Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is about presenting your site to the search engines, as well as the audience, in the best possible light. Keep in mind all the search-engine-imposed regulations when crafting your site, because you just don’t want to annoy them. You also want the users to like what they see on your site. A very indispensable tenet of SEO is to always consider the users when you are changing, editing or doing what-ever-else with your site.

The magic formula all these on-the-top-of-the-search-results sites apply is what I like to call T.C.K.L., pronounce it tickle or tackle as it strikes your fancy. The T is for tags, C for content, K for keywords and L for links. They are all important to SEO techniques, not necessarily in that order, but hey I had to make an acronym out of it and calling it cult didn’t seem very user-friendly!

Link Love

Picture the internet as a gigantic spider web across the globe – I hope you aren’t scared of spiders or the analogy might get a bit creepy – and the web crawlers all over the place are the spiders, of course. These are friendly spiders, people – they only bite when you spam-up your site! Anyways, these spiders love it when websites are connected together so they don’t have to work to get from one place to the others. The more links leading them to a site, the more they love the site. So you want to have a lot of backlinks to your page if you want it to be popular and have a good visibility among relevant search results. But the quality of the links is also an issue. Many people get into things like “link farming” for cheap marketing, which is just not healthy for the site. The search engines these days have the uncanny ability to tell a spam-free site from a spam-infested one. And by association, your site is going to be labeled as spammy and untrustworthy – not good for your site if you hadn’t realized, yet! You want your site promoted by respectable sites, preferably with a good anchor text. So “No candy from strangers!” for you guys. Make good link buddies, spread a little link love and stay away from suspicious activity.

Keyword Crazy

Keywords are the foundation of your SEO strategy. Really? As if we didn’t know that! Of course you know it. But what you might not realize is that optimizing your site for the wrong keywords may just be the reason your SEO goes downhill. Selecting the suitable keywords is the very first step to successful SEO. There are fortunately a lot of tools that tell you various keywords that would fit your site. A few tips wouldn’t hurt though, I suppose. Remember, with the internet as densely-populated as it is now, optimizing for one-worded keywords is like fighting a losing battle. You want to look for double- or triple-worded relevant keywords. And hear me out, loud and clear – keyword density isn’t all that it’s made out to be. You need to make sure that your keywords appear in the headings and title tags and the URL – in the rest of the content, use as it comes naturally. Do NOT, and I repeat, Do NOT stuff your page with keywords that search engines disregard your site altogether.

Creative Content

You cannot decorate a dirty room, can you? Well, similarly, you do not want to do SEO on a crappy website that users despise. SEO is meant to make the audience and the engines happy. So you need to make sure that your website content is original and crafty, and doesn’t make the audience want to gouge their eyeballs. Make sure that the site is easy to navigate, because you do not want users to be confused out-of-their-wits, keep it user-friendly and tone down the geek! Also, make certain that your site runs smoothly on all major web browsers because it puts the users off if it doesn’t.

Tag Tale

People are really gung-ho about their tags. There used to be a time when meta tags were really involved in the rankings but that was before people started sneaking in keywords in every nook and cranny, hence making the engines change the way they tackle the relevancy ranking. Meta tags are still a good practice to personalize – it makes you a goody-two-shoes from the viewpoint of the engine. The keywords are most effective in title tags and in meta tags.

So this is what I call TCKL, which combined together is a powerful SEO formula to boost ranking and make the engine and your site visitors happy as a clam!

Penguin was the name big ‘G’ gave to its latest web spam algorithmic update.  Google announced that users who believe their search status has been faultily affected by ‘penguin’ can fill a feedback form with their complaints. If they face spam content overlooked by Google web spam, they can tell in their feedback form.

Google’s engineer Matt Cutt’s  tweet revealed the following: – “If you want to report spam that Google is missing, fill out a spam report and add the word penguin”. Also “If you know a site affected by algo update that you don’t think should be affected; we made a form to provide feedback.”

