SiteProNews |
- How To Protect Your Search Engine Rankings
- Keep on top of your website maintenance
- Secret Copywriting Trick Makes People Buy with Eyes Closed
| How To Protect Your Search Engine Rankings Posted: 15 Jun 2009 12:22 AM PDT
The good news is that search engines have figured this out, and are now on guard for “spam” pages and sites that have increased their rankings by artificial methods. When a search engines tracks down such a site, that site is demoted in ranking or completely removed from the search engine’s index. The bad news is that some high quality, completely above-board sites are being mistaken for these web page criminals. Your page may be in danger of being caught up in the “spam” net and tossed from a search engine’s index, even though you have done nothing to deserve such harsh treatment. But there are things you can do—and things you should be sure NOT to do—which will prevent this kind of misperception. Link popularity is mostly based on the quality of sites you are linked to. Google pioneered this criteria for assigning website ranking, and virtually all search engines on the Internet now use it. There are legitimate ways to go about increasing your link popularity, but at the same time, you must be scrupulously careful about which sites you choose to link to. Google frequently imposes penalties on sites that have linked to other sites solely for the purpose of artificially boosting their link popularity. They have actually labeled these links “bad neighborhoods.” You can raise a toast to the fact that you cannot be penalized when a bad neighborhood links to your site; penalty happens only when you are the one sending out the link to a bad neighborhood. But you must check and double-check all the links that are active on your links page to make sure you haven’t linked to a bad neighborhood. The first thing to check out is whether or not the pages you have linked to have been penalized. The most direct way to do this is to download the Google toolbar. You will then see that most pages are given a “PageRank” which is represented by a sliding green scale on the Google toolbar. Do not link to any site that shows no green at all on the scale. This is especially important when the scale is completely gray. It is more than likely that these pages have been penalized. If you are linked to these pages, you may catch their penalty, and like the flu, it may be difficult to recover from the infection. There is no need to be afraid of linking to sites whose scale shows only a tiny sliver of green on their scale. These sites have not been penalized, and their links may grow in value and popularity. However, do make sure that you closely monitor these kind of links to ascertain that at some point they do not sustain a penalty once you have linked up to them from your links page. Another evil trick that illicit webmasters use to artificially boost their link popularity is the use of hidden text. Search engines usually use the words on web pages as a factor in forming their rankings, which means that if the text on your page contains your keywords, you have more of an opportunity to increase your search engine ranking than a page that does not contain text inclusive of keywords. Some webmasters have gotten around this formula by hiding their keywords in such a way so that they are invisible to any visitors to their site. For example, they have used the keywords but made them the same color as the background color of the page, such as a plethora of white keywords on a white background. You cannot see these words with the human eye—but the eye of search engine spider can spot them easily! A spider is the program search engines use to index web pages, and when it sees these invisible words, it goes back and boosts that page’s link ranking. Webmasters may be brilliant and sometimes devious, but search engines have figured these tricks out. As soon as a search engine perceive the use of hidden text—splat! The page is penalized. The downside of this is that sometimes the spider is a bit overzealous and will penalize a page by mistake. For example, if the background color of your page is gray, and you have placed gray text inside a black box, the spider will only take note of the gray text and assume you are employing hidden text. To avoid any risk of false penalty, simply direct your webmaster not to assign the same color to text as the background color of the page ever! Another potential problem that can result in a penalty is called “keyword stuffing”. It is important to have your keywords appear in the text on your page, but sometimes you can go a little overboard in your enthusiasm to please those spiders. A search engine uses what is called “Keyword Density” to determine if a site is trying to artificially boost their ranking. This is the ratio of keywords to the rest of the words on the page. Search engines assign a limit to the number of times you can use a keyword before it decides you have overdone it and penalizes your site. This ratio is quite high, so it is difficult to surpass without sounding as if you are stuttering—unless your keyword is part of your company name. If this is the case, it is easy for keyword density to soar. So, if your keyword is “renters insurance,” be sure you don’t use this phrase in every sentence. Carefully edit the text on your site so that the copy flows naturally and the keyword is not repeated incessantly. A good rule of thumb is your keyword should never appear in more than half the sentences on the page. The final potential risk factor is known as “cloaking”. To those of you who are diligent Trekkies, this concept should be easy to understand. For the rest of you, cloaking is when the server directs a visitor to one page and a search engine spider to a different page. The page the spider sees is “cloaked” because it is invisible to regular traffic, and deliberately set-up to raise the site’s search engine ranking. A cloaked page tries to feed the spider everything it needs to rocket that page’s ranking to the top of the list. It is natural that search engines have responded to this act of deception with extreme enmity, imposing steep penalties on these sites. The problem on your end is that sometimes pages are cloaked for legitimate reasons, such as prevention against the theft of code, often referred to as “pagejacking”. This kind of shielding is unnecessary these days due to the use of off-page elements, such as link popularity, that cannot be stolen. To be on the safe side, be sure that your webmaster is aware that absolutely no cloaking is acceptable. Make sure the webmaster understands that cloaking of any kind will put your website at great risk. Just as you must be diligent in increasing your link popularity and your ranking, you must be equally diligent to avoid being unfairly penalized. So be sure to monitor your site closely and avoid any appearance of artificially boosting your rankings. Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources How To Protect Your Search Engine Rankings      |
