Thread: SEO - the way to promote your site! (update every 3 days)

Hey guys, every 3 days I will add tips for promoting a web site, All those tips are small things that people look over when trying to promote their site, I hope this will help you:


1. Your home page is the most important page in your web site. To make it even more important, you have to make sure that from every page in your web site there is refferal link to your home page. The reason is: one of the main ways of google to check the importance level of a certein page is by checking the quantity and quality of the pages that links to the same page. Also internal links definitly come in to this calculation, and thats why a organized link from every page in your web site will turn your home page to a lot more important.
Good refferal to the home page is not reffering to the deafult of the web site (index.html or default.asp for example) but to the full domain of yours (http://www.torrent-invites.com let's say).
The best link to your home page contains the key words that have the greatest importance to you, that by them you wish to appear high in search engines. Here's a good example for good refferl code:
<a href="http://www.torrent-invites.com> T-I - Get your free private torrent tracker invites!</a>
in case you dont have the option to put a text link, it can be put by image, but than you must remember to add the key words with the alt tag of the graphic file. here's a good example for a refferal code by image:
<a href="http://www.torrent-invites.com><img src="http://www.torrent-invites.com/images/BlackOut/default/default.jpg" border="0" alt="Get your free private torrent tracker invites"></a>

2. The best place to register your site to.
Have you ever tought what is the most important web site index to register your site to?
Well the most important index for you is a site named dmoz (dmoz.org).
dmoz index is an index where the editors are volunteers. dmoz index has number of important advantages:
- dmoz index is used by google to create google site directory.
-dmoz index can be copied freely, thats why a website that appears there will appear in tens (if not hundreds) of copys of the index.
-Google attributes great importance to the fact you are registerd in the index.
During registering to dmoz index its important to locate the category that is most fitting for your website, and not registering it for other categories. The reason to that is that in the moment the website is registerd in any category, dmoz editors will probably won't sign you up for another category.
The last thing to know about dmoz is - because the editors are volunteers, the pressure is huge on them. During registering a site you better be very patient untill it appears in the index.

3. Links Links Links!
You must know that one of the first things every SEO needs to know is that the real war is between websites that are intrested in the first place is at the battlefield of getting out links to their website.
But is every link is a good link? are there better or worse links? here's some standarts you can use to identify which is a good link and which is not:
-A text link is better than a image link (banner).
-A link should contain the key words that important to you, as a part of the links text, or as part of the alt tag of the link. Text link like "Press Here" is not a good example...
-A link from a website that deals with the subject of your website or somthing like it will be better than a link from a site that has no similarities to your site at all. If the page in which th link appears in search results even for words that are important to you, than its even better.
-A link from a big and authoritarian website is better than a link in a small and sidelined website.
-A link from the home page on the site is better than a sideline link. The more you need more clicks to get to the page where the link appears from home page, the less the link is important.
-The less links in a page, the more important every link becomes.
-The link has to be from a page that already appears in google index. you can search the url of the page to see if it appears, or search some unique text on the page.

4. The most important part of the page is
When a search enging reads a web page, the part that gets the most attention of the engine in the code is the Headline. the headline you can find within the <title> tags of the page. To find this tag, you should look in the code, and it looks like this:
<title> T-I </title>
Here are some important rules on how to write a good headline:
-The headline must include the search words that are most important for that page.
-The headline should be unique for every page on the website - meaning, dont have to pages with the same headline.
-The important key words should be visible at the start of the headline.
-The headline should be 35-chars. In any case, you don't want to get over 60 chars in the headline.
-The headline should be marketing and make the surfer want to click it. Thats why its important to include the site name.

5. Headlines and Hirarchy in text
To allow search engines understand the hirarchy in the text of your information web page, its recommended to use signs that are defiend in html for headlins. those signs I mean is the Heading. a sign like this appears in the code like this:
<h1>T-I</h1>
The main heading on the page would be H1, bylines with secondary importance will be H2, H3 and so on. Here are some rules about using headings:
-Using a heading is recommended in every text page you create in the site.
-Only 1 H1 heading should be used, at the top of the page.
-You should maintain hyrarchy - H2 after H1, H3 after H2 and so on.
-Do not overload the headings with long texts. 2 to 4 words in each heading is the recommended size.
-its possible and desirable to change the ugly design that's defiend for defual of the Hx headings using css.

