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Search Engine Optimization

SEO: Attract People to Your Website

The Web is a crowded marketplace.
You and your competitors want to appear in the the first page of search engine results for the right keywords. To rank higher in Google and Bing, you need to learn and apply search engine optimization (SEO) techniques on your website and beyond.

How To Avoid an Unnatural Links Penalty
Google is constantly adjusting its search engine algorithm in an attempt to serve up the best websites and most relevant results to searchers. They’re at it again, and this time it’s a doozy. What’s being called the Unnatural Links update is rocking the SEO world. In March 2012 people started receiving warnings from Google about “unnatural links” and then many of those sites’ rankings in search results have taken a nosedive. read the full article


9 Common Title Tag Mistakes and How To Avoid Them
If you have the time to optimize one thing on your website, title tags are it. They're one of the most important SEO elements on your site for ranking well in search results, and they also entice people to click on your web pages. Learn how to avoid common title tag mistakes. read the full article


Cascade Content for SEO
When you write a blog post about something that matters to your customers and prospects, cascade it to the social networks to attract more visitors. You'll also be helping your website rank better in search results. read the full article


SEO Tips for E-commerce Sites
E-commerce sites have some unique SEO challenges to overcome. Read our 11 tips for improving your e-commerce site's SEO so you can rank higher in search results and get more customers for your online store. read the full article


Google's Freshness Update Helps Small Business SEO
Google's new Freshness update affects 35 percent of searches, nearly three times as many as affected by Panda. It also offers small websites the chance to outrank larger sites by favoring the freshest content on any topic. read the full article


Boost SEO with Social Media
Getting mentions in social media really can boost your search engine rankings. Better yet, it's often easier for small businesses to get noticed in social than to get backlinks or overhaul their sites for SEO. read the full article


Improve Your URLs for Better SEO
Your URLs provide an opportunity to let search engines and people know what your page is about. Conversely, if you don't pay attention to your URLs, they may provide no value for your site's SEO or for your human visitors, either. Badly designed URLs may even trip up search engines or make them think you're spammy. read the full article


No Follow Links Don't Help PageRank or SEO
It used to be possible to send more "link juice" to one specific web page through selective use of the NoFollow attribute. That hasn't been true for several years - but the myth persists. Learn what NoFollow is really used for, and how it can benefit your website. read the full article


Increase Site Traffic with Title Tags
Major search engines use the title tag of a web page as a link to that page in search results. It's the first thing people see and choose to click on - or not. [VIDEO] read the full article


SEO for Competitive Analysis
Keyword research and other SEO tactics can help you research - and beat - your competitors. read the full article


WordPress: Built for SEO
WordPress is increasingly popular for creating websites - and deservedly so. WordPress can help you build a large website with little effort and no knowledge of code, and it naturally handles much of the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization (SEO). read the full article


Get Your Blog Ranking Higher in Search Results
If you're going to all the trouble of creating and updating your business blog, you want your posts to rank well in search results. Learn to optimize your blog posts so they rank well for the keywords you care about. read the full article


SEO Benefits of Blogging
A regularly updated blog gives people a reason to visit your website more often. It also gives you the chance to improve your site's search engine optimization (SEO). Not sure it's worth the extra work? Here’s a rundown of the SEO benefits to help you decide. read the full article


Anchor Text Can Improve Your SEO
Anchor text tells people and search engines what a linked page is about. Thoughtfully chosen anchor text can tell search engines what keywords to rank your pages for...something that "click here" can't do for you. read the full article


Choose the Right Web Designer
There are thousands of web designers and web design companies out there ready to design your website. How can you choose one who will understand your business and make sure your site is visible to search engines and potential customers? Here’s a quick guide to help with the process. read the full article


6 Quick SEO Wins
You check Google every day to see where you rank. If you're still on page 4 or 5, you need a little search engine optimization, or SEO. Just a few simple steps can help your site rank better in search engine results, and attract more visitors. read the full article


Google's Farmer Update: What You Need To Know
The Farmer Update was a substantial change to Google's search engine algorithm that sent some websites' pages plummeting in search results, while others came out ahead. Learn how to check whether your site was affected by the Farmer Update, and what you can do to show Google your content is worthwhile. [VIDEO] read the full article


Reviews Can Help You Rank
If you're running a business that depends on local traffic, you probably know that good reviews can bring more customers through the door. But did you know that getting reviews - and not necessarily just good ones - can help your business rank better in search results? read the full article


Quick SEO Fixes for Internal Links
Watch out - your link juice could be leaking. Inbound links to pages with discontinued products, expired promotions or years-old press releases probably aren't helping your site rank well in search results. But you can build internal links to juice your most important pages, and boost them in search results. read the full article


