10 Effective SEO Tips You Can Do Right Now

Boost traffic without rebuilding your site from scratch

The problem with most search engine optimisation advice is that it effectively tells you to tear down your site and start again.

Does it really have to be that drastic? While any site benefits from having SEO in mind at the time of its design, there are some tweaks and tune-ups you can do to any site, quickly and easily.

They won't get you to the top of Google's results page overnight - but in the pitiless world of PageRank, the only way is up.

1. Use meaningful document names

Give pages descriptive file names that search engines can follow - like, "galleryofillustrations.html", for example. Your CMS, if you're using one, will probably allow you to configure this automatically in your main settings.

In Wordpress go to Settings > Permalinks and clicking "custom structure". Define a structure that includes the page title, using the %postname% tag.

Wordpress

GOOD URLS: When creating Permalinks in Wordpress, combine the descriptive post name with a unique tag, like the post's ID number

2. Speed up your site

Google software engineer Matt Cutts recently told WebProNews that site speed will be added to the criteria that affects your site's PageRank in 2010.

Easiest way to quicken up your site? Make sure you're using the right image types: JPEG for photos, PNG for graphics - and that their file size is as small as you can get away with without compromising quality.

3. Grow inbound links

Google, Bing, Ask and Yahoo - none of them publish a list of the rules they use to rank your sites. We do know that good quality, incoming links are a factor, though. So mention your site on Twitter, put it in your email signature, add it to social networks you use and get your friends to blog about your site.

4. Sign up for Google Analytics

Google Analytics is more than a log reading tool. It enables you to set goals, track conversions, see entry and exit pages and catalogue keywords. Add it, give it a week or two to work its mojo and you'll soon be bursting with site optimisation ideas.

5. Add popular pages to your sidebar

Using Google Analytics, or whatever traffic measurement comes bundled with your account, you can see which pages attract the most attention. Give people more of what they want. Add links to your most popular content to your sidebar. On Wordpress there's a popular posts plug-in that'll do it for you.

6. Put up signposts

Another analytics inspired tweak. Think about where you need users to go and give them a clear way to get there. You want people to find a picture gallery or a contact form? Add it to your main navigation as near to the top of your content as possible. If users can find it easily, so can a search engine.

7. Build a better landing page

Does your site have a lovely splash page filled with a nice big logo? Get rid of it. The landing page for your site should assure search engines it's the one of the best hits for the topic users have searched for. That means relevant, textual content filling up your front page.

8. Add "alt" text to images

Search engines can't see pictures, so you have to describe them. Required for your site to pass as valid HTML, make sure that all images have short but accurate "alt" text. While you're at it, add the "title" attribute to links, with a brief description.

Lynx

TEXT ONLY: Got a static HTML site? See it like search engines see it - with a text based web browser like Lynx

9. Ditch Flash navigation

Though some content in Shockwave Flash can be indexed now, it's best to make it as easy as possible for search engine spiders to find the links in your site. So, plain text links wherever possible please.

10. Make your site hypertextual

Internal references to similar content within your site will help search engine spiders determine relevance. Add links to existing entries in the body of your pages - or as a "now read this" recommendation at the end of a post. You'll improve both user experience and ranking.

Source:http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/10-effective-seo-tips-you-can-do-right-now-658200

How To Increase Google Position?

Increase Google Position

The more incoming links you have is one way to increase Google position and therefore increase search engine ranking entirely. For instance, if you go to Market Leap you will be able to see how many incoming links you have through Google, MSN, Hotbot, and Google. Most well optimized websites have several thousand incoming links pointing to their homepage. One more important piece of information to remember: It is important to make sure all your outgoing links are being reciprocated back. If you have an outgoing link, you must have one pointing back to you. It is a good practice to use a program such as SEO Elite or Link Sleuth and run a backlink analysis once per month. Using our effective one-way link building program is another great solution to increase Google position. We have developed a customized program that will increase you real estate content, build one-way links, and increase your sales!

