The Google Homepage "LOGIC"

Pretty simply put... Simplicity - Functionality - Interactivity

Explained:
Google Architects thought this way:
Q: "What do people want to do when they come to my "homepage"???
A: "They want to FIND something"
Solution: Google gave us a Search Box and only that amongst the small shortcuts on top and under.

Q: "What do they want to do ONCE they search"
A: "They want to go and see what they found"
Solution: Google gave us a results page, with a small description and a bunch of links.

This theory and architecture is a MUST for all websites. So stick to it and avoid any misleading, or unuseful info or contents on your pages. Keep it simple and you will see the difference.

αναφορικά με: Google (προβολή στο Google Sidewiki

How Little SEO Has Changed

72 search engine optimizers from around the world have contributed to SEOmoz's latest Search Engine Ranking Factors report, a study that offers valuable insight into how SEO works in 2009 … but also shows how little it's changed in recent years.

Participating SEOs completed a lengthy survey earlier this year that involved ranking possible factors that Google uses when ranking sites. The survey also included a variety of questions about current SEO trends and topics.

According to this year's survey, the top five ranking factors are:

• Anchor Text from External Links


• Keyword Use in Title Tag


• Raw Link Popularity


• Diversity of Linking Domains


• Keyword Use in Root Domain

Those first three factors are unchanged from the 2007 version of this survey, although the order is slightly different. Two years ago, the top five were:

• Keyword Use in Title Tag


• Global Link Popularity of Site ("Raw Link Popularity" above)


• Anchor Text of Inbound Links ("Anchor Text from External Links" above)


• Link Popularity within the Site's Internal Link Structure


• Age of Site

It looks like SEOmoz changed the structure of this year's survey a bit. Negative ranking factors are presented separately, and there's a new chart of "Overall Ranking Algorithm" elements. In fact, the fifth factor on the 2007 list, "Age of Site," is now essentially the same as (or at least very similar to) the number one piece of the Overall Ranking Algorithm, "Trust/Authority of the Host Domain."

When it comes to the big picture of SEO, the primary factors really haven't changed much over the years. But what separates "good" SEO from "great" SEO is often in the details. That's where you'll find the true value of the SEO factors survey - in learning the little things that competitors may have overlooked.

10 Common SEO Mistakes

One of the biggest challenges in SEO is the ongoing lack of recognition it plays in getting traffic to your Web site. This can be especially true in larger organizations where key members of management aren't familiar with it, and how it works. Uninformed senior managers can easily make decisions that are catastrophic from an SEO perspective.

Here are some of the most common mistakes made as a result:

1. Not Starting Early Enough

Even organizations that are aware of SEO's importance have a tendency to start the process too late. People in these organizations may think that SEO is about keyword selection and copywriting, but not realize that SEO also plays a critical role in technical implementation decisions. The key to remember here: it's easier to do it right the first time than to do it over.

2. Picking a Poor Content Management System

Unfortunately, many CMSs lack even basic SEO features, such as the ability to select title tags, headings, and anchor text. Other CMSs may allow these basics, but aren't crawler-friendly or create massive duplicate content.

3. Use Crawler Unfriendly Development Methods

Sometimes a senior marketing manager insists on using Flash for the whole site. Search engines are doing a better job at understanding the content within Flash files, but they still don't deal with it as well as plain HTML text. There are ways to completely block search engine spiders too, such as implementing links in JavaScript that can't be parsed by the crawler.

4. Duplicate Content Pages

There are many ways to implement duplicate content, such as creating print pages or referring to pages on the site with more than one URL (example: www.example.com and www.example.com/index.html.

5. No Canonical Redirect

Many Web sites allow http://example.com and http://www.example.com to co-exist without 301 redirecting one version of the URL to the other. This is actually a duplicate content problem, but it's so common that it deserves its own mention. A somewhat rarer cousin to this is where http://www.example.com and https://www.example.com are allowed to co-exist.

6. Pseudo Duplicate Content

One example of this is an e-commerce catalog that offers alternate sort orders for its products (e.g., a shoe catalog that allows you to sort on price, color, or size). To a user, the content on all these pages is different; to a search engine, they aren't because all the same elements of text are on the page.

7. Thin Content Pages

Many sites implement pages that have too little content per page. These can even be pages that the user sees as content rich, such as a page with images showing a product, and basic product information such as price. However, if the only text on the page that differs from other product pages is the title and heading tags and the price, the page will either be seen as a low quality page, or a duplicate.

8. Poor Use of Internal Anchor Text

A surprising number of sites still use "click here" or "more" as the anchor text on many links. This is a loss of a golden opportunity to help search engines understand what the page being linked to is about.

9. Over-Optimized Pages

Sometimes people go off the deep end after learning about SEO. They start creating overly keyword-rich pages in an effort to move their rankings upwards. This can quickly make for a poor user experience, resulting in a decrease in conversion rates and/or the site being less attractive for others to link to.

One warning signal of this is when you hear people talk about "SEO copywriting." This is a flag that the content author is thinking about search engines and not users, and that will get you into trouble. You're almost always better off having the writer focus on creating quality content, but controlling the title of the article so you can make sure that the keyword is in it.

10. Not Investing in Site Promotion

Many organizations think that the process is complete once a site is launched. They don't realize that the Web site needs to be promoted much like any other product or service. Inbound links (and in the future other references to your Web site, company, or products on the Web) are the primary voting mechanism that search engines use to tell them which are the most important sites related to a particular search query.

Summary

The best way to prevent these things from happening is with education. Help your senior managers understand what SEO is about in a way that is meaningful to them.

If you need help with putting that together, hire a senior SEO professional to come in and do the job for you. Once they understand the business implications of their decisions, most senior managers will make far better decisions about the Web site(s) and SEO.

By Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch, Aug 25, 2009

Find the best Keywords for SEO

Find the best Keywords

The basics: Why is it important to invest some time to find the best keywords?
Keywords are the words that web surfers enter in search engines to find websites. It's pointless to optimize your web pages for keywords that nobody uses in the search engines.
For a successful online marketing campaign, you must target the right keywords. The keywords you use should be relevant for your website and web surfers should be searching for your keywords.
If you target the wrong keywords, your website promotion efforts will be in vain and you will waste a lot of time and money.

Tips: Which keywords are good keywords?
There are three different keyword types: keywords for browsing, keywords for comparing and keywords for buying.
Keywords for comparing are usually the keywords that work best for search engine optimization. People who use that keyword type are looking for a solution to their problem and they are ready to buy. To get best results with your search engine optimization efforts, you should concentrate on that keyword type.
Most people use a two to four word phrase in a search, so phrases are very effective. Single words cannot be promoted effectively because they are not very targeted. Internet users who use four-word searches are more likely to purchase goods or services than those using fewer words (source: Oneupweb Research).

Warning: What can happen if you target the wrong keywords?
If you target the wrong keywords, you will lose time and money.
You will invest a lot of time in optimizing your web pages for keywords for which your website cannot get high rankings at the moment. Or you will invest a lot of time in optimizing your web pages for keywords that don't convert to sales.
It is very important that you choose the right keywords that lead to high search engine rankings and sales. Make sure that you choose the correct keyword type.

Action plan: What you should do now
Compile a keyword list of 10-40 keywords.
Start with multiple word keywords and then extend your keyword list.

Hope this helps out in deciding your keywords.
Keep in mind... we can always help at Exevior Technologies Ltd

PPC vs Paid Inclusion advertising model

You know that paying for advertisment online nowadays, has become a huge expense. Especially if you are advertising with the big guys, where a lot of competitions exists. What if i told you that PPC above, gives 50% real clicks and the rest are fake (Because some people manipulate these services to make money).

e.g.
Say that mike is a property developer in Cyprus and paying for the keyword "Cyprus developers" $1.00 per click just to be on position 5 or 6. John on the other side has a website that refers to Cyprus developers. John can choose to display these ads on his website and get a share of the profit when someone clicks. Well, it is expected that John will notify all his friends to click on his ads, so he will get some money. Mike now has paid $50.00 for 50 clicks of which 25 where johns friends.

Now on the other side, i've found that the so called ISEDN created a product that is cost effective and performance effective. ISEDN stands for Individual Search Engines and Directory Network. they gathered 300+ search engines and directories, which are scattered around the world, Uk, Germany, Usa, Australia e.t.c., and created a network, and a common product. they took the advantages of PPC with keyword targeting, and the advantages of paid inclusion and created the perfect product. Now you can get those expensive keyword based ads, for a small fixed fee per year. So you realise that click fraud has no longer a purpose to be performed, because they don't charge by clicks. It doesn't matter if you get 100 clicks or 100000 clicks, the price is still 36.00 usd per year per keyword.

for example:
http://www.exevior.com Is a Search Engine, as well as exactseek.com, burf.com and many others. (about 225+) members of the ISEDN, You may review the common product at this page http://store.exactseek.com/exevior.html . Just to review all the above stated, what they are offering is a choice. You can pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a 50% real outcome or $36.00 usd per keyword for a whole year, for 95% real outcome, and appear not only in one, but 300+ search engines and directories, members of the ISEDN, for the keyword or keywords you choose. personally, i found that this might be the solution to click fraud, eventhough i don't think the big guys will ever join such think as they will simply loose their monopoly.

Check it out.

WEB 2.0 Ages

In the 90s, the primary goal of most websites was simple: basic online presence. That meant static brochure-like content that typically started with "Welcome to our website..", hideous animated GIFs, a Netscape icon somewhere in the corner, a "You are visitor number 99999" note somewhere at the bottom, scrolling texts and dark backgrounds. Companies were tapping into a new marketing medium, standards were low and web development tools were unsophisticated. As a result, a website was simply an attempt to create an online version of a business card.

Now most companies are embracing the new standards. The Web 2.0 Age is here. Tricks to please search engines , embedded RSS feeds, drag-n-drop panels and blogs are becoming as common as the mail box icon and a little "under construction" guy were ten years ago.

• What are some of the visual patterns of a Web 2.0 web design?
• (and we are only talking about the visual, not functional, trends)
• Simplicity and elegance
• Rounded forms
• Subtle gradients and shadows
• Bigger font sizes
• Pastel colors used for the overall look, and bolder, bright colors used to emphasize important elements
• Big buttons and catchy glossy icons
• Never 100% Flash
• Simplification of clutter

These visual aspects are indicators of a major shift in the way that websites are now being used as marketing tools. As the purpose of a website matures into a well thought-out marketing crusade aimed at a specific target audience for a specific purpose, so does the website's organizational and visual structure. For the visitor the site is easy on the eye, and easy to get around, because a Web 2.0 site was designed with the following in mind:
The knowledge of the site's target customer, and things she is likely to look for immediately upon arriving on the site
2-3 most important messages that need to be presented to the target customer on the home page to entice her to explore further, all the way to the "buy", "contact us" or "sign up" screens
Content that is secondary, yet is beneficial to the visitor and the site's marketing goals

Thus, a good chunk of the expensive real estate on the home page may consist of nothing else but 2-3 content parts each carrying a clear message to the visitor

If the intent of the website is to maximize its marketing abilities, it makes perfect sense to highlight a few lucid messages on top of the pastel backgrounds.