Penguin’s complaint form requests one to fill in the particulars about the web site or web page affected by the algorithmic update. This form was onset from 24^th of April, supposedly to identify websites involved in ploy opposite to Google’s webmaster procedure, for instance keyword stuffing, cloaking, and link schemes. The form requires the URL of a page under effect of this ‘revision’ with questions illustrating differentiated results, providing opportunity of adding further observations.

Penguin’s launch is comparable to preceding year’s update-‘Panda’, Google’s creation of a Webmaster Central thread for those affected by the algorithm change.

Conceivably Google set out with the name Google Penguin since Global Penguin Day was the next day following the algorithm’s introduction. And possibly, Google’s 2011 Earth Day Doodle presents us with some evidence to some upcoming algorithmic updates.

You can select Paypal or Western Union at the moment and in the future there will be more options such as AlertPay and Skrill (Moneybrookers).

Cheers!

Google has created quite a ruckus by introducing Penguin. As per previous Google updates, it remains to be seen whether this one will be a hit or a miss. Before venting our frustrations over yet another update, we have to take into consideration that in order for Google to retain its top ranking and throne, it has to undertake extremely meticulous endeavors to keep its Search Engine Result Pages or SERPs devoid of spam and keep them appropriate. The release of Penguin isn’t unprecedented as Google has released other similar updates in the past decade.

What all those releases have in common though is the focus on keeping the amount of spam to a bare minimum. Although Google’s classification of what constitutes as spam varies, yet they have done a commendable job of voicing their opinions through their personnel Matt Cutts who helms Google’s Web Spam team, plus they have their webmaster guidelines to use as a beacon.

Some websites assume that they can mint some fast money without giving a second thought about their clientele and visitors or they have been led astray by devious individuals known as black hat SEO or agencies comprised of such people who compel them to use banned tricks and techniques. Mentioned below are some of the things websites should steer clear of as specifically highlighted in Google’s Webmaster guidelines:

• Concealed doorway pages
• Purchasing Links
• Varying pages for visitors and separate for search engines
• Concealed text or concealed links
• Redirects

Anyone utilizing above tricks is walking on a dangerous road. Businesses that rely on their web presence for sustenance should first and foremost think about their clientele and how they can achieve the following:

• Enhance visitor’s experience
• Provide more value for customers
• Retaining a customer repository and have them returning for more

If you focus on the abovementioned traits instead of deviating and thinking of employing banned tricks, you automatically start thinking towards putting on relevant and quality content on your website which will no doubt have user retention.

Being an SEO, the top priorities on your list should be creating worth of your site for visitors using accepted white hat SEO techniques. If you set it as your top most priorities, it will certainly have a trickledown effect on the rest of your company ensuring that there would be no deviation to the forbidden side of SEO.

Let’s delve into a course of action which can immediately be adopted by in house SEO’s when algorithms like Penguin are unveiled and how to inculcate that course of action for the future:

Instantaneous Strategy

Utilize your analytics to gauge damage

 When faced by penguin or any other similar update by Google, revert to web analytics report. An aggregate report consisting of 30 day traffic activity should let you gauge the effects and reduction in visitors.

Verify your keyword referrer report 

When you become cognizant of the fact that you are getting reduced traffic from Google, immediately consult keyword referrer report which can aid you in seeking out keywords which have reduced traffic. An aggregate report of 30 days in this scenario can be helpful.

Keep a vigilant eye on your top keywords

This can’t be termed more comprehensive than the report but this is a standard SEO procedure. It’s always recommended to vigilantly check your top keywords.

Consult Google Webmaster Central

Google informs the webmasters of affects on their websites, so consult your webmaster account for a message. You can report to Google spam team if your website was wrongly marked.

Continual Planning

Companywide Strategy and Training

Part and parcel of an in-house SEO is to establish organization wide SEO strategy based on best and assorted practices of SEO, particularly on page optimization and striking the right balance of keywords in advertisement copy (this will ensure that you don’t come off as spam spewing). Other measures include: training employees about principals of SEO and make them aware of scenarios of companies getting affected by Google updates.

