Search Engine Optimization Tips, SEO for Blogs, Search Tips

Why Google Search Engine handles dynamic content best. Google recently announced that it can take care of Dynamic Content and webmasters need not worry about rewriting dynamic urls to shorter static urls.

This is a significant improvement in Google Search advancements. ecommerce, job, shopping sites amongst others serve users varied content depending upon the search parameters (location, price, brand, category etc).

Dynamic content is content created on the fly, such as when a user searches on a ticketing site, for a low cost ticket to LA, it searches the database of information and throws up best results. These results are not actually available as static html page content anywhere on site.

Earlier site owners and webmasters had a tough time getting these indexed. They would resort to creation of thousands of static pages or rewriting their urls using modrewrite softwares. Now, Google’s ability to crawl and handle dynamic content is a boon to webmasters and users.

Should I then redo all static urls
No. Don’t be confused by this announcement. Google SEO team only means to say that Google algorithms can handle changing content much better than before. The existing static urls created on sites with dynamic content should just let it be there. Google will still crawl, index and show them in relevant search results. That’s not a disadvantage at all.

Yahoo though still recommends a different method for authenticated site users.
Yahoo Dynamic Content Rules Though I don’t recommend that.

In case you’re a large site, I recommend reading Arnold’s Indexing dynamic content

Please read the article  on my blog here: http://www.selfgrowthtips.com/2011/07/bloggers-guide-to-accepting-comments-on.html

Didn’t know how to get the right keywords for SEO of your site or blog, well that got easier with <a href=”http://google.com/sktool/”>New Google Search Tool</a>

It generates specific and relevant keywords that matches your site’s content. Primarily intended for those using Google Adwords, to help them find highly relevant keywords for bidding.

But it can be used by you to find highly searched keywords that are best suited to your blog or site. And also zero in on highly paid keywords, in case you’re using adsense.

Don’t worry if you don’t have a Google Adwords account, you can still use this tool to generate keywords, albeit in a limited way. On the left are generic categories and you can drill down to find out relevant categories for your site. And then find great keywords.

Alternatively, you can enter competitive site’s name and look for keywords that match a competitor. This can help you build better content that users are actually searching for.

moved content to How to blog-easy step by step guide

Many bloggers don’t pay enough attention to blog designs while blogging. In actuality, design of blogs is very important for the blogs success. Here’s a blogger’s guide to SEO friendly blog design.

By design I mean the organization of your blog pages. How should one organize content, images, video, categories etc to make it look pleasing to the eye? And eventually to make it easy and intuitive for blog users to navigate and read what they want.

First take stock of what you want on the blog home: main content, recent posts, recommended blogs, search bar, contact us, sign up for newsletter, subscribe to feed, site map and more. Then think about what users would like to see on your blog and what would readers do when they land on your blog home page.

Depending on what users are most likely to do, you decide on your right, left, top or bottom navigation. Get the most important things right up at the top – recent posts, categories, search bar, about, contact us, downloads, feeds/ subscribe to newsletter etc.

Choosing the template themes
Depending on the topic of your bloging, choose the theme. If it’s serious, get themes that are neat. If you’re blogging about products, travel or gadgets, then you get a flashy, colorful blog theme.

Touching the code
If you don’t know html, I suggest that you don’t tinker with the code. Use what’s there in a theme that suits you best. In case you’re using blogger.com, use drag and drop.

Creating a blog that’s pleasing to the eye
Just ask yourself. Would I stay on a blog for long it’s hard on my eyes? Will I close a page, if it’s not aesthetically good. Most blog readers will bounce off if there’s clutter on a blog. So keep it easy on the eye. But use images to enhance the beauty.

Test and tweak after a while
Google analytics will provide you some clues to how people actually navigate through the blog home page. The map overlay will tell you what content they are seeing the most. You can them rearrange content according to your analysis.

I keep repeating, search engines like Google only want to give it’s users the best sites. And keep sending more traffic to sites that users love, read lot of pages, spend more time on, frequent and recommend to others. Therefore, make user feel comfortable, quickly give them what they want – quality content and you’ll succeed as a blogger.

