• First of all, make sure you like this. Working with Search Engines might be monotonous and boring some time, and it’s a domain where you have to research and read a lot, all these while sitting in front of a computer .
• Read the rules. Learn what you are allowed to do and what not, by reading search engines’ TOS pages. You can find these for Google here: http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS and for yahoo here: http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/ .
• Learn all you can about the factors influencing ranking and search engine positioning. There are quite a lot of them, so I’ll recommend you to read everything in here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors .
• Research a lot, read as many authorities in this field as you can and try to keep up with everything changing or new in this domain .
• Practice a lot. All the SEO rules can be read and learnt in just a couple of days. Everyone can do this, but the thing that makes the difference between a newbie and a specialist is practice. You should build sites, create content, try to rank these sites, try to build links, use virals, social media, forums, use paid search, use everything you can.
• Don’t try to fool the search engines by using non-ethical tactics that might not be accepted with the TOSs. In the end, the one fooled you’ll be you, you’ll get your site declassified or banned and you’ll loose all the hard work done before. Remember, only ethic tactics can give you the long range results you need .
• Don’t be afraid to fail. Failing is part of the learning process, and most of the time, you’ll only learn things "the hard way" .
• Try not to focus on SEO alone. Learn a bit of everything, while focusing on one domain. A little bit of email marketing, coding, graphic designing, copywriting, all these might come in handy sometime.

That’s about it. Of course, lots of other things could be added here, and if you do have something to add, please do. In the mean time, I’ll leave you with a couple of great SE knowledge databases, just a few of the ones you should have in your reader if you plan to become a successful SEO developer:

• http://www.seomoz.com
• http://www.seobook.com
• http://searchengineland.com
• http://blog.searchenginewatch.com

Image source: here

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might like

What does sandbox mean?

You can consider Google’s sandbox as an extended probation period for your site. A period given to you to prove you’re worthy. Basically, the sandbox is a penalty or devaluation in the Google SERPs of new sites. Most of the time this devaluation will effect only the competitive keywords targeted, as other long tails searches would do just fine and receive high SERPs positions.

Of course, with proper techniques, there are possibilities to avoid or fastly elude Google’s Sandbox, as you will see down below.

How do i know if my site has been sandboxed?

You can always use these kinds of tools: Sandbox check tool.

 Or you can go the safer old fashioned way and try some of the following tips:

• are you ranked 1-10 in Yahoo and MSN for a "keywords" search but you’re nowhere in Google?
• are you ranked in among the first results for a 8-10 keywords matching exactly a posts title? (try this for several pages, but make sure those pages are indexed)
• do you rank well for wider non-competitive terms?
• is your site ranking well for a long tail keyword but is way further in SERPs for the same allinachor keyword?

If the answer to all the questions above is yes, then you are facing a "sandbox" problem. You’ll see further down what you have to do in this case.

Can I avoid the Sandbox?

Definitely. Before placing it in the Sandbox, Google gives every new site the initial SERPs boost. If during this short period you manage to "gain Google’s trust" by providing quality and unique content and acquiring a decent number of natural links from other sites, including authorities, you might just skip the probation period. Of course there’s nothing sure here, cause after all we’re talking about Google… But this site for example has never experienced Sandbox, as one of its first articles gained lots of exposure and natural links.

Of course, the best method for avoiding sandbox is to buy an older site (could be expensive though). This will also bring the "age bonus factor" into equation, proving to be useful later on, as we know how much weight does Google put on age in his ranking algorithm.

 My site is in the Sandbox. How can i get out? Help!