Guerilla SEO Marketing

Press releases and RSS Feeds are other techniques SEO professionals use. The trick to online marketing success is to be creative and not artificially inflate your website using blacklisted techniques. The search engines have become increasingly sophisticated and are more difficult to manipulate than ever before. By using a natural and ethical approach, your website will stay within the top rankings for the longest period of time. The best strategy I have used is to keep current with technology and informative resources, including blogs, press releases, and by reading articles printed by top SEO professionals. Contact us now and become the leader in your industry!

Source:optitrex.com

How To Promote My Website? How to get listed by search engines?

Everybody knows that web site promotion is vital for website success. The good news is that promoting your site boils down to two simple strategies:

1. Creating compelling content that site visitors and search engines 'enjoy', and
2. Building inbound links to your site (and repeating).

And SEO SPEED is your free guide to website promotion that shows you how to do just that. (More advanced site promotion activities like using pay-per-click search advertising and email marketing also covered).

My free SEO SPEED, covers basics like search engine optimization, building incoming links, and publishing a newsletter to more advanced subjects like using pay-per-click search engines and how to write a press release.

And if you already know the basics of website promotion, you can:

* Find advanced website promotion strategies here!, or
* Read how and why Harvey Segal is saying "It's Goodbye To Google"

Over the years, I've found that there are just a few 'how to promote website' strategies that you need to employ to successfully promote your website (now and in the future).

SEO SPEED has helped thousands and thousands to "promote my website", so PLEASE do explore the site and learn more.

Build incoming links, get people to link to your web site
Answers the question: why would someone want to link to your site in the first place. Covers link building strategies like link building services, link building campaigns, paying for links and even the dubious practice of swapping links. Before you start link building you should read this article...

Search engine optimization; use keywords and meta tags

Search engine optimization; use keywords and meta tags to get the click. Works for google search engine placement, search engine positioning, search engine ranking etc.
Pay per click advertising, google adwords, yahoo! search marketing
PPC search engine internet marketing is about using the power of pay per click advertising - Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) etc. - to generate cheap, targeted traffic to your website. This free article shows you how to get going with pay per click search engines and also includes pay per click management tools as well as what to look for in professional search engine marketing firms should you want someone else to do your pay per click bidding...

How to write a news release
Press release writing, or news releases, are a great way to promote your website or business. This free article on press releases includes a sample press release, a press release example and press release format. Yes, simply how to write a press release that gets your news published. - read the press release checklist

How to write a newsletter or publish an ezine
Writing newsletters and ezines are a great way of getting your site visitors to return (or to purchase your product). This 'how to write a newsletter' article covers basics of newsletter publishing...

Search engine submission, free services, web site tools
Are you interested in free web site submission to search engines? Then read this free guide to search engine submission to learn how to promote your website. Don't bother with search engine submission services...

Viral marketing, word of mouth, tell a friend schemes etc.
Viral marketing includes things as simple as word of mouth (word of mouse), tell a friend schemes and is also known as guerilla marketing. Dr Wilson explains all in his principles of viral marketing

How to write articles to promote your website
"Traffic Magnet"... The Genuine Article! is an article by Jim Daniels that explains why you should and how to write articles to promote your website.

More website promotion methods
There are always more website promotion methods to try. Some of these are free - using cookies, checking website stats etc.

Promote! Promote! Promote! newsletter
Free web site promotion guide offers tips, tutorials and articles on promoting your website. Tactics like using pay per click search engines, writing a newsletter, using word of mouth, and more!

SEO for images—is it that important?

Experts say that search engine optimization (SEO) is not just limited to site content. It also includes images in weighing which sites will rank top in search engine results.

According to PR and SEO expert, Michaela Lica, optimizing images will attract more traffic and keep visitors more interested in the site.

To optimize images, keywords should be used in image file names. These keywords should be separated using dashes and not underscores. Keywords should also be added in image ALT attributes and title tags.