And that’s why a well designed blog that users love becomes Search Engine friendly.

Directories are a compilation of web site resources by category and region. Here are secrets to getting listed in human compiled resources. They are very useful since internet users can find at one destination a comprehensive list of resources on a particular subject of interest to them.

Human edited directories like Dmoz, Yahoo and About, are more valued and respected than spider based directories. And search engines give importance to listings in human edited directories. The reason being that each site listed there has been validated by a human editor, who is knowledgeable about that category.

Dmoz is the largest human edited directory project ever undertaken on the net. With a 80,000 volunteer editor team, Dmoz constantly edits and improves the quality of listings in order to provide users quality resources and better experience. This oped directory project powers some of the directories for the world’s biggest search engines including Google, AOL and Netscape.

How to submit your site or blog to Dmoz?
If you submit a site or blog to authority resources like Dmoz without reading their guidelines, you won’t get the desired results.

Step 1
Go to the home page of dmoz.org and search to find whether your site or blog is already listed.

Step 2
Submitting to the correct category largely determines your success on getting listed. Search and find out the right category to list your main url. Click the “suggest url” link and submit. Take care to describe your site accurately. Do not write descriptions that sound like advertising or promotional copy. The secret to getting a positive review is writing a neutral description as their editors may do.
Example: A description for a retailer site selling scarves should be:

Traditional handmade scarves made of silk and cotton from the weavers of Kashmir. Matching hats also available. (and the description should not be an advertisement: fantastic cheap handmade cotton and silk scarves at prices that could stun you)

Category: Shopping: Clothing: Accessories or Business: Consumer Goods and Services: Clothing: Accessories: Ties and Scarves.

Before submitting your site or blog, you must complete the site, have atleast 100 posts, categorise, provide contact information etc. Your site must be complete with all contact information and any other information required by a user or buyer. Daily newsletters, RSS feeds cal also be mentioned.

How to submit your site or blog to About.com
A New York Times company, this directory draws 38 million visitors every month. A huge team of expert guides work on recommending newer and useful sites to readers. A directory that has gained the trust of users and major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL, About.com is a comprehensive directory where you should seek submission of your site.

Browse through About.com’s categories, select the appropriate category for listing and on the top left you’ll find the name of the guide. Hit that link and then email the guide seeking mention of your site.

I’ll talk about paid directories like Yahoo and Business.com in another post.

Building your blog’s reputation on a subject is key to success. Becoming a subject matter expert will fetch tons of traffic.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask love authority blogs and bloggers, because they have proven their subject matter expertise. They send a lot of traffic to such authority sites, since users would benefit from reading such useful and quality content.

Seo4google.org’s Example: So, if you’re a writer, how can you build authority around your site or blog on “how to write for the internet?” Here’s what I might suggest.

1. Write useful content on relevant topics:
a) How to research and choose subjects that users are searching for on the net
b) How to write headlines that’ll attract visitor attention
c) How to treat a theme for an article
d) How to break up a story into smaller parts
e) Tips to write a synopsis of an article
f) Differences between offline media and online media writing
g) How to write in an engaging manner
h) Styles of writing
i) How to submit stories to editors
j) How to write covering letters or emails to editors
k) Top online writer forums
l) Best online resources for writers
m) 5 mistakes most writers make
n) Common grammatical errors
o) How to sell your articles to online sites
2. Participate in writer/ journalist/ student communities
3. Write on high traffic and high ranking news sites
4. Be interviewed
5. Create useful pdfs, slides and share with wannabe writers/ authors
6. Speak at writer conventions
7. Publish guest posts in related sites

If you want to be known as an expert on a subject, you must write well researched, topical and quality content. Look for what readers on your subject want. What are the problems they generally encounter. Can you help them with insights into solutions.

Writing for other authoritative sources is critical to building authority
The fact that Health magazine publishes your story on “5 ways to fight obesity with vegetarian diet”, establishes your authority as a health expert on obesity, right? So you see, it’s very important to publish your articles on authority sites. I’d suggest that you identify sites and blogs that are respected in your domain, and keep trying your luck to get published there.

