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SEO Tip: Top 3 Google Tools for Keyword Research

2011-12-31T07:36:00.000+08:00

Keyword Research requires an in-depth analysis of user search volume for each keyword idea. Google is still the top search engine so we will use its statistical tools in performing keyword research.

Google has three search volume analysis tools namely:

Google Adword: Keyword Tool
Google Insights for Search
Google Trends

Google Adword: Keyword Tool

The Google Adword: Keyword Tool is a vital tool for keyword research. You can get the global and local search volumes for keyword ideas. This is helpful in determining what keyword ideas have high, medium, and low search volumes and its relative level of competition.

You can search for keyword ideas by entering a keyword related to your business or service or a URL to a page containing content related to your business or service. Or, you can go straight to filtering keyword categories.

There are different settings for generating results. The most important ones for SEO are listed below.

Option Settings:

Match Type:

Broad match:

The sum of the search volumes for the keyword idea, relatedgrammatical forms, synonyms and related words

Phrase match:

The sum of the search volumes for all terms that includethat whole phrase

Exact match:

The search volume for that keyword idea

      Set as "EXACT" in order to get the most accurate volume for a specific keyword idea.

[ ] Only show ideas closely related to my search terms
       - Select this option to see only results that include your original search terms. All closely related terms will be listed. Disable this if you want more keyword ideas instead of a more targeted listing.

Advanced Options:
    Locations and Languages

- Changing the country and language settings here will affect:

The language of your keyword results.
The statistics used to calculate Monthly Searches

Useful if you want to target a specific country such as for Google Places-related search volume.

Google Insights for Search

With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. You can compare up to five search terms or groupings at one time, with up to 25 search terms in each grouping (use the plus sign to create a grouping). Click + Add search term to add a search term or a grouping; to remove a search term, click the x next to it.

You can choose which parameter you want to focus on by selecting the appropriate radio button next to the corresponding search box. For instance, if you want to compare two locations, select the radio button next to Locations. You can compare up to five locations by clicking + Add another. Click the x next to a location to dismiss it. Then, click Search. Similarly, if you want to compare different time frames, select the radio button next to Time ranges.

Google Trends

Google Trends shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages. Google Trends also allows the user to compare the volume of searches between two or more terms. An additional feature of Google Trends is in its ability to show news related to the search-term overlaid on the chart, showing how new events affect search popularity.

Use these three Google tools in performing your keyword research especially for generating Google Places-targeted keyword ideas. These tools will help you create a keyword list by region for your local search-targeted campaigns.

After you have prepared your keyword list, you can then start building your website and/or Google Places listing SEO strategies.

SEO Tip: Top 5 Image Search Optimization Tips

2011-12-07T03:39:00.001+08:00

Image search optimization especially for the Google search engine requires following standards and some Internet marketing savvy.

Ever notice that the Google Web Search returns results from its relevant indexed images especially if the search keyword is a popular name,product, or celebrity?

Here are my Top Five Tips for Image Search Optimization:

Use Target Keywords for Filenames
Follow File Naming Conventions
Don't Forget The IMG Tag Alt Attributes
Use Image Captions
Use Social Media Sites

Use Target Keywords for Filenames

First, you need to determine your target keywords. What are your focus keywords? You need to perform a keyword research by yourself or hire a professional like an SEO Expert to help you.

The target keywords should be integrated to the image filenames. Make sure that the names are short,descriptive, and not spammy or Google will notice it.

Follow File Naming Conventions

Website owners usually upload images from their picture folders loaded with images from digital cameras. These pictures are usually named sequentially by the camera software (e.g. IMG_0001.JPG). These default names won't help your optimization at all.

You need to rename these files manually to provide more relevant names for each image. For compound names, it is recommended to use hyphens ("-") as word separators.

For example:

ferrari-logo1.jpg
apples-red-and-green.jpg
steve-jobs-apple.jpg

Don't Forget The IMG Tag Alt Text

I've seen a lot of website owners and webmasters fail to include the "Alt" attribute text on their websites' IMG tags. The "Alt" text is used by Google and other search engines for indexing images. The "Alt" text on each image should be UNIQUE, short, descriptive, and not spammy.

Use Image Captions

Under each website image should be a keyword-rich caption that describes what the picture is all about. The captions help the search engines in determining the relevancy of the images to the target keywords or key phrases.

Use Social Media Sites

Don't forget the importance of Social Media sites. Use Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other photo-sharing sites as part of your web visibility efforts. You can also share the images on top social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit. The more varied the websites that host your images, the more Google will give value to these images.

The keyword rankings of these images may take from two to three months to reach the first page on Google's Image Search results. This will depend mostly on your competitors and your image optimization efforts.

Hope you learned something.

Google PageRank Update November 2011

2011-11-08T19:42:00.000+08:00

Google PageRank has updated again and my SEO blog's PR score downgraded to 2. I also noticed the PageRank scores downgraded on my other blogs. Hopefully, this could just be temporary and Google will tweak their PageRank scoring algorithm again.

Google PageRank

The Google PageRank is still alive and it probably would still be used by advertisers as an important metric for ad placement.

What could have been the factors for my site's PageRank downgrade?

Time to go back to the drawing board. =)

SEO Tricks: My Top Fresh Content Indexing Techniques for Google

2011-11-05T22:08:00.000+08:00

Google likes fresh content. New articles or new website pages are favored by Google because these pages bring the most up-to-date info. If you want to bring in more traffic to your site, always plan to add new content as often as possible.

Here are some of my tricks in shouting out to Google that my blog is ready for re-indexing:

1. Blog and Ping

Blogsites are designed to allow you to easily add material to your site quickly and as frequently as you'd like. Pinging notifies a number of web services that keep track of blogs and publish them. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated.

I usually use the ping services of these websites:

http://www.bulkping.com
http://pingomatic.com
http://feedshark.brainbliss.com

Pinging tools are very simple to use. Just enter the URL of the specific page with the new content you want to be found and the ping tool will alert sites like Google Blog Search, Syndic8, Weblogs.com and others that you have new content ready to share with the world.

