Category: SEO

Categories
PageRank SEO

Get out of the Supplemental Index

Google’s Supplemental Index are results for pages with little trust value and thus do not rank compared to regular web pages in Google’s index. Thus, you should make an effort not to have a large number of your site’s pages in the supplemental index. To check for pages in the index, use a query similar to this: "site:lyrics.rebelpixel.com *** -view"

The example I showed above checks for pages from my lyrics.rebelpixel.com site, just replace the domain with your site’s URL. About two months ago, it numbered to around three thousand pages, but now down to less than a thousand, thanks to the solution provided by Chris Garrett.

But what puts pages in the supplemental index? It can be basically explained by google’s hate for duplicate content. ChrisG explains the “duplicate content issue” further and details the solution you need to implement.

If you haven’t checked your site for this problem, now’s the best time for it. You will definitely benefit from it.

Categories
Optimization SEO

Complete SEO Checklist

In my previous entry, I wrote about the myths of search engine optimization. As I’ve said and as discussed by the related reference, SEO is not the complete solution to successful websites — content is. This time though, we take this useful SitePoint article for our discussion. We’ve said that SEO is not everything, but it can be very helpful in getting good content to those who seek them. If you have the content that you think is of value to other web users, you can get it where it should be through SEO.

This article discusses the many details involved in optimizing your pages for search engines. The ones I find really important are:

  • Plan your web site’s SEO before you create the site. Though this is debatable, it pays to have a focused outline for your site, especially for determining what you want to do with it. You can’t have a site with no clear goals, especially if you’re putting a significant amount of effort into it.
  • Target keyphrases rather than single keywords. You have to do this because users do not always search for keywords, but specific keyphrases as well.
  • Include keywords and keyphrases in your site’s information architecture. If your site is about bananas, it has every right to have banana written all over it.
  • Use focused keyphrases within each web page’s <title> element. The title element defines the content of the whole page and should contain the relevant details.
  • Use your focused keyphrases within the page’s <heading> elements, beginning with the <h1> element. Break up your content into subheadings to enhance readability, and label your subsections with the appropriate title using the right heading tags.
  • Avoid the use of splash pages. You should’ve known this many years ago, and if you just learned it now you should do something about it. Now.
  • Create search-engine friendly HTML text navigation and cross-links. Cross–linking your site’s content is your way of pointing search engines and users to relevant pages within your site. Strive to keep your users reading your content.
  • Use structural markup, and separate content from presentation as much as possible. This is the only right way to go. Good markup looks good to search engines, and your users benefit.

Read on for more, and consider these tips for your site. Good SEO can only help you.

Categories
Link Building Optimization SEO Traffic Building Writing

SEO Myths

Everyone praises search engine optimization (SEO) like it’s the holy grail to a successful website — it isn’t. First of all, always remember that content is king. If you do not have good original content and just link to other sites without even providing valuable insights, your sites have less chances at good traffic growth. Even having good content can be less effective if not published at the appropriate time.

A recently popular article over at digg entitled “5 Myths in SEO” lists the following pitfalls: “Overnight Results,” “Placement Can Be Guaranteed,” “Meta Tags,” “Submitting to Search Engines,” and “More Links > Good Links.” Any SEO company or practitioner who promises you these things is most likely lying, or too confident with his illegal methods.

My personal SEO recommendation: Write to your heart’s desire. Write with passion, and always try to provide something unique.