Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization
Author: Karen Michelle Gatdula

So now you have your corporate blog. You spent a lot of money for professional marketers to choose the right words and captions and the most appealing tag lines for your product, for copywriters to check if there are grammatical errors and enhance the content of your campaign and for web designers to create the most attractive design ever made since the dawned of the Internet fad.

You're all set now, or not.

You are very excited you want to see what your blog looks like but you accidentally (accidents happen everyday and this is a worst case scenario) forgot the url of your blog so you googled the generic and blasted – you never find your blog. Well, it's not that the blog doesn't exist but there are millions and I mean MILLIONS of blogs being born everyday just like the one that you spawned. But no need to dilate those eyes and calm down a little bit because the solution to your problem is just as easy as 1, 2, 3.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization can do the most amazing thing in the Internet today. They can make your website hit the top 1 spot on Google, Yahoo, MSN or whatever search engine you desire. This is being done by professional SEO Webmasters in which several Offshoring companies has the most talented and experienced people in the whole wide world to do the trick for you. Addendum to that, a Philippines outsourcing company like iStaff.ph. offers the lowest labor cost of link builders and SEO specialists you could get from anywhere in the planet.

Outsourcing: In The Philippines Perspective

Outsourcing: In The Philippines Perspective
Author: Karen Michelle Gatdula

Outsourcing is often given a negative connotation since it was said that this industry will somehow cause a massive unemployment to the western countries. I extremely beg to differ.

Outsourcing is like the rich dad poor dad principle – on one hand, the poor dad would tell his son to study hard and after he graduates, he should find a good job in a good company while on the other hand the rich dad would tell his son to study hard and after he graduates he should start his own company.

Outsourcing is the transcendence of the western people from being employees to being employers.

For the Philippines, the country's progress growth drastically increased after the BPO industry dawned and continue to boom year after year. The quality of living that Filipinos who work for a BPO company improved into a greater degree. The demand for property leasing also multiplied thus giving many job opportunities to undereducated Filipinos as construction workers.

But the most important thing that Outsourcing does to everyone of us is providing us the knowledge of different cultures and diverse people thus giving us new solutions to the world's increasing demand on low-cost labors.

Nofollow and Noindex on Robots.txt and Meta Tags

Nofollow and Noindex on Robots.txt and Meta Tags
Author: Eileen Maravillas

I know a lot of you are wondering what's the difference between the “nofollow” and “noindex” in the robots.txt file and the ones declared on the meta tags. Some search engine optimization specialists claims that there's no difference while others believe that one method is less valuable than the other.

You can ask it out on several webmaster/SEO forums, but you'll just get mixed responses. In here, I will give you the REAL answer! According to Eric Enge's interview with Google's software engineer Matt Cutts way back in 2007, there are differences in using NoIndex, NoFollow, and Robots.txt.

In The Robots.txt File

Even if you restrict Google's spider from indexing certain pages of your website, they can still accumulate page rank. For example, if you disallow the crawling of your “About Us” page yet your homepage links to it, PR juice is still passed on.

In addition, websites that disallow crawling can still accumulate page rank and be visible in search results. Why? If another website links to it, PR juice will be passed on. Google can sometimes use the information of a website submitted to ODP (also known as DMOZ) in order to display it on their results page, or when another website links to it.

In The Meta Tag

Let's understand what Nofollow and Noindex really means.

The Nofollow is usually used on outgoing links, when declared in the meta tag, it means “do not follow all links on this page.” With this, you are also telling the spider not to pass PR juice. However, the nofollow on the meta tag also applies to your links that points to the other pages of your website. This also means that you are depriving the flow of PR juice to some of your pages.

On the other hand, the Noindex means, “do not index this page.” Pages with noindex can still accumulate page rank if a there's a dofollow link pointing to that page.

Dofollow is the opposite of Nofollow - a link with no “nofollow” attribute assigned means it's a dofollow link. A term used by webmasters and SEO experts.