How To Use Twitter for SEO
It's official. Google and Bing now include social signals - namely, links that get tweeted on Twitter - when determining how web pages should rank in search results. Learn how to get the best SEO value from tweeted links to your site. read the full article


Good Meta Descriptions Bring More Site Traffic
Writing a compelling, accurate meta description for each important page on your website is an important part of making your business more visible on the Web. A good meta description can persuade more people to click on your site when it appears in search results. [VIDEO] read the full article


Keep Track of Inbound Links
Getting inbound links to your website from good, reputable sites can help your site appear higher in search results, and get you more visitors. Make sure you monitor links to your site so you can make sure they're increasing, and coming from the right places. read the full article


7 Easy Ways To Improve Your Site Speed for SEO
Making sure your website is fast - or at least, not slower than the average site - can help you gain or maintain good search engine rankings and traffic to your website. read the full article


White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO
If you've been reading about search engine optimization (SEO) and trying to apply it to your website, you've probably wondered what "white hat SEO" and "black hat SEO" really mean. Use this guide to do the right thing, and avoid getting your site penalized. read the full article


Flashy Websites Can Be Too Hot for Bots
Web page content that’s wrapped in a fancy package can be difficult – or impossible – for a search engine to “see.” Making your page attractive and easy to search is the goal. read the full article


Compression Can Speed Up Your Site
A web page that's chock full of different files and data can take a long time to load into a web browser, making people impatient and causing search engines to rank the page lower. Use compression to make rich, complex pages load faster. read the full article


Redirect Alternative Domains for More Traffic
You can get more visitors to your website by acquiring domain names related to yours and redirecting them to your site. This can help you capture visitors who mistype or can't remember your domain name. read the full article


SEO Stumbles to Avoid
Whatever business you're in, if you're not paying attention to your site's SEO and doing whatever you can to increase your Web presence, you'll look like a novice. Learn how to look like a pro. read the full article


How H1 and Other Headings Help SEO
The H1 and other headings on a web page help people and search engines quickly understand what the page is about. Write them well to get more site visitors. [VIDEO] read the full article


Alt Text Helps People and Search Engines
Search engines are blind when it comes to images, and so are some people. At least 10 percent of Web surfers use assistive technology to help them browse websites. Make sure your images can be seen by everyone. [VIDEO] read the full article


404 Errors Drive Visitors Away
When someone clicks a link to your site and gets a "Page not found" error, they'll likely regard your site as broken, or nonexistent. If you're trying to do business on the web, you want to make sure your site can be easily found, 24/7. read the full article


Don't Block Search Engine Crawlers
A great page on your website will never rank well in search results - and be discovered by more people - if the search engines don't know it's there in the first place. read the full article


What PageRank Means for Your Website
PageRank is at the heart of Google's ranking algorithm, and everyone wants to know what to do about it. Discover the changes you can make to your site to help its PageRank and get it showing up better in search results. read the full article


How To Use Robots.txt
People usually use robots.txt to prevent search engines from indexing web pages whose content really shouldn't be indexed. Robots.txt can also be used to request that specific robots not index a site. read the full article


Good Search Rankings for Your Brand
Here’s the ultimate frustration for a business owner: Typing your own name into Google’s search bar, and finding yourself outranked by other professionals who have the same name. Learn three free, easy steps to push your own brand higher in search results. read the full article


Choose the Right SEO Company
If you have a website, you’ve probably thought about hiring – or tried to hire – a search engine optimization (SEO) firm. Selecting the right SEO company can be a challenge, though. We have tips for choosing a firm that will help your website drive more sales and leads. read the full article


Video Marketing 101
Countless marketers post video clips on YouTube in the hope of winning more website traffic and new business. Most are boring. You can make engaging and effective videos by following our tips. read the full article


What to Do If Your Content is Stolen
You've spent months or years building your website and its content, and you're proud of it. One day you find that some thrown-together website has copied your content and tried to pass it off as its own work. This is incredibly frustrating. Worse, your site can be punished if search engines decide that your site is the one hosting the duplicate content - not the other site. read the full article


SEO Mistakes Even Experienced Web Designers Make
There's a lot of detail involved in website creation. Sometimes a design decision that's great for users can have a big, unintended negative effect on your site's search rankings. It's a real loss to your business if your beautiful, very usable website doesn't get customers coming to it from search engines. Your site could have one of these common SEO problems. read the full article


Build Links and Visibility with Press Releases
Most businesses publish press releases to trumpet company news, while (hopefully!) persuading journalists to tell the company’s story. Your press releases can bring you much greater benefit if you learn to optimize them for search engines – benefits like more people coming to your website, and your site appearing higher in search engine results. read the full article


