Good question. And the answer is that you don’t always know, but there are some guidelines that you can follow that will help you stay out of the spam category. Basic, good web-design practices are your best defense. If you’re handling your web-site search marketing using the guidelines provided by the various search engines you’ll target, you should be in a position not to worry about being classified as a spammer.

Don’t do anything that makes you worry that you’re doing wrong.
It sounds like simple advice, but when you think about it, if you’re doing something on your web site that you have to worry is going to get you banned from a search engine, you probably shouldn’t do it. This includes strategies like using hidden text on your web pages, using doorway pages or cloaking your pages, and creating false link structures. Even if you don’t know that these strategies are banned by search engines, when you consider the sneakiness of the strategy, you’ll be able to tell that it’s not likely a strategy that you should use.

Don’t make your web site appear to be something that it’s not.
It’s easy to “put a spin” on something to make it appear more attractive than it really is. People do it all the time where products and services are concerned. But using that same strategy on your web site may get you banned. Creating false link structures is one way you might make your site appear more popular than it really is. The problem with using that strategy is that it won’t take a crawler long to figure out that all of those sites are interconnected.

Don’t trust someone who says that a certain practice is acceptable, if you even suspect that it’s not.
Some unethical SEO people will tell you that it’s okay if you use certain obvious spam techniques as long as you use them correctly. Wrong. Spam is spam. It doesn’t matter how you use it, the search crawler will still see it as spam and you’ll still pay the consequences, while the unethical SEO consultant will take the money and leave you in the crawler’s bad graces.

Source : Search Engine Optimization Bible by Wiley

SEO Tools for better Internet marketing

SEO Tools

There are certain SEO Tools that helps to know the number of visits, ROI (Return on Investment), bounce rate, new online customers, SERP (Search Engine Result page), etc. This helps to monitor the SEO campaign for better optimization. Below is the list of SEO tools which helps to find the complete details of the website and its promotion.

Traffic Travis : Market Research SEO and PPC optimization tool

Backlink Watch : Backlink Checker

Quantcast : Website Evaluation Tool

SEO For Firefox : Page Ranking Extension for Firefox

Goingup : Document and Image Converter

SEO Monitor : Video and Audio Format Converter

Sitemapdoc : Google Sitemap Generator and Editor

Automapit : Sitemap Creation Service

GWebCrawler & Google Sitemap Creator : Source Code Web Indexing Engine

Free Online Sitemap Generator : Online sitemap creation

Sitemapxml : XML Sitemap Generator

Brokenlinkcheck : Broken link check 

Broken Link Checker : Link broken checker

W3C Link Checker : Link Checker

Keyword Pad : Keyword List Generator

Primitive Word Counter : Keyword Density Calculator

Keyword Analyzer : Tool for keyword gathering and result estimation

Xedant Keyword Harvester : Keyword Harvest Tool

Google Keyword Tool : Free Keyword Tool

Keyword Density Analyzer : Keyword Density and Word Depth Calculator

Niche Watch : Niche Keywords Research

Google Suggest Keyword Suggestion : Keywords Suggestion Tool

Free Keyword Suggestion : Keywords vs Search Volume Estimator 

Keyword Suggestion and Keyword Popularity Tool : Keyword Suggestion along Popularity

Google Semantics : Firefox Add-on

Alexa Toolbar : Free alexa tool

Search Status : Firefox Toolbar Extension 

Meta Tags : Firefox Sidebar Add-on for SEO

Web Developer : Firefox, Flock, Seamonkey Extension

Web Tools : Ranking and related Tools

Pagerank Lookup : Page Rank Checker

Rank Tracker : Search Engine Ranking Tool

Check Google Pagerank : Positioning Estimation Tool

Google Ranking : Ranking Tool for popular Search Engines

SEO Rank Tool : Ranking and Backlink Tool

Rank Checker : Ranking Checking Tool for Firefox

Gorank : Professional SEO Ranking Tool

Alexa Site Information : Website Monitoring Tools

Sitemeter : Real Time Reporting Tool

Traffic Estimator : Google Traffic Estimation Tool

Social Poster : Social Bookmarking Tool

Google Analytics : website traffic

Social Maker : Social Bookmarking and Promotion Tool

Website Optimizer : Website Testing and Optimization Tool

Web Page Analyzer : Website speed Test

Copyscape : Website dupicate content checker

Search Engine Spider Simulator : Spider Simulation Tool

Web Page Analyser : Web Page Analyser gives a report on the good, and the bad points of the page in SEO terms

Builtwith : Website Optimizer

Xml Sitemaps : Sitemap Generator

How to Handle Google Penguin Algorithm Change

Google Penguin Algorithm Change 

Google Penguin: Putting Link Abusers On Ice

What it is: First announced on April 24, 2012, the Penguin update was "huge," Meyers says. Unlike previous algorithm updates, he adds, Penguin was more punitive, as opposed to simply being designed to improve search quality.

Google named its new algorithm Penguin. Initially, it affected about 3.1 percent of English-language search queries, according to Search Engine Land. Penguin sought to decrease rankings for websites that engaged in dubious link exchanges, unnatural links, relied on too many of the same anchor text links and so on. (Anchor text links are hyperlinks that contain a targeted keyword phrase.) 
 
