Best Seo Practices?

A lot of people look for technical tricks for SEO and ignore the big picture. You need both. Your SEO (and business) strategy is every bit as important as SEO tactics. There are more than 200 SEO factors that go into rankings, but here are a few of the more important SEO factors that I've experienced, both tactical and strategic:

• Have a website worth visiting. If your website isn't designed for users first, most of the time it won't do well in the search engines.
• Make your site crawlable. Don't rely on Flash or JavaScript navigation. If you need to use JavaScript, use it to enhance an existing (X)HTML menu, not create it. You won't even need a sitemap if your site is crawlable in the first place (but it doesn't hurt). RSS feeds also help you get crawled.
• Do your keyword research using Google's Keyword Tool. I guarantee that you're missing out on traffic opportunities if you don't do this (and most people don't). Take 5 minutes to make sure that your content is hitting the most popular search terms for its subject matter. It's worth it.
• Make a bigger website. Backlinks matter and internal links from your own pages count. The easiest, surest, and most efficient way to get backlinks is to increase the number of pages on your site. The bigger your search engine footprint, the more weight you have to throw around. This is one of the reasons blogs are recommended for SEO.
• Get your title right. You get 65 characters to create an on-topic incentive for the user to click on your search engine listing. Use the opportunity wisely. Your best keywords should be in the title. However, it's not just about using the right keywords; it's also about catching the user's attention while still signalling that your page is going to be relevant and helpful to them. Use Michael Masterson's Four U's Method: Be Unique. Be Useful. Be Urgent. Be Ultra-Specific. Stronger titles use more U's. Remember that your title is often used by social media sites to link to your page as well.
• Get your anchor text right. Use keywords that are also helpful to your users. Never use the infamous 'Click Here' or 'More...' text as a link.
• Get a handle on duplicate content. It's far too easy to create duplicate content. http://example.com, http://example.com/, http://www.example.com, and http://www.example.com/ are all considered different URLS. URL parameters also create duplicates: http://example.com?a=1&b=2 and http://example.com?b=2&a=1 are both different URLs. Use Apache or whatever server you're using to manage your redirect rules so this doesn't happen. This needs to be a consideration from the beginning and should be solved both programatically and with server redirects.
• Don't waste time asking for links. There is no bigger waste of time and money, IMO, than emailing other websites offering to do link exchanges. Think about the time spent searching for relevant websites, emailing, responding, and implementing a link exchange. What's your hourly wage? Now think about economies of scale and how many times you have to do that to make a discernible difference for every page of your website. There is no way that you can possibly come out on top. There are easier ways to get links.
• Make your site sharable. All those little social media widgets? They might be annoying, but when used properly, they make it easier for your users to share your content. The caveat here is proper context. Privacy policies, terms of use, registration, and other pages of that ilk are probably not good candidates for a widget.
• Viral content works. But you need to use it wisely. Not every announcement on your site is going to be or should be viral. It has to make sense and it needs to be well-thought-out. Ask yourself objectively, why would someone link to this? If you can't think of a good answer, you should go back to the drawing board. Again, the 4 U's help here.
• Incentivize linking. A great way to kickstart a viral campaign or even a more moderate but steadily growing external link profile. Think contests and giveaways, but also think StackOverflow's badge widgets.
• Build a community An audience of loyal readers will link to and share your content naturally. User-generated content increases your website's footprint and also incentivizes linking.
• Remember the big picture. Why are you doing SEO in the first place? What is the purpose of your website? It's easy to focus so much SEO that you lose sight of what you're trying to do. If you're trying to make money with your site, don't forget that you also need to focus on the usability, the design, the copy, the offer, the product, the checkout process, etc. SEO is only a small part of that.

If you're interested in more details, I wrote an article on my website about basic SEO tips which you can reference for more info.
Edit: Incidentally, one of the reasons StackOverflow does so well in the search engines is because it has an enormous community that continually produces keyword-laden pages. It gets a lot of the basic tactical SEO right too, but this is an excellent example of big-picture thinking that most people ignore. SEO is built into the design of the community as an extension of the way the community functions. That wasn't an accident.