To sum it all up:

• NoFollow means you're telling the search engine spider not to follow a link and also not to pass PR juice to that link.
• NoIndex means you're telling the search engine spider not to index your website and not to show it on SERP.
• The website or webpage in a Nofollow link can still gain PR if another site links to it without the nofollow attribute.
• Pages with the Noindex tag can still gain PR if another site links to it without a nofollow attribute.
• Pages with the Noindex tag can still be visible on SEPR using the information collected from ODP (DMOZ) or when another website links to it using Dofollow.
  
• Nofollow on the meta tag of a webpage, applies to all the links on that page.
• Nofollow attribute on any link applies only to that link.

So whether you use the Robots.txt or the Meta Tag, the results are still the same. The reason why Robots.txt is mostly used is because “it is the fundamental method of putting up an electronic no trespassing sign that people have used since 1996,” and it's much easier to declare which pages of your website not to crawl instead of placing the NoIndex code manually on individual pages' meta tags.

Commonly, SEO services do provide complete analysis of a website as well as recommendations. So whenever you are looking for a good search engine optimization service, never forget to ask for a website analysis first, don't just jump in and hire somebody you do not know.

The “Nofollow” Attribute

The “Nofollow” Attribute
Author: Eileen Maravillas

The nofollow attribute was created by Google's Matt Cutts and Blogger.com's Jason Shellen mainly to stop spam comments on blogs. However, some people still believes that this is a TAG used to restrict search engine spiders to index a webpage.

In search engine optimization, the “nofollow” attribute is placed on an outgoing link (a link that points to another website). By placing this attribute, you are telling search engine spiders “not to score” or “don't pass my page rank juice” to this website. You cannot block access to a content or prevent that content to be indexed.

Example:


In another sense, this attribute is used to control the flow of page rank (PR) from one website to another. You don't want to pass on your hard earned PR to some untrusted (and oftentimes illegal) sites. That's why bloggers are using this to prevent such sites from hurting them.

Other search engines like Yahoo, Bing (former MSN) and Ask respects the rel=nofollow but only Google honours this attribute completely.

Controlling the Flow of Page Rank

Since it works on outgoing links, many search engine optimizers (SEOs) believed that this can also be used on internal links. The ability to pass on PR juice to the most important pages of your website using the nofollow attribute gave SEOs another method called PageRank Sculpting.

Several SEOs have suggested that pages such as "About Us", "Terms of Service", "Contact Us", and "Privacy Policy" pages are not important enough to earn PageRank, and so should have nofollow on internal links pointing to them. Google employee Matt Cutts has provided indirect responses on the subject, but has never publicly endorsed this point of view. From Wikipedia

There are many BPO companies that offers SEO Services, no matter the cost, that would suggest to use the nofollow attribute on not-so-important pages and focus mainly on the high valued pages like the homepage. Even so, there's this contradiction: instead of having just one page appear (or rank) in SERP, you can have two or even more pages appear by making them rank high as well. So instead of just focusing on boosting one page of your site up to the first page in SERP, you can have two or more thus gaining you more traffic and sales.

If you're wondering which of this two strategies you're going to use, my advice is focus on your target goal. If your client wants to rank his homepage only then you may use the nofollow attribute on low-valued pages. Just remember this, always INFORM your client of the additions and/or changes you're about to make and make the decision TOGETHER to avoid any conflict in the long run. Your strategy may get his website on top but once your ranking fluctuates and drops the website way down, you'll be having a hard time explaining it to him! (Especially if the client knows nothing about SEO).

Other Purpose

Aside from human and automated spam comments on blogs, the nofollow attribute is also advised to be used on paid links so that these links do not get credit in search engine results page (SERP).

Abuse of Using the Nofollow Attribute

While this attribute greatly helps blog owners to sweep away spam comments, there are also bloggers who uses the nofollow when referring or quoting to a quality content from another website. There may be a link to follow but as long as there's a rel=“nofollow” included, these links are deprived of their well deserved PR juice.