Google's goal: With Penguin, Google is cracking down on a common black hat SEO practice: abusing links to gain search engine rankings. If you paid for links from lots of dubious, low-quality link directories, link exchanges and other sites, you may have felt the Penguin slap. 

What you should do: Penguin has already been updated twice and is likely to updated again soon, Meyers says. As a result, it's more important than ever to have link quality and diversity. Earn "natural" links from a variety of other quality sites because you've posted compelling, useful content. 

News: Google Begins Penalizing Search "Over-Optimization"News: Copyright Removal Requests to Affect Google Search Ranking

Don't focus on getting links from other sites using identical anchor text. "Look at where your links are coming from using Google Webmaster tools and what the anchor text links are," says Ting-Yu Liu, Covario's manager of paid media services. "Try to have at least 60 percent keyword diversification. If you have 80 percent of external sites linking to you with the same anchor text, that's a problem."

Read more: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/3409655/how-deal-with-panda-penguin-other-google-algorithm-changes

How to Handle Google Panda Algorithm Change?

Google Panda: Putting Content Farms Out to Pasture

What it is: In February 2011, Google rolled out a major new algorithm. It was called "Farmer" because it was targeted at demoting high-volume content farms in Google search results. The update eventually became known as Panda, a reference to the name of Google engineer Navneet Panda. Since February 2011, Google Panda has been updated 20 times, Meyers says.

The initial Panda update reportedly affected the rankings of nearly 12 percent of all search results, according to the Search Engine Land blog.

Google's goal: Panda was designed to push down sites that are overly optimized, offer "thin" content and/or operate as content farms, explains Michael Martin, SEO manager at Covario, a global search marketing agency. (A content farm produces large amounts of content specifically to attract traffic from search engines and use those page views to generate easy advertising revenues.)

Meyers gives as an example a pest control service, operating nationwide, which may have created a specific Web page for every U.S. city in which it operates. The content on those pages is nearly identical except for the different geographic locations. With Panda, Google's search technology is better able to identify nearly duplicate content like that, recognize that those pages offer no real value to its users and push that content way down in search result rankings.

What you should do: Don't create content simply based on keyword optimization or post thousands of pages with nearly duplicate content. If you do, Google is likely to push down your entire site in its rankings, Meyers advises. Instead, make sure your site's content is as unique as possible and that it adds reader value. Ask yourself: "What does my content do for people who find it?" Does it help them, educate them or engage them in some way?

News: Google to Punish Sites with Many Ads At the Top of Pages
Sometimes, duplicate content is part of what a company legitimately offers. A large publishing company, for instance, may publish the same article on multiple sites it owns. In those cases, to avoid a Google penalty, publishers should properly identify the parent content and make sure others use rel=canonical to point back to the original content, Martin says. (You can learn more at the Google Webmaster Tools' rel=canonical tutorial.)

Read more: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/internet/3409655/how-deal-with-panda-penguin-other-google-algorithm-changes/#ixzz2BcswTJpj

Types of Pay Per Click Marketing Campaigns

Types of Pay Per Click Programs

Pay-per-click programs are not all created equal. When you think of PPC programs, you probably think of keyword marketing bidding on a keyword to determine where your site will be placed in search results. And that’s an accurate description of PPC marketing programs as they apply to keywords. However, there are two other types of PPC programs, as well. And you may find that targeting a different category of PPC marketing is more effective than simply targeting keyword PPC programs.

Keyword pay-per-click programs:

Keyword PPC programs are the most common type of PPC programs. They are also the type this book focuses on most often. As known, keyword PPC programs are about bidding on keywords associated with your site. The amount that you’re willing to bid determines the placement of your site in search engine results.
In keyword PPC, the keywords used can be any word or phrase that might apply to your site. However, remember that some of the most common keywords have the highest competition for top spot, so it’s not always advisable to assume that the broadest term is the best one. If you’re in a specialized type of business, a broader term might be more effective, but as a rule of thumb, the more narrowly focused your keywords are, the better results you are likely to have with them.

Search PPC marketing programs such as those offered by vendors like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Search Marketing, and MSN.com are some of the most well-known PPC programs.

Product pay-per-click programs

You can think of product pay-per-click programs as online comparison shopping engines or price comparison engines. A product PPC program focuses specifically on products, so you bid on placement for your product advertisements.

The requirements for using a product PPC program are a little different from keyword PPC programs, however. With a product PPC, you must provide a feed, think of it as a regularly updated pricelist for your products, to the search engine. Then, when users search for a product your links are given prominence, depending on the amount you have bid for placement. However, users can freely display those product listings returned by the search engine in the order or price from lowest to highest if that is their preference. This means that your product may get good placement initially, but if it’s not the lowest-priced product in that category, it’s not guaranteed that your placement results will stay in front of potential visitors.

Some of these product PPC programs include Shopping.com, NexTag, Pricegrabber.com, and Shopzilla.com.