Lica also advised that images should be posted on the immediate vicinity of keyword-related content.

“The cool factor of a good image has an important psychological impact on the reader: images make the visitor stay and remember the page via associations,” explained Lica.

Source: http://www.lastclicknews.com/seo-for-images%E2%80%94is-it-that-important-10770.html

SEO Best Practices When Moving a Web Site

When moving a Web site to a new domain, the primary objective is to make the transition seamless to users and search engines alike. It's important that the search engines receive the same quality score signals as the pages shift from old to new domains.

Test the relocation process by moving the contents of one directory or subdomain first. Then use a 301 permanent redirect map to transfer authority from your old Web pages to your new destination online. This tells the search engines that your site has permanently relocated and that old URLs indexed by the engines should be replaced by the new URLs that will eventually encompass the new site.

There are several options for producing the 301 map. You can crawl the site with Xenu or GSiteCrawler and then pattern match each old URL to its new URL, assuming you have already set the URI patterns in stone. Another way to get started is to download the pages indexed by the three engines, deduplicate the indexed URLs listed, and then pattern match the URLs of the indexed listings to their equivalents on a one-by-one basis.

Once the 301 mapping is in place, you should audit indexation levels to ensure that the pages on the new site are appearing in Google, Yahoo, and Bing search results. Web CEO or Rank Checker can help verify that rankings have been passed along to the new URLs. When you're satisfied that the test went well and all freshly moved pages are working correctly, you can schedule a series of staged releases for moving the rest of your site's content.

It's not in your best interest to just do a blanket redirect of all old URLs to the home page of the new site. You really want to avoid producing any volume of 404 errors that could produce a poor user experience and signal the engines that your site isn't healthy or cared for. Page-by-page redirects, where each page on the old site gets redirected to the corresponding page on the new site, is a lot more work, but doing so provides search engine spiders and users with a consistent and transparent path to the new site location. If there aren't one-to-one page matches between the old and new site, try to make sure that every page on the old site is at least redirected to a new page with similar content.

Also, it's a good idea to check internal links within the old site and update them to point to the new domain. Once the content is in place on the new server, use a link checker like Xenu to ensure there aren't any broken legacy links on the site. This is especially important if the original content included absolute links instead of relative links. Depending on the content management system (CMS), it's relatively easy to use the "find and replace" feature to change internal linking structures. If not, you can use freeware like Text Replace to make the changes.

Add the new site to each of your Webmaster Tools accounts and verify your ownership of the new domain. That way, when you are ready for relaunch, you can readily create, validate, and submit XML sitemaps listing the URLs for the new site. At the same time, you can take down existing XML sitemaps that include URLs that have been redirected. Doing so will help send another strong signal to the search engines that the old content is now available at a new location. The same holds true for any product feeds to shopping engines.

You'll want to keep both the new and old sites verified in Webmaster Tools for a certain amount of time. Doing so allows you to review crawl errors regularly to ensure that the 301s from the old site are working properly and that the new site isn't showing unwanted 404 errors. To prevent confusion in the engines, retain control of the old site domain for at least four to six months. It takes approximately one to three months before the content's previous rankings stabilize in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Limit duality as soon as you see that the old domain's authority has been transferred to the new domain.

Check external links to pages on the old site. The most accurate listings can be downloaded from Webmaster Tools accounts with Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Ideally, the Webmaster of each site that links to yours should be contacted with a request to update the links pointing to the new pages on your new domain.

If this isn't practical, which it often isn't, target the top referring links. Review the analytics for the top 200 to 300 domains sending traffic to the old pages and contact as many Webmasters as possible about changing their links. Or review Yahoo Site Explorer links to the old site. Because Yahoo tends to show more important links first, Webmaster contact can be prioritized in a nearly optimal order.

Remember to write a post in the Google Groups Webmaster Central forum, indicating the sites are moving and why it's being done, in the hopes that doing so will help Google recognize the new domains are legitimate.

