Sunday, December 21, 2008

Latent Semantic Indexing – An Intriguing Information Retrieval Technique

Recently Google has brought about a new indexing technique called Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) for efficient information retrieval. Actually this concept was first used in Google’s Adsense program to find out the most relevant adverts on a particular site. Later a Google owned company named Applied Semantics took shape to help Google employ latent semantic indexing concepts and ideas in its search ranking procedure, and other search engines in the market immediately start using this concept for quality indexing purpose.

In non technical terms LSI is the human-like search ability of the search engines to find out most relevant information using the concept of semantically related words for a particular keyword search. Latent semantic indexing is nothing but the outcome of the search engine efforts in improving its search rankings and result display system further. In view of most of the web users falling prey to irrelevant websites from top search engine rankings, the search engine ranking procedure has lost its due importance. There is a strong urge among search engine makers to modify and update its old ranking system as its ranking algorithm was mainly based on number of links, votes and keywords and suffers from major setbacks resulting in penalization of pretty good sites for no fault of theirs in the mean time. Due to this many sites full of irrelevant keywords, inferior content and linking heavily to other irrelevant sites or even link farms can occupy top positions in search engines and webmasters as well as SEO professionals has started taking undue advantage of it. To stop this discrepancy from occurring further and bring transparency to search engine ranking, search engines revised their major criteria like keywords and links going in and out of the site and considered using synonymous word search facility to add quality and relevance to it. Thus LSI technique has started paying dividends in search engine arena recently.

LSI technique is not that much clumsy, and following it, one can easily build and organize his/her webpage to be found out by search engines successfully for a particular keyword search. Based upon the concept of semantically related words LSI algorithm scans your whole website content for searched keywords, and then establishes relationship between found key phrases and keywords. It even compares them with the already indexed websites for the same keyword and finds synonymous words and phrases. Latent semantic indexing also involves checking grammar, spelling, terminologies and the like on your website and other relevant sites which are already indexed. To be precise, the overall content of your website gets scanned and checked for particular search query text and ranked in the order of its relevancy as compared to already indexed relevant sites in latent semantic indexing mechanism.

A search for keyword “cellphone” on a search engine will bring sites having the highest occurrence of word “cellphone” or links pertaining to it whereas under LSI, a search for the same keyword will display sites that also have the word “mobile phone” or “cellular phone” or any other synonymous terms. Sites with quality and relevant content will always win over sites using illegal practices like keyword stuffing or link spam in higher search engine ranking race. Now, efforts of webmasters and search engine optimizers following ethical SEO practices have started paying results by bringing their site on top positions of major search engines and throwing away irrelevant and rubbish websites from the index list completely. Thus latent semantic indexing decides ranking and performance of a website from its quality and relevancy.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Spamdexing – A Black Hat SEO Technique with Many Side Effects

Search engine optimizers consider adapting both unethical as well as ethical SEO techniques when it comes to increase the search engine visibility of their client’s websites with a higher search engine ranking. Most of the search engines set almost similar set of criteria and use a sophisticated algorithm to determine the search engine ranking of websites on the basis of their relevancy. However most of the site owners try to manipulate the ranking algorithm of search engines in their favor to grab the largest market share of referral traffic from search engines and spread their business further.

What is Spamdexing?

Spamdexing otherwise known as search spam or search engine spam is a black hat SEO technique which follows some unethical web optimization means like content spam, keyword spam, link spam and many more to improve the search engine relevancy or prominence of web resources by manipulating the search engine indexing system. It mainly uses illegal referencing techniques and methods in diverting traffic to a website.

Use of Spamdexing:-

Search engine ranking algorithms give maximum stress on link popularity, authority, relevance and keywords of websites while displaying them in organic search results in the order of relevance. Spamdexing is such a optimization mechanism that its powerful search engine indexing system manipulation features can make web traffic to land on an irrelevant site thereby pushing up its search engine ranking for a particular keyword. As a result the ranking of other spamming sites which keeps the link of this particular site also increase.

