How to use Keywords to improve Search Engine Rank

Those who are trying to get their website on a search engine should realize that while popularity is a part of the equation, there are many other factors to how search engines rank web sites for the search results. While each search engine will have it’s own way as to how it filters results, there are four things that every search engine relies heavy on for its results.

Keyword Frequency

The main thing that search engines are looking for is the page (or pages) that offer the most information on the topic. This is determined by the frequency of the key words available on the actual website. If someone searches for “SEO tips”, the search engine will look for the websites that have the best frequency of “SEO tips” available; too little will garner no results, and too high of a frequency may have an adverse effect. 

Keyword Location

Another thing that search engines are looking for is the actual location of those specific keywords. The search engines want to know how soon the web page is actually getting into the information that the person is search for. If the keywords appear toward the top of the page, the website will rank higher. If the keywords do not show up until later in the page, they will rank low, or will not even rank on the search engine results at all.

Spamming

Many people take the idea of the keyword and over-do it. They try to place the keyword on the webpage as much as possible. To protect results against this, search engines will actually cut out results that are deemed to have too many keywords. They feel that the web page is attempting to “spam” the search engine by simply featuring multiple keywords excessive amounts of time without actually having information about the specific keyword. 

Popularity

Search engine results do take popularity into account when ranking the websites for keywords. Those web pages that rank high on results but are not often clicked on will find that they are dropped on the results page. This is something that is not controllable, as it simply relies on how often your link is chosen when shown on a search engine results page.

Summary: 

Trying to get a website to show up on the top results of a search engine’s results can be difficult and confusing for many. While getting the results wanted may be easy for certain topics, it may be incredibly difficult for others. Taking all of the aspects of how search engines rank web sites can help you to understand exactly what needs to be done to rank as high as physically possible on search engine result pages.

Role of Link Baiting

Link Baiting is an important part of SEO and can spell the difference in the effectiveness of an SEO strategy. While some people consider it a somewhat underhanded practice, it is simply a creative method of building links.

To the uninitiated, link bait is any content or feature within a web site that is designed to lure viewers to place links to it from other web sites. Link baits can come in many forms. They could be free tools, an article, an image, a puzzle, an invitation to join a contest – there really is no limit to what you can use.

Link baiting drives SEO results as this is a speedy and easy method of building links. It gets your website the attention it needs as more and more people learn about what you have to offer. If your link bait is very good, people will continue referring your links to others and this is really akin to having other people do your work for you at no cost! Of course, an increase in traffic volume may potentially lead to higher profits.

Link baiting is also one of the factors that can increase your search engine rankings. The number of backlinks attributed to your site increases your chances of appearing in the top results page of a search engine. Now if your links are picked up by well-established websites, that will do even more wonders for your reputation.

The potential of earning long term results through link baiting is also a significant advantage of this technique. If your content is compelling enough, people will keep referring to your site for years and years to come. When you actively use link baits, you are building up an image, a reputation for providing useful data to the public. Even if you use link baits for special or seasonal events only, this doesn’t necessarily mean traffic generation ends once the event has concluded. A well thought out link baiting scheme leads to sustainable traffic, not just one time visits that won’t be duplicated once the curiosity has worn off.

For link baiting to contribute considerably to your SEO strategy, remember that your website must have a strong backbone and that backbone comes in the form of superior quality content.

Unless your website has something truly useful or relevant to offer, no amount of backlinking will boost your rank or maintain traffic over time. Link baiting sounds very easy but it requires strategic planning for it to be effective.

Easy Steps for WordPress Blog Setup

I want to describe here is to set down some step-by-step instructions for the people who wants to get started with a solid foundation with a self-hosted WordPress blog. There are many blogging platforms available, most available at little or no cost. I like WordPress, mostly because it’s easy to make. This post is some steps that I have learned along the way that will hopefully help you to:

• Set up your blog easily
• Make sure it’s safe from hackers
• Give you some basics that will get you started to a successful blog

This is by no means a comprehensive list, nor is it intended to be. It’s merely a compendium of things that I’ve learned along the way that can help you get going with a minimum of effort, and these are the exact same steps I take for my clients who want me to do it for them. You can host your blog with WordPress directly free of charge. However, if you host your blog with your Web site, it becomes part of the Web site – really just an extension – and can benefit you from an SEO perspective.

