Search Engine Marketing Articles

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Your site's URL can determine SEO success


Uniform Resource Locator, or URL is the web address of a hyperlink. It is a unique code that helps a web browser to identify a particular page from billions of web pages floating in the online marketplace.

When it comes to search engine optimization, URLs can play a pivotal role in bringing your website on top of SERPs. This code is not just a location; it is the identity of a web page. Therefore, optimizing a URL is as important as working on other Meta Tags of your page.

SEO experts say that long URLs should always be avoided, especially when you name your homepage. Most search engines regard long names as spam because typing them is a tedious task for human beings. This is the reason why most SERPs do not show long names in their topmost listings.

It is advisable to use your main keywords in your site's URLs. However, be sure you are not engaging in keyword stuffing because search engines do not prefer such coding. Use a name that is logical and in syndication with the content on a page, or the product you are selling.

Search engine optimizers need to pay extra attention to their dynamic URLs. Pages that are frequently updated (shopping cart pages, news pages, etc.) should be clearly specified to a search engine, because their web addresses change almost everyday, and in some cases, many times in a day. Such pages can be identified with a '?' in their URLs.

Search engines usually prefer static pages over dynamic ones. For the latter, it is advisable to rewrite the URLs so that you get noticed by the search engine spider. Because, it would otherwise take months to get indexed and ranked time and again. However, the former will be automatically re-crawled by the spider and hence ranked better.

Certain search engines like Google do not prefer to index dynamic pages if they have more than two parameters in the URL. In fact, many search websites do not crawl such pages for fear of getting entangled in a web that alters at will. Google, for a fact, does not follow links that have session IDs embedded in them. In such cases, it is best to change your server code and use URL optimization to come out of this trap.

The most simple solution is - create static pages with hard-coded links to your important dynamic pages. By doing so, you can help your visitors in finding out a product-specific page. Always remember, the key to SEO success is being visible on, and accessible to search engines.

Source: http://users.search-o-rama.com/Article243372.htm

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Monday, November 26, 2007

Search Engine Marketing Tips for Online Success

One of the premier online marketing services, search engine marketing is growing from strength to strength. It helps websites in getting ranked in the top few listings of search engine result pages (SERPs).

Marketing on search engines can be both paid and unpaid. However, both the forms demand extensive research and analysis work due to the all-encompassing nature of this domain. The World Wide Web witnesses changes almost every day and therefore, webmasters have to ensure that their sites live up to those alterations. It is extremely important to keep oneself updated about the ever-evolving search engine guidelines.

The following SEM tips will help you strategise your campaign in a better manner, so as to rake in maximum traffic, and eventually, profits from the same:

1) Keywords are paramount in the online marketplace. You can enhance your web presence only by catering to words or phrases that are related to your business and industry at large. These keywords should also be incorporated in your site's content and meta tags so as to have the desirable impact on search engines.

2) Just getting traffic will not help your campaign. You will be benefited only if your visitors are convertible into buyers. To achieve this, you need to research on competitive keywords so as to get targeted traffic to your site.

3) Once you get search engine traffic directed to your website, you need to make an effort of retaining the same. Your site should be appealing enough to hold visitors' attention and make them come back to you. To make this happen, you need concentrate on the content and design aspects of your web pages. Make them search-engine friendly and easily navigable to ensure faster indexing by crawlers.

4) Result tracking is extremely significant if you want to have a lasting impact with your search engine marketing efforts. After your campaign starts off, you need to constantly monitor the results. Take note of what is, or is not, working for you. This will guide you in making changes as and when required. Also, adherence to latest industry updates will help you cater better to search engines.

5) If possible, submit your web pages to a variety of search engines. Not only will this improve the traffic inflow to your site, it will also give you a better search engine presence.

These tips can be highly beneficial if you stick to the basic of user-friendliness when it comes to the online marketplace. Do not over-complicate your site with heavy pages, incomprehensible content or unwanted graphics. Simplicity is invariably the key to success in this field.

Source: http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=689987

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