Different Forms of Spamdexing: -

There are countless ways of practicing spamdexing. Below is given a list of SEO methods which are found to be widely used but still come under spamdexing.
 Content Spam: - All the content spam techniques are meant for changing the logical view that a search engine has over webpage content. It includes the following techniques:
Keyword Stuffing
Meta Tag Stuffing
Hidden or Invisible Text
Gateway or doorway pages
Scraper sites

Link Spam: - Link spam is nothing but techniques being followed to get back links for a site from other highly ranked websites only to get a higher ranking thereby influencing search engine’s link based ranking algorithm. It includes the following techniques:
Link Farms
Hidden Links
Sybil Attack
Spam Blogs
Page Hijacking
Cookie stuffing
Buying Expired Domains


Mirror Websites: - It involves creation of multiple websites all with the same content but using different URLs with an intention to get higher search engine ranking.

URL Redirection: - It uses META refresh tags, Flash, JavaScript, Java or Server side redirects to take the user to another page automatically.

Cloaking: - Cloaking is an attempt to mislead search engines by serving them a page which is completely different from that of visitors.


Effect of Spamdexing on Long Run: -

Spamdexing may provide a boost to your site’s ranking on a temporary basis but it carries along with it the risk of your site being banned or penalized by search engines on being detected to use unethical or spammy SEO techniques for manipulating search engine index system. Today search engines are more vigilant to wipe out such web spam stuff in order to increase the quality of indexing system. One has to think many times before choosing the path of spamdexing otherwise search engines may throw away your site from their index list and can go to the extent of banning it.

Friday, December 12, 2008

Link Popularity is the Real Trump Card for Your Site’s Search Engine Ranking

All the major search engines i.e. Google, Yahoo and MSN used to rank a website based on the quantity and the quality of inbound links it has got while showing up in their search result pages. Therefore “search engine ranking” and “link popularity” has become quite complementary these days. One needs to manage his/her site’s incoming links properly and should try to improve their numbers using advance and ethical link building techniques in order to get higher search engine ranking.

What is Link Popularity?

Link popularity is a measure of the number of links pointing to a website from other websites. Strong link popularity positively influences your site’s ranking in organic search results. Links from theme related and quality sites are considered more important by search engines than links from less relevant or unpopular sites.

Importance of Link Popularity:-

Only an increased number of inbound links can’t bring your site higher search engine ranking unless and until they are from quality sites. Quality of links is crucial in assigning websites better link popularity scores and sets apart bad links which are acquired using spammy techniques which some search engine algorithms don’t consider while deciding upon the link popularity for a website.

Role of Link Popularity in Search Engine Ranking: -

Each inbound link is considered a vote for the linked site. Therefore search engines not only consider sites with higher number of inbound links as quality sites but also assign them good link popularity score. Though your link popularity alone can’t make it to high search engine ranking but it will help your site in some form or other to rank high in major search engines.
Major search engine algorithms include link popularity as an important criterion for search engine ranking. Even Google uses link popularity almost exclusively to rank sites. Recently Google has entered into a partnership with Yahoo to provide secondary results for Yahoo's Web directory, so a high ranking for your site in Google may help it indirectly in coming at a higher rank in Yahoo too.
Managing and Improving Link Popularity: -
Link popularity development and management is an ongoing process. Even a quality site with valuable content has to wait for a considerable period of time to have a better link popularity and high search engine ranking.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways to set up your own link campaign and improve link popularity, which will give your site a boost in the search engine rankings. Some of them are as follows:
• Directory Listings: You should make it sure that your site is listed in the Open Directory Project (ODP) and also in Yahoo’s Business Express ($299 yearly) and Look Smart Express Submit or Basic Submit. As directories rely on human editors, they have tremendous potential to boost your link popularity. You may also try searching for other directories on web and try submitting in them too.
• Cross Linking: It is also known as internal linking where you have to cross link all your important web pages properly and tell the search engines that these are the more important pages within your website so that they will rank high in search engines. When you have hundreds of pages and some of them are four or five levels deep, cross linking your pages helps the search engines to find and index your most important pages quicker. Internal linking is a great way to increase the amount of keywords in your visual text links.
• Request Links: When looking for your prospective link partners, start by visiting a search engine and typing in your most relevant keywords. It would be better for you to target non-competing and complimentary sites rather than your competitors. Personally approach the ones that might be receptive to your link request mail. Convince them to link to your site and be sure to suggest where to place your link. A good link request practice is to link to those sites before approaching them with a link request, which might help you get a link back sooner.
• Publish articles: Writing up some informative articles your audience is interested in, and submitting them to online publications may help your site get some quality links over a short period of tome. These articles must be published with your bio which includes your web site URL and a brief description about it.