Financial Prediction of Loss

If you got affected by Google updates, then you’ll have to produce a financial prediction of just how much profit you were deprived of because of it. Use it as a guideline to make everyone in your company aware about the importance of SEO guideline and why they should adhere to it. A feasible way to inculcate this is to gather data based on the amount of traffic lost, keywords rendered useless, profits lost because of keywords and total profits lost.

Comprehensible Track for Programmers / Developers

People associated with SEO field might be aware of standard practices, but when it comes to programmers and developers they need to be given comprehensible guidelines and tracks on SEO practices. It may be an uphill task at first trying to educate them like this, but with progression of time and by working with them, you’d have to get your point through.

Keyword density on page

No visitor would want to read content overstuffed with keywords. This usually happens when an overzealous SEO tries to stuff keywords. Close vigilance is required to keep an eye on the content and avoid this mistake. Best way to avoid this is to educate the writers about the main subject of the content instead of giving them keywords to begin with.  This would allow them to produce organic to the point content with keywords incorporated naturally instead of overstuffing them unceremoniously.

We can write dozens and perhaps hundreds of pages about what SEO is. In this article I will talk about SEO in general. As a technical termn, an IT termn, like one of my friends calls it, many are frightenede at its hearing.

Questions like:

-What is SEO?

-Definition of SEO?

-What does SEO mean?

-What does SEO represent?

-Can I also do SEO?

-Is SEO hard?

-Do I have a chance with SEO?

-What the heck is this so weird term?

They all jump in the mind of an enthusiast, such as popcorn in the microwaves.

Let me calm you and give the definition of SEO.

SEO is an acronym and stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of actions taken on a site/blog, in order to manipulate, in a favorable way, the rankings for keywords relevant to your site in search engines. SEO’s goal is to bring relevant traffic to your site. Relevant traffic is traffic which generates money and fame for you. Ranking is the position of a keyword in the search engine, the place on which your site is, for a particular keyword.

SEO is divided in two big categories:

-On Site SEO  – activities performed on your site, or your client’s site;

-Off Site SEO – getting links to your site, also called link building.

On Site SEO actions:

-actions of text optimizing (change the text according to some rules)

-actions of optimizing html meta tags

-actions of optimizing the informational structure of the site (categories, labels/tags, pages)

-actions of optimizing the URLs – rewriting URLs. Example: instead of www.yoursite.com/?p=23 it will look like www.yoursite.com/search-engine-optimization.html

-actions of optimizing pictures, links and any other HTML elements

Off Site SEO Actions:

Off Site SEO actions have the purpose of getting links to your site, from other sites. As an example: can you leave a comment on a blog? Where you will write your name, your blog adress and e-mail? Well, this is an action which gets you a link to your site.

Here are a few examples of OFF Site SEO:

-submitting your site/blog to web directories

-buying articles with links to your site

-writing quality articles on your blog/site (a good, quality article will get links from other blogs, by their recommendation)

-publishing your link on twitter, facebook and other social networks

‘Warning’: you don’t really need to know programming, HTML or PHP to become a SEO expert. If you have eyes, know how to read and follow a list of actions, you also can do SEO. Still, it is recommended to have some basic wordpress knowledge, to know how to use the wordpress platform and so on, but this is actually very easy.

Now, you want to be like the others and turn the profile page into a page, either because you approach the limit of 5000 friends or because you want to run FacebookAds campaigns or just to be okay with the Facebook Terms of Service.  Fortunately, Facebook offers this possibility.

Now, even if the conversion process is quite simple, it’s kinda irreversible, so you can’t return to the personal profile form (maybe if you made a mistake and you insist with the Facebook assistance). This is the reason for which the conversion steps are very important:

-make sure that all the groups and business pages you’re an admin of have another administrator, besides you. If they don’t have, appoint one, otherwise, you’ll end up with groups and pages inacessible.