2. Status Updates

Post your new article/page's URL with the accompanying keyword-rich text on Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other micro-blogging sites.

The Googlebot crawls a high PageRank (PR) website more often. If you are a blogger or webmaster who update your website frequently, your site's newly added content and links will greatly benefit from the Googlebot's priority crawling.

Posting your new article/page URL on a high PR and authority site like Facebook helps your fresh content and links to be shown faster in the search engine because of indirect indexing.

I hope you learned a thing or two from this post. =)

SEO Tip: Don't blame the Panda for your site's poor keyword rankings

2011-10-26T06:23:00.000+08:00

The Google Panda updates were performed by Google as part of its commitment to return high-quality sites to Google search users. New "signals" were incorporated to Google's ranking algorithm every time there is a Panda update in order to differentiate high quality sites from low quality sites. For anyone who was hit by Google's Panda update, it is particularly important to know and understand that website changes won't have immediate effects on your site's keyword rankings.

Awwwww...The Google Panda updates should be as cute as this pic.

Since the Google Panda update is run from time-to-time, if you have improved your site's content after a previously run Panda update then there's a big chance that your keyword rankings will improve too. You have something like 4-6 weeks as a window of opportunity for your site's content improvement before the next Google Panda update.

Take note that Google makes small algorithm changes all the time independently from the Panda updates. Don't blame the Google Panda updates if your site's keyword rankings are poor. You just have to improve your site's content quality in order to show Google and ultimately the rest of the major search engines that your site is informative and has value.

So QUIT blaming the Panda!

SEO Tip: Google Extended Sitelinks Tips for Webmasters

2011-09-27T19:21:00.005+08:00

Extended Sitelinks

Last month, Google announced extended sitelinks. The maximum number of sitelinks of websites increased from eight (8) to twelve (12). Extended Sitelinks are new additions to the search results pages of Google. Sites of well known brands and companies like Facebook are those which are receiving the extended Sitelinks.

Facebook Sitelinks on Google

In general, Google shows sitelinks if it is sure that a website is the exact match for a search query but these sitelinks don't usually appear for two or more keyword searches. Product name or company name searches are usually given more value by Google's Sitelinks algorithm.

Google generates the sitelinks for your website based on the following:

website navigational structure
page names
page titles and Meta descriptions
click stream data of the most popular website pages
anchor text of the internal and external links that point to your website.

Google uses these important signals in determining the sitelinks to be generated.

If Google decides to display sitelinks for your website, your site's content will be more prominent than before and the major pages and their respective descriptions will be visible in Google's Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) .

Google Toolbar Not Available for Firefox 5

2011-09-04T13:09:00.002+08:00

Heads up for Mozilla Firefox users!

The Google Toolbar will not be available for Firefox 5 or newer versions. The article about this update is published at http://www.google.com/support/toolbar/bin/answer.py?answer=1342452&topic=15356)

The Google Toolbar

The Google Toolbar offers helpful search suggestions as you type in the search box. While most suggestions come from popular Google searches, you'll also see suggestions from your Google bookmarks and your search history. Toolbar even lets you know if you've incorrectly spelled a word, and suggests the correct spelling.

For SEO, the Google Toolbar has the PageRank (PR) button to display a web page's PR value. This button displays the importance of the web page you're viewing. According to Google, web pages with a higher PageRank are more likely to appear at the top of Google search results.

Check out how the Google PageRank system works at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank.

What? Another Google Toolbar Pagerank Update?

2011-07-20T15:10:00.001+08:00

Wow! That was quick... check out your website's PageRank, I think there was another Google PR update last July 18, 2011. This blog's PR is back to PR3 from PR2.

I thought my site lost some PR points, I guess Google corrected this "mistake". Maybe Google miscalculated some site PageRanks and had to re-update them to the most accurate PR values. =)

Thank you Google!

Heads up! Another Google PageRank update!!!

2011-06-27T22:35:00.005+08:00

Check out your website's Google PageRank. Google just updated site PRs. Some of my sites improved their PageRanks, while some downgraded. =(

I still have to check why this happened. Could this be because of the Google Panda Update? Maybe some of my backlinks have issues that need to be resolved or the sites my blogs linked to got penalized. Quality backlinks are important for good PageRanks.

Anyway, good luck guys! Hope you have improved your site's PRs.

SEO Tip: Importance of Outbound Links and Inlinking

2011-06-26T06:43:00.007+08:00

Outbound links tell search engines which websites you think have valuable information and are relevant to your own website(s), and help your visitors find what they need even if these websites / web pages are not your own site(s).

One of the key elements of search engine optimization is links - not just inbound links to your website, but outbound links from your site to other websites.

When you link to other websites, you show search engines that you are trying to provide a good user experience for anyone who visits your website by sending them to other information sources you've judged to be valuable and relevant to your content. Because links are used by search engines in discovering new websites or web pages, you're also doing other websites a good favor.

You can also link to important pages on your website from your homepage. Inlinking signals to search engines which pages have information you think your readers or visitors will get more information. When you link to other pages in your website, you distribute link juice into your web pages. While this won't automatically shoot your pages into the No. 1 spot on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs), linking to pages within your site will help search engines "see" the connection between your pages and the homepage.

Now go on and build me some links!

SEO Tip: Use Only One Google Places Listing If You Have Several Service Areas for a Business

2011-05-29T10:51:00.002+08:00

The Google Places Guidelines state that

"A business owner may add service areas to a new or existing listing if his business model requires him or an authorized representative of his business to travel to his customer's location. Some examples include: a restaurant that offers delivery to your door, a dog-walking business that picks up your pet from your home, or an in-home maid service."

Not all local businesses serve their customers from a physical location. For example, some businesses operate from home while others are virtual, mobile, and have no central location. If a local business serves customers at their locations, it can list its service area on Google Places.

A service area is the area that a business is willing to serve. Google Places does not allow anyone to create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts.