Another abuse I see is mostly at the sidebar of any blog (or in a dedicated link partners' page of any website). Yes, I'm talking about their link exchange partners! Though link trading is not highly recommended in search engine optimization, they too have a value. There are many webmasters and SEO specialist who practices this scheme to fool their link partners. It is not nice to receive quality PR juice from your link partners while you use rel=“nofollow” on their links. Seriously, it's like stealing on daylight!

The NOFOLLOW attribute is created to help combat spammers and not to provide another way for evil geniuses (bad webmasters and SEO specialists) to cause more problems on the web.

Blogosphere Marketing

Offshoring in the Philippines
Author: Karen Michelle Gatdula

Blogging of Flogging? Which is better? Although Flogging have a very unpleasant connotation amongst the Internet geeks because it was oftenly used by viral marketers to continuously ballyhooing products A and B everywhere, we can't deny the fact that there is no bad publicity – all is good publicity. Because of this, many bloggers or rather I say, “floggers” make money than them bloggers.

But, I must say that although we see a big potential in flogging, I still adhere to blogging using subconscious marketing. This marketing strategy is not really that sophisticated rather a classic. Film producers often do this to gain sponsors. The perfect example of this is Steven Spielberg's E.T in 1982. Although we didn't see the brand's name, Reeses Pieces' packaging is not that infamous as a matter of fact, their sales skyrockets right after the movie was publicly shown.

This is where blogging comes in. Through blogging, we need not to shamelessly praise the product to market it. We just need to write something that's related (but no so related) to what we plan to advertise. For example, if we want to advertise a corned beef brand, then we start writing a blog that's full of corned beef recipes and put our corned beef's name in the ingredients. Also, we make use of the color that's similar to what our brand's uses.

Another example is this article. This was made to give info about blogging and flogging and to let you know that we lease writers to make awesome blogs for you.

Thinking about hiring writers to do the job for you? Don't forget that you can always ask for a free quotation first.

Offshoring in the Philippines

Offshoring in the Philippines
Author: Karen Michelle Gatdula

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo continues to give scholarship to those who are aspiring to work in BPO companies in the Philippines. Many graduates aspire to work in BPO companies but they lack the basic knowledge to do so because they were enrolled in degrees in which is far related to being a worker on BPOs.

This project of the government helped many unemployed professionals to make a living. Although this became unpopular to some local companies because BPO oftenly gets the best graduates and professionals rather than them. This is because BPO companies give higher compensation and decent benefits compared to what local companies give their minimum-wage-earners.

Home-based projects are now familiar among the Filipino vocabulary. Some of them learned that writing blogs, essays, reviews, medical transcriptions and everything under the sun on the Internet can give them more than that of what they could earn if they work in the office thus giving them ample time to spend with their loved ones and families. Retirees and other unemployed professionals try their luck by applying in call centers and gained themselves a decent-paying-job rather than staying home and doing nothing.

Offshoring also opened a new scheme to IT professionals who oftenly just decided to study IT to get a high paying job abroad. Now, because of the high demand on low cost IT labors from the western countries, graduates need not to apply for a visa to get the job they want, they just have to walk or take a bus ride to the nearest BPO hub in their place and apply in the position that will guarantee them security and better life.

Creating Sitemaps: What Are Sitemaps?

Creating Sitemaps: What Are Sitemaps?
Author: Eileen Maravillas

A sitemap is one way of organizing your links in a hierarchical manner to identify in which group/category a URL belongs, because a sitemap is primarily created for the purpose of proving users/visitors with clear navigation to all the pages within a website.

Importance of Sitemaps

In search engine optimization (SEO), aside from providing an easier way of navigating a website, sitemaps are used for faster indexing of webpages, proper flow of page rank (PR) from the index page to its inner pages and as a means of communication to search engines. What type of communication you ask? Well for example, in your robots.txt file, you can tell search engine spiders which pages of your website to crawl and index or which pages to restrict indexing.

Sitemaps are also useful when newly created pages or when updates are made, you can quickly tell search engine spiders to visit and crawl those pages. However, don't expect for them to get indexed right away, but it's much faster compared to when you don't have a sitemap at all.

