estions 40 Frequently Asked Questions Search engine optimization SEO is a foreign field to a lot of people. Rarely does a day go by when I don't get asked a few questions on the subject. So I've decided to post this FAQ article in the hopes that it will rankmaniac 2012 help people understand the basics and make them a little more comfortable with the whole domain. Q Why are search engines important to me A 85 of all website traffic is driven by search engines. The only online activity more popular than rankmaniac 2012 search is email. 79.2 of US users don't go to page 2 of search results. 42 rankmaniac 2012 of users click on the no.1 result. For the under40 agegroup the Internet will become the most used media in the next 23 years. Q How do search engines decide on their rankings A IMPORTANT You cannot pay a search engine in return for a high ranking in the natural results. You can only get a high ranking if your content is seen as relevant by the search engines. Search engines identify relevant content for their search results by sending out spiders or robots which crawl analyze your site and index record its details. Complex algorithms are then employed to determine whether your site is useful and should be included in the search engines search results. Q Can't I just pay for a high ranking A No. The biggest concern for search engine
companies like Google and Yahoo is finding content that will bring them more traffic and thus more advertising revenue. In other words their rankmaniac 2012 results must be relevant. Relevant results makes for rankmaniac 2012 a good search engine irrelevant results makes rankmaniac 2012 for a shortlived search engine. Most search engines these days return two types of results whenever you click Search NaturalOrganic The real search rankmaniac 2012 results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results rankmaniac 2012 are ranked according rankmaniac 2012 to how relevant and important they are. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright rankmaniac 2012 Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 41 Frequently Asked Questions 41 Paid Pure advertising. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers pay the search engines to display their ad whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results but are normally labeled Sponsored Links and normally rankmaniac 2012 take up a smaller portion of the window. Q How do I get a high ranking A There are four rankmaniac 2012 main steps Step 1 Use the right rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 words on your website Step 2 Get lots of relevant sites to link to yours Step 3 Use the right words in those links Step 4 Have lots of content on your site add more regularly Q What is search engine optimization SEO A Search Engine Optimization SEO is the art of creating a website which is search engine friendly. This means using the right words in your copy using the right words in your HTML code structuring your site properly designing your site properly For more information on these 4 elements download our free 'SEO Secrets' eBook from httpwww.divinewrite.comseosecrets.htm . Many people use SEO to also describe the other ingredient in a high ranking 'Link Popularity'. Q What is link popularity A Think of the search engines as a rankmaniac 2012 big election. All the websites in the world are candidates. The links to your website are votes. The more votes links a candidate website has the more important it is and rankmaniac 2012 the higher its ranking. Link popularity is all about how many links you have and how you can get more. Links to your site tell the search engines how important your site is. They assume that if its important enough for a lot of other sites to link to its important enough for them to display at the top of the rankings. Links are the single most important factor in ranking. Generally speaking the more links you have to your site from other sites the better your ranking. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 42 Frequently Asked Questions 42 rankmaniac 2012 Q How many links to my site are there A Search Google for www.yourdomain.com. Don't search for linkwww.yourdomain.com as this only returns a subset of the links to your site. Then on the page that displays next select Find web pages that contain the term www.yourdomain.com . When you do it this way you'll see all the pages that contain your URL. In most cases the URL will be an active link or at least it should be... if it's not you should ask the site owner rankmaniac 2012 to make it so. There are also some tools you can use For more information on tools p.43. Q Are some links better than others A Yes The ideal kind of links are those that come from relevant
sites sites which use rankmaniac 2012 the same keywords come from important sites have a high ranking include your keyword as part of the visible link text include varying link text not the same link text each rankmaniac 2012 time and come from a page that links to few other sites. When a search engine sees a link which satisfies most or all of these conditions it says Hey this site must be credible and important because others in the same industry are pointing to it. Q How do I get lots of links back to my rankmaniac 2012 site A There are many possible ways to generate links. Some are dubious like rankmaniac 2012 autogeneration software and sites set up by webmasters simply to host links to their other sites and I wont be discussing them here. Others like those discussed below are legitimate. Add your site to DMOZ Yahoo Directories and other free directories Check where your competitors links are coming from Article PR Write and submit articles for Internet publication Swap links Partner websites Pay for links For more information on these methods download our free
'SEO Secrets' eBook from httpwww.divinewrite.comseosecrets.htm . Q What do you think is the best way to get lots of links A Article PR. Write helpful articles and let other webmasters publish them for free in exchange for a link in the byline. With article PR you don't have to pay for the link you determine the content of the page rankmaniac 2012 containing the link you determine the link text and the link is more or less permanent. A single article can be reprinted hundreds of times and each time is another link back to your site SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 43 Frequently Asked Questions 43 For more information read httpwww.divinewrite.comseoarticles.htm or visit www.ArticlePR.com . Q How do I write a good article PR piece A See httpwww.divinewrite.comseoarticles.htm . Q How do I get a high ranking using free reprint content A See httpwww.divinewrite.comTopRankingFree.htm . Q How long does it take to get a high search engine ranking A A long time Its impossible to say how much time youll need to spend generating links but you can be sure itll rankmaniac 2012 be a while no matter which method rankmaniac 2012 of link generation you use. You just have to keep at it until you rankmaniac 2012 have achieved a high ranking. Even then youll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task otherwise your ranking will drop. Q What is the Google Sandbox and is it real A The Google Sandbox theory suggest that whenever Google detects a new website it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine credible long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence. Q What is the Google Dampening Link Filter and is it real A The Google Dampening Link Filter theory suggests rankmaniac 2012 that if Google rankmaniac 2012 detects a sudden increase i.e. many hundreds or rankmaniac 2012 thousands in the number of links back to your site it may sandbox them for a period or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence supporting the theory but there is also a lot discounting it. No one has categorically proven its existence. Q What SEO companies should I be wary of A Be wary of SEO companies that promise or guarantee results in a given timeframe especially if they won't expand on their methods for generating links back to your site. Q What tools can you recommend A There are many very useful tools to help with your SEO. The following are just selection. All
tools are free unless otherwise indicated. Backlink checker httpwww.webuildpages.comneato Backlinks by IP address httpwww.webuildpages.comcclassindex.php Link Popularity Tool httpwww.marketleap.compublinkpop SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 44 Frequently Asked Questions 44 Number of links required to rank httpwww.iblcheck.com Google Alert httpwww.google.comalertshlen Google Sitemaps httpwww.google.comwebmasterssitemaps Google Sitemap Generator httpjohannesmueller.comgs Google Toolbar httptoolbar.google.com Indexed Pages httpwww.webuildpages.comcachecachetoolpublic.pl Keyword rankmaniac 2012 Analysis Nichebot httpwww.nichebot.com Keyword Analysis Overture httpinventory.overture.comdsearchinventorysuggestion Keyword Analysis WordTracker Paid httpwww.wordtracker.com Keyword Difficulty httpwww.seomoz.orgtoolskeyworddifficultytool.php Keyword Identifier httpwww.googlerankings.comultimateseotool.php Keyword Density Measurement Simple httpwww.livekeywordanalysis.com Keyword Density Measurement Complex httpwww.gorank.comanalyze.php Plagiarized Copy Search httpwww.copyscape.com Traffic Rank httpwww.alexa.com Search Engine Rank http