The Future of SEO in 2013

In this post, Gaz Copeland brings together 30 SEO experts and reveals their predictions for SEO in 2013.
As you can imagine, the predictions vary considerably from one person to the next, but a few topics are consistently mentioned:
(1) Expect more spam fighting Google updates (furry names optional)
2012 was dominated by link network take-downs, unnatural links notices, and of course: the Penguin update. Many of the SEO experts predict that we’ll see more of the same in 2013.

Google will continue to find ways to distinguish between editorially given links (votes for pages on the Web) and links intended to manipulate rankings.
- Bill Slawski

(2) Anchor text will continue to lose value
Every year, the power of anchor text is diminished more and more. In 2012, anchor text lost value and actually became dangerous due to the negative consequences associated with the Penguin update. Moving forward, many experts believe Google will continue to devalue anchor text.

We’ll see Google turn down the dial on the power of anchor text. It has always been a bug bear of mine that they put so much weight on it in the first place because real internet users do not link using exact match anchor text.
- Paddy Moogan

(3) Authorship and AuthorRank will become MUCH more important
Google+ is Google’s identity management system for the Internet. As such, Google will continue to promote the system and strongly encourage (and incentivize) webmasters to create profiles and associate their content with those profiles.

Authorship is only going to get more important. Google wants (read:needs) people to complete their Google Plus profiles and start using authorship for reasons that range from making their incredibly broken reviews system work to making sense of entities and the semantic web.
- Joel Klettke

(4) Semantic markup will continue to proliferate
Google presents rich snippets in the SERPs for a variety of verticals. In the coming year, more webmasters will take advantage of these rich snippets, and Google will experiment with new ways to leverage (and display) this data.

I think there’ll be a few more Schema based case studies next year and predict that SEO’s will get off their arses and actually get round to implementing it.
- Sean Revell

(5) Webmasters will focus more attention on user experience (UX)
If your website provides a negative user experience, you’ll quickly lose visitors (regardless of how valuable your products and services are). Since search engines have a vested interest in keeping their users happy, they won’t promote sites that don’t create a positive user experience.

The big thing for me next year is going to be User Experience (UX) – creating websites that deserve to be on the first page of Google
- Chris Dyson

Those are just a few of the most popular predictions. For even more, be sure to check out the entire post!

Web Gnomes Highlights

Since we’re reviewing the past and predicting the future, we’ll finish this week’s recap with a quick run-down of the most popular posts from our blog in 2012:

• 33 Free SEO Tools You Should Know About – If you love free SEO tools, this is the post for you. Without question, this was our most popular post in 2012.
• Everything We Know About The Penguin Update – In this post, we highlight the events leading up to the first Penguin update as well as the coverage that followed (you can find a similar timeline for Penguin 3 in Part 2).
• 10 SEO Analysis Tools You Should Be Using – Unlike the previous post about free SEO tools, this post is exclusively about SEO analysis tools.
• Learn SEO Like Rand Fishkin Would – In this post, we provide various resources to help you learn SEO (e.g., free guides, books, blogs, etc.).
• 7 Essential Resources for Chasing Google’s Algorithm – This post is also educational, but it’s focused on tools for chasing Google’s algorithm (e.g., SERP flux measurements, search engine announcements, research, etc.).

We have even more exciting posts planned for 2013, and as always, if there’s anything you’d like to see us write about, please let us know!

Effective Post sphenisciform penguin SEO methods

This 2013, expect to check stronger and stricter computer programme terms and conditions. As such, corporations and net marketers square measure left with no possibility however to amend and strengthen their SEO methods so their have a higher likelihood of obtaining hierarchic on search engines.

Considering that the Google sphenisciform penguin  was free to grant lessons to websites whose still still observe quality content and spamming. they're currently taking live to spice up their websites through making original, distinctive and helpful articles, correct link building techniques, smart keyword improvement and on-the-scene and off-site SEO.

You must keep in mind that websites and little businesses that do not follow these techniques would get a foul impression on computer programme like the gawk.

Abide with Google's Rule

Website improvement is an important tool to extend traffic and sales. thus so as to survive within the terribly powerful competition of SEO you have got to follow Google's recommendations. Therefore, some very important factors in SEO techniques this 2013 ought to use.