| Keep on top of your website maintenance Posted: 15 Jun 2009 12:18 AM PDT You’ve probably tried many times in the past to visit a website only to find that it is no longer there, filled with broken links or that the information contained is well out of date. Just like you’d put in the effort to keep your home or your business in good condition, you should practice website maintenance to ensure that your visitors see a working site with updated content. A website which is neglected will begin to show wear and tear. Visitors will simply go elsewhere if they see your site filled with out of date content and links which no longer work. You’ll need to ensure regular website updates to keep the content fresh and ensure that everything is working properly. Many businesses fail to place the proper emphasis on website maintenance - which is a big mistake. To many consumers, your website is the point of contact for your business and your products and services. Suppose you had a brick and mortar storefront; you wouldn’t still be advertising a Christmas sale in May in your shop window, would you? Visitors will think your website has been abandoned and they will go to your competitors - hardly the result you want from your site. Keep your content fresh You’ll get a higher search engine ranking if you keep your content regularly updated, meaning more visitors will find and visit your site. Google, Yahoo and other search engines keep an eye out for updated content, so the more often you add new and relevant content, the higher your search engine ranking will be and the better you’ll be able to establish a reputation as an authoritative source of information in your field. When you maintain a website by adding new content regularly, you’ll keep visitors coming back to see what you’ve added. This will build interest in your business and raise your profile online. You can use a blog or a news page to attract and retain the interest of consumers. Whenever you have new information to add that may be of interest to your visitors, get it up there on your site! You can also keep your visitors engaged by offering a newsletter or an RSS feed for updates. To keep your site fresh: Maintain up-to-date information on services, products and pricing; add photos, graphics and other multimedia content to the site regularly; feature a blog, articles and other new content regularly; send out announcements via email (or an RSS feed) about any company-related news. Check all of your links regularly There are few things which are more annoying than broken links. Broken links are those that point to a website or other resource which is no longer there or has been moved. You can either check your links yourself or hire someone to perform this service for you. Make sure to remove or update any broken links that you find. If you remove any pages from your site, check if these pages are linked to by other sites and let them know that these links will no longer work (if possible, provide an updated link to these other sites). When you add or remove pages, make sure to update your site map so that the search engines can update this information as quickly as possible. Your website will grow and change over time as your business grows. Website maintenance is an essential part of this business growth; your website will keep doing its job of attracting customers and driving sales as long as it is properly maintained. Andrew Plimmer is CEO of Suncoast Internet, Sunshine Coast web design, web development and search engine optimisation specialists. For a free consultation on web design and SEO at Suncoast Internet go to => http://www.suncoastinternet.com.au/ Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Keep on top of your website maintenance    |
| Secret Copywriting Trick Makes People Buy with Eyes Closed Posted: 15 Jun 2009 12:12 AM PDT “I’ve tried it all Dan. But after sending traffic to it (his sales copy), my response rates are still poor!” one of my mentoring clients told me on the phone. “You’ve tried it ALL?” I asked. “Yes.” “And what do you mean by that?” “From using proven swipe files for my headlines, using powerful benefit bullets to telling a compelling story - everything Dan!” When he finished saying this, I understood where exactly he had gone wrong. “You see, here’s exactly where you’ve gone wrong,” I told him. “What you’re focusing here is how you can SELL better with your copy.” “You mean… we’re not supposed to sell with our sales copy?” he retorted in a confused tone. “It’s the mindset! If you only focus on SELLING, that’s where a lot of things can go wrong. The fact is, people don’t like to be sold to. But they always love to BUY. When you focus too much on how to sell, you may come off boring, uninteresting, confusing. Maybe your end copy might sound compelling to you as the salesman, but it might sound irrelevant to your consumers. So no matter how hard you sell, your response rates and profits will always have a low ceiling.” “Wow, I never thought of it in this way… I thought all we need to write profitable sales copy is just be a skilled wordsmith,” he said. “Far from it. The mindset where you’re writing from is much more important. Put in your prospects’ perspective - what you need to do is give them OFFERS they can’t refuse. Earn their trust, their respect, their sale. Don’t try to make it, earn it. If you do this well, you’ll never have problems getting rich.” How to Write Friendly Rich Copy “All things being equal, people want to do business with their friends.” “All things being not so equal, people STILL want to do business with their friends.” But how do we implement this into writing sales copy? Here’s our following conversation: “But Dan, do you have any specific tips on how I can implement this with my sales copy?” he asked. “Sure. Here’s an easy way to do it: First, ask yourself how you’d perceive an ideal friend to be. Is he friendly? Does he has credibility in your eyes? When he says something, can you trust him? Now when he recommends something to you, what is his tone? How does he talk? Those are a few of the questions you can ask yourself. Whatever trait you think can compel you to BUY from him - without him having to ask for it, write it down. Because write your sales copy with them in mind and you’ll have what I call, a friendly copy.” “That’s powerful Dan! But will writing sales copy in this manner make much profits at all?” he continued. “Good gracious YES. It still comes back to the art of salesmanship-in-print. Sure you’d want to create rapport and sound friendly on your sales copy. But in the end, you still have to write from your prospects’ perspective. Remember the THREE major response rate killers. Boredom. Confusion. Disbelief. Find out how you can craft friendly copy with these response rate killers in mind. You’ll have a FORTUNE maker before you know it.” A former college dropout, Dan Lok transformed himself from a grocery bagger in a local supermarket to a multi-millionaire. Dan came to North America with little knowledge of the English language and few contacts. Today, Dan is one of the most sought-after business mentors on the Web, as well as a best-selling author. If you enjoy this article, you’ll love Dan’s info-packed website: http://www.websiteconversionexpert.com Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources Secret Copywriting Trick Makes People Buy with Eyes Closed    |
Your website’s ranking on search engines is a vital element of your overall marketing campaign, and there are ways to improve your link popularity through legitimate methods. Unfortunately, the Internet is populated by bands of dishonest webmasters seeking to improve their link popularity by faking out search engines.| You are subscribed to email updates from SiteProNews Recent Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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