Resources To Get Started

Before you can start with any of this, you need to have some basic materials. I will assume you already have a working computer with a reasonable internet connection. Beyond that, you will need:

• A Web hosting plan that supports both PHP and a MySQL database. I prefer GoDaddy but you can use any hosting as long as they support PHP and MySQL databases.
• FTP software – This is to move files to your hosting platform. I like CuteFtp, but there are many free tools available as well.
Assuming you have all this, let’s get started with setting up a WordPress blog.

Download WordPress Software

The first step is that you need to get the software. Go to the WordPress.org Web site, and click the button that says “Download WordPress 2.8.6″ (or whatever the current version is). Save the zip file to your hard drive, and unzip (uncompress) it to a folder that’s convenient to get to.

Create a MySQL Database

Go to your hosting platform and create a MySQL database. Usually you can do this through your Control Panel. You’ll need to know the following:
• The database host server (sometimes it’s “localhost”)
• The database name
• The user id to connect
• The password
Usually you can specify everything but the host, so pick a secure password that includes letters and numbers.
Upload the WordPress Software

Connect to your Web hosting with your FTP software, and create a folder that you want the blog to live in. I usually just create a folder called “blog”, but you can call it what you want. If you want the blog software to actually be your Web site, you don’t need to create a folder. Just upload all the files and folders to the root directory of the Web site. This is about 7.1MB of files, so it shouldn’t take very long if you have a decent connection.

Configure the WordPress Blog Software

You’ll find a file called wp-config-sample.php. You need to edit this file with a text editor. You can either edit the local copy on your computer, or edit the one on the Web. Enter the database server, database name, user name, and password where it shows these settings in single quotes (see red underlines in the sample graphic).
Next, you must create a unique authentication key by going to the WordPress authentication key site. Copy and paste the four lines into the config file where it shows the sample lines.

Security Tip - I

The last and most important change is to make sure that you change your Table Prefix. Most hackers know that the default prefix is “wp_”, so change it to something totally random, like “wp_55SEO7U1”. Just add some random upper and lower case letters and numbers. This will make it much harder for a hacker to break into your database.

Save the file. Rename it as wp-config.php and either upload it from your computer, or just rename the one that’s on your Web site.

Kick Off The Installation Process

Open your browser and go to the Web site with the directory into which you installed the WordPress software. So if it’s in the /blog directory, go to http://www.domainname/blog and the installation process should automatically kick off. If it complains that it can’t connect to the database, check your config file to make sure you entered all the database information correctly.
It will automatically create an admin id and password. Print this page out! If you forget the password, or don’t write it down, you have to delete the database and start all over.

Security Tip -II

Before you do anything else, create a new admin id that is something like “admin0512″ (or a name that means something to you) and very secure password using upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. The meter will show you how secure your password is. Hackers know that the default admin id is “admin”, and will try to hack it. Now log out, log in with your new admin id, and delete the original admin id. This is critical to prevent hackers from getting into the site (or at least slow them down).

Apply a Theme

There are lots of free themes or you can buy attractive themes that people have developed. Find one that has four or five stars and apply it to your site. The ones that have high ratings and have been downloaded thousands of times have been tested and upgraded so that they work the best for you. You can always customize it with your logo and other changes later.
Install Plugins

I have a specific set of plugins (which are additional functionality that doesn’t come with the base WordPress software) that add value. I recommend that at a minimum, you install these:

• XML Sitemaps – Creates XML sitemaps for Google automatically, which is great for getting indexed
• Google Analytics for WP – Set up your Analytics code so you can track all the throngs of people reading your blog
• All In One SEO Pack – Has great SEO tools for your blog
• Akismet (already installed, but be sure to activate it) – It catches all the comment spammers and blocks them
• WP Security Scan – Gives you a report to see if your WordPress blog is fully safe from hackers
• WP DB Backup – Allows you to back up your database before you make any changes. ALWAYS back up your database before you upgrade or do anything!
• SEO Platinum – To make individual title for all pages.

