ChristianPortals Blog

A Guide to SEO Resources and Discussion Groups.

Finding the right SEO tools and resources can be challenging – but we’re here to make it a little easier on you. SEO forums and newsgroups can be very confusing to a person with no SEO experience. These forums and newsgroups are just so heavily populated that they can intimidate many new users.

The first rule regarding these situations is to just slowly try to integrate yourself into the community. Follow these rules closely and concisely so that you do not offend anybody:

1. Do not spam the forum with your problems. If you have a few things that you would like to discuss you will probably get help, but do not try to hog all of the assistance for yourself. For one thing, most of your questions have already been answered, believe it or not. There is generally a “search” option. Always use this before posting your problem.

2. Do not “Flame.” Flaming is a term used among forum dwellers to describe the behavior of “yelling” at people via the forum. This is generally associated with cursing, constant argument, typing in all caps to try to convey anger, and dismissing other people’s posts in an undignified fashion. There are other problems that are included in flaming, but I have given you the jist of it.

3. Never take a post off topic. If there is something that you would like to discuss that was inspired by a post on another topic, post a new topic in the appropriate board and explain where the topic was conceived. You may still want to reply to the post just to let people know that the topic has been created so that somebody else doesn’t take it off topic.

4. Do not “bump” your thread (or post). Bumping a post is when you reply to your own post in hopes of getting a response sooner. The only time that this is acceptable is if your thread has laid dormant for about a week. Bumped threads are very annoying to most forum users. Bumping posts on a regular basis will probably lead to a lack of interest in your posts and will probably contribute to a lack of support in your ventures.

6. Be friendly. There is no reason that you can’t be completely polite when posting on a forum. You will get very good response if you are simply polite in your post. Politeness in the world of forums includes making sure that you have communicated your problem carefully so that people attempting to help you can understand and provide answers to the best of their abilities.

7. Join in on the community favorites. Many forums now include “games” which are occasionally pretty fun. They are pretty much just there for if you are bored and waiting for a response to your other posts, but they are enjoyable if you keep up with them as many forum dwellers are quite articulate and witty.

Here’s a list of resources that you can use when you need help but you don’t want to pay for it.

Finding Groups.

Google makes discussion groups easy to find with their ‘Google Groups’ tool (groups.google.com). Go there and type in ‘seo’ to see what’s on offer. Two popular groups are alt.internet.search-engines and alt.www.webmaster. If you don’t like Google’s groups, try Yahoo’s instead (groups.yahoo.com). Either of these sources will provide you with a pretty substantial list. Remember, regular search engine listings seem to apply here so generally you will see the best results towards the top of the listing.

dmoz.org is a good place to start: from their home page, you can browse down to any subject you want, and you should find at least one mailing list, discussion forum or message board in the listing.

There are several forums out there on the web that focus on SEO, and you can learn a lot from all of them, even if some of the discussions are over your head at first. Even ordinary searchers can learn a lot from following these discussions, as they tell you a lot about how search engines work.

Here are some useful forums: WebmasterWorld, Search Engine Watch Forums, ThreadWatch, Best Practices Search Engine Forums, cre8asite forums and the High Rankings Forum. Check them out.

About The Author: Alex Matthews - the newest leader in online information publishing. For more information about this topic or/and other topics, please visit http://www.MoreDotCom.com

How Search Engine Spiders Work.

There are hundreds of search engines available today, but some are far more complex than others. This article will give you an overview of how some of the most popular ones work.

Let’s start with a smaller engine: InfoSeek. They only index about 200 words of your web page, so it’s important to make sure that you have meta tags on your site, and that the most important things are listed first. The information you put in your meta tags will be used to display a description of your site, and most meta tags can contain about 200 characters of text. The keywords meta tag, however, can have up to 1,000 characters.

These simple rules are important to keep in mind for all search engines. The more important that the information is, the closer it has to be to the beginning of your meta tags or even the beginning of your site’s content. Many search engines won’t even touch your meta tags so it is important that you have the same information in your body that you have in your meta tags (although you obviously cannot simply enter lists and lists of key words as this would be detrimental to your site’s content).