 First of all, there’s no need to panic. This "sandbox problem" sounds worse then it is. With a little bit of work and a decent amount of patience, most of the sites will get over it. So, let’s see what every site owner should do once he is sure his site is affected by a devaluation:

• build quality and most importantly, unique content. Give each page an unique title and description (Meta tags of course). Also, each post should have 250 characters (that’s just my opinion) of unique content at a minimum.
• get more trusted links. I would not recommend on site wide links (also there are others claiming otherwise), but links inside the content for old and established sites, preferably authorities from your domain.
• build links slowly (no more than 10 each week)
• only add links that can be considered fully natural. That does not mean directories (except DMOZ or Yahoo Directory) links could be bad, but they will surely be less reputable and trustful than others
• don’t get only links pointing towards your home page but also deep links. This helps your site seem less "hollow". After all, if we’re talking about natural links, it’s more then normal that other sites would link to the posts they like rather than your home page, no?
• don’t panic and don’t use Black or Grey methods. Anything from spamming to buying links (except buying links inside posts, that would appear to be 100% natural, which are recommended) should be out of the question.

 All these methods are just theories gathered from the community. In most cases, sticking to them should get you out of the sandbox, but there’s nothing 100% sure. Anyway, the only real escape from the Sandbox is time. Depending on the competitiveness of your most important keywords, that time can vary from one to six months, with three to four months being the normal duration. In the meantime, continue to improve your site, and be prepared to make a rapid rise once the Sandbox probation ends, cause if you’ve spent the probation period doing the right things, you will…

But i still need traffic!

Most of you won’t settle to working on the site without seeing any traffic during the "sandboxed" months. But don’t worry, there are lots of other ways to get traffic besides Google. Afterall, it’s not safe for any site to rely on only one source of visitors, especially when that source is as unreliable as Google… Anyway, here are the other traffic sources you should take into consideration:

• Yahoo and MSN. Even though Google is the dominant search engine, Yahoo and MSN together hold a good amount of traffic (around 50% of Google’s share).  So,  they could be a great alternative to Google.  Trying to rank  well in Yahoo and MSN might not be that hard, as their algorithms are not as advanced as Google’s is. Generally, any site with decent links and good On page SEO should do OK here.
• linkbaits, viral promotion and social marketing are great ways of generating exposure. It’s true, the visitors will not be as targeted as the ones coming from search engines, but they compensate by numbers. Knowing how to write a proper link bait post and how to promote it is a must, as these methods could hurry your "sandbox exit", by attracting lots of links from related sites.
• PPC: if you’re looking for targeted visitors and money are not a problem, you could buy some traffic. Google’s Adwords is some of the best way to do it, but Yahoo and MSN provide their own similar services. It’s just up to you

In the end, the conclusion is pretty simple: Google’s Sandbox in not a myth as some members of the SEO community might claim but it’s not that big bad guy either. All in all, with patience and hard work, everything will end up just great in the end. So remember, when we’re talking about eluding "Google’s Sandbox", time is everything.

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• SEO vs PPC. The pros and cons
• How to rank number 1 in SERPs in simple steps
• Yahoo is better than Google
• Google slaps affiliates and advertisers
• Being a SEO developer is not cheap

So, how can you distinguish the good SEO companies from the fake ones? Well, first of all, learn not to believe in any of the following stories, that the guys from Hobo-Web put together a couple of days ago. I’ll show you only some of the "best" replicas:

• We cannot show you results for clients as it is 100% confidential - so i guess i should take your word for it, ay mate?
• We KNOW how Google works – well, that surely make you unique. Cause i don’t and i don’t think anyone does, not even Matt Cuts… But hey, that’s just my opinion. You’re the big SEO Expert, you know better…
• Toolbar Page Rank Is Everything – Of course it is. And pigs fly. Oh no, wait, they don’t… That means there’s something wrong with your logic? Ironicaly, the PR myth is so deep-rooted. 90% of my clients ask me about it and demand a PR5+ for their site…
• Submit To 75,000 Search Engines - Since Google, Yahoo and MSN have like 95% of the worldwide market, and you don’t even have to submit your site on them, what are all the other 74997 search engine submission worth?
• We don’t rank for any “seo” terms because we don’t want to – or perhaps because you don’t know how to? Hmmm…

Anyway, clients like to see high figures, so you can’t really blame companies for giving them what they want, can you? But in the end, how can you be sure you won’t be duped when looking for the services of a SEO company? Well’ you can’t, but the risks should be minimal if you take these advices into consideration:

• never sign a company that guarantees you results over night. Because we’re talking about a logical and longtime process that can’t happen over night, and which can’t always have the desired results
• don’t fall for the big numbers: 50.000 search engines, 10.000 first positions in SERPs, thousands of visitors everyday, etc etc
• try to work with companies/people recommended by your friends (or by many others on forums, groups, etc)
• ask for previous work references
• make sure you know what you are asking for and what are you expecting to obtain from a SEO company

That should be it. Now I’m going back to those Guides i told you in the beginning. If you have other tips and advices, feel free to leave them by.