Also, monitor rankings for the content, comparing old to new over time. If site rankings appear to drop and not rebound in two weeks or so for the new sites, post an update in your original thread at Google Groups with details about the specific shifts that are problematic. Ideally, ranking reports for targeted keywords and phrases should be benchmarked for at least three months prior to the site moves so rankings can be closely monitored as search referral traffic and conversions.

Launch the new site in tandem with a media and online marketing blitz. The goal is to get as many new inbound links pointing quickly to the new content and attract a high number of branded search referrals for the new sites at the same time. Doing so will help rebuild the link authority of the new site. Other support strategies include, but are not limited to:

* Buy ads for any brand related queries or keywords that you feel your site must rank for during the site transitions.

* Produce press releases about the new site launch.

* Unleash a series of e-mail marketing promotional campaigns and/or contests and promotions.

* Unleash a social media blitz in Twitter, Facebook, etc.

* Update all business card contact information, Web addresses, e-mail signature lines, etc.

Summary

Moving a Web site is never easy, but if you take a phased approach and complete at least one trial run you will be better prepared to overcome any search engine obstacles. That way, design and development resources can be efficiently allocated and it will be much easier to diagnose any potential issues, should they arise. Unfortunately, no one can just flick a switch with the search engines to let them know the sites have moved to new destinations. At the very least, the SEO (define) best practices recommended here can be implemented to help make the transitions as trouble free as possible.

Source:http://www.clickz.com/3635887

Find Affordable SEO Services

While you are shopping around for affordable SEO services, you have to keep your eyes wide open. You will find a number of companies that claim to offer affordable services, but what you will be paying for is link building that is of low quality. So when you are searching for services, you want to ensure that you will be provided with the same professionalism as you would get from the larger companies. The question is then, how do you find a quality service that is within your budget? Well, down below are some guidelines that will aid you in searching for quality service that you can afford.

Follow these guidelines:

1. Choose a company that keeps a full-time staff and completes the work on time: Many websites that offer SEO are not genuine companies. They only resell SEO for other companies and not able to provide on time support service.

2. Get references: SEO companies which are professional will provide references, if you cannot find any you can ask and they should supply them. If they refuse, then you have reasons to believe that they are not a legate service.

3. Pick a service that has large corporations as clients: It is difficult for a service to get business from a Fortune 100 company, so if you find a SEO expert that has affordable SEO services and has large corporations; it means that they are trustworthy.

Anyone that has their own internet business and website knows that it takes time and money. Anywhere you can save a little money is a plus, but when it comes to optimizing your site, it is important that you be careful while searching for Affordable SEO Services.

It is possible, however, that you can acquire the help of SEO experts who offer prices that are reasonable, but offer and provide the best work possible. Remember that you can ask questions and request for references before you make the final decision on hiring them. After all, this is your business and you want nothing but the best. So if you take the time and do a bit of homework; you will not be disappointed with the results.

Finding affordable SEO services is a time consuming task, but by following the above guidelines you should be able to find a service that fits within your budget. A company that will provide you with quality work. Be sure before hire any affordable SEO service provider Company that they are professional enough to know each strategy and provide you the best service too, because only affordable price does not matter if you are getting nothing after getting touch with them, so try to see the end result before making any decision.

How To Promote Your Business through a Directory Submission Service

t is said that the best and most affordable way wherein a website owner can increase the back links of their sites, is through directory submission. This process is one of the important aspects in the link building approach and is widely used to improve search engine ranking. The directory listing helps generate more traffic, and therefore increases the number of clients visiting your site. Using an expert directory submission service will enable you to find the right directories, which perfectly meet the theme of your website.