The AltaVista search engine will send Scooter, its spider, to check out your entire site. Scooter can take as long as three months to spider and fully index your site – the average spider only takes 6-8 weeks. Scooter will normally spider somewhere between two and ten pages from your site each week. This means that the longer that your web site lasts, the better it will be indexed which is in example of how search engines implement Darwin’s Theory into their ideology.

Excite used to be a search powerhouse, but has now been dropped as the provider of AOL and Netscape search, so it’s less important than it once was. The algorithm it uses to determine keyword relevance is very complicated: it indexes your pages and then attempts to summarize them by selecting only the most relevant sentences. Expect to have your pages reviewed roughly once every two weeks. Keep in mind, though, that with meta tags have no meaning to Excite when it comes to rankings, even though it will use your description tags as long as the words are relevant to your pages’ content.

Let’s move on to Lycos. Lycos has fully integrated the Open Directory Project (ODP) into their mainstream results pages, and they also use search results from AllTheWeb. Lycos also runs click-throughs to their sister site HotBot. Lycos is one of the harder search engines to understand, as their submission pages say one thing but then they index your site in a completely different way. As a general rule of thumb, your site will be indexed in Lycos in due time as long as you get indexed in ODP and AllTheWeb.

Even though WebCrawler is owned by Excite, it still has its own search engine and indexer. If you happen to be listed with WebCrawler, you should try to stay listed with them, as it isn’t the easiest search engine to get listed with. Its hit-and-miss standards combined with the sporadic indexing methods makes the submission process tough, although not impossible.

The biggest player is, of course, Google, who use a page ranking system as the central basis of their index. It was once nearly impossible to manipulate this page ranking system to drive up your rankings, but people quickly figured out that the more links they could generate to their site on the rest of the net, the better Google ranked them. Google is not thought to be using context-sensitive rankings. Context-sensitive information is used at Yahoo, Looksmart and the ODP, however, and Google regularly spiders those sites when it re-indexes its own database.

MSN is another important search engine. The holy trinity of search engines at the moment is Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. These three search engines combine to provide you with the vast majority of the traffic that you will receive from search engines. MSN will generally be the first search engine to index your site and it will almost certainly list the most pages the fastest.

Although no-one can tell you exactly when you will be indexed on any search engine, it’s best to check back at least weekly. Whatever you do, though, don’t re-submit your site more often than every two months or so – you might not get indexed at all if you do this.

About The Author: Alex Matthews - the newest leader in online information publishing. For more information about this topic or/and other topics, please visit http://www.MoreDotCom.com

Advanced Link Checks.

View the source of each and every page: is there JavaScript and CSS on the page? Remember that spiders may not index pages that have more than 10k or so of JavaScript or CSS embedded in them. Spiders don’t enjoy getting tangled up in JavaScript. So as a general rule you should avoid putting out prompts and alerts using JavaScript every time that a page loads. Because of this rule, it is also wise to avoid link partners who do so on the pages that they link to you from. If anything looks fishy, it probably is.

CSS won’t give you many problems. If you are going to use CSS, it is best to link to it from another source. Create a separate CSS page and use the
tag to work it into the head of your HTML. This method will keep your file size down considerably, and since you will probably be using the same CSS on several pages, decrease your bandwidth usage. Normally a large quantity of CSS within the document isn’t indicative of any suspicious behavior on the part of the linker. If you feel that you are, indeed, suffering from the fact that the site uses such an excessive proportion of CSS on the page itself, suggest to the webmaster that he/she may want to create an external CSS document and link to it in his/her header.

Check that you’re still on the domain you clicked on a link to, and you haven’t moved to another site or a subdomain. Some people will move you to another domain while telling that’s their site and your link is there, relying on you not checking the address bar. This trick is all too common and happens to folks who are new to SEO every single day. This sad fact will continue until people begin to catch it every time.

If the domain has changed, delete your backlink to the site in question immediately and then email the webmaster with your complaint. If the webmaster does not fix the problem you may even want to request that they remove the link as the site may wind up discredited as a link farm or some such thing that you do not want to be associated with for fear of being banned from many popular search engines with technology used to combat link farms.

