How to Analyze Your Web Site Traffic
By Herman Drost

Getting traffic to your web site without analyzing it, is like being blindfolded in a crowd. You hear voices, but you don’t know which direction they are coming from or who they are. Without analyzing your web site traffic, it’s difficult to improve your web site marketing.

Know Your Traffic Language
You should be aware of the different terms used to describe web site traffic, so as not to be confused about your web site visitors. Here are the main terms used:

Visit – these are all requests made by a specific user to the site during a set period of time. The visit is ended if a set period of time (say 30 minutes) goes by with no further accesses. Users are identified by cookies, username or hostnames/ip addresses

Hit – this is a request to the server for a file not a page. Your page can be made up of different files, such as graphic files, audio files or css and javascript files, resulting in a number of hits for that page. Each of these requests is called a hit.

Counting hits is not the same as tracking pageviews. It takes multiple hits to view a page.

Pageview/Impression – this is the number of times a page is accessed as a whole.

Unique View - A page view by a unique person within a 24 hour period.

Referrer - A page that links to your site. By looking at your referrers will tell you who's linked to your site. This can be particularly valuable for seeing where your search engine traffic is coming from.

Content Rich, Keyword-Focused Pages: Your Key to Search Engine Success

An often overlooked fact in search engine optimization is that internal pages can have a dramatic effect in boosting traffic to your site. More often than not, efforts are concentrated only on getting people to visit the home page. This is a mistake. Content rich, keyword focused internal pages are easier to optimize and have an excellent probability of pulling in abundant and relevant web traffic.

Directories & Google
By Clare Lawrence

Can listings in directories help my rank on Google?

Google the leading search engine considers several actors in its ranking algorithm, firstly it considers the text content of a sites web pages and decides what theme it belongs to.
 
Next it looks at the number of links inbound to each page, particularly important are links from related themed web pages.
 
So a web page about domain names, using the key phrase domain name registration with lots of links inbound from related sites such as other domain registration will do well.
 
A sites content rank will depend on its rating compared to other competitive websites. Greater relevancy and linkage brining a better ranking.

Submitting your site to the Open Directory
By Sumantra Roy

Getting your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory (DMOZ) is vitally important as far as search engine positioning is concerned as Google gives a lot of importance to sites being listed in the Open Directory.

In this article, we focus on how you can get your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory. Even if your site is already listed in the Open Directory, you should read this article to find out how you can get multiple listings in the Open Directory.

Becoming an Open Directory Project Editor
By Sumantra Roy

Getting your site registered by the Open Directory is vitally important as far as search engine positioning is concerned. In order to see how you can do that, see my article on this topic. However, sometimes, it may so happen that try as you might, you just do not manage to get your site listed in the Open Directory. Or, it may also happen that the description under which your site is listed is not optimum.

In this case, the only solution is to become the editor of the category to which you want to submit your site. Here's how you should go about doing it.

First, go to any category of the Open Directory and click on the "become an editor" link at the top of the screen. If that category does not contain such a link, simply go to a lower level category which does contain such a link.

Now, read the third paragraph, which says that the Open Directory does not bar editors who have business affiliations with the category. In practice, however, it will reject just about any new editor who has a business affiliation with the category. If you scroll down the page, you will find that the Open Directory asks you whether you have any business affiliation with the category. If you admit to having an affiliation with the category, you will most certainly be rejected.

Now, you may think that you can solve this problem by not admitting that you have any business affiliation with the category. However, the Open Directory also asks you about your experience or interest in the category. For a category which deals with business related sites, it is very difficult to project your expertise in it without admitting that you are affiliated with it.

Hence, your strategy should be to locate a category in which you can legitimately show some experience and interest without having to admit that you have any business affiliation. By far the easiest way to do this is to become an editor of a regional category which deals with the city in which you live. Once you can become an editor of one category, it is usually much easier to become the editor of the category to which your site belongs. This is because when an existing editor applies for a new category, the Open Directory does not ask for his/her experience or interest in the category.

Here are the steps you should follow in order to become an editor of the category applicable for your web site:

Frames and Search Engines
By Sumantra Roy

When it comes to framed sites and the effect that the use of frames by a site has on its search engine ranking, there are two schools of thought. Some people say that framed sites, if done properly, have no problems in getting good rankings in the search engines. Others claim that if search engine optimization is important to you, never use frames.
 
In my opinion, the truth lies somewhere in between. Yes, the use of frames does throw up a few issues when it comes to getting good rankings in the search engines which don't understand frames. Hence, when you are designing a new site, I would recommend that you avoid using frames, unless you have a specific reason for doing so. However, if you already have a site which uses frames, all is not lost. You can still get good rankings in the search engines even though you have used frames. Furthermore, using frames also has its own advantages when it comes to search engine placement, as we shall later on. This article assumes that you have a working knowledge of frames.

How best to use Links
By Clare Lawrence

Introduction

Google is the world’s leading search engine and it measures link popularity as a key component of its ranking algorithm, using what is calls PageRank.