Service pay-per-click programs

When users search for a service of any type, such as travel reservations, they are likely to use search engines related specifically to that type of service. For example, a user searching for the best price for hotel reservations in Orlando, Florida, might go to TripAdvisor.com. Advertisers, in this case hotel chains, can choose to pay for their rank in the search results using a service PPC program.

Service PPC programs are similar to product PPC programs with the only difference being the type of product or service that is offered. Product PPC programs are more focused on e-commerce products, whereas service PPC programs are focused on businesses that have a specific service to offer.

Service PPC programs also require an RSS feed, and even some of the same attribute listings as product PPC programs. Some of the service PPC programs you might be familiar with are SideStep.com and TripAdvisor.com.

Source : Search Engine Optimization Bible by Wiley

How Pay Per Click Works

What is Pay Per Click?

Pay-per-click marketing is an advertising method that allows you to buy search engine placement by bidding on keywords or phrases. There are two different types of PPC marketing.

In the first, you pay a fee for an actual SERP ranking, and in some cases, you also pay a per-click fee meaning that the more you pay, the higher in the returned results your page will rank.

The second type is more along true advertising lines. This type of PPC marketing involves bidding on keywords or phrases that appear in, or are associated with, text advertisements. Google is probably the most notable provider of this service. Google’s AdWords service is an excellent example of how PPC advertisements work

PPC advertisements are those advertisements that you see at the top and on the sides of search pages.

Putting pay-per-click to work:

Now you can begin to look at the different keywords on which you might bid. Before you do, however, you need to look at a few more things. One of the top mistakes made with PPC programs is that users don’t take the time to clarify what it is they hope to gain from using a PPC service. It’s not enough for your PPC program just to have a goal of increasing your ROI (return on investment). You need something more quantifiable than just the desire to increase profit. How much would you like to increase your profit? How many visitors will it take to reach the desired increase?

Let’s say that right now each visit to your site is worth $.50, using our simplified example, and your average monthly profit is $5,000. That means that your site receives 10,000 visits per month. Now you need to decide how much you’d like to increase your profit. For this example, let’s say that you want to increase it to $7,500. To do that, if each visitor is worth $.50, you would need to increase the number of visits to your site to 15,000 per month. So, the goal for your PPC program should be “To increase profit $2,500 by driving an additional 5,000 visits per month.” This gives you a concrete, quantifiable measurement by which you can track your PPC campaigns.

Once you know what you want to spend, and what your goals are, you can begin to look at the different types of PPC programs that might work for you. Although keywords are the main PPC element associated with PPC marketing, there are other types of PPC programs to consider as well.

Source : Search Engine Optimization Bible By Wiley

How to do Competitive Analysis in SEO

Competitive Analysis:

Competitive analysis is a step you should take in the very beginning of your SEO efforts. It should be right at the top of your to-do list, along with keyword analysis and tagging your web site. In fact, you should probably do a competitive analysis even before you begin tagging your site.

But did you know that your competitive analysis doesn’t end there? Like analyzing your web statistics, conversions, and other elements of your web site, your competitive analysis should be ongoing. Your competitors will change. They’ll learn how to reach a search engine better. They may even change their customer approach just enough to always stay ahead of you. They’ll keep you guessing, and the only way to figure out what they’re doing that you’re not is to spend the time it takes to analyze what they’re doing.

As you’re going through this analysis process, the first thing to keep in mind is that you’re not checking out only your direct competitors. You need to look at those competitors who are ahead of you in search rankings, even if their offerings are different from yours.

Plan to spend a few hours a week on this analysis. You should look at all the sites that are ahead of you, but specifically those sites that rank in the top five to ten position in the SERPs. Look for the same indications that you examined during your original competitive analysis. These include:

Site rankings: Where in the SERPs is the site ranked? Make note, especially, of the top three to five sites.

Page saturation: How many of the competition’s pages are indexed? Not every page on a site will be indexed, but if your competition has more or fewer pages ranked, there may be a factor you haven’t taken into consideration about how to include or exclude your site pages.

Page titles: Are page titles consistent? And what keywords do they contain, if any at all? How your competition uses titles can give you an indication of what you’re doing right or wrong with your own.

Meta data: What meta data is your competition including? How is it worded? And how does it differ from your own? Remember that you can access the source code of a web site by selecting Source from the View menu of your web browser.

Site design: How is the competition’s web site designed? Site architecture and the technology that is used to design and present the site are factors in how your site ranks. Learn what the competition is doing and how that differs from what you’re doing.

A robots.txt file: The robots.txt file is accessible to you, and looking at it could give you some valuable insight to how your competition values and works with search engines.

Content quality and quantity: How much quality is included on your competitor’s site and is it all original, or is it re-used from some other forum? If a site is ahead of you in search rankings, its content is probably performing better than yours. Analyze it and find out why.

Link quality and quantity: Your competitors’ linking strategies could hold a clue about why they rank well. Look at the link structure. If they’re using legitimate linking strategies, what are they? If they’re not, don’t try to follow suit. Their actions will catch up with them soon enough.

Source : Search Engine Optimization Bible by Wiley