Configure Your Ping Servers

WordPress comes pre-configured with a single ping server, but you’ll want to add more. Every time you create a blog post, you want to make sure that the search engines know about it. When you click “Publish”, WordPress will go tell all the ping servers that you’ve configured to notify the search engines about your new post.

Configure Your Permalinks

Permalinks is a setting that tells WordPress how to display the links to your blog posts. We all know that you want your keywords in the link text if you can. The default setting for WordPress doesn’t give a very SEO-friendly link, so I recommend that you change it. Many people debate about the “right” way to set them up. Set them, and don’t worry about it. Most people set them to:

/category/postname

which will display your posts with a subdirectory of the post “Category”, then the actual words from your post title.

Google Docs Added Folder Sharing Feature

Google added couple of new features to its Google Docs, namely folder sharing and multiple file uploads.

Now you can share your files means spreadsheets, presentations and document files with other people also you can now share folders in Google Docs means that the service is more useful for groups who can now work on all the documents in a folder together.

And the addition of multiple file uploads means that you can upload more files at once,which previously allowed one. This feature saving both time and effort and making life so much easier.

Google is Finally Removed PageRank

Google has dropped PageRank data from its webmaster tools due to statistical imbalance.

Google uses PageRank algorithm to calculate a web page’s rank in a numerical score based on the importance it gets. Its rank is loosely dependent on the inbound links to a page apart from the relevance and credibility of these links.

Until now, PageRank has been one of the many variables included in Google's Webmaster Tools, but according to Google analyst Susan Moskwa:
"We've been telling people for a long time that they shouldn't focus on PageRank so much... We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it."

Now a days Google is only updating the PageRank displayed in Google Toolbar a few times a year.

It certainly wont stop certain webmasters using the tool to obtain high quality links to enhance their sites ranking. Hopefully this may reduce the amount of people trying to manipulate the search results by selling links on high PR pages. This move by Google is a statement to Webmasters that PR is not as important as everyone thinks, lets hope it changes some peoples minds.

Major Search Engines Follows NoFollow links

Every search engines interpret NoFollow in their own way. Here's list of the major search engines and their actions with NoFollow link.

• Google follows NoFollow links but simply does not pass any credit to outbound link that is tagged with the attribute(rel='nofollow').



• Yahoo follows NoFollow links and excludes the link from all ranking calculations.



• Bing may or may not follow a NoFollow link, but excludes the link from ranking calculations.



• Ask does not adhere to NoFollow.

What problem with Duplicate Content ?

Duplicate content – This is very effective to loose Search Engine Rankings:
Using duplicate content is very harmful for search engine ranking. Most webmasters are using duplicate content today. Some of them thinking duplicating the content is time save, but the fact is that duplicate content can loss search engine rankings of your web page. The big problem for duplicating content is that, your web page won’t be indexed by the search engines no matter what SEO strategy you are doing for your page.

Google’s point of view about Duplicate content :
About Google point of view, duplicate content can be two types:
1. Duplicate content within your website – When same content appears in more than one page of your own website.
2. Duplicate content in others website – When one content of your site which appears in other external sites.
In case of first category (Duplicate content within your website) it’s totally on your hands to remove duplicate content to get crawled by Google. One of the best way provided by Google to avoid the first problem is use of the sitemap file. You should include the preferred version of the URL in the sitemap so that Google can index the particular page of your preference.

In case of second category (Duplicate content in others website), i.e. If any one steals your content and publish it in his website, you will have to monetize it. So that, when Google comes across such content across different web pages, the Google crawler will search for various thing and effectively identify the actual original webpage. According to Google don’t worry about your content duplicated by others because Google crawler can effectively identify them and avoid those pages from indexing.

As said in official Google Webmaster blog, “in the majority of cases, having duplicate content does not have negative effects on your site's presence in the Google index. It simply gets filtered out.”