Link popularity constitutes a major part of your search engine optimization strategies. It can improve your site’s search engine visibility as well as ranking effectively. What is needed is that you should act upon a proper link popularity strategy and get on modifying it further.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Discover the Power of Social Media Marketing in getting more exposure & Traffic to Your Site

What is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is an internet marketing strategy which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals for your business or website through social media channels. Whether you are selling services/products or just publishing content for ad revenue generation, social media marketing constitutes a cost-effective promotional method that will help your site get maximum traffic.

Necessity of Social Media Marketing:-

Nowadays an increased number of companies are queuing up for social media marketing and trying to evaluate the possibilities of social media as a marketing channel for their business prospects instead of firmly sticking to traditional search engine optimization techniques like link exchanges, search advertising or the purchase of editorial ads and banners on relevant sites.
Reasons for such a sudden change in this online marketing strategy may be ascribed as follows:
• Unlike paid advertising, it helps your site reach to a huge audience base in a spontaneous manner and builds up natural links without any discernible pattern.
• Through strategic social marketing skill social communities can be exploited to get a huge source of web traffic.
• Social media marketing has the ability to create huge number of links free of cost thereby giving you high return in turn of low investment.
• Though social media marketing deals with community-centric optimization methods, it complements and goes well with other advertising campaigns carried out to get targeted traffic to your site.

Value of Social Media Marketing for Your Website: -
Social media marketing is all about the creation of viral content or link bait and effectively promoting and spreading them among targeted audiences through successful social media channels. However developing link baits and getting them popularized on various social media news websites like Digg and StumbleUpon will have multiple SEO benefits for your website which are as follows:
• A large number of natural and permanent links from trusted social media domains develops authority for your site which search engines used to trust most. Thus you can get higher search engine ranking faster for certain competitive keywords provided that you optimize your linkbait and website structure properly.
• Social media news site are just like an interactive platform where you will get a chance to be heard or read, even for a brief moment or for a few hours. The people who find your message appealing enough will visit your site and recommend it to others. Such community supporters count for both primary and secondary traffic for your site. Visitors who land on your site directly from social media websites form your primary traffic part whereas referral traffic from websites which link to and send you visitors is your valuable secondary traffic.

Role of Social Media in Making Money for Your Site:-

Social media marketing is an excellent way to invite people to come into your site to have a look at your products or services on offer. The more community supporters a social media marketing site has, the greater is the chance of spreading your brand awareness. Thus your business can grow only when you campaign for social media sites having a group of regular visitors who will readily act upon your message and help it spread further. In this case your site needs to make an effort itself. As the core group of community supporters goes on recommending the site to others or make purchases themselves, your business will continue expanding and become profitable in everyway.

A solid social media strategy can greatly increase your site’s income potential apart from developing a natural link pattern and better search engine rankings for your site. Hence it is quite important for the success on every level even for established sites as it is a strategic and methodical process meant to establish your influence, reputation and brand within communities of potential customers, readers or supporters.
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Google Canonical Issues and Its Solution

What is Google Canonicalization?

The word “canonical” basically refers to authoritative or standard. The particular url which you target for web marketing purpose and want your visitors to visit is generally a canonical url. When a website is designed and all of its tracking urls is arranged for internet marketing campaign, more than one url may seem right for a particular webpage. The process of the choosing the best url among the available options specifically for the home pages is known as canonicalization in Google. There are certain urls which seem to be same but are technically different. For example

• domain.com/
• www.domain.com
• domain.com/home.asp
• www.domain.com/index.html

In each of these cases the web server may return completely different web content. Therefore one should try to select the url that represents a particular webpage best from an available list for google url canonicalization.