These directory services are a great way of promoting a website, which has just been created. It is important not to submit the same web URL more than once and not to hide your listings either. It is a good idea for a website owner to stick with manual submission, since it’s possible that automatic submissions may be banned if there is a use of repetitive content or instances of errors. It is also important that the same title, description, and keywords are not used over again. If this takes place, all of the sites which have the specific link going to your site; will show the exact information. It may seem that the information is unnatural and search engines will definitely find the repetitive text. On this note, only submit to directories that are cached, indexed and search engine- friendly.

However, before submitting your site to a directory, it is important to do keyword research. Create title ad descriptions for your listing so that they are keyword rich and choose the keywords that fit your business/niche. Making use of multiple title and keywords will help maximize the benefits of SEO, but with the help of a directory submission service; all of this can be out of your hands and in the experts’ instead. Also keep in mind that there is a niche directory submission service that can be very beneficial. They offer you with quality, as well as specialized links and you will get heavy traffic from these directories, in addition to quality one way links. The latter will also increase your ranking in the popular search engines.

Once your website has been listed correctly in the various directories, search engines will begin to automatically crawl and index your site. Before submitting though, do a run through, to be sure that your site is not already listed. Every directory acts in different ways and views contents, as well as format differently. Knowing their set of rules or guidelines will surely be beneficial.

It is best to submit to directories which have a high page rank and have high quality traffic. Niche directories; normally have sub categories which have the sites within the main subject area. This is a benefit for the everyday internet user. Remember that the older directories have a more popular and trusted reputation of the major search engines. They also have a bigger human base; however if you do not want to do deal with any of this on your own, then it is best to acquire a directory submission service from the professional.

Great Content Equals Great Rankings, Right? Wrong.

I've been a big fan of Chris Dixon's excellent blog for a while now, so you can imagine that I was really excited to see him writing about SEO in a post last week. Chris kindly called out SEOmoz, which humbled me, but he also espoused some thinking in the comments that made me a bit concerned and was the catalyst for this post. Here's how it went:

RAND: Chris - I think the biggest thing you've forgotten to mention is that 70%+ of the weighting/ranking used by all of the engines depends on links. If you're not thinking about how your content and pages will incent users/bloggers/writers/media/other sites to link to your work, you'll lose out to someone who does.

A while back I got riled up about the lack of SEO in startup marketing and wrote about it - http://j.mp/4q9zkh - might be relevant/useful, though I did write with a bit more anger than was likely deserved.

CHRIS: Rand - totally agree re links. But isn't getting links primarily about creating great content?

Read the article you link to btw and am in complete agreement.

RAND: Tragically, at least in my experience, the answer is a resounding no. Great content is easily missed by the web's link-heavy audience, while some pretty crummy content that's been marketed well (or made the right connections or comes from the right sources) will tend to overperform.

The web's link graph isn't a meritocracy - like everything else in life, it's a popularity contest. Those who find the best ways to distribute, promote and market their works to the audience most likely to link to it are going to succeed much more so than just the "great content" producers.

Just think of it like politics. The best, most rational, reasoned, intelligent arguments are the exception, not the rule. Instead, the conversation and media attention (and thus, public awareness) is focused on concepts that are easy to grasp, virally distributable (which often puts rumor and innuendo above fact) and fit a compelling narrative (rather than add complexity).

A post on this topic - http://j.mp/4tYThK

I would love to tell Chris that he's right, that the better the content, the better, higher quality and greater quantity of links that content earns. But, perhaps sadly, that's not the case. What those in the content world would call "better" does not always (nor even mostly) garner the links and rankings. Instead, those who have "better optimized" for attracting links tend to far outshine their peers with rankings and traffic.

This may seem like a tragedy, or even a travesty of the democratic structure the web is supposed to represent, but in fact, it's the way all marketing has worked for generations. The "best" restaurants are often family-owned, hole-in-the-wall, never-marketed-themselves joints whose fabulous epicurean creations are a secret to all but the most diligent culinary Clouseaus. Meanwhile, the affront to humanity and cooking that is Olive Garden advertises relentlessly, conducts impeccable market research and appeals to the lowest common denominator in town after town to achieve geographic and market-penetration ubiquity (BTW - my wife is Italian and thus recoils at the very mention of this establishment and the tarnish it's brought to her beloved countrymen's kitchens).