6. Out links.
In the past it was usually tought that links that go out of the site to other sites may hurt the ranking of the site because of the fact that links like these transffer pagerank from the site to the linked site. Because of that reason website owners were very cheap on links they put into their sites.
But, its can be said with a pretty solid confidence that out links not only do not harm your site, but even benefits it. May be the algorithm pagerank that was published in 1998 really shows that these links may hurt the site, but since than this index importance significatly decreased, and new indexes got into the picture.
It seems that 2-4 out links to autoritative sites in the field of your site can definitly benefit the performance of the web site.
One of the new elements search engines check is the level of autorithy of different sites. one of the ways that by them the engines (especially google) decides about this is by checking the sites it links to, while checking their autorithy.
The meaning of this is simple: a site that links to autoritative sites in his field will be considered by google as a autoritarian site itself. ofcourse, in addition to out links from the site, the site will also need links from other site to itself.
How do you know who are the autoritative sites in your fields? well, most site owners know who are the main site in their field, once you know who they are, its possible to try link to them from different pages in the site. in addition, sites that google already shows high on search results that pops up by key words that important to you, are probably defiend relevant by google already.
So what should you do?
-Search google for main search words of your site. the 10 top sites are usually autoritative.
-A link to articles in wikipedia that is relevant to your site.
-A link to sites with registration in dmoz at the relevant category.
-A link to news sites, and main portals.
-Sometimes its worth to offer a high autority site a linke from your home page in exchange to a internal ling from his!
-Don't play with out lins - no JavaScript linls, or nofollow links.
-Include in the text of these out links the key words you wish to promote.

7. Dividing the key words in a text.
Since the moment you decided on who are the relevant key words to a certein page in your website, you must make sure that these key words are scatterd well on the page text.
Good scattering will make google think that the page really deals with the key words that are scatterd in it.
Here are a few finger rules to use when scattering key words in a text:
-Its recommended to promote as less key words in any page, the more you try to promote more words, the less the power of every key word gets.
-You must make sure that the key words will appear all over the text, including the last paragraphs.
-Big emphesize is on the first paragraph, where the important key words must appear.
-Its recommended to maintain a ratio of between 3% to 7% between key words and other text in the page. In any case you should not go higher than 15%, because high ratio may punish the page.
-It's better that the key words will appear at the start of a paragraph, and not just as the first word.

8. Picking the right Domain
How do you pick the best domain for you? lest test some questions, that the answars to them can help you make the right call about the right endint of the domain you need:
-What is the language does the audience crowd of the site talks? what country do they live in? does the searches the your potential clients are made in english? and are they living in the US/UK or any other country that speaks english, than the best domain for you is .com, if its hebrew so .co.il, .es for espaniol, .de for german, .ru for russion.
-If you have to languages in the website, its recommended to build spearate site for each language, the domain should be fitting for the language and country.
For example, domain.com for english, domain.co.il for hebrew, domain.de for german. This recommendation is true only if you really have enough contant to create and significant site at each of the domain!
-.Com/.co.il/.de/.ru is alote better than other (.biz, .info and so). Many surfers will naturally assume that that your domain is this and may end up in another site if your true domain is .org for example.

Here's some more advices for buying a domain:
-If the domain is ment to attract mainly people for over seas search engines, so its better to include in the domain key words, and seperate them with -: keyword1-keyword2.com. Don't use more the one "-" in the domain.
In case the domain is a strong accurate expression that many surfers search, its better to use a domain without the "-". For example - if many surfers look for the expression "seo us" so seoUS is better than seo-us.
-If the domain also ment for image needs, so its better to avoid using "-", it might even worth to make up a new (and short) word, and use it as your domain. For google, amazone and yahoo it worked...
At this moment, the best place to (cheap and realiable) to buy international domain is GoDaddy.com website.


