underattacker - panicstarter » seo

page one already?

admin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:49:19 +0000

for google keywords “mozilla aurora”. impressive. i’m telling you guys, if you want to keep your seo game up, you’d better start reading or i’m going to be taking all of your seo freelance jobs left and right. Related posts: getting freelance as a student whoa, it’s been a while how’s that for getting it [...] Related posts:

i forgot how much fun it was…

boogie — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:25:02 +0000

…to be a jerk.

again, it’s all for the sake of working out my seo skills, and they seem to be working. i still get constant e-mails and hits for that thread alone. just follow these and you should be fine, just like me.

on a side note, i still can’t believe there aren’t any decent viva la vida wallpapers out there.
viva la vida wallpapers / apple coldplay wallpaper, 3rd result, 1st page for both search terms

designing a search-friendly site

boogie — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 07:24:06 +0000

There are many websites that fail to target their required traffic, even if they’ve had some seo work done. One of the main causes for this is simply because the website isn’t search engine friendly. This is a basic essential that needs to be incorporated into the design of all websites at the outset – think of it as the foundation to establishing your search engine optimization strategy.

these are factors a web designer should think about and incorporate into their design for maximum search engine effectiveness:

Search Engine Friendly Pages

It is important that when you design your website you not only bear in mind what your website requirements are, but also what the requirements are for search engines. the Best way to approach this is to remember that search engines don’t really care about how nice or complicated your graphics or flash movies are, or how clever your javascript is. Instead search engines look at the code behind your page. Therefore if you want to impress a search engine, then your code needs to be nice and easy to read. Now from this I don’t mean adding ‘comment’ tags and breaking the lines of code up with spaces, but to ensure that the elements the search engine is interested in, i.e. Title tag, Description tag, Keyword tag (these days only some search engines really use the keyword tag), Alt tag, are readable near the beginning of the code. Search Engines don’t like wadding through lines and lines of javascript to get to the core areas that can help you page’s ranking. Therefore careful planning and positioning of your page elements is required.

Avoid using frames.
If you need javascript for navigation purposes, then use smaller scripts to call up the bulk of the javascript from a different file.
Think twice on how to use graphics – make them relevant to your content and use the Alt tag for all images.
Position the main content of the page before the images, or at least with the images nested between the text.

Keywords

Having good keywords is one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage.

In general the range of keywords associated to your pages can be very extensive therefore for good concentration and prominence of keywords it is advisable to carefully select the top 5-10 keywords.

Content

Many search engines look at the main body of the page and identify keywords and phrases that are used within the text.

Use competitive keywords relevant to the purpose of the page within the main body of the page. Always try and ensure that the keywords are prominent within the text body, i.e. they appear near the beginning of the page, they are defined using the ‘heading’ tag, they are typefaced in bold, or they are used as hyperlinks.

Page Title

This is arguably one of the most important areas of a page and needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected. Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly page, the Page Title should also have a good keyword which describes the page content. To keep within the limits of many search engines the number of words for the Title shouldn’t exceed nine.

Page Description

Another important area to work on for good ranking is the Page Description. This is the text found under the META Description tag and is displayed to users in the search results. Again, it is a good idea to pay attention to the use of good keywords when writing the description, which should be short (not more than 20-25 words) and sells your page before the user even opens it!

Graphics

We’ve covered the use of graphics briefly above, emphasizing the importance of using an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s). Although the use of images can be nice and very appealing to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they shouldn’t overpower the textual content of your page.

Site Map

A Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site Map tools available on the web that’ll create your site map instantly.

Navigation Links

Navigation links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the nav bar is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash, etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation then it’s always a good idea to implement simple text based hyperlinks to your common pages at the bottom of every page on your website.

content is about more than just keywords

boogie — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:40:47 +0000

Let’s say you are writing a web site to sell beach homes on Vancouver Island, Canada. You look for some good keywords and come up with ‘Vancouver Island waterfront property’. So you use that term in your title, headline and here and there in the text. So far, so good. The phrase will help you with your rankings. And the use of the phrase on the first screen of your home page will let your visitors know they are in the right place.