High-level Google and Engagement - it's the latest giving of Google that provides several advantages that alternative search engines and social networking sites don't have. It finally comes out with terribly fascinating options that offer helpful advantages to the users to widen their client base and on-line recognition.

Author Rank - This tool has become one in every of the foremost vital SEO barometers for Google once it involves assessing however distinctive and informative your contents square measure. the best thanks to build your name is thru making quality content.

Create and Share totally different Content - so as to strengthen and boost your website's exposure you have got to make and share contents in several varieties. a number of the simplest ways square measure webinars, videos, Screencasts, graphs, infographics, articles, blogs and podcasts.

Practice Google's New Role - you'll surprise what it is? It's no apart from content supplier. does not knowledge to try and do that? it is a manner of golf stroke the most plan of your content like victimization the primary sentence to focus on customers via press releases, blogs, social media content, RSS feeds, video descriptions and article submissions.

Make Use of Social Media Solidly

It cannot be denied that they become an important technique of growing your website's exposure and widening your client base. Also, they're effective in crawl and spidering search engines to extend you web site rankings. you will miss one 1/2 the selling strategy if you are not victimization this technique.

Hence, social media specialists square measure extremely recommending the subsequent steps to become victorious in your chosen niche:

1. recognize what the vital keywords that square measure trending on Twitter.

2. create use of the Google's keyword choice tool to well decide the simplest and most relevant keywords for your content to use for web site improvement of your websites.

3. produce a Facebook fan page for your web site. Facebook is that the leader of the pack of thuscial media so it's an efficient manner of stigmatisation for your merchandise and websites.

4. interact your journal readers and guests to supply some backlinks, feedbacks and suggestion so you'll be able to create changes for the progress of your websites.

Reasons for DEAD of SEO

SEO Graphic by SEO Book

SEO : 10 most mistakes which is overly used for Websites

You’ve just heard about the latest and greatest website technique. Everyone is doing it you should try it too! Right?
Well, you might or you might not.
Too often, sites pick up a technique just because another site uses it, thinking awesome, that’s cool for me, too!
However, just because someone is doing it, even the biggest, baddest, coolest someone doesn’t always mean you should as well.
Here are some of the most commonly overused site techniques and why they're bad for users, SEO, and conversions.

1. Infinite Scroll

Sure this is a great technique for some sites, just not all sites or even most.
Infinite scroll is great for sites like Facebook where you have linear information that is best delivered in a never-ending story, but is this true for all sites or site pages? Definitely not!
Before you start laying out your page into long-form scrolling bottomless wells, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have a story to tell?
• Does the scroll make you want to keep going or do you feel tired?
• Does your information naturally lend itself to a listed format?
• Is there a reason your users might be better served by pagination?
• Are you proposing using it where it shouldn’t be used (e.g., your homepage)?

Never use infinite scroll on your homepage! Sorry Mashable this even means you. Your endless scrolling homepage is a nightmare for usability. Why?

• Homepages are used to direct users to information inside the site. Endless scrolling defeats this purpose.
• They are bad for SEO.
• Too much information, no direction.
• They are very heavy and in this case, can overload the browser with a 6 MB download (and that is where I stopped, bailed, and vowed never to return).

2. Sticky Nav

A sticky nav is one that doesn't move with the page. This can be a top nav, a footer or even a side nav.
Can anyone say frames? Maybe you're too young to remember when frames where cool (not) and why they went away. Sticky navs are no different, just a different way of implementing what used to be called frames. If you can bring back the Dodo, do you?
Sure, there are certain types of sites and implementations where it makes sense to take up 125-200 pixels of your top nav screen at all times with a navigation element that never disappears (oh and don’t make it disappear and reappear – just don’t).
However, a really good site search might be an even better method for quick site access. If ecommerce is your site goal, do you really want to lose that much real estate to a nav bar?
There aren't going to be hard and fast rules on when and when not to use a sticky header except that your site content is going to be your best determinant. Rule of thumb: if your users aren't going to use your nav on a regular basis once inside your site, don’t.
So how about a sticky footer? My advice? Don’t. Almost anything you put in a sticky footer bar is only good for your marketing department, not your users, but don’t take my word on it. A/B test.
In the case of the sticky navs, annoyance factors will be dependent on use case and audience.
However, always allow your users the option to disable the feature.