Businesses that operate in a service area, as opposed to a single location, should not create a listing for every city they service. Businesses that operate in a service area should create one listing for the central office or location and designate service areas. All Google Places listings, including listings with service areas, require a valid physical address.

To set a service area for your listing, log into your account and edit the listing of your choice. On the Edit Business Listing page, look for the section with the header "Service Areas and Location Settings".

To set a service area, select 'Yes, this business serves customers at their locations in a specific area.' option. Once you select 'Yes,' a box will appear with additional options. If you'd like to make your address private, check the box next to 'Do not show my business address on my Maps listing.', then, select the areas your business serves.

Be sure to follow the Google Places Guidelines. Google is strict with these guidelines, and following these requirements will determine your listing or delisting from Google Places.

SEO Tip: How to Report Duplicate Content to Google

2011-04-17T11:47:00.007+08:00

Are you a victim of website duplication?

Well I am and I'm pissed as hell at this lazy SEO guy from Pakistan. He has six freaking years as an SEO specialist.Yeah right! This guy copied everything from my site including the Title text, articles, and web layout. Basically, he just copied my blogsite's content and added more text about his services and then proclaimed himself as the leading SEO freaking Specialist of Pakistan.

How do I deal with this scumbag? Well I reported him to Google and if no action was taken by Google after two weeks then I am gonna deal with him my way.

Here is the link on Google's Webmaster Tools for reporting site duplication thru the Spam Report page:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/spamreport?hl=en&pli=1

Google Webmaster Tools - Spam Report

Fill in all the required fields and don't forget to check the "Duplicate site or pages" option. Google's action on the spam report might take two weeks or more. Just continue on checking your site and the copycat site's keyword rankings. If you see some improvement on that site's keyword rankings then refile your spam report.

Sorry for my rant by the way and have a nice day!

How is Your Website after the Google Panda / Farmer Update?

2011-03-16T20:15:00.001+08:00

So what happened here? What is your website's keyword ranking after the Google Panda/Farmer Update?

Google updated their ranking algorithm last February 23rd in the USA and some site keyword rankings were affected. Here's a link from the Official Google Blog regarding this update:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html

This Google algorithm update is pretty big in scope and affected about 11.8% of Google search queries and it affected the keyword rankings of low-quality sites. Sites with copied content, content scraped from other sites, low quality poorly-written content, shallow content, and sites with more ads than content were greatly affected. I hope your site is not one of these sites. =)

Review your site's content and make sure that you only publish useful content that is related to your website's target keywords. Give your website visitors the info that they need. Your site's design and usability is also important. Make sure that the web pages are easy to navigate and the overall user experience is above average.

This is a good improvement from Google and will surely be beneficial to all except the shady sites for sure.

SEO Tip: How to Disable Google's Personalized Search Manually

2011-01-29T04:12:00.002+08:00

Google Personalized Search is a feature of Google Search that records all of user searches on Google Search into the Google Web History when a user logged into a Google Account and performs a search on Google.

The search results are not only based on the relevancy of each web page to the search term, but Google Personalized Search also takes into account what websites the user previously visited through search results to determine which search results to determine for future searches, to provide a more personalized experience.

This may work for personal use but the results are not the same for others. For example, clients from another country wants to check the keyword rankings of their websites and they then compare the results with your own search results. Chances are the results are slightly different due to the Google Personalized Search algorithm.

In order to manually disable the Google Personalized Search algorithm, try adding the text "&pws=0" to the URL in the address bar and reload the page. Check out the results. What you see are the actual Google search results without the effect of Google's Personalized Search algorithm.

Another workaround for this issue is to use third party SEO tools.like the Scroogle Scraper or the Mike's Marketing Tools - Search Engine Rankings Report, These SEO tools are simple and easy to use. The results of these tools are not affected by the Google Personalized Search algorithm.

SEO Tip: Heads Up! Google PageRank Updated last Jan. 21, 2011

2011-01-25T23:03:00.004+08:00

Heads Up Guys! Google updated PageRank scores last Jan. 21, 2011.

I didn't notice this until I got an email newletter from an SEO-related website advising about the latest Google PageRank update. One of my blogsite's PR increased from PR0 to PR2 while the rest stayed the same. Now I have three out of five active websites with good Google PageRank.

The Google PageRank scores of websites are still important for SEO. Other SEO experts may state otherwise but if you do experimentation, you will notice that a linked site's PR has an impact on how a website's PR is computed. The more back links you have from high PR sites, the more likely it will be for your website to achieve a good Google PageRank.

Building 10-15 quality back links daily will help your site achieved a higher rank whenever there is a scheduled Google PageRank update. Build links from as many websites as you can naturally.

Google frowns on automated link building. Make your back link grow naturally by starting slow and increasing the amount of backlinks gradually per week. Sooner or later this will improve your website's Google PageRank.

SEO Tip: Quick Indexing Technique for Yahoo!

2011-01-15T16:55:00.007+08:00

Have you noticed that Yahoo! takes a longer time than Google when indexing sites?

Just like Bing, Yahoo! has a slow crawl rate. The workaround for this is to broadcast yourself to Yahoo! thru a Yahoo! mail account.

Here are the steps to perform this technique:

1. Login to your Yahoo! mail account.
2. Go to My Yahoo!.
3. Click on "+ Content"

4. Click on "Add RSS Feed"

5. Enter your site's RSS Feed then click the "Add" button.

6. Click on the "I'm Done" button.

Take note that this can be applied to sites with RSS feeds or blogsites only. I've tried adding a SITEMAP.XML file but it did not work last time I checked. Maybe sooner or later Yahoo! will add this feature.

Another technique that I use for blogsites is the Blog and Ping Technique which I had covered before.

That's it. I hope my visual guide helped your sites get quicker indexing for the Yahoo! search engine.