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• Focusing a domain on a misspelled high traffic keyword
• SEO vs PPC. The pros and cons
• I don’t really get Alexa ranking
• How to avoid and elude Google’s Sandbox
• Being a SEO developer is not cheap

How come? Well, you’ll see. These $3000 dollars are going to be spent just for the basic program licenses and memberships every SEO developer must have. Now let’s see how are these money going to be spent.

Advances Web Ranking – $399

This is a program good at one thing and only one: check rankings and return results.  No page critics, no forums or blog links, only ranking. Has lots of complex functions but strikes the user with it’s simplicity, being one of the best SEO applications a beginner can use.

Like other programs, this one has a huge list of engines in which to search data, but unlike other programs, this one has a filter. If you want to check your Google rank simply type Google in the filters box. If you want to see the UK engines, type UK. And so on. Your projects’ progress in time and various graphs and statistics can be saved and looked upon with just a couple of clicks.

Advances Web Ranking Enterprise Edition usually costs around $399, but as i checked the site today, you can get a $100 discount if you buy it til the end of January. Payments can be made via Paypal (my favourite) or VISA/MasterCard card

WEB CEO Professional – $389

I’ve been using WEB CEO for more than 5 years and i must say this one is the program i like the best. perhaps because it has became so familiar to me. Anyway, WEB CEO is a software package of around the main tools that help you promote, analyze and understand the traffic of your sites. Some of the best features include:

• Keyword research tool: up to 1000 keyword phrases (with daily search count) per search query
• Search engine optimization tool: analyzes your web page and compares important ranking elements with top 10 ranked pages in major search engines, to find out how to improve your rankings.
• Check your rankings: a huge time saver for search engine specialists and Website owners who need relevant data.
• Link checker: quickly and easily check who’s linking to you, who’s linked to your competitors, and much more.
• Always know the status of your site: real time monitoring of your sites (and you can be emailed or telephoned when something goes wrong).

All these can be yours for $389, payable via Visa card. You do get a 30 days money back guaranteed option in case you don;t like the program and its features, but i doubt that could happen.

WordTracker – $329

If you’re into SEO and not using keyword research tools like this one and Nichebot… well, perhaps you shouldn’t have been here

Wordtracker was the first and still is the best keyword research tool available. It offers a massive 300 million keywords database from which you can find out what your target audience are entering into search engines and how many times each keyword has been entered.

There’s a Free Trial version of Wordtracker that can be used to see just how useful this program is. But the vast number of limitations will make you press that buy button pretty soon. Cause you’ll get :

• When you type in your main keyword phrase, the paid version brings back 300 words in the left hand column – all related to your main phrase and each one can be clicked on to bring up a list of up to 500 related words in the right hand column.
• Keyword basket can hold 5000 keyword phrases compared to only 30 in the trial.
• Paid version can give you common misspellings of words. This is superb for PPC campaigns where you want cheap clicks.
• Paid version allows you to search for competition in all major search engines, the trial version only works on Altavista
• Paid version allows you to set up multiple projects that you can work on at the same time. 

Should we say more? This are surelly the best spent $329 you’ll get rid off this year.

NicheBot – $230 ($19 a month)

Nichebot is a cheaper keyword analysis tool that brings together some (but not all) of the data offered by Wordtracker and coraborate it with data from Overture and Google. NicheBOT allows users the ability to create an account to save their keyword searches (called Keyword Basket). This could be handy but it lacks a lot of functionality that would make it a true asset. So all in all, NicheBot can be a pretty good tool if you’d like another keywordd research tool besides Wordtracker.

