SEO can be divided in to two different categories the first one being onpage optimization and other one being the off page optimization. Onpage optimization involves in effective inclusion of keywords and phrases in domain name, website name, the content of the website, urls of internal pages, meta tags, meta descriptions, and alt image ids.

Offpage optimization is anything done outside the web pages and this includes backlinks, directory submission, article submission, and the like. This article is an attempt to elucidate the techniques in link building for a website.

One of the criteria for the search engines in ranking a website is the number of relevant backlinks. This process of acquiring relevant backlinks is known as link building. There different strategies for link building of which some are reciprocal links, one way links, paid links, text links, links through banners, links form blog sites, and more.

The following are the important point to remember when you start link building.

Dos

• Your links should originate form web pages that contain relevant content to your website.
• See that the web page from where you get the link has minimum outbound links.
• Verify the crawl frequency to know if the webpage is crawled by major search engines.
• See to that your links are visible to the visitors.
• Confirm the page rank, traffic, duration of links, quality of links and the total number of outbound links before you get the link from a website.

Don’ts

• Do not get links from unrelated websites.
• Avoid websites with low page rankings/porn/adult sites.
• Never go for penalized sites involved in Black Hat SEO.
• Do not get links from websites that exaggerate their page ranks.

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So, what can you do to ensure your visitors are sticking around? Follow these 7 tips for successful landing pages.

1. Write a Great Headline- The first thing visitors to your landing page see is the headline. A boring, keyword-stuffed headline won’t do the job here. Your headline needs to refer to the place from which the visitor clicked to get to your page. It also should be strong enough to entice the visitor to keep reading. Some copywriters prefer using leading questions; others favor writing compelling headlines that sell a benefit.
2. Use Clean Design- Remember, this is a landing page, not your home page. Keep the design as simple as possible. The goal of your landing page design should be to direct the visitor’s eye flow toward the call to action. For this reason, you need to eliminate any unnecessary distractions from the page. Keep it simple!
3. Make it Easy to Scan- This goes hand in hand with the above point. You want to make your text as easy to scan as possible. Your visitors don’t want to read a long block of text. Break the content into short paragraphs, and bold a few key phrases throughout the body. This accommodates the visitor’s inclination to scan rather than to read.
4. Have a Clear Call to Action- Your landing page was created for a reason. For some sites, it’s to get a lead. Other landing pages are designed to close a sale. Whatever your purpose, you must have a clear call to action that tells the visitor what you want. If you want them to fill out a brief contact form, tell them. Also, give them an incentive for doing so. Anything from a free consultation to a limited time discount will help convince them to take action.
5. Place Important Content Above the Fold- First impressions are important. When a visitor lands on your page, what do they see? Whatever content is above the fold is what determines if they’ll keep reading. You need to have enough content visible to help the reader make a decision without scrolling down.
6. Use Real Testimonials- Testimonials are great sales tools. If you can cleanly place a couple of testimonials in a sidebar on the landing page, it will really help your company build trust with visitors. If your readers see the satisfaction others have experienced with your company, they’ll be less worried about getting ripped off.
7. Test Landing Page Regularly- Testing your page regularly is the key to creating the most effective landing site. If your page isn’t converting properly, keep tweaking it until it does the job. Have trusted associates look at your landing page to see if there is anything else you can do to improve it. The more you test, the better a page you’ll have.

Post by Eric Brantner

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Believe me this is the very 3rd question asked at every webmaster forum including some popular one like DigitalPoint, Google Groups, Webmaster Talk .. and tons of more.

Like Barry reported about an intresting thread at Webmaster World where a user asked similar question Which penalties require a reinclusion request in Google?

Yes this is a great question and not all the penalties require you to file a re-inclusion request with Google.

Tedster, Administrator of Webmaster World sums up the issue with this question.

• Not all “penalties” are really penalties. In fact, a nice percentage of posts that say, “I have been penalized,” are really not penalized.
• Some penalties are manual, while some are automated. Manual penalties probably require a reinclusion request, while automated ones do not necessarily require one but likely can be expedited by one.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

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Looks like Google Changed its Algorithm and backlinks are most important factors for search engine rankings once again.

Noticed this while doing a post for Google SERP’s Update for Oct. I was shocked when my experiment page was back in first page and jumped to #2 for the targeted keyword.

Later in the evening I asked Rishil about his experiment, and Yes !! Rishil also got the targeted keyword on page one.