Beware of "Snake Oil" salesmen selling SEO Expert Services

2010-12-31T15:04:00.000+08:00

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is both an art and science that requires skills and knowledge on how major search engines work and how to perform website optimization in order to rank on the top pages of Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

SEO skills require years of experience and experimentation in order to refine SEO methods and best practices. Search engines such as Google periodically change their ranking algorithm and it's the aim of an SEO expert or SEO specialist to be always updated of these algorithm changes in order for their clients' websites to stay on top of the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs).

Anyone can offer Search Engine Optimization services and claim to be an expert in this field of work. You can see new websites sprouting up offering SEO expert services. These SEO firms / freelancers may be legit but some are offering hype and hot air. Sometimes they refer to themselves as the top or best SEO firms in their area. Care should be taken by business owners in searching for good and reliable SEO firms or SEO freelancers.

The first thing you have to check out are the SEO firm / SEO freelancer's portfolio of clients and the target keywords optimized and ranked for these clients. You can ask about their SEO methods and check if they are using all white-hat techniques. You can also ask about their corporate website and how its target keywords / keyphrases rank against competitors.

The best giveaway of a "snake oil" salesman is a website that is not visible in the top pages of Google SERPs for keywords that this SEO firm is supposed to have a good ranking. Check their domain names and homepage title text for obvious target keywords that should have top page ranking on major search engine ranking results.

I hope my "rant" gave you some pointers on how to select the best SEO firm / SEO freelancer for your website(s).

Good Luck!

Importance of Customer Reviews on Google Places Listings

2010-11-22T09:07:00.005+08:00

Google Places Customer Reviews

Google Places listings have been incorporated to Google's organic search results that's why a Google Places listing is now more important for businesses. Don't be left out by competitors. If your Google Places listing is invisible on Google's search results then you are invisible to others and customer prospects.

Google values the trustworthiness of a business listing. Trust can be accomplished thru customer reviews. If you are wondering why your Google Places business listing doesn't have a good ranking then check your listing again. Your business listing might be missing some customer reviews or don't have it at all.

Customer reviews are important factors for a good Google Places ranking. Both positive and negative feedback can be helpful for a business. This will show the strength and weaknesses of your business. Think of all feedback as an opportunity for your business to improve customer satisfaction and for it to grow.

Whenever you have new customers, tell them that you have a Google Places business listing and you would appreciate it if they would post feedback or testimonials about your company's services. You don't have to pay them or offer them anything. Tell them to be honest and straightforward so that you can improve your services.

To create your Google Places business listing, go to http://www.google.com/places.

Google Instant's Effect on SEO

2010-11-14T07:41:00.005+08:00

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. This means that you can scan a results page while you type. Seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search
term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want.

How will it affect a website's SEO? This is what a true SEO Professional would be thinking. Will it affect a website's ranking and traffic from Google search? This can only be determined by site metrics and monitoring the quality of traffic that comes from Google.

User searches are much faster because of Google Instant. Evaluating the top keywords / key phrases suggestions for searches will be the SEO professional's job. Long tail keywords and top one to three keyword rankings will gain more importance because of Google Instant. SEO firms and freelancers will be more busy these days optimizing sites for top keyword and Google Instant placements.

I guess SEO will become more important and this will mean more projects for SEO service providers.

Top Three Tips for Google Places

2010-10-23T17:41:00.005+08:00

Google has recently relabeled Google Maps Local Business Listings into Google Places. Some site owners experienced changes in their business listing rankings while some lost several important reviews for their businesses listed in Google Places.

Here's my Top Three Tips for Google Places:

1. Never let another person control your Google Places listing. If you hire a Google Places Expert, make sure he/she has no access to your Google Places account. He/She should only recommend the changes to your Google Places listing(s). The website owner should be the only one to have full access to a Google Places account.

2. Report a duplicate listing to Google. You don't want a duplicate listing to share your user reviews. User reviews are factors for top rankings of your business listings.

3. Optimize the CATEGORY types of your business listings using your target keywords. Use one target keyword or keyword variation per category and use all the allocated CATEGORY types using the "Add another category" link. A maximum of five category types are allowed as of October 2010.

If you need help in your business listing's Google first page rankings (Top 1 to 7 for Google Maps), just contact me and avail of my cheap Google Places optimization services.

Google updated PageRanks!!!

2010-10-18T17:10:00.000+08:00

Did anyone notice a Google PageRank update on their sites? Google probably updated PRs yesterday or today. I'm still confirming from other SEO forums. One of my blog Best SEO Tools Online is now PR2. No update on this Google SEO Expert blog though.

Anyway this is just a heads up. Check out your website's PR now.

Top 5 tips for Google Sitelinks Optimization of Websites

2010-09-14T01:23:00.007+08:00

Google Sitelinks are the sub-list of links that you see after a website URL is listed on Google search results. These links are generated by Google based on a set criteria. Google scores every link on the home page and only the links from the home page are generated sitelinks by Google.

Google Sitelinks

If your site's Google SERPs listings contains sitelinks, it means that your site is trusted by Google. This brings confidence to your website visitors. Google has a definitive guide for sitelinks at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334.

Although Google has a guide for this, some factors that you might consider for Google Sitelinks optimization are:

1. Website header and footer navigation links should be descriptive of the content of the pages it points to. The link's anchor text should be a keyword pointing to a page that has a recommended keyword density of 2-4%.

For example, if the anchor text is "Services", the page that the link points to should have a "services" keyword density of 2-4%.

2. The file name that the link points to should be the same as with the anchor text. For example, if the anchor text is named "Contact Us", the filename of the HTML file that the link points to should be "contact-us.html". Another example is if the anchor text is named "About", the filename of the HTML file that the link points to should be "about.html". This file naming convention helps web crawlers index pages properly.

3. Create duplicate footer links from the website's most often used header navigation links. These footer links will be seen by Google as important links and will be scored higher by Google.

4. Navigation link placement should be fixed and standardized across all pages. If a link on a current page is placed on top, a similar link on another page should have the same location as with the current page in order to avoid confusion by visitors.