Two Types of Sitemaps

1. HTML Sitemap
   A basic html sitemap used for website visitors.
   
   As simple as HTML! All you need to do is collect all links, arrange in a hierarchical order and save it as “.html”


2. XML Sitemap
   A xml sitemap is used to inform search engines of pages that are available for crawling in a website. When a xml sitemap is submitted to Google Webmaster Tools, it provides detailed report on your webpages' visibility on Google.
   
   Since this sitemap is for search engines use only, you don't need to place a link to it from your website. Just simply save it exactly as “sitemap.xml” and upload it in your root folder.

Steps in Creating a HTML Sitemap
Step 1: Gather all URLs
Step 2: Code it in plain HTML
Step 3: Save it as “sitemap.html”
Step 4: Upload it in the root folder

For the code:


The best place to place a link to your HTML sitemap is on the footer, or if you have a menu bar you can place it right under your website's banner/logo (top-center of your site). This way visitors can easily have access to all the pages within your website.

Here's a neat HTML sitemap of Google


Steps in Creating a XML Sitemap

Step 1: Use a free online XML sitemap generator
Step 2: Editing the elements you want like the "priority"
Step 3: Save it exactly as “sitemap.xml”

Step 4: Upload it in the root folder Step 5: Submit to major search engines

For the code: Using a free online XML sitemap generator

• loc : Location : Contains the URL of the page you want to be crawled.
• lastmod : Last Modified : The date the page was last modified.
• changefreq : Frequency : How frequently you change/update a certain page (options are: "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly" or "never").
• priority : Priority : This represents the priority of a page to be indexed. From 0.1 to 1.0, where 1.0 being the most important.

Submit XML sitemap to major search engines:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
http://www.bing.com/webmaster (former MSN)

If you want to ping your sitemap to the three major search engines, you can use this (just don't forget to edit it):

For Google
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=http://www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml

For Yahoo
http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml

For Bing
http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://www.YourSite.com/sitemap.xml

High Converting Web Design With Offshoring

Psychologists are aware what makes people tick. Now, they even work with web designers in order to build the ultimate online store that will convert shoppers to buyers. With the spread of online shopping, people are also being more aware of online scams. That is why it is becoming harder and harder to convince web shoppers to become web buyers. How can you reassure your customers and get them to pull out their credit card?

Converting visitors into customers is a tricky process. The most important thing is for the website to gain the trust of the would-be customer. The website must create this ultimate shopping experience where the buyer will be comfortable to part with his or her money.

How does one make a web shopper comfortable? Buyers need to feel that they have control of all parts of the transaction. All things must be transparent to them. No underscoring terms or hidden agreements. Full disclosure is required.

Here are a few points that you should concentrate on when developing a website design for your website.

1. Website design that loads quickly: Make sure that your homepage loads within 10 seconds of your visitor typing your domain (or coming to your site if coming through a search engine


2. Website design with light background: Make sure that the background of your website is light and makes it easier for the visitors to read the content of the website. Most of the modern website designers understand this aspect. Think about using black or dark blue font on a white or light body background.


3. Concise Navigation: Make sure that your website has a navigation that is easy to follow. Again I believe that most decent website developers will help you develop a concise navigation.


4. Instil Confidence: You should work with your web designer to create a website design that helps develops trust between you and the visitors to your website. Its only when your visitors trust you, they will become your customers.


5. No Advertising banners: I can't argue this point enough; no website design needs external advertising. Your website design should be developed so that it helps you grow your business and not someone else's. Also many visitors will not take your website seriously if they see third party ads on your website.


6. Create a "sense of urgency." Urge the customer to act immediately; they are not likely to come back later and buy. Emphasize that supplies or time is running out, or that if they miss their chance it will be gone forever. Of course, try not to go overboard as if you are overly hyperbolic or "spiel-like" (ever seen a really bad infomercial?) the customer might not believe your sense of urgency claim. Just like in dating, you don’t want to sound desperate or use ultimatums that will put off your customers and destroy your credibility.