Like many parts of life - it's not about the quality, diligence or aptitude you bring to your field, but your ability to market it successfully. As SEOs, our responsibility is to help the best of the best become the most noticed, most beloved and most linked-to in their field. It's a strange, almost paradoxical leap of logic, but one you internalize this principle, it gets easier to accept and to spread to your clients and managers.

p.s. I'm also a fan of Chris Dixon's startup, Hunch - I'd urge you to check it out and try answering a few dozen questions. The results are quite fascinating.

Source: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/great-content-equals-great-rankings-right-wrong

Google Caffeine SEO Notes

Google Caffeine SEO

Since the SEO News industry has become so noisy (with lots of well-titled posts hyping mostly empty articles), and the major news sites are apparently jumping to publish first with such headlines, using similarly low-value content, it’s not easy to find real content about Google’s new “caffeine” indexing system. Google says it’s a big deal:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits ‘under the hood’ of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

Matt Cutts says this is a complete rewrite of many parts of the Google indexing system, and that it’s fundamentally a big change. He suggests caution and asks for feedback via an alpha review, and says Google plans to deploy it on one data center first for evaluations, before depoying it completely. According to Matt, “whenever you change SO MUCH stuff under the hood…” you need to move forward carefully.

There is some speculation that this will form a basis for the Google’s annual “screw the affiliates right around Thanksgiving, to have maximum impact on the holiday sales season” effort this year. If that’s true, I suppose it’s a good sign that Google finally recognizes the importance of such huge changes, and the need for more than a week or two of lead time. It also makes sense that Matt’s out front handling PR on this, since he has to face the webmasters at Pubcon in November.

I have yet to see any meaningful discussion of this new Google on the web, beyond basic observations on a few specific searches. But I’ll keep watching.

In the mean time I’m aggregating references on Google’s “Caffeine” update and what it might mean for search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. If you know of a meaningful article about Google’s Caffeine update, that would be interesting to SEOs, please note it in a comment.

For starters:

* http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-test-some-next-generation.html
* http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ (they’re working on it)
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU5cKDryjy0&feature=player_embedded
* http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/explaining-algorithm-updates-and-data-refreshes/
* http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whats-an-update/
* http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-updates/
* http://www.comparegoogle.com/ (cute, but obviously not always working because it probably violates TOS)
http://www.webmetricsguru.com/caffeine (not published yet… not sure what it is)
* New Feature: opting out of Google by tattooing your forehead with a big “G”
* The Google Roommate Video
* Bald Matt Cutts with WebProNews
* Bill Hartzer’s review of Caffeine so far http://www.vizioninteractive.com/google-caffeine-a-comprehensive-analysis/

Types of Navigation - Organization is Key

There are three basic types of navigation: hierarchical, site wide, and locally determined.

Each of these types of navigation can be represented in a tree structure (see figures). The navigation trees can be traversed vertically or horizontally by following the links (lines) between the elements.

In an earlier post, I offered Tips for Simple Navigation. Here I’ll describe the three types of navigation.

Note on the figures: If no connection exists between two elements, a direct link is not available between those elements in that navigation structure.

Hierarchical Navigation













Hierarchical Navigation Tree

Hierarchical navigation is based on a strong organizational structure that forces a choice between elements at each level of the tree. In a hierarchical system, it is only possible to traverse the tree vertically as there are no direct links between elements that reside on the same level.

For example, in our figure, it is not possible to move from one product element directly to another product element. In order to move between product elements, you would need to return to the category (or even the home, in some cases) element and then move to the desired product element.

Hierarchical systems are excellent for large sites that contain vast quantities of detailed information that need to be sifted through to find specific information. They make traversing the tree easy and intuitive by successively narrowing down the relevant choices as the user moves down the tree.