5. If you are using buttons as navigation items, make sure that the image tags are optimized on every button declaration. Fill up the IMG "Alt" attributes with the button title. This button title should also be similar with the button's image filename. For example, if the button name is "Downloads", the button's filename should also be "downloads.jpg".

Google Sitelinks generation for new websites will take time. New websites might take three months or more before a sitelink becomes visible on Google SERPs.

Make sure that your sites are optimized for Google Sitelinks. These sitelinks will give your website authority and trustworthiness so start optimizing now.

SEO Tip: Don't Use Your Target Keywords Inside the Meta Keywords Tags

2010-08-20T22:28:00.000+08:00

Some people confuse keywords with the META "Keywords" tag. Keywords define what websites are all about. Websites are optimized using the target keywords defined during the keyword research phase.

The META "Keywords" tags have long been abused by webmasters when they're optimizing websites. Google, along with other major search engines, ignore these META tags because of the overzealous keyword stuffing performed by webmasters.

Although it is disregarded by major search engines, I still use it on my site because some search engines might still be using it for indexing or maybe my competitors still use it and I don't want them to be a step ahead of me.

What I am advising is never ever place your primary and secondary keywords inside your website's META "keywords" tag. The reason for this is that you'll be giving your competitors' a sneak preview of the keywords that you are optimizing for. Don't give them an easy way to figure these things out. You can use alternate keywords instead, keywords that are relevant to your website/web page. Two-word key phrases that are alternates for your primary and secondary keywords.

One last tip, my recommended number of keywords inside a META keyword tag is eight. Try using the SubmitExpress Meta Tag Analyzer Tool to check your page optimization. This SEO tool is great for analyzing websites and it's free.

SEO Tip: On-page Optimization Factors To Consider

2010-08-10T18:21:00.004+08:00

Google indexes and scores a web page for keyword relevancy. The relevancy of a site's web page content for keywords / key phrases requires site optimization or on-page optimization. Google factors a web page's content based on keyword relevancy, keyword density, and keyword proximity.

Here are some of Google's ranking factors:

1. Relevancy of Title text
2. Relevancy of Meta Description text
3. Relevancy of Body text
4. Relevancy of HTML tag "IMG" Alt text
5. Relevancy of HTML comments
6. Proximity of keywords to top of page
7. Page loading time
8. Density of keywords
9. Number of outbound links
10. In-linking between pages

These are just some of the requirements for on-page optimization of web pages. Google has more than a hundred of ranking factors and some of these factors are secrets that only the Google Engineers know about.

SEO Tip: Top 5 Image SEO Tips For a Better Google Ranking

2010-08-08T17:16:00.001+08:00

Optimization of images is also an SEO factor for major search engines. You need to optimize these images in order to increase your page score. The HTML tags can be optimized for better search engine rankings.

Here are five tips for better image SEO optimization:

1. Put captions for images on a web page

Captions should have some target keywords integrated but it should be descriptive of the photo. Avoid keyword stuffing by the way. You could be penalized by Google for keyword spamming.

2. Be descriptive in naming your images

A filename such as beginners-seo-guide.jpg is much better than img15067777.jpg. Google values filenames where keywords can be extracted and indexed.

3. Add your keywords in the "Alt" attribute text of HTML tags

Your primary and secondary keywords should be integrated to the "Alt" description text. Don't overdo this. Use variations of your keywords to avoid being penalized by Google for keyword stuffing.

4. Don't duplicate your 'Alt' attribute text

Avoid duplicating the 'Alt' description of your website's images. You can alternate with "Photo","Image", and "Picture" in describing your images. You can also add numbers to your 'Alt' descriptions if you are using a product catalog.

5. Use the "Title" attribute of the HTML tag if necessary

The "Title" attribute is used like a tooltip. A descriptive text is displayed on top of the image whenever your mouse points to it. You can integrate your keywords into this attribute. Avoid duplication of text.

Image optimization is an on-page SEO factor that you need to implement in order to gain a better page score on all major search engines.

I hope these SEO tips can help you gain a better page ranking.

Scroogle.org's Google Results Scraping Services Is Online Again

2010-07-11T10:25:00.003+08:00

Scroogle.org's Google search results scraping services is up again. I hope this will be permanent. Their Google scraping service is good and the results are accurate.

Here are some screenshots of the site's interface:

Scroogle Scraper

Results from Google Search

An added bonus is the numbering of the items which is handy when you want to get the exact position of your site's Google ranking without manually counting each item one by one.

Let's hope that this scraping service stays online for good.. better yet let us hope Google will not do any major change in their search results that could affect Scroogle's service.

Scroogle.org's Google Search Scraping Service is Temporarily Suspended

2010-07-03T07:38:00.000+08:00

Ouch! Scroogle.org's Google search scraping service has been temporarily suspended since July 1, 2010 because of Google's UI changes. You'll encounter Scroogle's notice after you perform a keyword search on their Scraper page. This is surely an unwelcome development. Now I'll be reverting to my usual workaround for Google's Personalized Search.

Guess what?

A web proxy server. I always use a United States-based proxy server to perform my keyword searches for Google. This has been my workaround for Google's Personalized Search. A US-based proxy server will give me a sample of what US-based Google Search users will encounter after performing a keyword search.

I currently use HideMyAss.com because of its simple user interface and catchy name. Its server is based in Los Angeles, California, United States.

Going back to Scroogle, let's wait for their next update and just hope for the best.

Google Personalized Search Is Screwing Up Keyword Ranking Results

2010-07-01T10:26:00.001+08:00

Ever wondered why you and your client(s) get different Google search results every time a keyword search is performed? This is due to Google's "Personalized Search" innovation.

Google extended "Personalized Search" last year. First they implemented this on signed-in users, then they extended this to include signed-out users. This addition enables Google to customize search results for users based upon 180 days of search activity linked to anonymous cookies in their browsers.

Now when you perform a keyword search, Google will be able to provide you with the most relevant results possible. For example, if you search for "movies" and often click on results from imdb.com, Google might rank imdb.com higher on the results page the next time you look for movies.