9. Checking links that leads in
Its very important to know which are the websites and pages that reffer to your website, and ofcourse, who are the websites that reffer to your competition sites. For that there are special commands in search engines that let you check links that lead to your site.
There are two main commands:
-link: - this command is used to check all the links that leads to a specific url. The comman you write in the search engine bar of primary sreach engines (google, yahoo):
link:torrent-invites.com
-linkdomain: - a command that's been used to check all the links that lead in to a whole domain (meaning, to all the pages inside the domain). This command, in contradiction to link comman, doesn't work nowadays in google. The command you write in the search engine of yahho:
linkdomain:torrent-invites.com
Its good to know that in contradict to yahoo, google is not presenting all the sites and pages that he knows about that links to your site, but only a small sample of them. Its not clear whats the real reason for that, but that's the case. According to it, its recommended to make lead links checks only in Yahoo!



10. Sand Box
One of the phenomenon that characterize google is a phenomenon that can be reffered as Sand Box. the meaning is to a phenomenon that is characterized by the fact that new sites that appear in google start very good in results, but a few weeks late going down hard on results for a few months time.
How can you dodge Sand Box? well, the basic answer is that its very hard. Yet, there are a few things to do to narrow its long term affect on your site.
-The first action you should do while creating a new site is buying a domain. After the purchase its better to upload a "Soon to come..." page, and care that the new page appears in google. That way, while building your new site, the site already starts to accumulate seniority in google.
-Don't add large amount of links to the site at once, or large amounts of pages at once. The links and pages you should add bit by bit. Sometimes its the addition of multiple links only makes the staying in the Sand Box longer.
-Links from autoritative and serious sites can reduce the chance of the site to fall to the Sand Box.
-If possible, its recommended to buy a domain that's already up and running and is shown in google. Many times you can address the domain owner, and the cost can be less than the loss of the proffits during the time in the Sand Box.
-Use Google AdWords advertising tool while the site is still deep in the Sand Box.
-Focus on other search engines (yahho or bing for example) - where the Sand Box does not exist.

11. Registering to google
How can one "inform" google about a new website? well, in the past it was traditionally just going to "Add new website page" in google, to write our new address, and wait untill google comes and scan the site.
Today the best way is the next way:
-To find a page that scans frequently by google. Pages like that will usually will be high pagerank.
-To insert in a page of this kind a link to your site.
-There is no need to insert links to all the web site pages. Google will come to your home page of your site, and from ther monitor the different links in the home page to find the other site pages.
-Now you need to wait, from time to time go to google, and make a search on your domain. As long as a search is being commisioned, and a message such as "Sorry, we don't any information for the address: www.torrent-invites.com", your site still is not on google.
in short - there is no need to pay money to appear fast in google. If the page in which the link to your web site is pageranked 4 or 5, its probable to assume that your site will be scanned by google in a few days.

12. Dynamic Sites
Dynamic web sites are sites that the content of the page is built automaticly by a program that was writen in some language, like ASP or PHP. In websites of this kind the content of the page is changing accordingly to the data that are transfered to the program (paramaters).
Here are a few points which you need to remember when using dynamic web pages:
-The more parameters by the program from page to page, the less the page is significant. Here are some good examples in decreasing way of good nature:
*page.htm
*page.asp
*page.asp?page=1
*page.asp?page=1&lang=2&lang=2&title=3&site-4
-Its recommended not to use the parameter ID while building the page. Many programs uses this parameter as a parameter that identifies a user, and beacuse of that google may ignore it.
-In dynamic pages the importance of buildint a site map is rising dramaticly.

13. nofollow Tag
A few years back search engines added a suppert in a tag named nofollow. This tag is ment to allow web owners to place a link in their site without the link helps in promoting the site that the link reffer to. Here are a few situations in which a site owner may want to place a link that doesn't help the site it leads to:
-If the owner is intrested in placing a link to give a "bad example" site, so he wants to give the link without helping the "bad" site.
-If the site has forum system, blog, guest book, or any other system that allows random users to insert uninspected links, so its able to define links as those as nofollow links so there won't be any mistakes and any link will lead to a "bad" website.
The way to use the nofollow tag is:
<a href="http://t-i.com" rel="nofollow"> T-I </a>
Today forum systems and many blogs support this function, and many owners uses it constantly. Even wikipedia uses this tag on links that editors inserted.
With that, many owners used this tag to manipulate the power in their website by creating nofollow links in internal links within their website. The best recommendation is not to use nofollow tag at all when we talk about internal links in your site.

I have some more, but I have to go for now, when ill come back ill update more.
and every 3 days ill try and add another tip. enjoy, use it well, and try to really understand everything.