SEO Services 24/7 Blog » search engine optimization

Choosing a Domain Name

admin — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 09:04:35 +0000

I still remember when I was working with a client and had suggested him to change the domain name of his site from his brand name to its main keyword as a part of my SEO recommendation. The client was not happily ready for this suggestion and therefore moved further to other SEO specialists within forums and groups to seek second opinion on my recommendation. To my surprise, 99 % of his fellow group members supported my recommendation which made me to write this post and share some points to be remembered of while choosing a new domain.

Domains with your main keyword in it are the best domains if available as they will help the higher rankings of your site earlier compared to others. Also an important point which should be noted is that the keyword should be at the start of new domain e.g. if your main keyword is ‘dog food’, then your domain name can be dogfood.com or dogfoodatlanta.com and so on instead of cheapdogfood.com or atlantadogfood.com

Avoid using misspellings domain as search engines are smart enough to get you caught using misspellings for your domains. Similarly use of hyphens or dash in your domain is less useful as it rarely helps you with the increase in ranking over the continuous keyword. Moreover the hyphen cannot be spoken off easily and thus do not help in brand development.

Keep the length of your domain as short as possible unless you get your most powerful keyword in long domain name.

Try to get .com domain names over .org and .net, the preference should be as .com followed by .org followed by .net, try to get global domain by paying little extra instead of country specific domains unless your services are restricted to a particular country.

Get a domain which is easily memorable over the domain name which cannot be understood.

To get more information on choosing a SEO friendly domain name, connect me here.

Google page rank update in 2010

admin — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 04:47:02 +0000

Google has updated its page rank across World Wide Web on April 3, 2010. This again alarmed the webmasters across the world. Many pages have seen a sudden raise in its PR but there are very few websites who’s PR has increased with a very high figure. With the inclusion of caffeine in Google’s search algorithm, webmasters were worried as they predicted that the Caffeine may also bring changes in PR calculation algorithm. But this was not the case as most of them got PR as they expected. But before the PR updates most of the webmasters were unaware of this update. Many of them predicted the update to be around in May 2010, but the exact time was a mystery to everyone. If you are a frequent reader of Matt Cutt’s blog, you can get some idea about any changes which Google has made or is planning to make in its search algorithm. In the same way you can also predict the exact period of PR update. Google has become very smart and it’s last two PR update was done on holidays (last update on 31st December 2009 which was a Christmas holiday and the last one on 3rd April which was a Ester holiday). According to some blogs, the schedule of PR update in 2010 has already been decided by Google and the schedule is:

1) April 2010

2) July 2010

3) October 2010

Though these predictions are not confirmed by Google yet one can trust them with small variation of about 15 to 20 days. So any webmaster who is unhappy as his or her PR was not updated on 3rd April 2010 can work to aim the July update. Though till now there is no update by Google in its PR calculation algorithm but you can expect some changes in the July update. So for webmasters it is necessary to follow the Caffeine algorithm as it is sure that the update will be very much oriented towards Caffeine.

PPC or SEO – Which is better?

admin — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 17:42:16 +0000

PPC (Pay per Click) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are the two different and most important forms of Internet Marketing. All the online marketers have different opinion on which type of marketing techniques to use. Some of them aggressively go for PPC as it is a good option to keep a website on top page of the major search engines for desired keywords, while SEO is a long term process and takes some time, say months to make a website perform well in search engine results page.

Some basic properties of the two marketing strategies are given below:

PPC: Traffic comes through users or visitors clicking on an advertisement. Every time a click is made, the owner has to pay for it. The position where an ad is placed is decided by the bidding process. For a particular keyword depending upon the bidding the advertisements are arranged with highest bidder mostly at the top position or the Ad which is performing well. All major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. has this feature of keeping sponsored ads.

SEO: Various factors which are taken into account by search engines for placing a website in top positions for a keyword can be altered to meet the requirements of search engines. These activities come under SEO techniques. If compared to PPC, SEO is a long term process and for a new website it can take months to rank well on search results. The factors that can be changed include the site content, the actual coding of a site and the inbound links which point to any page of the website.

Whatever is the marketing technique used by a website, but it should be made clear that the ultimate goal is to gain potential customers. PPC is an expensive deal and really needs good capital supply to sustain good position. On the other hand, SEO is a slow process but can really be more fruitful. You do not have to pay anything to search engines to rank you on top position. So if you word hard initially in a well planned manner along with a good SEO services provider, it can really be fruitful to you in future.

Many experts have an opinion that if we run PPC campaign on search engines, their organic rankings also increase, This issue is always a topic of debate between experts, but its a fact that if a website has good organic rankings on search engines then running a PPC campaign is dual advantage for the website to impress visitors.

Some high ranking tips for a website

admin — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:29:00 +0000

1) Use your primary keyword or keyword phrase in anchor text of links. This is considered as a very important parameter for Google for ranking. When search engine bots find these anchor text, it follows the link to the website. If the theme of the website is as same the anchor text, then be assured to get the maximum benefit of using the anchor text.

2) Ask other good websites to link your page. If any good (high PR) site is having a link to your website then this is a very important parameter taken into consideration by search engines for ranking a website.

3) Try to get inbound links from sites similar to yours. Getting incoming links from a reputable site is good. But getting links from similar sites is a far better option. Even if the site is not having a high PR, it does not matter a lot if there work domain is same as yours.

4) Try to get backlinks from .edu, and .gov websites. Generally .edu or .gov site is given more importance by search engines as these sites are generally government or educational sites. So if you have an inbound link from any one such websites, then it is really good for a top search engine ranking.

5) Have as much create on your site as you can. In terms of SEO, it is said that content is king. So have as much relevant content on your webpage as possible. Search engines cannot read images and flash videos. These are just a medium to impress visitors. So in order to impress these search engines, you have to use content in your webpages. The major keywords should be used effectively and should be uniformly distributed throughout the page. These keywords should be highlighted so that it catches the eye of the visitors as well as search engine bots.