3. Auto-Sliders

Usability expert Jakob Neilsen just came out with a report on this technique for carousels and accordions. His advice. Just don’t. Well unless annoying your users is your goal, then please do!

4. Auto-Play Anything

Please never auto-play audio, video, or animation when users click on your site. It will only attract the wrong kind of attention from your visitors.
Visitors don’t want to hear the sound of a woman’s voice talking in the background on their computer while they scramble to find it and shut it down because it’s interrupting whatever else they’re doing at the time.
And animation? Well maybe yours is audioless, so you’re thinking you’re cool. Nope! Just don’t.

5. Banner Ads, Promo Boxes, Ads for Ads Sake

Ten or 12 years ago users used to click on those ads and even bought things. Today they are taking up valuable real estate and possibly putting you at risk for a Google ad space penalty.
Unless you're one of the lucky few who are making real revenues from these third-party traffic detours, best to leave them off your site or if you must have them replace them with internal ads to your own pages. This way you keep your visitors on your site and focused on your content.
Remember, for every cent you make for a click, you’re also taking users off your site. Is this really helping you make money in the end?

6. Pop-Up Anything

If it pops up, kill it. Whack that mole!
Seriously, with pop-up blockers almost no one is seeing it and with mobile devices you are just impeding the users ability to access your content. Now this is not referring to lightbox implementation or other styles of layered div techniques, just the actual popover or even pop-under.
Although, really? Is someone going to register to use your site if they have not gotten to the content yet? And have you tried it on a tablet or mobile device? A/B test these and see whether they are helping or impeding.

7. Websites as Apps

Your website is not an app! Repeat, in case your mind was wandering. your website is not an app, stop treating it like it is one.
Website users are a multivariate group with varying user intents, whereas the app user is looking for the app to take them quickly to definitive and finite goals. Don't confuse the two purposes.
Your website should offer all the same content on mobile and tablet that it does on the main desktop site, and your app should have 2-4 main user goals that your site data indicates are desired and needed.

8. Copy For Copy Sake

Yes, copy is all the rage these days. Non-SEO people discovered copy is good for SEO and suddenly 2012 was the year of content marketing and content development and content everything. New? No, but new to some.
So what is wrong with this? Nothing if you content is clear, consistent, and contextual.
But for many, content is about driving metrics such as pageviews and impressions and quality be damned as long as people are visiting. That isn't OK.
This type of content development, search engine trolling, is against Google’s TOS and bad for users. If it is bad for users, it is likely bad for your site. Just ask those who haven’t recovered from their Google “Content Trolling” slapdowns, well if you can find them.

9. Keyword Tagging

Keyword tagging originally started as a way to group content into sets of pre-defined keywords so users could find all articles under one topic. Now authors make up tags on the fly, are given unlimited tagging capability, and create multiple one off pages acting as topics giving the site duplicate content issues.
Your content tagging should be keyword appropriate, but limited, fixed and finite. Don't allow your authors to just make these up as you go along and don't have infinite topic creation. Keyword tagging should help find content, not drive SEO terms and unlimited topic page creation.

10. Vertical Scroll Sites

This site actually does it right. As does this one. These sites eliminate the perception of the page and allow their users to engage with the information at whatever point the page lands. These sites integrate the changes between top and bottom as a seamless flow without the need to stop at exact points.
This one is less successful. I have to try to stop it at the right stop points. This is more annoying than interesting and begins to equate to a negative user experience.
This one is a failed experience. Unless I'm on a tablet where I can easily control the stop points with my fingers or hand the movement of my fingers on my laptop pad or mouse move me past the stop point to awkward “dead spaces”.
When using HTML5 and CS3 for new styles of presentation, do not ask yourselves, why not? Ask yourselves why? If you cannot answer the why with very specific business goals supported by research and user data, then it is best to skip the “cool” and stay with the “what works”.
Oh and one SEO note, these types of sites are really bad for SEO, so if you need to be found in the search engines, don’t. Use this on a landing page or mini-site.

Why Oh Why So Much Bad UI?