Link Juice: Save Every Drop
Most people redesign their websites every couple of years. Maybe it's a cosmetic makeover, maybe it's to enhance search engine optimization (SEO), or maybe the site has grown and really needs re-organizing. Whatever the reason, rewriting web page URLs means breaking links to those pages. Don't waste the "link juice" -- the extra visibility those links bring you, and possibly higher standing in search results. read the full article


Shared Page Titles: Classic SEO Mistake
The page title is one of the most important ways that search engines determine what a web page is about. That means you should make sure each web page on your site has its own unique title, one that accurately reflects its content and purpose. And each page title should include the most important keyword or keyword phrase for that page: the words most people would use to find the page’s key content. read the full article


Google Instant Changes Local Search SEO
Once again, Google has moved the proverbial goal post by announcing its newest search engine feature, Google Instant. And website owners will need to get very savvy with their search engine optimization if they want to score. What is It? Google Instant displays search results as you type, in real time, making searches more interactive and immediate. As you type, Google Instant updates search results, instantly. read the full article


Twin Home Pages: Classic SEO Mistake
Most websites have a home page with something like index.php or default.aspx at the end of its URL – for example, MyWebsite.com/index.php. Just like your underwear, you really shouldn’t be showing that level of detail to the public. Even worse than an unexpected glimpse of the skivvies, these extras at the end of a site’s URL could indicate that the webmaster has inadvertently crippled the site’s visibility to search engines. read the full article


Multiple Subdomains: Classic SEO Mistake
You might think – and many web designers do think – that subdomains are a nice way to organize your website. People often put the company blog on blog.mywebsite.com, the product catalog and shopping cart on store.mywebsite.com, and job listings on career.mywebsite.com. While this seems like a reasonable way to structure a website, it's a real problem for search engine optimization. read the full article


Keyword Research Is Key to Online Success
Good keyword research is the cornerstone of any website’s success. It gives you powerful insight into the words people use to search for products, services or information. That insight can help you craft content for your website that will make it rank higher in searches for your important keywords. read the full article


Get Good Backlinks
Inbound links - also called backlinks - are important for driving more traffic to a website. Links from other websites provide a direct path to the site for anyone who clicks on them. Backlinks from reputable websites can improve a site's SEO and boost its ranking in search engine results. That means more people may find the site when searching for its keywords. read the full article


Intuitive SEO by the Book
If you think of your website as a book, and organise it like one, you’ll find that tuning the site and its pages for best search engine optimization (SEO) becomes easy and intuitive. read the full article


Boost Conversions and SEO with Contact Info
Putting your contact information out there and freely offering customer service can feel unimportant -- or downright scary. But I'm here to suggest that making contact information available can improve your sales, conversions and search engine rankings. read the full article


Get Your Website Indexed
Before a website can be found in search engine results, the search engines must first discover and index that website. The sooner your website gets indexed, the sooner you can apply SEO strategies to boost the site higher in search engine results. Appearing in the top 10 to 20 search results can, in turn, attract more visitors to your site. read the full article


Don't Lose People Who Don't Type WWW
Though websites often live at web addresses that start with www -- like http://www.Example.com -- it's increasingly common for people to type just Example.com into the navigation bar of a web browser. Most webmasters make sure that typing either "www.Example.com" and "Example.com" into the navigation bar will get someone to the right website. Too often, however, people don't think about this issue, and someone who types just "Example.com" won't get to the website at all. read the full article


SEO: The Basics
“Build it and they will come” won’t work in the jungle of today’s web. Mining the rich opportunities available to companies requires the right search engine optimization (SEO) tools and techniques. Without those tools, you risk being eaten alive by your better-equipped competitors. read the full article


SEO vs PPC
Every website owner wants to rank high in search results for the site’s most important keywords. But getting into the first page of search results takes a lot of time and search engine optimization (SEO) work, especially if there’s hot competition for your most important keywords. Pay-per-click ads can help a new site establish its brand quickly, and a PPC campaign can cost less than the initial stages of SEO work. But site owners often get a better long-term return on investment from SEO. read the full article


Free SEO Tools
Attracting more traffic to your website isn't magic; it just looks that way. When you choose -- and use -- the right search-engine optimization (SEO) monitoring and analysis tools, you learn how people are using your website, and how to start attracting more visitors. read the full article


Creating an XML Sitemap
A sitemap can help search engines index more of the pages on your site, more quickly, making it easier for people to find your website. A complete XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap can direct search engines to your most important pages, increasing the likelihood that these pages will be indexed and then discovered by the people you want to attract. read the full article


An HTML Sitemap Helps Search Engines Discover You
A sitemap -- also written as "site map" -- helps search engine spiders and crawlers find and index all the pages on a website more quickly than they might be able to do otherwise. This matters because if a web page hasn't been indexed by a search engine, it cannot show up for any searches in that engine. read the full article