-make an announcement on your Facebook profile, so that people will know that you will be moving to a fan page. You don’t want your fans to wake up one day and see that they liked something that doesn’t exists and give you an unlike.

-save yourself a copy of the content posted on the Facebook profile, because the move wil save only profile pictures, friends and subscribers (transformed into fans). This can be done from the Account Settings section – General Settings section.

-make a post-conversion plan: what content you want to keep from the saved one, how often you want to repost it, so fans won’t leave you because of an empty page or over-postings, how to interact with fans in the new format, what FacebookAds campaigns you could launch, etc.

-make sure you have the right name for your fanpage. After the conversion process, you won’t be able to change the name of the page, unless you have less than 100 fans. When you’re still in the personal profile format, you can easily change the name (from the General Settings section of your account), with the exception of some keywords, which are prohibited by Facebook’s automatic keyword filters (the ones which are too commercial).

After doing all these things, you are ready to begin the (irreversible) process of converting your profile into a fan page. You can do this from the Facebook Help Center.

From now on, the process is the same with starting a brand new Facebook fanpage. You pick the category of the page, the name (which has to be as close as possible to the original), enter all the information about the page, and this is it. You’re done! You’re the prowd owner of a Facebook fanpage, on which you log into using your old email and password.

Don’t forget to implement the post-conversion plan, appoint yourself (or someone else, if necessary) as an administrator and eventually thank your fans for staying with you through this move.

Easy, huh? How was it for you guys?

No, I’m not talking about promoted tweets. It’s all about some simple mechanisms, by which any Twitter user can build a short campaign on Twitter. Just follow these steps:

Step 1 – Twitter account

Although obviously you can’t do a campaign without having a twitter account, we must clarify some elements from the profile you need to create in this social network. The picture is very important – it should be as visible as possible in a small format, clear and airy. Nobody wants to talk to you if he/she doesn’t understand what you have in your avatar. Don’t forget the description, which has to be as clear as possible in 140 characters, the maximum allowed by Twitter. Also, include in the description the (short) vision or mission of your company, so that people know who they are dealing with. Your site will appear near the description, so you don’t need to give many details.

Step 2 – follow discussions and people

You don’t have to see what everyone writes. I highly recommend Twitter Advanced Search – you write two or three words related to your business, or to the products you offer. Think about which are the elements people have contact with the most and it’s the easiest to speak about. From here, establish one or two directions where your idea of campaign could go.

Step 3 – conceptualize

Summarize in a statement the campaign you have in mind. For example: At what do people think when they are #eating (campaign for someone in the food sector). Or what’s your favorite music while #driving? (a campaign for a radio, or a record label, etc.). In the phrase that defines your campaign, you must have a keyword, which gathers all the tweets around the campaign. That’s the hashtag, which is recommended to be short, easy to write and easy to integrate into sentences.

Step 4 – users with many followers

Twitter campaigns can’t be supported by advertising (at least not directly, on Twitter) and anyway, this article isn’t talking about this. For this, bet in touch with Twitter users who have many followers. They can help you with your campaign, by promoting your services/products.

Here you have two options:

1. Your campaign has also a social flavor – you can pick up people who believe in your cause and you don’t need to pay.
2. Your campaign is purely commercial – you pay.

Step 5 – follow and support

Your campaign, after you’ve secured a pro bono group or supporters (or paid), must be encouraged constantly on your account. Give reminders, push people to respond, ask questions, tweet funny stuff about your campaign. Be careful about the discussions on your topic and respond to every relevant tweet.

Follow your campaign using TweetDeck or directly on Twitter.com (by clicking on the hashtag).