Why do so many sites use these techniques if they really shouldn’t? We’ll first usually because someone in marketing or biz dev or even IT person thought hey – “THIS IS COOL! WE MUST DO THIS! PEOPLE WILL LOVE IT!” But herein lies the rub, testing shows, people don’t love it

But… But… It’s Cool!

I was speaking at an internationally recognized conference in Austin, when someone from a Fortune 100 came up to me to ask me why the landing page they just launched was not working. After all, it was so cool! They used HTML5/CSS3, vertical scroll, how could people not love it!
”Easy,” I told him. “Because people don’t care about your cool. They just want to the information and an easy way to buy if they are interested. If you do that, your page will convert.”
He then showed me a page that was converting and they could not figure out why, nothing flashy, some nice graphics, good information and a clear buy button. Well there you go, information and a way to buy, just as I had told him.
So I told him to A/B test and let me know what he found out. He did and every time the info page outdid the “cool” one.
People want to do what they came for, to get info, perhaps buy, and go home – same as if they were in your real world store. Imagine if in a brick and mortar you had to decipher how to get into the store just to get to the shoe section? But Everyone Else Does It!
“Well, Mashable does it, so we must be missing out on some sort of awesome!”
Slow your roll folks; does it seem awesome when you go to Mashable’s 6MB and growing, endless scrolling page? Or do you want to run away as your browser gets overloaded with bytes it slows to a painful crawl and you cannot find that one article you just heard about? Just because someone else does it, does not mean it is right, it is good or it even works.
In fact, just because someone else does it doesn’t mean anything. Too often today these decisions are made by marketing groups and business units, not the people who would tell you why it might be an endlessly bad idea to have an endlessly scrolling homepage.
We often don’t see these ideas perpetuated because they are good, but because we live in the age of resharing, retweeting, regurgitating and repurposing. So next time someone tells you to use what seems like a bad technique on your site, ask them what is the business reason? Where are our metrics? Why would we do this? Show me the A/B tests.
Granted, it may not stop the implementation of another notorious bad idea, but it might slow it down long enough for some other “hot idea of the day” to come take its place and maybe time to move on to something else.

Rich snippets | structured data | Microdata | Microformats and RDFa

Rich snippets and structured data, Microdata, Microformats and RDFa 

How to design a rich snippets and structure html data for you webpage

What is snippets?

The few lines of text markup that seem beneath each search result area unit designed to convey users a way for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their question.  These made snippets facilitate users acknowledge once your web site has relevancy to their search, and should end in additional more clicks to your pages.

Three markup formats in we can design rich snippets structure data :-

1. Microdata 

 Microdata uses straight forward attributes in markup language tags (often  or ) to assign transient and descriptive names to things and properties.   To create associate item, the itemscope attribute is utilized. The itemprop attribute is utilized on one in every of the item\'s descendants. the kind for associate item is given as a result of the price of associate itemtype attribute on an identical part as a result of the itemscope attribute.

HTML marked up with microdata example:-

<div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"> 

  My name is <span itemprop="name">SEO Traffic engine</span> 

  and my website url

  <a href="http://seo-traffic-engine.webs.com/" itemprop="url">seo-traffic-engine.webs.com</a>

</div>

Microdata generator Tool

http://www.microdatagenerator.com/

You can use microdata generator tool for design rich snippets in microdata format. 

Information:- Microdata only support html5 and css3 version in you can design rich snippets and structure data.

2. Microformats

Microformats are easy conventions (known as entities) used on web content to explain a particular sort of data.  Microformats use the category attribute in hypertext markup language tags (often  <span> or <div> ) to assign temporary and descriptive names to entities and their properties and vcard, hcard, span class tag to define CreativeWork, Organization, Event, music,  Person, Place and Product.

HTML marked up with microformats example:-

<div class="vcard">

   <img class="photo" src="http://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-Z327GXoKPWk/AAAAAAAAAAI/AAAAAAAAADY/0oZ7Chf-6BM/s512-c/photo.jpg" alt="SEO traffic engine />

   <strong class="fn">jiten3patel</strong>

   <span class="title">SEO</span> at <span class="org">SEo Traffic Engine Reviews</span>

   <span class="adr"> DEL</span>

</div> 

Microformats generator Tool

You can use Microformats generator tool for design rich snippets in microformats. 

http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator

Information:- Microformats support all html and css version.