Think about storing papers in increasingly specific sub folders within file folders – this is hierarchical organization.

However, pure hierarchical systems break down in real-life situations where a person would like to traverse horizontally as well – from one category element to another or one product element to another without retracing steps.

Site Wide Navigation











Site wide navigation is based on an organizational structure that places primary emphasis on interconnecting most, if not all, elements in a site. The goal with site wide navigation is to remove any unnecessary traversing of the tree when looking for a specific element – to reduce the number of clicks to find a particular element.

Think about the papers sitting in a stack on your desk, unfiled and all within easy reach, regardless of their categorization – this is similar to the site wide organizational structure.

The most extreme example of a piece of site wide navigation is the sitemap page that many sites have. Imagine the sitemap page as the homepage of a website; you have easy access to every single page on a website – in just one click! So, why don’t all sites employ this tactic on their homepage?

Site wide navigational systems are very good at reducing the number of clicks that it takes to reach the desired element, but run into problems when people are unable (or unwilling to spend the necessary time) to find the particular link they are looking for.

Confusion can easily be the result of a pure site wide navigational system. Offering too many choices in one place makes the decision much harder to make. [Take a look at Barry Schwartz’s “Paradox of Choice” talk for a more in-depth look at the fascinating subject of complex decision making.]

Local Navigation / Locally Determined Navigation (recommended)

Local Navigation


Local navigation is a combination of hierarchical and site wide structures applied on a case by case basis at the local level. This navigational system uses the strong points of both previous navigation types, while eliminating many of the problems that can be associated with using a ‘pure’ hierarchical or site wide system.

Going back to our desk analogy - think about your desk with those unfiled commonly used papers on the desk and the filing cabinet next to it filled with categorized files - combining your different organizational schemes acts just like localy determined navigation.

For a web example, a site that has a store, a forum, and a blog probably doesn’t want or need direct links between particular forum posts and individual products in most cases, but might want to connect specific elements that contain relevant information. Separate and unique navigational structures would exist within the store, forum, and blog sections of the site based upon what navigational system would work best in each specific situation.

A well designed local navigation system builds flexibility into the navigational system that allows people to intuitively traverse the tree while avoiding any extraneous or confusing links.

As with most things, with navigation, moderation is key.

Read more: http://blog.vortx.com

10 Tactics for Video Optimization

This is an area of SEO that got hot once Google started showing “Universal Results”. Universal results is just a term that means Google includes in the Search results everything now. Along with the organic text listings are News, Images, Shopping, and Video. Google pulls these search results from all types of different websites.

The big question is “How can I get my video there?” Now it behooves advertisers & publishers to conduct a Video Optimization for specific keywords related to the video. In many cases it’s worth the time & money invested to get your video to the top of the search results page.

Without showing any of my client work, I’ll show a personal video that is ranking. Search for the term, AFX race cars.

10 Tactics for Video Optimization:
1. Use the Keyword in the Title. Make the Title sound interesting.
2. Write approx 2 paragraphs of text for the Description.
3. Tag each video with keywords.
4. Choose proper category for each video.
5. It’s best to put a hyperlink to the target page within the Description, but before the user needs to click (more info) to see the hyperlink.
6. Upload all videos to multiple video sites (Youtube, Viddler, etc)
7. Comments help by showing interest, and by additional user-generated content (more words on the page).
8. Video responses show interest/activity.
9. Rating. Try to get as many 5 star ratings as you can ;-)
10. Views, views, and more views.

Treat the video as you would any other webpage, and begin a Link building optimization to increase the amount of Inbound links. Ideally, your objective is to increase Link popularity and Link relevancy. While building links for your off-site optimization, try to mix up textlinks and the number of Embeds. All these are Video Ranking Factors.

A great productivity tool to upload videos to multiple video sharing sites is TubeMogul .



Source: shimonsandler.com