SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

**Divisive Cotton** · 12-02-2007, 06:28 AM

ohh... getting into the spirit of things now. Added a footnote:

Footnote

A SEO campaign can take between one and two years for it to come to full fruition. There are SEO companies that offer promises of guaranteed top ten search engine placements. Avoid them like the plague. No company is in a position to fulfill such promises, and if they are, it may be that they make changes to your website or they instigate a link building programme that Google would consider cheating - unethical in SEO speak. If this is the case then your website may be banned by Google completely, or suffer infractions to its SERPs.

This guide is only ever intended as a brief introduction to the subject. It is worth reading the threads on the main internet marketing forum Digital Point for further ideas and suggestions to help you with your SEO. You will find that users on Digital Point are friendly and willing to offer advise.

A popular purchase is Aaron Wall's SEO Book. This is a good introduction to basic SEO, but to be honest, at $79, you can find all the same information on Digital Point or similar forums for free.

Remember, there are no secrets to SEO – all the information you need is out there

**Divisive Cotton** · 12-02-2007, 06:35 AM

Cooking now, I've added the beginnings of an introduction:

Introduction

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is one of the most popular search subjects on the net.

For a explanation of what SEO is read Wikipedia's introduction:

'Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site.'

There are two aspects of SEO, “On Page” optimisation and “Off Page” optimisation. “On page” are factors like the title and url, and the correct use of images, headline tags and bolding amongst much else. “Off Page” optimisation primarily refers to the number and quality of incoming links that point to a particular page or site.

Both of these are equally important.

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin co-founded Google in the 90s, they realised that incoming links was an important factor in a websites credibility. For instance, a website with 1,000 incoming links would be considered by Google to be more worthy than a site with just 10. This is because incoming links means that the rest of the internet community is giving its thumbs up to a particular site. A webmaster is publicly declaring, If you want information on a particular subject then visit this site. They are giving your site the thumbs up.

Nearly ten years since the launch of Google incoming links is still a major part of its calculations.

**Divisive Cotton** · 12-02-2007, 07:11 AM

Added bit on Google Analytics Tools:

Every webmaster likes to monitor their site closely. For instance, the most basic need is to know just how many people are visiting your site on a daily basis. It is also useful to know where they are coming from. Some of you visitors (also called traffic) will be coming from search engines, others will be coming through links to your site that have been placed on other websites. In order to increase the effectiveness of your SEO campaign, then you need to have a full and detailed breakdown of these sorts of statistics.

This is where Google's free Analytics Tools comes in handy.

Like their Webmaster Tools, this is free to use and is activated by placing code into your website.

For Google Analytic Tools you will place the code in your footer which Google will provide to you

As it happens, you can place the code in your header, but the reason why it should be placed in your footer is because it will decrease the load time of your page.

Google's Analytic Tools are now considered so advanced that it is used by professionals in the SEO and webdesign industry over other paid options.

It offers many advanced features. As an example, it will tell you the screen resolution of your visitors such as 800 x 600 or 1024 x 768 or even just what type of browser a visitor is using.

Analytics Tools will also give you information such as what keywords visitors are using in search engines when they came across your website.

For an introduction to Google's Analytics Tools read their guide here.

The best way of understanding what Google Analytics offers is by joining yourself and exploring its many complex features.

If you do have any questions regarding this tool, then post it up in this forum and others will be able to assist.

**Divisive Cotton** · 12-02-2007, 07:55 AM

I've added an item on press releases:

Press Release

Okay, so you've created your Pligg-based website and you're ready to launch. Obviously, you've spent a lot of time on your site and you want to tell the world about how great it is and why they should visit, join and contribute.

One way of doing this is by releasing a press release.

There are a number of sites that will release your press release for free, some of which are pressbox.co.uk, PR Log and PR Leap.

All of these will offer an upgrade to an advanced publicity feature with prices ranging from a few dollars to fifty.

It is widely considered that in order to receive the full potential of these services then paying a little money will help

But if you don't, a item using these services will still lead to a website launch announcement reaching out to the world wide web.

It may bring you some traffic, it may not. It will certainly give you some inbound links.

As a note, it really isn't worth submitting the same press release to every company and website you can. Google hates duplicate material and is now very good at spotting it. If you want to use more than one press release service then change the text – certainly the title, but as much of the content as you possibly can.

For an example of a recently released press release by a Pligg-based site, then read this here. This was upgraded to their premium account with the modest fee of a few dollars. Positive aspects of paying money to these companies rather than just using their free service is that adverts are removed and it will be placed as a feature item on their home page.

**GrinGEO** · 12-02-2007, 09:27 AM

Thanks Divisive
Yoiur content is very good... Problably I will go true it and fomrat it a little bit.... so that the Wiki does not look overloaded.
Thanks again for your effort, I really appreciate it...

**chrisdon41** · 06-16-2010, 03:25 AM

Thanks for sharing the wonderful article

**gbrown88** · 06-26-2010, 09:04 AM

Hey,

I made the change to option 2 for SEO and added the .htaccess file, but at the bottom of the categories page there is no rules for me to copy and add to the .htaccess.

Any suggestions?

Thanks a ton,
Grant