Seo

[girlx]

Does anyone have any good online resources they can forward me to on the subject of SEO?

Thx

[Joey Boy]

www.google.com

[george]

webmasterworld.com

[Ajarn]

Just write a good website. I think these companies that promise you higher listings are just taking your money. Yes, google will put you in a little box on the top, but who really looks there first? I NEVER do, at least at first...

There are lots of good primers on how to get listed hgher in search engines. A main key, emphasized by all, is to avoid gimmicks... I've never paid one cent, yet even those websites which pay Google big money will not show higher than my website using various search terms, such as 'Asian Recipes', despite this being a very popular area of interest with many commercial companies using recipes to attract you to their related product... Because of poularity, quality, consistency, and time, my little website comes out ahead, always. But not everywhere.

If you want to buy banner space to promote your company, be aware the percentage of viewers in America who click on these ads is only 0.05 % . And much lower outside the States . The banner business, in my opinion, is only really valuable for branding, not really for direct sales or contacts, except maybe on a very local level,- like maybe the Subway ads on tv.com. For the website owner, putting up banners only becomes somewhat lucrative if you get LOTS of page views, in the area of 100,000 page views and up per month. At a million pageviews per month, you're going to do well just on cpm banners, for sure. No sweat about clickthrough ratios. For a site like TV. com, most of the large banner companies aren't interested because of the notoriously low click-through ratios on forums, so have banned them, but it does leave an opening for local business banners and, of course Google ads, even though the click through rate is sooo low. No money from google except for clicks (cpc), so not as good usually as the cpm's which pay you for each viewing, clicked on, or not.

CPM= cost per thousand (views)

CPC- cost per click

For the Internet newbie, there seems to be a period of paying your dues for anyone able to achieve some relative success. But, common business sense gives you the basic goals to long-term success..

Have a product somebody wants.

Or is unique.

Provide quality, quality, quality.

Ditto with service.....

In practical terms, if you want to make money, make a website that will attract people. Either as direct buyers of your products/services, or as viewers who will, hopefully, click on those often annoying banners... Or maybe click on the little button that says 'Donate to Us' ...

As example using my own site, I could try to sell recipes and access to information, but it's all available for free in many places on the internet already. People come to my site because I've done their research for them, compiling all the information in the field that they're interested in... And presented it in a user-friendly way... I could compile all the recipes in a book (recipes are not normally copyrightable), but what a hassle to deal with, from my view. My original motivation, which still continues, is as a teaching tool, an as an outlet for some of my creativeness, as well as other personal issues, like Peace...

My website has grown quickly since 1998, in terms of visitors. A few years ago, I decided to capitalize on its popularity by addings some banners... I've always hated banners, but, then there's the practical side, where you can make some decent money, frankly speaking

In my defence, I donate it all to some local schools, including individual students and teachers

In my experience, the most inportant parts of your webpage are, in order of 'search return' value...

website name, then .html page name. "recipes.html", for example, on a search term of 'recipes'

Page Title.

meta NAME="Description"

meta NAME="Keywords

Words in text, starting from the left side columm, if there is one (top of the coded page)

TexT size (H1 valued higher than H3, for example)

Image alt text

If you have something good to offer, my experience is that, sooner or later, people will come and support you.

Just brainstorming. Hope something is of value...

[cdnvic]

Avoid those services that, for a fee, will submit your site to 400 different search engines and directories.

First of all, Google, MSN, and Altavista/Yahoo account for most searches. Secondly, they offer to submit your site, not list it.

cv

[waldwolf]

I don't know about the other search engines ranking criteria, however, in the case of Google, your ranking is based purely on how many websites link to your website.

I suppose those offering to increase your ranking for a fee could "purchase" or negotiate referrel links from other websites, however any "rank increase" requests directed to Google will be ignored.

As Ajarn wisely counseled, write a better website and the world will beat a path to your doorstep.

[Ajarn]

I don't know about the other search engines ranking criteria, however, in the case of Google, your ranking is based purely on how many websites link to your website.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not purely, but sure plays a strong role. Also, the ranking of the site that links to you counts in the value of your site, too, according to google in a press release I remember reading not too long ago.... Maybe that's why I get attacked by these link spammers on a regular basis.

It seems though that google is looking at ways to keep the link spammers from gaining from their links, so one can expect some changes here, I think, in the way google counts links...

[sajal]

the best way is to keep on posting yr links all over the web in directories n places...

exchanging links with related websites...

when the google bot updates yr page im sure yr page will be ranked higher as now many pages have links to your page...

still get a lot of link spammers when tryin to search for something on google...really pisses me off sometimes...

[Crushdepth]

Just write a good website.

This is absolutely the best advice you can get. Provide quality content that people want and people will use your site and link to it. If your site sucks, then no amount of optimisation will help you.

Google does provide some useful information on SEO. Getting high quality sites to link to you (not crappy ones) helps a fair bit, as does giving your links meaningful names.