7. Eliminate clutter. Clutter does not look professional and it confuses the mind. Remember that Google built an empire on a web site that is mostly white and minimalistic, and there are some important lessons to be learned from that.


8. Easy E-Commerce: If you want to sell using your website, make sure that your visitors find it easy to make a purchase.

Some tips on making the ultimate, most comfortable shopping experience are-

1. Make the site look professional. Professionalism builds credibility.. And web shoppers look into credibility, because a lot of online scams are already present. Upon learning that credibility, this is already one step in making their shopping experience more comfortable.


2. Ease navigation. Make the site very user-friendly.


3. Have an FAQ page ready. Answer all possible questions the web shopper may have.


4. Have a contact form or e-mail link available. (Assure the potential client that their queries will be answered to ASAP.)


5. Offer lots of payment options. (Ones that have good reputation where the buyer will not even doubt on.)


6. Offer shipment options too. Something that is secure where the buyer would not feel violated about giving away shipping information.

There are many online tools that companies can use to gauge their web design’s performance. There is the Google Website Optimizer. The best thing about this is that the service is offered free!

Getting Indexed by Search Engines

Getting Indexed by Search Engines
by: Eileen Maravillas

If you read a lot of articles, guides, tutorials and any other materials about basic search engine optimization, getting indexed to search engines is the most important part of SEO after you've created your site and optimized its content.

What will you do after you've uploaded those web pages, optimized the content as well as your meta tags? Getting listed in SERPs of course! Here's what learned about indexing web pages:

Submitting to Search Engines
Many would say that submitting your home page to search engines is just a waste of time. Well, if your trying to submit on all those search engines then you really are just wasting your time. You can still do this method but my advice is to submit only to what webmasters' call “The Big Three”, namely Google, Yahoo and MSN.

You can still get your web pages indexed without having to do this method. There are other ways, which I think are much better, that can help you get your site indexed in SERPs.

The Power of Social Bookmarking
If you haven't heard if Digg.com or StumbleUpon.com then you're way behind in search engine optimization. These are samples of a social bookmarking sites which is similar to the ordinary bookmark tool we have in our web browsers' menu bar. The difference between the ordinary bookmarking and with social bookmarking are:

* you can access your bookmarks on any computer you use just by registering an account;
* and share your bookmarked sites/links with other members

Why Should I Submit to Social Bookmarking Sites?
Here are the reasons I've learned why I submit to social bookmarking sites:

1.For fast indexing - high traffic social bookmarking sites are more frequently visited by search engine spiders. If you submit your site, the higher the chance you have getting indexed.
2.For traffic - people love interesting topics, important news, humor and tutorials.
3.Increase more traffic - posts on Digg, and other social bookmarking sites, also appears in SERPs, giving you a higher chance of visibility!

Social Networking Sites
Do you like Facebook or Twitter? These are social networking sites where you can submit your links. Isn't that great?! Now the key to the successful use of social networking sites is you got to have lots of friends. Mingle with other members, join different groups, share your profile and be active, don't just login to your account to post a link. This link building technique is very helpful if you use it properly.

I find social bookmarking and networking as a part of link building technique that you can both use for work and have fun at the same time. Because you get to meet other webmasters doing link building of their own, you can exchange SEO tips and secrets, and the normal internet users you can interact with while doing work. And best of all you can even earn extra income by offering link building services to companies/sites that needs help with their search engine rankings.

Sitemaps
There are two types of sitemaps we can use, the XML and HTML sitemaps.

.XML Sitemap - This sitemap is used to inform search engines of pages that are available for crawling in a website.

.HTML Sitemap - This sitemap is for your visitors. It is used as a guide/navigation for visitors who are looking for a specific page, product or service you might be offering.

Now, you'll find these search engine optimization techniques quite easy to learn and do. Submitting your site or blog to the big three search engines can take you at least five minutes to do, social bookmarking and networking can be time consuming but it's all worth it, and submitting sitemaps to search engines is a must-do if you want to get all your web pages indexed.