Seomoz Premium Membership – $399

I’m sure most of you read the top quality materials posted by Rand and Vanessa on Seomoz. You ned an ordinary account for that, but they also offer some premium content and tools for $399 each year. You get access to unique industry guides, tools, tips, tricks, answers, videos and exclusive events. These features and tools make it easier to understand the inner workings of web sites, search engines and other forms of Online marketing that Webmasters constantly use within their business advertising and branding strategies.

SEOBook  – $79 (lifetime)

If you’re not sure what this SEO Book, perhaps you should take a look at this review. For those of you who know, Aaroon Wall’s book takes you in a journey through SEO and SEM strategies, being a perfect guide for newbies but a good reading material for experimented developers too.

Here are some of the most important chapters on the book:

• A brief history of Search Engine Optimization and the Web.
• How to choose a domain name that can help you rank high for your selected keywords.
• How to design your site from a search engine perspective.
• How to optimize the individual pages of your site.
• Why is the anchor text on incoming links important.
• How good usability can help your site.
• How pay per click works.

Also, as a great plus, SEO Book comes with free updates for life.   And since search engine optimization is such a dynamic field, where the rules change every day, it is reassuring to be able to buy an informational product that will always be kept current by one of the most renown experts on the field.

SEO Book also comes with a personalized free 15 minute consultation with Aaron.

BlackHatForums – $1000

I’m sure most of you won’t agree with me here, as $1000 an year spent for a Black hat Forum membership might seem like fool spent money. But, you should take into consideration sometimes Black is the new White, and great results (from the financial point fo view) can be obtained through those methods known only be very few people. And since most good Black Hat communities work behind closed doors, you’ll find some great knowledge in here. I so agree though $1000 is a little expensive so buy this only if you want to use what you’ll learn here.

That being said, you see we’re getting pretty close to the $3000 margin. And we only have a bunch of programs and memeberships. But all of them are a must have for a good SEO developper. Don;t you think so?

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• SEO vs PPC. The pros and cons
• How to avoid and elude Google’s Sandbox
• How to rank number 1 in SERPs in simple steps
• I’m a SEO Professional!
• Focusing a domain on a misspelled high traffic keyword

So here’s what you should know about links if you plan to rank number 1 in SERPs for decent searches

1. Gather links for your pages from relevant sites
2. Link buying is a very good solution to gather quality links as long as you know how to do it
3. Don’t buy site wide links. And don’t sell them either
4. Look for links inside relevant posts to the subject you’re trying to promote. Anchors and relevancy are more important than PR for a back link. So don’t look for high PR links, as they might be very expensive and not necessary worth it.
5. Make links look natural. Use different link anchors and promote not only your main page, but your deep pages too.
6. Don’t do reciprocal link exchanges, go for 3-way exchanges instead
7. Link to the authorities in your niche. Beside the SEO factor, this might get them to notice you.
8. Try to control the number of outbound links on a page. That does not mean you should be afraid to link to helpful and relevant content if you think it would help your readers.
9. Don’t use all the link schemes you can read about on the Internet. Offers like: "Get 5000000 back links for 50$" are almost 100% bullsh@t and they might end up harming your sites a lot.
10. Remember. Link buying is in most cases the fastest way to improve your site’s link popularity. But it is also the fastest way to get your ass penalized or even banned. So be careful and mind your every step… It’s not that hard but if you’re not sure of what you should do, perhaps it might be better to pay a specialist to do it for you.

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• How to avoid and elude Google’s Sandbox
• SEO vs PPC. The pros and cons
• Google slaps affiliates and advertisers
• Being a SEO developer is not cheap
• Search engine optimization tips – links and link structure

There are lots of pages on a site that should not get into SERPs. Why? For many reasons: duplicate content, uninteresting content, very low chances of ranking well etc.  So, what should you do with all these pages? Prevent crawling bots to get to them. By using robots.txt or the noindex meta tag.

You can find more about robots, noindex and nofollow from a previous article.