On a related subject, when you check your back links, make sure that these links appear in legitimate places. If the site is completely dedicated to linking to other sites and doesn’t seem to be a directory or something similar you will want to get your link removed as soon as possible. There is no time when one link is worth the risk of being permanently banned from any popular search engine. Aside from the traffic that you will lose from that one search engine, you may wind up “red flagged” so to speak. It seems to be common practice among search engines that if one finds faulty activity the rest seem to find out soon afterwards.

Overall, if it seems dodgy, leave it alone. It’s better to sacrifice one link in caution than to destroy your site’s rankings by accepting one you’re not sure of. There are hundreds of situations aside from link farms that can and will give you trouble. It would be impossible to list every scam as there are people who make their living (or seem to anyway) in creating and executing these scams. Whenever there is a new form of “SEO” technology that “can’t fail,” you should watch out because it is almost guaranteed to blow up in your face. The only truly powerful and guaranteed method of SEO is to make your site valuable to your visitors and then let it fall where it may in the realm of the search engine.

It is difficult, after you have optimized your pages and submitted them to search engines and directories, to sit back and wait, but there is not much that can be done aside from attempting to accumulate links from good, solid places. The work that you have done is bound to pay off sooner or later as long as you stay honest. When it comes to the world of SEO, honesty is, indeed, the best policy.

About The Author: Alex Matthews - the newest leader in online information publishing. For more information about this topic or/and other topics, please visit http://www.MoreDotCom.com

SEO Tips for Google.

Google is still the most popular search engine out there, and they’re not showing any signs of slowing down. It’s important to know how to get on the right track with your SEO for Google. It is also important, however, to remember that Google is not the only search engine out there and that Yahoo! is also a highly rated search engine which actually has more pop culture usage.

Before you can truly understand Google you must understand a little bit of the history behind Google. In the beginning, Google was considered by many to be the “Geek’s Search Engine.” This changed as Google started delivering better and better results. Google slowly evolved into the most trusted search engine around, but Yahoo!’s advertising strength and popular usage has still claimed a large number of users. It wasn’t all that long ago when Yahoo! was the most popular search engine by far.

Google’s search engine is based on PageRank, a complex algorithm that was revolutionary when it was invented. This page rank is the primary reason that Google is so popular. The Page Ranking technology that Google has created and the evolutionary steps that Google has taken to increase the strength of its algorithm has made it a search engine giant which actually sets out to protect internet users from fraudulent web sites. Google has come to be a search engine that cannot really be tricked. It’s kind of the integrity police f the world wide web. Basically, Google checks the number of links to each site in its database, and treats them as ‘votes’. Here are some tips on getting ranked high on Google:

1.The more incoming links you have, the better your chances are. Good links are ones that are relevant to your own page and link with text that makes it obvious that they intended to link to your site. Google has also recently integrated a new piece into its algorithm which makes old links better than new links. In Google’s opinion, if a link withstands the test of time it is has to be relevant or else both parties would have removed the link after not seeing any positive action by Google. Basically, this is another one of Google’s “keeper of integrity” options that have become so famous among SEOs.

2. Links from ‘authority’ sites, such as directories or non-profit organizations, tend to produce better results than links from commercial sites. Google likes to decide what sites are important. A site has some huge credential for being a spectacular source for quality information will be appreciated more than sites that don’t have such strong affiliations with quality work and content. This will result in stronger, more heavily weighted links to and from this site.

3. Site elements to consider for Google are the title (including the strongest keyword phrase), the meta description (Google displays this to its users) and the body text (it needs to be highly-focused and use keywords well), as well as your onsite navigation.

4. Make sure that Google can spider the whole site easily. You’ll probably want to have plain links to every page on your site at the bottom of each of your pages.

Don’t forget, though, that Google is strict about ‘cheaters’ who use unethical SEO techniques. Here are some things that Google hates:

1. Getting lots of ‘shadow domains’ that all point to one site.

2. Using doorway pages.

3. Using falsified WHOIS information.

4. Sites that are “fake” search engines or spyware.

Google Facts and Fiction.