Step 6 – measure, report and award

This step is very important – it shows you if your campaign was a success or not. Count how many tweets you have collected on your keyword, using Archivist. And see how many users have been caught by your campaign. Be sure to check that everything you promised during the campaign (follow-up, awards, articles) happened or will happen. You wouldn’t like to spoil its effect with a forgotten prize and users shouting that your campaign was a scam.

Beyond these 6 steps, each campaign can have its characteristics. This 6 are a minimum basis for a campaign.

When it was launched, a big hype was created around this new social network. Everyone was on google+, telling their friends about it and importing their contacts. This is one thing I don’t get. Why should you import all your facebook contacts, let’s say, on a new social network? I’m asking this, because, at a first sight, the main advantages of google+ are only 3: organization, usability and the fact that this network is pretty…elementary. Let’s talk a bit about them…

1.Google+ has an apparently much better organization and intuitive groups of friends (facebook also has this option, but I don’t think many people use it, even though it could pretty useful for accounts with lots of friends).

 2.Also, with this whole excess of dhtml, ajax and whatever this drag and drop things,selecting friends using CTRL, showing Picasa photos, etc. use, google+ has also a major plus of usability. It doesn’t innovate anything, but it really facilitates consumption.

3.At your first post, they ‘force’ you to choose your circle of friends whom it is addressed, or to make it public, no exceptions. At the next one, the settings are maintained, but they are quite evident, which makes you think who you want to address to.

 Disadvantages? I don’t know where to start. Let’s not call them disadvantages, but lacks, because facebook is a robust and complex social network, with the possibility of consuming users’ time without exceeding its margins, and with very well defined sections for companies.

So google+? Let’s face it. It has four clear sections (Home, Photos, Profile, Circles) and some other features which I don’t know if someone ever used them. After all, I doubt that users invite their friends for a drink, recording a clip with the webcam and use Hangouts.

When they launched it, the guys from Google thought that simple will be the new black, and people will invade google+ from the first days, leaving facebook. Why? For a drag&drop in a circle?

Probably most of you people have a Google+ account. Some of you because you like it and use it daily and some of you, just like me, made an account when it was launched – pure curiosity, not something else – and after a few days, or weeks, figured out that it is a big fail. Yes, you heard me. One of google’s products is a fail. And believe me, I’m not the only one who thinks this.

When it was launched, a big hype was created around this new social network. Everyone was on google+, telling their friends about it and importing their contacts. This is one thing I don’t get. Why should you import all your facebook contacts, let’s say, on a new social network? I’m asking this, because, at a first sight, the main advantages of google+ are only 3: organization, usability and the fact that this network is pretty…elementary. Let’s talk a bit about them…

1.Google+ has an apparently much better organization and intuitive groups of friends (facebook also has this option, but I don’t think many people use it, even though it could pretty useful for accounts with lots of friends).

 2.Also, with this whole excess of dhtml, ajax and whatever this drag and drop things,selecting friends using CTRL, showing Picasa photos, etc. use, google+ has also a major plus of usability. It doesn’t innovate anything, but it really facilitates consumption.

3.At your first post, they ‘force’ you to choose your circle of friends whom it is addressed, or to make it public, no exceptions. At the next one, the settings are maintained, but they are quite evident, which makes you think who you want to address to.

 Disadvantages? I don’t know where to start. Let’s not call them disadvantages, but lacks, because facebook is a robust and complex social network, with the possibility of consuming users’ time without exceeding its margins, and with very well defined sections for companies.

So google+? Let’s face it. It has four clear sections (Home, Photos, Profile, Circles) and some other features which I don’t know if someone ever used them. After all, I doubt that users invite their friends for a drink, recording a clip with the webcam and use Hangouts.

When they launched it, the guys from Google thought that simple will be the new black, and people will invade google+ from the first days, leaving facebook. Why? For a drag&drop in a circle?

Where does this change?

Everywhere your gig is listed.

I have an idea for more prefixes!

Awesome, submit them to us in a helpdesk ticket and we will include any valid suggestions.

To purchase, click here.

Example:

Cheers!