I found a keyword ranking tool at http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm. This tool will get Google search results using an anonymous IP address, without saving, without storing search-term records, etc.

Every time you run a search query on Scroogle, therefore, Google won't have any past data about it, so the Google SERPs will be the ones seen by the average Internet user.

You can also set the number of search results. The sequence numbers are real handy when you are trying to determine your keyword ranking positions.

I will be using this tool all the time from now on.

Check it out now.

SEO Tip: Google PageRank Updates Last June 5, 2010

2010-06-09T22:30:00.001+08:00

Google updated website PageRanks last June 5, 2010. I didn't notice it because my website's PR did not change and I guess I was just too busy doing other stuff. I just need to build more back links so that I can level up. I hope my other blogs got their updates too.

I still can't figure out why I got PR3 in such a short time. I've been doing experimentation on how I got some PR juice from authority sites. Maybe it has something to do with the outbound links from my blog's home page. I'm not gonna tell from what section, but I think I know what's giving me the high PR link juice.

A little more experimentation and then hopefully I can get my confirmation and reveal the results.

SEO Tip: Build a Facebook Fan Page to Market your Products and Services

2010-05-23T20:41:00.003+08:00

Facebook has more than 500 million active users. That is a huge market for companies who want to sell their products or services online. An online presence in Facebook is a big advantage for companies.

A Facebook Fan page should be part of a company's Internet marketing efforts. A company can interact online with their clients or customers thru Facebook's Fan page. Top companies use Facebook Pages to market their services and products.

A Facebook Fan Page is free and a Fan Box widget can be integrated to a company's website. A Facebook Fan Page is also public, which makes it visible to Google and other Search Engines like Yahoo! and Bing. Within a fan page you can easily post pictures, start discussion posts, integrate videos, create events, and even link your blogsite's RSS feeds to Facebook Notes. By linking RSS feeds, your Facebook Fan page's wall will be updated automatically every time blog entry is created.

Make sure that you use primary SEO keywords when creating your Facebook Fan page's title. You don't want to change the page's title again after your Facebook Fan page has been indexed by Google.

SEO Tips: Use microblogging sites for fast indexing of new sites and pages

2010-04-26T16:41:00.002+08:00

I've noticed that microblogging sites help in quick indexing of new sites or web pages. Sites like Twitter and FriendFeed are examples of microblogging sites. These sites are authority and high PR sites.

Google prioritizes high PR and authority sites when indexing pages. Indexing starts from PR10 down to PR0 sites. If your site's link is visible in a high PR site, chances are your site's link will be crawled by a spider faster than other sites not linked to the high PR site.

I tested and confirmed this SEO technique when I was trying out a microblogging site. I posted a link to my site on this microblogging site and checked Google from time to time. My Google indexing time took 15 minutes only and my site's keyword rankings improved.

I believe that if you mix microblogging and social bookmarking sites as one of your link building techniques, then you will have a quick Google indexing time plus gain more traffic and one-way links.

Check it out and tell me the results thru your comments.

New Google Adword Keyword Tool Beta

2010-04-19T08:31:00.002+08:00

The New Google Adword Keyword Tool is in Beta now:

A link to the Beta version of the tool has been added to the current Google Adword: Keyword Tool dashboard.

Check it out.

SEO Tip: Online Reputation Management Tips

2010-04-16T11:09:00.007+08:00

Online Reputation Management according to WikiPedia:

"is the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media.he goal is to have people speak about your brand in a positive sense by achieving, maintaining and improving a positive online sentiment about it.

Being mentioned in social media can be a threat if not dealt with correctly, but can also generate great benefits if used the right way. It’s all about buzz and sentiment, and how you manage it."

Online Reputation Management or ORM, (* Brand Reputation Management or BRM in UK) requires more targeted optimization since the goal is to remove negative URLs from the top 1-2 pages of Google result pages.

Here are my tips for ORM:

1. Check if the website pointed to by the URL of the negative article or post has a free article submission link. Create and publish an positive and informative article regarding the ORMed website on this article website. This gives positive feedback to the ORMed website. Add links to the article that point to the ORMed website. Perform off-page optimization / link submissions that point to this article.

2. Push the lower ranked URLs higher by performing link submissions that point to these lower ranked URLs. You are in fact performing SEO for the positive URLs. This will take much of your time since you have several links (about two pages but depends on how far back from Google search results you want the offending links listed) to push higher in Google search results.

3. Use microblogging and social bookmarking sites to push the positive links higher. These sites are indexed faster by major search engines and you will see immediate results in less than an hour.

There are several websites that have more detailed info about Online Reputation Management. You just have to Google it.

New Google Adword Keyword Tool?

2010-04-07T14:53:00.001+08:00

I was using the Google Adword Keyword Tool earlier today when I noticed that the user interface has been modified. Please check the screen grabs below:

New Google Adword Keyword Tool Image #1

New Google Adword Keyword Tool Image #2

The Google Adword Keyword Tool has changed back to its normal UI. Maybe it was just a preview of what's going to be released soon.

I will keep you updated.

Heads Up! Google has Updated Site PageRanks!

2010-04-04T19:01:00.003+08:00

Wow! This blogsite's PageRank is Three (3) only after three months of light link building. Google has updated PageRanks (PR). These PR updates probably started yesterday, April 3, 2010.

PageRank, according to a reliable source (Wikipedia):
"is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set."

Google assigns a numeric weighting from 0-10 for each webpage on the Net. PageRank or PR denotes a site’s importance in the eyes of Google.

Since I started with a PR Zero three months ago and now my site is PR Three, my PR advanced three levels. This is a big accomplishment considering my top Google competitors are SEO Experts from India and the Philippines plus my link submissions were not constant and daily.

Maybe I made the right website submissions or maybe I hit the Google jackpot. =)

Anyway, just a Heads Up, Google has updated website PRs.