Read the following quote from Google’s advice to webmasters:

www.google.com/technology/index.html

PageRank Explained
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote.

Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query.

So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Integrity
Google's complex, automated methods make human tampering with our results extremely difficult. And though we do run relevant ads above and next to our results, Google does not sell placement within the results themselves (i.e., no one can buy a higher PageRank).

Improve the Link Popularity of your site
By Sumantra Roy

Link popularity, i.e. the number of sites which are linking to your site, is an increasingly important factor as far as search engine placement is concerned. Other things remaining the same, more the number of links to your site, higher will be its ranking.

What is important is not only the number of links to your site, but also the types of sites which are linking to you. A link from a site which is related to yours is more valuable than a link from an unrelated site.

In this article, I explore different methods by which you can improve the link popularity of your site. I start with the methods that you shouldn't bother using, then go on to the moderately effective methods, and then end with the most effective methods you can use to boost the link popularity of your site.

Creating Keyword Rich Pages
By Sumantra Roy

Once you have established the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines, it is time to figure out how you can get a high ranking in the search engines for those keywords. The solution is to create Keyword Rich Pages (KRPs) - pages which provide good content and in which a particular keyword is repeated a number of times so that the page gets a top ranking for that keyword.

Links and link building with Google
By Clare Lawrence

Google is the leading search engine, so having the right strategy for optimisation on Google is essential.

FFA sites
Having a link on your website to an FFA (free for all) otherwise known as a links farm will not damage your PR. What will harm your site and your Google Page rank is outbound links from your site TO FFA sites.

Page rank is Google’s own measure of the links and their quality to your site. Page Rank is an important factor, but not the only factor in Google’s algorithm.

Links and search engines
By Clare Lawrence

What is linking?

Linking involves linking your websitesite to another with the aim increasing traffic and directing the web visitors to other interesting content.

Emerging Methods and Standards for Effective Search Engine Ranking

Search Engine traffic has always been and continues to be one of the best ways to drive qualified traffic to a web site – it presents information about goods and services when the interest level is high and it can be acted on immediately. Up till now opt-in e-mail marketing has been an effective complement to search engine ranking campaigns; but the never-ending deluge of Spam is rapidly ruining the effectiveness of opt-in e-mail and helping to add luster to the value and cost-effectiveness of search engine traffic.

SEO Services - Why You Need a Search Engine Optimization Maintenance Service Plan
By: Herman Drost

A search engine optimization maintenance service plan will ensure that your site will continue to increase in its rankings, attract more visitors and make more sales. It's not enough to simply design your web site, have it optimized for the search engines and expect it to continually rank well. If left alone, you may soon lose the business your web site initially generated.

What should be included in a SEO maintenance service plan?

Advanced search engine optimization tactics
by: Detlev Reimer

Do you find it difficult to get your site ranked in the top 10 of the major search engines for your main keywords ?

Optimizing your web site for the search engines seems to be a never ending game these days. A lot of people have trouble getting their site ranked at all . This article discusses ways of getting your site ranked well in most of the major search engines . The good times of free search engine submissions seem to be almost over. More and more search engines are restructuring their financial foundations as most of them are struggling to find enough advertisers who allow them to keep their listings free of charge. Many of the major search engines are taking a submission fee already or are considering it. There is a good and effective way around it but I will cover these details later within this article ...
 
The factors which will determine your ranking:

Submission scams
By Clare Lawrence

Submit your site to 1,000,000 search engines and directories for $19.99. Sounds too good to be true. Well it is! 90% of submissions sites are a waste of money.

It’s a common fallacy that you need to submit your site to search engines on a regular basis.

Submit Your Site To Yahoo!
by: Sumantra Roy

Getting your site an optimum listing in Yahoo! is perhaps the most important step in effective web site promotion. An optimum listing in Yahoo! can bring in more traffic to your site than all the search engines combined. In addition to this, getting listed in Yahoo! will also help you improve the link popularity of your site which helps in improving the ranking of your site in the search engines. In this article, we focus on how you can get your site an optimum listing in Yahoo!.

Top 10 Search Engine Positioning Mistakes
By Sumantra Roy

When it comes to search engine optimization, there are certain common mistakes that I see people making over and over again. Here's a list of the 10 most common mistakes that I see people making. By avoiding these mistakes, you can avoid a lot of anguish and frustration in the long run.

1) Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords

The first step in any search engine optimization campaign is to choose the keywords for which you should optimize your site. If you initially choose the wrong keywords, all the time and effort that you devote in trying to get your site a high ranking will go down the drain. If you choose keywords which no one search for, or if you choose keywords which won't bring in targeted traffic to your site, what good will the top rankings do?

Which keywords should you optimize your site for?
By: Sumantra Roy

In this article, we focus on the correct way of finding out the keywords for which you should optimize your site for the search engines. This article will give you the formula for the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) - a mathematical formula which I have developed to help you determine which keywords you should be optimizing your site for.