Post regularly on quality article sites
Another way is to look at good quality and high page ranked article sites where you can submit your articles regularly. www.ezinearticles.com, www.associatedcontent, http://www.scribd.com/ and the like. Build your expertise by posting high quality and fresh articles on such sites. These will also provide your backlinks that are important for growing your link juice or page rank.

Use forums like Yahoo Answers to build your reputation
Answering and providing help to relevant communities is a strategy to build your reputation. Join forums and community sites where there are many eager folks seeking answers. Offer them your guidance. If they love, they’ll comment, link, vote and visit your blog.

Write guest posts on blogs
Network with bloggers and email related bloggers offering to do a useful guest post. If you offer value to users, and are in a non competitive zone, chances are you’ll be invited to write. If you have expertise and they interview you, great.

Post comments on other sites
Few people realize that offering your insight and posting your comments on a hot topic is a good strategy to develop authority. When you read a relevant piece anywhere on the net, post a comment with valued inputs. Keep doing that with the intention of helping the community. Your signature in such posts will turn meaningful in the near future.

Thus building your reputation results in traffic, page rank and dollars on your blog.

Content has been moved to Why Linking to Other Sites is Good Karma

Links to your site from relevant and quality sites with high page rank are sure to increase your site’s Google ranking.

What do external links mean?
A link to your site from another site, blog or directory is called an inbound link. These mean that someone has liked your content and is willing to recommend it to his users. That’s why Google, as a search engine, which loves to give users good content likes this recommendation system. When it’s an editorial choice and voluntarily done, it’s a vote for your site or blog.

But when the vote is from a site whose content is relevant to your audience, then it’s viewed more positively. And the quality of the vote is best when the site linking to you has a high Page Rank. It should be from an authoritative site, relevant to your content.

Example: If you ran a site that sells toys, then a link from a childrens site (or parenting site) which recommends your toy store is more relevant than a link from a site selling cameras for wild life photography.

It’s easy for quality sites with unique content to draw a lot of inbound links from good sites. I mean, people naturally link to sites that offer useful or niche content since the site’s content is likely to be useful to their readers.

That’s how people link to sites normally, right.

How to get inbound links to your site?
The fundamentals are very simple. Find a niche. Write refreshing content. Make it useful to your users. Give readers the best on a subject. Tell them the latest in your domain. Interview those doing good work in your area of interest. Write compelling content. Make readers come back to your site by offering relevant and highly readable content.

Build your expertise in the chosen area. Write to news sites, magazines that cater to your site’s main theme. Participate in forums. Enter your site or blog in niche directories that are ranked well in Google. Offer useful downloads to users. Make videos, slides, audios and let visitors choose the mediums they like.

If you sell a product or service; or offer educative content to users, there’s no need to worry about seo. The inbound links, page rank and traffic will come naturally.

Links from other sites also mean more traffic to your site. And if it’s from a related site then the traffic is more qualified. And such users are likely to like your content and revisit. And perhaps make purchases on your site.

Host good content and inform Google, which allows you to submit your site or blog for indexing.
Google crawls all over the net and will sooner or later find your site. But to index quicker in the search engine, go to http://www.google.com/addurl/ and add your website url.

Although this does not guarantee that it’ll crawl your site or show it in the results, it’s better than not submitting.

You can add the home page url and also put in a few sentences about the content of your site. Or you could submit the keywords of your blog or site.

Seo4Google.org’s Tip: To index faster in Google, write an article in a site that gets crawled frequently (news sites etc). Get your author’s bio at the bottom with your url and when Google search engine visits that page, it will also visit your site from there.

Another way to get Google to visit your site is to request bloggers or webmasters (friends or otherwise) to review your site. So that search engines can crawl through your website url from that blog.

Social media is another option to get your site indexed faster in Google. Submit good quality pages to Digg, Reddit or propeller. Since these sites are visited many times in a day by search engine bots, chances of indexing are higher.