SEO Tips: Submit Your Sitemap.XML file To Google

2010-03-29T20:04:00.010+08:00

Here are the steps for submitting your website's sitemap.xml file to Google:

1. Register and sign in to Google Webmaster

2. Click on the “Add a Site” button.

3. Enter your website's URL then click on the "Continue" button.

4. Verify your site ownership by uploading a verification file

5. After verification, go to Site configuration > Sitemaps

6. Click on the “Submit a Sitemap” button

7. Wait for the Google bot to discover your sitemap.

Tip: You can use a BlogSpot RSS feed as a valid sitemap.

SEO Tips: Using Sitemaps To Improve Google, Yahoo, and Bing Page Indexing

2010-03-19T22:01:00.001+08:00

What are sitemaps?

Sitemaps inform search engines about pages on websites that are available for crawling. A sitemap is an XML file that contains URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL. This helps search engines crawl a site more intelligently.

You can create sitemaps thru an online sitemap generator like the one offered by xml-sitemaps.com. You just have to enter your site's URL, set the change frequency, last modification, and priority settings.

After this you can download the generated XML file. Upload this file to the root folder of your website and update your site's robots.txt file to include the following text:

"Sitemap:http://www.your-site-name.com/sitemap.xml"

If you don't have a robots.txt file, create one in your site's root folder.

Next is sitemap submission which will be discussed in my next post.

Ciao!

SEO Tip: Use the Blog and Ping Technique for Faster Blog Publishing and Indexing

2010-03-11T17:12:00.003+08:00

"In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated. An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more ping servers, which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material."

Source: Wikipedia

In layman's terms, blog pinging notifies all major blog directories in one go so that everyone knows about your latest or recently updated blogs. It saves you the time of having to do each site manually.

The Blog and Ping technique is an often overlooked SEO technique. Pinging notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated. This increases your blog's popularity and helps blog search engines crawl and index your site properly.

Here's a list of auto-pinger sites:

1. PingOMatic.com
2. PingMyBlog.com
3. FeedPing.com
4. AutoPinger.com
5. FeedShark.com
6. Pingler.com

Try it!

SEO Tips: Proper submission to DMOZ.ORG - Open Directory Project

2010-02-26T23:33:00.000+08:00

A DMOZ listing is valued highly by Google and this gives you an edge over your competitors. Since DMOZ is a .ORG website, it is a high authority website that boosts your Google ranking score.

Here are some tips on how to get listed in DMOZ:

1. Professional-looking website.
You will give the DMOZ editors a good impression if your website looks professionally designed. This will increase your chances of getting a spot in DMOZ.

2. Original and quality content
Make sure that your website contains quality content that is relevant to its theme and target niche.

3. Business/Personal Contact Information
Give your visitors a way to contact you. Adding an email address, phone number, and business address will definitely help.

4. Proper and relevant category:
Submission to a proper and relevant category is important because DMOZ editors reject submissions on improper or incorrect categories.

5. Follow DMOZ Guidelines
Be sure to follow the DMOZ guidelines on "Site URL", "Title", and "Description" text. Following guidelines help in getting a DMOZ editor's approval.

6. No broken links and no spelling errors
Check your site for dead or broken links. You don't want to annoy DMOZ editors and visitors with "Page Not Found" error pages. Check also for spelling errors in your page content before submitting your site to DMOZ.

7. Website Usability
A website's ease of use will be a factor for DMOZ listing inclusion. DMOZ editors will be impressed by the time spent on your website's user experience design and subsequently your website will get their approval.

8. Lots of Patience
Patience is a virtue. DMOZ Editors receive several website URL submissions every day. It may take weeks or several months before your submission is approved by a DMOZ Editor.

My blog's DMOZ Listing is at http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Philippines/Provinces/Davao_del_Sur/Davao_City/Business_and_Economy/Computers_and_Internet.

The blog site's primary DMOZ search keyword is "seo freelancer tips".

SEO Tip: Streamline Target SEO Keywords for HTML Title tags

2010-02-18T23:41:00.000+08:00

After SEO keyword analysis and research, you found a lot of good keywords but found some to be too wordy. So what will you do next?

For example, you have the keyphrase:

"best tourist spots and cheap hotels in the philippines"

Here's an optimized version:

Best Tourist Spots Philippines | Cheap Hotels Philippines"

I removed the word "and" and replaced it with a separator "|" and repeated "Philippines" to double the score for the "Philippines" keyword.

Three to four word keyphrases are used more commonly now. Using the Long Tail SEO Strategy, you can bring more exposure for your keyphrases while avoiding highly competitive two-word keyphrases. You can bring more traffic to your site this way since you have a bigger captured market for your keywords.

I recommend that you use your country's name as the last keyword. This will bring more targetted traffic to your site since most of the time, users add the country name as the last keyword before generating a Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP).

SEO is quite challenging, the more you are exposed to it, the more you'll learn and improve your methods.

SEO Tip: Find the Right Keywords for SEO

2010-02-11T00:43:00.001+08:00

Keyword analysis requires a deep knowledge of the target market. Before setting up a new website, you should have the target keywords ready and build your content from these keywords.

Use the Google Adwords: Keyword Tool to perform a comparative analysis of the keywords you are generally aiming for.

Use an online spreadsheet tool like Google Docs to tabulate the keyword info. Prepare columns for "keywords", "Average CPC", "Local Search", "Global Search", and "Google Competitors". Set the "Match" option to "Exact" and locate the best match for your target keywords.

You'll need to find the ten best keywords by analyzing the Average CPC, Local Search Volume, and Global Search volume and the Google competitor pages. The value of the Google competitor pages is generated by doing a Google search of the focus keyword(s).

Enter the selected keyword details on a Google spreadsheet of your keyword list. This list will define the content of your home page and landing pages. The top one keyword on the list will be your website's primary keyword.

Just be patient when building your keyword list becase you'll need one day to prepare and finalize a good keyword list.

One last tip, don't focus on one or two-word keywords/keyphrases because buyers rarely use them. Focus on what you would type when searching for a specific product that you'd like to buy. It's something like [name of product] + [location].