But for writers who focus too intently on keywords and phrases, there is a danger.

A danger in optimizing your pages for good keywords? Yes.

There is a significant difference between the keywords that pop into visitors’ minds and the hopes and ambitions they carry in their hearts.

Let’s look at the real estate example again.

As a potential buyer I might type the phrase ‘Vancouver Island waterfront property’ into the Google search box, because that’s what I’m looking for. But that term doesn’t reflect what I’m feeling.

Having a home on the coast may have been a lifelong dream. It may be something I feel very strongly about. So when I come to your site, I am looking for two things.

the rational part of my mind is looking for confirmation that your site can help me find what I want. this is where the use of keywords and phrases makes perfect sense.
there is a strong, emotional element at play. As a potential buyer, I am looking for someone who can help me fulfill my dream. And this is where a writer who focuses too intently on keywords and phrases can end up with poorly performing copy.

By all means, optimize your pages for Google and for the rational part of a searcher’s mind. But be sure to understand and address the emotional needs of the visitor as well.

That means using keywords as the starting point. Beyond the keywords, you need to use language that addresses the deeper needs of the reader.

understand what Google wants. understand what your visitor is looking for. But if you want results, you also need to understand and address what the visitor is feeling and hoping for.

8 seo tips to own search rankings

boogie — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:16:14 +0000

From the somewhat obvious to the not so obvious, here are 8 tips i’ve followed to help me gain 11,000+ visitors in less than a month.

Deep linking. Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible. What does it tell a search engine when other web sites are linking to different pages on your site? That you obviously have lots of worthwhile content. What does it tell a search engine that all your links are coming in to the home page? That you have a shallow site of little value, or that your links were generated by automation rather than by the value of your site.

here is where wordpress, drupal, joomla and the like are king. they were coded and designed to automatically create specific and unique article pages per blog post that all link to each other. now although this is just a shallow level of linking, it definitely helps a lot.

ALT Attributes. Don’t forget to use ALT attributes for your images. Search Engines cannot see images, they can only read the alt attributes about what an image represents, and more importantly this helps visually impaired surfers. stay 508 compliant!

Article exchanges. You’ve heard of link exchanges, useless as they generally are. Article exchanges are like link exchanges, only more useful. You publish someone else’s article on about the secrets of winning poker with a link back to their site. They publish your article on the top ten poker tips list, with a link back to your site. You both have content. You both get high quality links.

Titles for links. Links can get titles, too. Not only does this help visually impaired surfers know where you are sending them, but some search engines figure this into their relevancy for a page.

again, wordpress will do this automatically for you with specific seo plug-ins.

Be bold. Use the tags around some of your keywords on each page. However, do NOT use them everywhere the keyword appears. Once or twice is enough.

Not anchor text. Don’t overdo the anchor text. You don’t want all your inbound links looking the same because that looks like automation – something Google frowns upon. Use your URL sometimes, your company name other times, mix it up to improve results.

Site map. A big site needs a site map, which should be linked to from every page on the site. This will help the search engine robots find every page with just two clicks. A small site needs a site map, too. It’s called the navigation bar.

Get a grade. Have your site graded by one of the many SEO grading sites available on the web. i use this one. it’s not super accurate, but it does give you a good idea of where your site stands within certain keywords against other ranked sites.

outdated seo update

boogie — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:46:16 +0000

a lot of these are a bit outdated from a 1-2 months back and i haven’t been maintaining the keywords, but i’ve been able to climb to the top with my latest seo practices and have confidence that i can pull it off again.

anyways, enjoy the gallery.

now that’s what i call seo!

boogie — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 06:12:49 +0000

“sam stern hulk” and “samuel stern hulk“. first pages on both for google.

i think i’m really starting to get it
version 1 / version 2 / version 3 / version 4 / version 5

more impressive seo updates soon!