I want to speak here about using nofollow to influence PR juice distribution on your site. In theory, things are like this: You have a PR X page with Y links on it. Every one of these links passes a PR equal to X/Y. So, the lower your Y will be on a page, the more juice will each of the links pass. And here comes the question. Is it worth using nofollow internally on your site?

From my experience, using nofollow internally has no results. But i still use it nonetheless. Why? Because I’ve read many posts from people claiming they had results with this technique and recommending it. And even a friend of mine claims so too… Perhaps, when we’re talking about a limited number of links on a page there might be some influence, but other from that.. i sincerely doubt it. One more interesting thing: Nofollow internally can be used though to pass the link juice to third tier links, skipping the second level ones.

In the end, i must add that you should not have any fear that using nofollow internally is a Black or even Grey HAT SEO method, as Matt Cuts himself admitted that "webmasters can feel free to use nofollow internally to help tell Googlebot which pages they want to receive link juice from other pages". Just don’t expect incredible results. this thingy is just one of the hundreds of factors inside the Google Algorithm.

 That being said, stay tuned for the next episode of this Search Engine Optimization saga.

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• On page SEO checklist
• Search engine optimization tips – links and link structure
• Search engine optimization tips – the beginning
• Focusing a domain on a misspelled high traffic keyword
• SEO vs PPC. The pros and cons

The ON page SEO Checklist

1. The arborescent structure
   • depth of the tree (should be at most 3 levels deep)
   • the logic dependence between levels (the child level has to be a particular case of its parent)
   • Existence of broken parts of the tree
2. Link analysis
• breadcrumbs (the navigation bar)
• link structure (related to the structural tree)
• use only absolute links, no relative ones
• how is the link built (should contain only lower case words separated with "-"; special character and connection words should be eliminated)
• length of the link (65 characters top is the best)
• no duplicate links (different links with same content)
• links should always end in "/ "  (www.mikesquarter.com/article/) due to server loading problems
• don’t use links ending with extensions (.htm, .html, .php, etc)
• number of links on a single page
• title attribute on each link
3. Menus
   • Important keywords in menus
   • absolute text links
   • using Hs where needed
   • Use CSS menus rather than JS or Flash ones
   • use nofollow on secondary menus where needed
4. Indexing and nofollow
   • use robots and index only the important pages (usually search and secondary pages should be excluded)
   • use nofollow internally
5. Semantics
   •  Title, keywords and description – unique for every single page
   • using H1 for title, H2 for subtitle, etc
   • using the Alt attribute for pictures and Title for links
   • using Em, Strong, etc to emphasize parts of the text
   • using internal linking
6. Sitemap
   • use a sitemap
   • the standard of the sitemap
   • put in the sitemap only the links you want to be indexed
7. Coding
   • validate your HTML and CSS code (might be impossible to do this, but take care of the important errors. for example, don’t leave opened tags unclosed, don’t use inappropriate attributes for a tag, etc)
   • external CSS
   • try not to use JS, Flash unless really needed. If you have to use it, make sure you have external JS.
   • Don’t use Frames or iFrames
8. Gallery
   • make sure you have a little bit of content on each picture’s page in the gallery. (A short description of the image would do just fine)
   • use the Alt attribute and try to rename the picture accordingly to what you can see in it (actually, according to what you think users will search on Google to find that picture). Be short and descriptive.
   • use proper navigation in you gallery
   • I would not recommend on using Flash or JS galleries, even though they look quite good. That’s if you want your pictures to be found by Search engines.
9. Other problems
   • personalized 404 page returning proper HTTP status code
   • domain canonicalization
   • table less design would be appreciated (not needed though)
   • keep your page dimension as low as you can (many Internet users in the world still use Dial up you know)

 Well, this should help you make a decent analysis on your site. If you need some help, don’t hesitate to contact me. Oh, and if you have anything to add here, just leave some replies. I’m always looking to improve my lists

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• Search engine optimization tips – indexing and controlling the link juice flow
• Search engine optimization tips – links and link structure
• Search engine optimization tips – the beginning
• Focusing a domain on a misspelled high traffic keyword
• SEO vs PPC. The pros and cons

Mot of the paid directories had their PRs reduced by 2-4 points. The only ones that seem to have escaped yet are Yahoo Directory, Business, Jayde and BOTW. All of them are old and established domains though. The other were hit, thus all the links from them lost a lot of their weight.