For example:
"best tourist spots philippines"
"cheap hotels in the philippines"
"freelancers from the philippines"

If you would like to learn more about SEO, just shoot me an email at seo.expert4hire@gmail.com.

Freelancer Tip: Top Ranking in Google using the right SEO methods

2010-02-04T17:36:00.000+08:00

After one month of focused SEO, my blog is currently number one in Google Search for the keyword "seo freelancer tips". This top spot was achieved thru several SEO methods such as keyword and competitor analysis, on-page and off-page optimization, and Internet marketing.

Google Search result for "SEO Freelancer Tips":

Top page ranking requires in-depth knowledge of Google's page scoring factors and the keyword relevancy and quality of the website's content.

Shoot me an email at seo.expert4hire@gmail.com if you want a free SEO Analysis report of your website.

Freelancer Tip: Using the Escrow Service on Freelance Sites

2010-01-13T12:15:00.000+08:00

Escrow is a feature that you can use at freelance sites.
An escrow account is an account maintained by the freelance site. The freelance sites that incorporate Escrow require buyers to deposit funds before the project is allowed to begin.

If you are a service provider with good ratings, you should always use Escrow. Escrow ensures payment of your services. Some buyers or project owners scam providers by not paying for the rendered services. After a project is completed and the reports are submitted, the buyer can't be contacted again. If you did not use Escrow, the freelance site can't help you demand payment from the buyer. Don't get ripped off by not using a freelance site's Escrow service.

Others suggest new comers not to use Escrow as buyers do not like to use Escrow when they are hiring new people for their projects. The reason is that some new comers fail to complete the project and in case the buyer has placed money in Escrow, then the buyer will have to wait for few days for his/her funds to be returned by the freelance site.

My suggestion for newcomers with no ratings is to use Escrow if the project is long term or requires one month or more to complete. For short-term projects, like 15 days or less, you have the option to ask for Escrow.

One more tip, check the buyer's review(s) first, try to go thru the comments of paid providers. You will get some ideas of the buyer's reputation and ability to pay on time.

Freelancer Tip: Options on fund withdrawals for Freelancer.com (GAF) Funds

2009-12-30T10:49:00.000+08:00

Balances on a Freelancer.com account are withdrawn thru the following options:

Freelancer.com Debit Card:

Withdraw cash in local currency at ATMs around the world
Online access to view your account activity
If card is lost or stolen, a new card is issued and balance is transferred.

      Requirement:
A $30.00 Freelancer.com balance is required to order a card
      Processing time:
              Freelancer.com funds will be loaded directly onto the card

PayPal.com:

Shop securely without revealing your credit card or bank account information
Pay conveniently and quickly when you shop online
Send money to friends and family
Shop worldwide at ebay and thousands of other online stores in your preferred currency

Requirements:

A PayPal account
A $1 fee is taken from your Freelancer.com balance

Processing time:
1 week (Released every Monday and Tuesday)

Moneybookers.com:

Send money to anyone's email
Withdraw money

Requirements:

A Moneybookers account
A $1 fee is taken from your Freelancer.com balance

Wired Transfer

Withdraw via Paypal to a local or US Bank account or a card
Withdraw from your PayPal account to your in-country bank account or to a U.S. bank account. In addition, withdraw to a credit, debit, or prepaid card in the following countries:

Philippines
Brazil
India
Indonesia
Israel
Luxembourg
Slovakia
Turkey
Chile
Uruguay
Bulgaria
Cyprus
Estonia
Gibraltar
Iceland
Latvia
Liechtenstein
Lithunia
Malta
Romania
San Marino
Slovenia
United Arab Emirates

Requirements:

A PayPal account
A $1 fee is taken from your Freelancer.com balance

I recommend that you use a PayPal account for fund withdrawals. A Freelancer Debit Card
bank withdrawal has a $2.15 fee per transaction which is costly in the long run.

I haven't tried the Wired Transfer option of Freelancer.com but basically it works thru PayPal which is already a second option.

How to get your project bids noticed in Freelancer.com (Formerly GAF)

2009-12-19T22:23:00.000+08:00

I have been working as a home-based freelancer for several months and have completed some freelance projects.

In order to get noticed as a bidder in freelancing sites you need to be aggresive with your efforts. You have to prepare a short summary of your skills. Include the number of years of related experience and your successful projects. Don't just cut and paste this summary on every freelance project that you bid on. You should customize your bid summary to the project requirements.

Make your bid text personal and greet the project owner by his/her name. Add a PM to your bids. Your PM should contain more details of your bid. Explain on how you came up with the bid amount and the number of days required to complete the freelance project. If the freelance project owner replied to your PM, be sure to reply immediately. A project owner might have some questions that need an immediate reply. If you don't reply soon enough, the project owner will move on to other project bidders.

When a bid offer is accepted, be sure to coordinate with the project owner as soon as you get his/her contact details.

Happy freelancing!

Home-based Work / Telecommuting

2009-10-02T10:15:00.000+08:00

Telecommuting is defined as a work arrangement in which employees enjoy flexibility in working location and hours. In other words, the daily commute to a central place of work is replaced by telecommunication links.

Many work from home, while others, occasionally also referred to as nomad workers or web commuters utilize mobile telecommunications technology to work from coffee shops or myriad other locations.

Source: Wikipedia

Telecommuting has its advantages and disadvantages.

The advantages are you can work at your own pace, control your own time, and you don't have to spend for travel or paid meals.

The disadvantages are you only have a virtual conversation with your client and you seldom meet people, you are using a residential DSL line, and you have to bid against other freelancers for the projects.

The best way to address the disadvantages in my opinion are the following:

1. Build a network of home-based workers / friends, inform them about your availability, and the services that you can offer.
2. If a friend has been a home-based worker for a long time and has completed a lot of projects and has good reviews in a freelancing site, he/she can outsource some projects to you thru his/her account.
3. Go to a coffee shop / restaurant with Wi-fi access, meet some people, and build your network.