3. RDFa 

 RDFa could be a thanks to label content to explain a selected sort of info, like a building review, an event, a person, or a product listing. These info sorts square measure known as entities or things. every entity includes a variety of properties. RDFa uses straightforward attributes in XHTML tags (often  or ) to assign temporary and descriptive names to entities and properties. You can use the entities and their properties xmlns:v,typeof and span property.

XHTML marked up with RDFa example:-

<div xmlns:v="http://rdf.data-vocabulary.org/" typeof="v:Person">

  My name is <span property="v:name">jiten3patel</span>, 

Here is my homepage: 

  <a href="http://seo-traffic-engine.webs.com/" rel="v:url">seo-traffic-engine.webs.com/</a>.

   at <span property="v:affiliation">SEO Traffic Engine</span>.

</div>

RDFa generator Tool

You can use RDFa generator tool for design rich snippets in RDFa.

http://websnippetr.com/events.php

Information:- RDFa only support all xml and xhtml version.

Markup your content specific types:-         

1. CreativeWork

2. Event 

3. Intangible

4. MedicalEntity

5. Organization

6. Person

7. Place

8. Product 

and for sub types go on schema.org website.

Subdomains | Subfolders | Top-Level Domains

Many of the client issues we've been working with recently have centered around canonicalizing, re-directing and structuring URLs for content. Marketing, sales, executives and IT departments all seem to have a unique viewpoint on these matters, making compromise and agreement especially difficult. For the purposes of this post, I'll focus solely on the "best practices."
When to use a subfolder
99.9% of the time, if a subfolder will work, it's the best choice for all parties. Subfolders have all the flexibility of subdomains (the content CAN, if necessary, be hosted on a unique server or completley unique IP address through post-firewall load balancing) and none of the drawbacks. Subfolder content will contribute directly to how search engines (and users for that matter) view the domain as a whole. The link in to subfolders are considered relevant to the domain as a whole, and while this rule applies for many subdomains, the exceptions make it worth avoiding them.
When to use a subdomain
If your marketing team decides to promote a URL that is completely unique in content or purpose and would like to use a catchy subdomain to do it, it can be practical. Sites like maps.google.com, blog.searchenginewatch.com and even SEOmoz's own web2.0awards.org are examples of wher the marketing considerations make a subdomain an acceptable choice.
Be wary of press and media attention to the domains, as un-savvy users often don't understand the concept of subdomains or that domains can be on the "world-wide-web" without a "www." It's much less expensive to use a subfolder and have slightly less marketing panache than it is to educate through branding and advertising.
When to use an entirely new domain
When you don't want it to rank at the search engines . Seriously, though, a new domain, even for many of the world's largest brands, is not a particularly good idea. It's practical for entirely new campaigns, like a new movie (though if I were Warner Brothers or MGM, I'd opt for warnerbrothers.com/newmovie) or a new brand, and it's obviously necessary when building a new company. Other than these limited uses, however, multiple domains hosting content that could fit on an existing domain is brand dilution. I'd liken it to retail stores only taking American Express Gold cards and rejecting AmEx Corporate or AmEx Blue - overly segmented and dangerous for the consumer mindset (particularly consumers named Google, Yahoo! or MSN).
Giving up the value of incoming links, the branding of an existing domain and the historical weight given by search engines is exceptionally inadvisable, particularly in a post-sandbox era.
When to use a TLD other than .com
Only these few rare situations would sway me to move away from the .com domain:

• When you own the .com and want to re-direct to a .org, .tv, .biz, etc. possibly for marketing/branding/geographic reasons. Only do this if you already own the .com and can re-direct.
• When you can use a .gov, .mil or .edu domain (.jobs, though technically restricted to HR and hiring organizations, is available to anyone who hires, and doesn't have any special search benefits)
• When you are serving only a single geographic region and are willing to forever forego promotion outside that region (i.e. .co.uk, .de, .it, etc.)

I have no doubt my strict rules have some omitted exceptions - feedback is always welcome.