How To Attract Spiders To Your Web

How To Attract Spiders To Your Web
by: Karen Michelle Gatdula

First of all, let's define “spiders”. What is this term? This isn't the arachnids. These are intelligent robots that gathers information about websites in able to index it for search engine use. Haven't you wonder why Google or Yahoo can give you answers to your question in just a matter of seconds? That's the job of the spiders. Get the picture yet?

If the spiders indexed your website then you are listed in search engine's database and your website can be searched using that certain search engine – this means a lot of prospect visitors because there are millions of people who uses Google, Yahoo and other search engines.

So how would you lure spiders to visit and index your website?

One thing you must remember if you want your website to be visited by spiders – put more attention on content and less on images. Why?

Spiders can't read images as well as text in the images. They only read the texts. Notice that most of the websites that rank on the top ten of search engine results has one thing in common – they repeated the keyword that you typed several times in the documents.

Another thing you should remember is to manage your META tags, title keywords and the first paragraph of the web's content well because spiders also prioritize these things.

3 Types of SEOs

3 Types of SEOs
by: Karen Michelle Gatdula

Here's an article giving a brief description on the three types of Search Engine Optimizations.

3 Types of SEOs (White Hat, Black Hat & Gray Hat)

Let me first give you a gist of what are white hat, black hat and gray hat – they are the types of Search Engine Optimization. They could be ethical but not so effective, they could be highly profitable but risky and they could be somewhere in between.

To compare these three hats briefly, let me give you a quick explanation:

White Hat SEO – the ethical but tedious way of building website traffic through using methods that are considered honest and with accordance to the search engine's link building principles. This may take time to have noticeable results. Some examples are: backlinking and keyword analysis.

Black Hat SEO – the complete opposite of White Hat and a risky way of building website traffic because it violates search engine's guidelines. It guarantees very fast results. Some examples are: keyword stuffing, invisible text, link farms and doorway pages.

Gray Hat SEO – somewhere between the two. The result is also somewhere between the two. Some examples are: duplicating contents of other websites and having a thick keyword density that's not considered normal but less than what a Black Hat has.

Building a website popularity is like starting a business. To make your business work out you have to exert a lot of effort, time, money and hire the right people. You will have to deal with difficult decisions all the time in able to keep up with your competitors. Sometimes the progress could be very slow that you will think of other risky measures to make the capital returns faster, even to the point of paying the price of jeopardizing your business because the method you chose violated the government's guidelines.

Let say for instance that the government is the search engine and you are building your website's popularity considering the search engine's ethical link building rules. What would you do?

- You would go for the White Hat method which adheres to the search engine's requirements.

But let say that you want a faster result. You want to topped Google in no time without considering some ethical standards, what would you do?

- Do it the Black Hat way, but be ready to risk the possibility of your website to be banned by search engines.

If you want to have the benefits of both without or maybe lessen the risk, do the Gray Hat technique.

You can never rush your ROI. And so do a website's popularity. If you are planning to have your website searchable in search engines for a long period of time (or even for eternity) then you will have to choose giving the White Hat method a shot. Hire a very good SEO and see your website climbed the organic results in search engines in a given decent amount of time.

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?

What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
by: Eileen Maravillas

As the Google Webmasters' Guide tells us:

SEO is an acronym for "search engine optimization" or "search engine optimizer."

Basically, SEO is the method or strategy used by webmasters to improve their website's ranking in Search Engines (SE) in order to increase traffic and sales. Basic things such as review of web content and structure, are a part of SEO.

It's in the early 1990's where website owners began to realize that having their sites highly visible in SERPs (Search Engine Results Page) brings them more traffic and sales.

People who began to notice this have created techniques to manipulate Search Engines. Spamming and hacking Search Engines' algorithm were the main idea at that time, though it was highly discouraged by Search Engine Owners.

Due to this, the banning and decreasing of website rankings began. The people who did the aforementioned unethical way to increase their rankings realized that by following Search Engine's guidelines, they can also come up with satisfactory results, all that they need is patience.

Search Engines were made to provide quality information to its users, that's why they fight back and bite hard those webmasters who practices SEO the wrong way.