Have you noiced something similar  ? Comment and let everyone know about the situation.

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It is just recommended to avoid reformatting a dynamic URL to make it look static. However, Static URL’s are fine if u have some Static information on the webpages but if you are planning to use some dynamic content then you should allow GoogleBot to analyze the URL structure and not to remove them by making them look static using URL-Rewrite.

According to the blogpost “Dynamic URLs are okay if you use fewer than three parameters.” is also a myth and there is nolimit about using number of parameters. However, Using short URL’s is a great Idea and like a thumb rule and is applicable for both Dynamic and static URL’s.

More Details can be seen at: Google Webmaster Central Blog.

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I’m still not sure, What exactly is Going on as there was a PR Update last month and now we can see several new threads at DP where webmasters reporting about Increase and Decrese in Toolbar PageRank for there websites.

In personal, I think it might be something related to Matt’s Comment that Google is expiring some older penalties on websites plus some new penalties for website involved in buying and selling links. This is what I can conclude after viewing some comments from users where many users claimed to get previous lost PR back and some claimed to lost all of there PR.

Forum discussion can be seen here, here, here and here.

If you have some additional information about this update let me know. I will update this post later as soon as I will get some more Additional Information.

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Patrick in his post described something similar and this is something everyone noticing including me, Looks like Anchor-Text are no more The Most Important Factor for Organic Rankings.

According to the expirement I performed 2-3 months back, I was able to get ranking for the targeted keyword and I was at Top-10 for atleast 2-3 months and now last night when I checked it was no-where …  Strange hun ?

rishil and many more webmasters reported the same thing !! If you have something to say about this issue then feel free to comment

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So here is the transcription of the session:

Someone was thinking when scheduling the first session at 11:00. Genius.

Moderator Jeffrey Rohrs, VP Marketing of ExactTarget, welcomes the crowd this fine, late morning.

To speak first is Patricia Hursh, President of SmartSearch Marketing. Her company started growing their international business just a few months ago. So, she’s going to give us tips and advice for getting started with global B2B search. She’ll cover:

1. Which search engines to focus on.
2. How important is translation?.
3. Regional search trends.
4. Ease of PPC campaign set-up.
5. Common constraints.

Understand search engine usage be country or region and know the search engine preferences. If your target audience is business searchers, the pie chart of different search engines used is very different than that of the general public.

We’ll take a look at China as an example. The market share is dominated by Baidu, but it is shifting as Google tries to gain market share. In Japan, Yahoo is the leading search engine with approximately 64 percent market share. Look for studies that have been done in the region you’re interested in. Do your research and understand the preferences in the country.

But pie charts don’t tell the whole story. Preferences can vary by the type of search. When Patricia’s country was doing research, a woman told her that she searched for food, shopping, maps and news on Baidu, while business, financial and some research was done on Google.

How Important is Translation? Importance of local language varies based on:

1. Search engine requirements.
2. Target audience language skills (Are the older, younger, more educated, commonly multilingual?)
3. Searchers’ preferences.
4. Acceptable methods.

Go beyond translation… think localization.

1. Capitalize on local dialect, vernacular, cultural references, current events, and regional word preferences. Use a “local voice”.
2. Work with native speakers currently living in the country.
3. Utilize translation memory tools.

She’s going to look at search engine language requirements. On a SERPs page from Google Mexico, there’s about an 70/30 split of Spanish to English language results. On a Yahoo Mexico SERPs page, both paid and organic results are 100 percent Spanish.
Run tests that measure differences of ad impressions, clicks, average CPC, and average conversion rate for different languages in the region. They’re very easy to do and will show you the effectiveness of different languages.

Set up a Yahoo international SEM campaign at http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/international.php. There’s a separate interface to set-up for each international campaign. Charges are in the local currency only. Minimum deposits may be required. Minimum bids vary. Often times, ads and Web sites must be entirely in the native language.

For Google’s international PPC set-up, there’s the single AdWordes interface. Media charges can be in U.S/ dollars or in local currency. Although recommended, ad copy, landing pages and Web sites are not required to be in any language.

Now Kevin Lee, Executive Chairman & Co-founder of Didit, is ready to address international search challenges.

Currency issues

1. Cross-border ROI calculations can be challenging.
2. Budget by country or region.
3. Hedge for currency fluctuations?.

Vendor selection issues

1. Localize or centralize.
2. Single multinational vendor network or local hotshot?.
3. Centralized reporting for optimal decision making.