Google Canonical Issues: -

Google canonical issues may cost search engine optimization professionals a huge cost in terms of domain url. It becomes manifold if the domain url is not set up properly. Google does not recognize both the www domain url (www.domain.com) and the non www domain url (domain.com) as the same website and considers them as completely different websites with individual pages which is not the case. When these pages get indexed by google, you may get supplemental result for duplicate content and at last your own link popularity may get severely affected with all these issues.

Solution to Canonical Problems: -

By setting up a permanent 301 redirect within your .htaccess file, you can protect your site from canonical issues as it requires FTP access only and redirects all forms of your domain url to one standard url called a canonical url. The .htaccess file is a text file which is there in your site to store directory and even site specific server information. A permanent 301 redirect within .htaccess file not only informs a search engine browser that the website it is accessing has moved permanently but also redirects that page to the new url.

Small amount of code lines within your .htaccess file located at root can fix the www/non www canonical issues. The only thing you have to do is to include the following code lines in your .htaccess file.
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

Improve Your Site’s Organic Prominence in SEO through Natural Google Bombing

Though it is true that there is no shortcut to success but this phrase does not hold good in SEO industry. By following a few black hat search engine optimization techniques one can easily manipulate his site’s ranking in SERP. Google bombing is one such offsite SEO practice which is mainly done to bring a website to the top position of search engines for a particular search term through getting back links from forums, blogs and sites. When a site is linked to other sites using a common phrase, it will naturally come at the top of the result page in Google during a search for this particular phrase as Google has got that unique feature to show up the anchor text used in linking to other sites in SERPS. Thus presence of keywords in the anchor text of so many inbound links to the target site collectively increase its relevancy and influence its ranking in results returned by the Google search engine.

It is also seen that people get undue advantage of the Google bomb concept and try to cause harm to someone’s site by getting it ranked high for an irrelevant search term. Googlebombs are very rare in common queries as there is no dearth of any relevant results for these terms. The most famous Google bomb was for the phrase “miserable failure” which brought President George W. Bush's bio on whitehouse.gov to the top of organic listings in SERPS for that term.

Google gives importance on the quality, quantity as well as keywords present in the anchor text of a site’s inbound links while showing up them in order of their organic prominence in search result pages. If not done properly then google bombers face the risk of their site being noticed by search engine and getting banned as an offending site which hampers the site’s search ranking.

Dos and Don’ts for Natural Google Bombing:-

• While doing SEO link campaigning, one must avoid using a common anchor text as Google often counts them as artificially created links.
• Choose from a list of different anchor texts relevant to your site keywords in your link building.
• Maintain the link campaigning in such a way which looks more natural.
• If possible use some recognized keyword tools like Google adwords and try to collect as many anchor texts as you can related to your keywords from which you can choose the best one.

However Google’s algorithmic update has started giving negative rankings to sites which are traced to have used google bombing by comparatively better analysis of the link structure of the website. Thus the effect of many Google bombs has minimized to some extent. Again this new algorithm has its own limitation too due to which it can’t trace every Google bomb coming in its way.

Affordable SEO Services with Custom Solutions for Your Online Business

Google, Yahoo and MSN have now become the familiar search engine names for visitors searching information on the internet. Their frequent use in searching has made them brands among customers for quality searching. People generally consider the search results that come on the top of these major search engine result pages as the most relevant and quality ones which is not true. However high search engine rank is the sole factor which can play a considerable role in making or breaking your business. Only a properly optimized website can get high search engine ranking. A website with high search engine ranking always draws good traffic which in turn gets converted to potential customers and generates revenue with increased product sales.

Every business needs to build up an efficient & affordable SEO and internet marketing campaign to be successful. Internet Marketing, website optimization & promotion, Keyword research, competition analysis, Search Engine Optimization, directory submission, article posting, blog submission, social network marketing, link building, pay per click constitute essential elements of affordable SEO Services. All these search engine optimization and marketing services increase lead conversions and bring business to the company.

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