Google has an article on its site called ‘Google Facts and Fiction’. For example:

Fiction: Advertising on Google affects my rankings in the search results.

Fact: Advertising with Google neither helps (nor hurts!) a site’s rankings on Google.

Fiction: Sites that are not HTML are not included in Google’s index

Fact: Google is and does index as many file formats as possible, however there are some that it cannot index. File types Google is able index include: pdf, asp, jsp, hdml, shtml, xml, cfm, doc, xls, ppt, rtf, wks, lwp, wri, swf.

Everyone who wants to optimize for Google should make sure they read this article, to avoid common mistakes.

About The Author: Alex Matthews - the newest leader in online information publishing. For more information about this topic or/and other topics, please visit http://www.MoreDotCom.com

SEO Tips for Yahoo.

With the improvements that have taken place at Yahoo over the last few months, the site is starting to become important again. Many say that their new search tool provides more relevant search results than Google does now – great for Yahoo, since they were the top dog before Google came along.

Even for a few years after Google’s conception, Yahoo! was the high and mighty search engine. It is still the popular choice for those who are seeking popular culture solutions and should be the target search engine for such pages. Yahoo! will put up a fight here for the king pin of search engines again before too long so make sure that you have quality results here as well as Google.

In general, Yahoo’s spiders work the same way as Google’s, following every link they find on the web and putting that information in a database. As always, you can also submit your site to the index manually. These manual submissions will speed up the process slightly but probably won’t give you instantaneous results. There are no real ways to incorporate highly

Yahoo places some weight on your incoming links, but not as much as Google does – it’s more interested in your content, which could explain why Yahoo’s results seem to be more relevant. To get a strong ranking at Yahoo, you should pay more attention to your keyword density than you do to your link popularity. Yahoo is also less likely to index a huge number of pages than other search engines are. Normally forums and posts are not touched by Yahoo as it will deem them unnecessary. There are times when this may seem like a good idea to many searchers, but there are also times when these types of results are missed. Basically, keep in mind that you will not get as many pages indexed by Yahoo! as you will by Google, MSN, and other search engines. You may, however, get a higher number of hits out of each page that you get listed in Yahoo! depending on the type of site that you provide.

At a Glance.

1. Use keyword-rich titles, about 20 words long and unique for each page of your site. These titles are the first things that Yahoo! sees and are the single most important aspect of your site regardless of which search engine you are optimizing for.

2. Use the meta description tag on each page too, with a description that fits your site well. Yahoo! still uses meta tags for its descriptive purposes but not necessarily word for word. Make sure that you have a quality description so that you don’t run into situations where you don’t get listed because of lack thereof. Basically, your description tag is an evasive action rather than an attempt at attaining a high number of hits or a higher rating.

3. A meta keywords tag should be included on every page of your website, and it should list words and phrases related to the site. Make sure that the key words describe the specific page rather than the site itself except for the index page. You don’t want a bunch of people to be going to the wrong front page. They may see the page, not find their answer and leave. If they find your home page, they’ll probably see that it’s a home page, look for a relevant link, and find the answer or material that they are looking for.

4. Well-written, keyword-rich content will help you a lot with Yahoo. Well-written content is important regardless of search engines. This content is the entire reason for your site’s existence. Make sure that the content that you deliver is something that you want your name on. Something that you can stand behind.

5. Easy-to-follow internal links in plain text will help Yahoo’s spider – the bottom of the page is a good place for them.

The key to getting a high ranking at Yahoo is to keep adding keyword-rich, relevant content to your website on a regular basis. Continual updates let Yahoo’s spiders know that you are maintaining the site and keeping your information updated – they’ll come back regularly to check out these changes.

Yahoo’s improvements are sure to help them in the market, and the number of users flocking to Yahoo is starting to show optimizers that there are more search engines out there than just Google.

About The Author: Alex Matthews - the newest leader in online information publishing. For more information about this topic or/and other topics, please visit http://www.MoreDotCom.com