B2B search challenges

1. No single decision maker.
2. Offline conversions.
3. Long lead time and lagged conversions.
4. Keywords are often not B2B specific.
5. Huge range in lead quality.
6. Huge range in LTV of a closed deal.
7. Leads can cool off fast.
8. Buying cycle and buying process variations.

[This guy is fast and he didn't make his presentation available for download. Sorry I can't get it all down for ya.]

When the keyword alone doesn’t work, the other predictors relating to click quality are:

1. Search engine syndication settings.
2. Daypart.
3. Day of the week.
4. Geography.
5. IP address and ISP.

Should all regions use the same metrics? Sites and communications strategies may need to vary across regions:

1. Different success metrics.
2. Different values assigned to metrics.

Some other B2B specific solutions

1. Custom serving the landing page based on IP block, ISP, existence of a cookie.
2. Click routing.
3. Integration of automated or manual proactive chat if lead value is high traffic and mix is good.
4. Heavy use of retargeting campaigns for sticky visitors who are more likely to really be B2B.

As his final thoughts he says, stay educated on best practices, pick the right partners for technology and strategy development, and never stop testing.

Finally, Jeffrey Pruitt, President, SEMPO and Vice president, iCrossing, will give us some of trends he’s found and recommendations for international B2B.

Jeffrey says he recently came back from China. Although he doesn’t know any other languages, he still had to figure out how to communicate.

It is expected that the B2B SEM will double in the next four years to $8 billion. This means that you have to think of deployment strategies.

1. Communication: The importance of the partnership and close communication with the stakeholders.
2. Localization.
3. Objectives: Understanding the global business goals is essential to selecting the right tactics for each country/region.

B2B trends in SEO/SEM

1. Mobile: 84 percent of mobile search users expect the sites to have a dedicated mobile search.
2. Display: offers a more effective and efficient means of reaching the B2B prospects.
3. Social: B2B marketers continue explore social and engage customers.

Program management process should be consistent and different in each region.
Consider the client organizational structure. Who from the client side will you work with? Where do the budgets come from?

Execution factors

1. In-house, in-country clients.
2. Localization of company relationship.
3. Know your space.

Addressing the challenges

1. Optimized communication flow based on the client’s organizational structure.
2. Translation of the global marketing goals and objectives and marriage between them and the local market needs.
3. Centralized campaign execution and optimization.

Focus on engagement success. This can be anything from registration for Web cast or the downloading of white papers.

How do you go about selecting a partner overseas?
Kevin Lee: The same processes of due diligence apply. You need to understand what your key criteria are for vendor selection. SEMPO also has a list that could be a good starting point. References are important.
Jeffrey Pruitt: You need to go there and meet them face to face. A partnership without that connection won’t be as meaningful or effective.
Patricia Hursh: Make sure you’re using the resources you already have. Find out if there are more office locations of the partners with which you are currently working.

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Here are the simple and effective 9 Steps for Video Search Engine Optimization:

1. YouTube will tell you what’s popular on their site with its search suggestions. It will tell you what keyword related to your keywords are most popular at YouTube. Type a keyword related to your content then sort by “most viewed content” and you will see the most popular videos on YouTube related to your terms.
2. Knowing what type of content is most popular with viewers can strategically aid the shaping of your video based marketing plan.
3. Submit to many video search engines to get the most visibility, not just YouTube.
4. Create a video response to popular videos that are related to your video content in some way and include audio and visual call to action to visit your video. These will appear in close proximity to popular content allowing your visibility to piggy back on the popular video.
5. Leaving with an active URL in your description. They’re clickable! Conclude your video with an instruction/visual cue to click on the link.
6. Use video annotations to convey text information and link to other YouTube videos.
7. Add comments on popular videos that include a coded URL call to action.
8. Become a YouTube partner channel, get featured, promoted and share ad revenue.
9. Allow comments. If you don’t, you won’t be able to rank well in hyper-competitive areas.

He was speaking at a Conference, More details and full coverage can be seen at Bruceclay or at Seroundtable.

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Our homepage has a fairly high PR and is based in the US, but sadly we
do not have any travel-related pages one link away. If you want, you
can submit a business proposal to Google here:
http://www.google.com/support/contact/bin/request.py?bdpg=1

When you have the chance, you should read up about link schemes in our
webmaster guidelines:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66356

However, This was nothing new as I had reported earlier also, Link Exchange e-Mails and Requests are just SEO Mistakes.

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