Short summary of SEO strategies and secrets - Part 2

by Alla Babin

Does a domain name (URL) play any role in SEO and how to choose a good domain name?

1. Google does not appear to give any weight to keywords in URLs. The keywords in URLs appear (are highlighted) after the calculations for ranking have been completed. They are not counted in the algorithm; they won't help you get better rankings by trying to manipulate them for search engines.
2. Yahoo gives a little weight to keywords in URLs.
3. MSN gives a lot of weight to URL names.
4. It's better to use hyphens than underscores. Hyphens tend to split the keyword phrase whereas underscores are treated as one keyword.
5. Google announced that they treat hyphens and underscores the same way, however it's not the case with Yahoo and others. Stick to hyphens, it's safer.

How to build Back links (or inbound links)

1. Submit your website to search directories under related categories. It's recommended to use those directories where no back links from your site are required.
2. Submit your articles in Articles Directories. It's free.
3. Don't forget to use good anchor text with your main keywords. (Anchor text is the text that contains a hyperlink to your website.)
4. Use forums and communities to promote your website there.
5. Don't put links to your site on the websites whose Page Rank is lower than yours.
6. Simple reciprocal links (from site A to site B and back from B to A) are not efficient any more since Google "learned" to recognize and ignore this kind of "artificial" optimization technique.
7. Checking back links to your site, do not rely on the Google "link" command (link:mysite.com), it is flawed. Instead search Google for the string: "mysite.com" -site:mysite.com . This will show you all the pages indexed by Google, which are not part of your site. The "minus" sign in the string tells Google NOT to show the site itself, but only external links to the site.

How to optimize a blog ?

1. Find operators of other websites that are willing to swap links between the pages where your blog is and their pages. Swap links with these pages.
2. Make your subject matter topical, such your opinion of the news of the day or of issues that are of concern to a majority of people. This will result in other pages linking to yours.
3. Give the title of your page a unique name, but one that is easily searchable. The easier it is for the search engines to find your blog or website.
4. Search engines tend to ignore blogs that are less than 250 words, so use that length as a minimum.
5. Set up meta tags including a description and several keywords, which should be there in your blog. Search engines will use these to find your blog or website.
6. Use headlines and subheads in your blog. Search engines tend to rank these fairly high when they examine your website, and they should increase your ranking.

Is it Ok for SEO to use Flash sites?

1. Quite recently Google has announced that they have been developing a new algorithm for indexing textual content in Flash files of all kinds, from Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash websites. Recently, they've improved the performance of this Flash indexing algorithm by integrating Adobe's Flash Player technology. However, this technology is not yet as effective as html crawler and it's still preferable follow the below rules.
2. Use Flash effectively: i.e. a few banners on site, some short animated text, etc.
3. Google can "read", although not very effectively, text and content of a flash file.
4. Other search engines can't do it.
5. Avoid using Flash to display content.
6. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft can't "read" links in a Flash file. Never build a site with Flash-only navigation. You should at least create a parallel html navigation (NOT in javascript).
7. Remember that robots do NOT run javascript and can't "see" whether graphics are coming from flash or pictures. If you want your site to be easily and effectively indexed by robots and spiders:
   • Make sure that all the content is in full text. Of course it prevents you to use fancy and smart fonts, and might look less nice, but by getting these pages indexed you give surfers an occasion to find your pages.
   • If you use fancy navigation (Flash, javascript, or picture maps), be sure to put in parallel some html-coded navigation.
   • You may also consider building an html map of all your pages, where visitors, as well as search engines, will be able to see links to all of your pages with one-paragraph descriptions of each page.
   • The html-coded text on each and every page should have at least a link to the home page and to the page of the map.

How to avoid Google penalization to your site or blog?

1. Google can penalize a website that has:
   • Bad link structure;
   • Hidden text;
   • Small fonts;
   • Paid links;
   • Duplicate content;
   • Excessive link exchanges;
   • Back links from online casinos, adult and drug related sites.
2. How can you know if Google penalized your site or not
   • Using Google Webmaster Tools , to "tools". If your site has been banned, you should see a link to "resubmit your site.|
3. What to do if Google penalized your site?
   • First of all, eliminate all the possible causes of the penalization (see # 1).
   • Resubmit to Google, explaining what exactly you have changed.
   • Do not try to justify why this happened.
   • Remove all the links to any sites unrelated to your content.
   • Submit your site only to quality directories that do not require a return link.