On the other side, there are the blogs that sell/used to sell links. They were hit too. Johnchow and Engadget can be found in the top of the list.

But what are the effects of these penalties. Let’s see. Directories will loose most of their clients, because their links are not worthy anymore and because people will think twice before buying a link, knowing they pay for something that will possibly do them more wrong than good. Blogs will also not be able to sell their links, for the same reasons mentioned above.

These changes attract major penalties in SERPs. Numerous examples can be found on forums and blogs. It’s not because your blogs’ PRs were reduced, it’s because the total link weight getting in your site has diminished. So, if the most important part of your link building campaign consists in paid links… then… you’re screwed(Expect you Google traffic to drop drastically).

In the end, i tend to agree with Google on these PR penalties. They stated for so long the importance of naturalness in their algorithm and it was expected to do something against paid links. Of course, for us, SEO developers, it will be a lot harder now to raise a certain site in SERPs…

What do you think about Google’s move? Do you agree with it or not? Feel free to post your comments bellow.

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might like

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• SEO vs PPC. The pros and cons
• Google slaps affiliates and advertisers
• 24% don’t know how to search something on Google
• Hmmm, strange
• Spock – find people in a different way

Link structure

Why is this so important? Because is the key to success. A site is like a house: the better is built, the better and more durable will it be. And a site’s structure is translated in its link structure. What are the important things in determining the best of it? Here we go:

• a site’s link structure have to use the bubbles principle, being a well built and logically  tree. You start from the main page, then divide the content in the main categories, then each category is divided on its term in subcategories, etc. Every node of the tree must be related upwards with it’s predecessors. (Example: www.business.com/financial-business/banks/credits/The-best-credit.html  You can get credits from banks, where you can make financial businesses, that are part of the vast domain of businesses. Something like this… )
• a site’s link structure must be determined by someone skillful in SEO and link building. He will be able to target the best words for each category with some help from his researching tools
• each category/subcategory name should be full of targeted keywords, with potential of high traffic
• The order of the directories in a link is important (related upwards like i said)
• Use as few directories as possible
• parameters, ids or any kind of directories that would interfere with the logic of the structure have to be avoided
• Use a personalised 404 page that returns the 404 HTTP status code
• Very Important: Plan you site’s link structure carefully. Any following change might result in a head ache, as it should use 301 redirecting. That means telling people and bots that the page moved from where it was to where it is right now. Don’t you even think about making link structure changes if your not familiar with redirects.

The link structure is just a huge organized and logic tree

Links

A friend of mine asked me a couple of days ago to review his new site. From the beginning, i told him that he should rewrite the URLs. And he asked: "Do you think that’s so important?" Well, it’s very important. Both people and bots understand easier a nice looking URL than a very long one, stuffed with lots of parameters and ids.

Here are a couple of important things you should know about links:

• use mod rewrite to transform your dynamic links into static user-friendly ones. The final link should look like you planned it in your link structure.
• use the rules above in rewriting links
• use only  "/" for separating directories in a link and "-" for separating words inside a directory
• use links canonicalization
• don’t have duplicate pages (different links for the same pages

Link rewrite is done via the .htaccess file. If you’re not familiar with it, find someone who is. Modern CMSs like WordPress, Joomla, etc have their own mod-rewrite functions, so things are made a lot easier.

After you’ve managed to plan and implement you link structure, you should also take care of what pages will get to be indexed by search engines. More about this and about how to control link juice flow through your site, in the next post from the "Search Engine Optimization tips" series.

©2010 Mike's Quarter - the internet blog. All Rights Reserved.

Similar posts you might enjoy

• Search engine optimization tips – the beginning
• How to avoid and elude Google’s Sandbox
• How to rank number 1 in SERPs in simple steps
• Search engine optimization tips – indexing and controlling the link juice flow
• On page SEO checklist