2009
10.27

Doing SEO for Google Image Search

Google is one of the most popular search engines out there today, so it’s very important that your page is optimized for Google. This means you’ll get ranked higher on the engine’s list of returned results, which in turn means you get more traffic. However, there’s another Google search out there that many people forget about: Google Image Search. Getting your images ranked highly is just as important as getting your page ranked up there, especially since it can result in extra traffic to your site. But how do you go about doing Google Image SEO?

When Google’s image spider crawls along your website, it starts indexing all of the images it finds in a way that’s similar to how web sites are indexed. The image spider doesn’t visit your page as often, however, which means your new images won’t be indexed right away. Sometimes, it can actually be four or five months before a Google image spider gets to your site again. This means it can be quite a while before new images are added to Google’s image catalogue.

If you want to make your images irresistible to Google Image Search, you need to be certain you have ALT text on every one of them. ALT text has been around since the early days of HTML, and it’s the text that appears if the image doesn’t load. This way, the visitor to the site at least has an idea of what image should be there. You want to try to work in several of your site’s keywords into the ALT text, including the name of your business, what the image is, and where you’re located if possible. Think of things people might put into Image Search that would logically lead to your image, but at the same time, make sure your ALT text is actually readable and not just a list of keywords.

Remember to give your file name a bit of a description, too. It does actually help to name it something related to the image and not a generic name like picture003. It’s a small thing, but it can help.

Include captions to give your readers more of an idea of what the image is and to help Google figure out how to classify your image. The more text near to and related to your image, the better it will be categorized in Google’s database, and that can translate directly into a better ranking.

The entire website can also help contribute to your image ranking. Google will look at your page’s keywords and other features on the site and use them as part of the equation that determines where your images rank.

Overall, remember good keyword practices when working on your ALT text, captions, and other image-related text. Just because something is a picture doesn’t mean you don’t have to use good SEO practices. In fact, it’s even more important that you write good text because the image spider can’t actually see your image—all it has to go on is the text you write.

2009
10.27

SEO Errors to Avoid

Doing SEO on your website is very important. It is, in fact, one of the most important things you can do if you want to get a lot of visitors to your site quickly. Getting a page one ranking on Google, for example, will dramatically increase the traffic to your site, and the only real way to do that is by doing SEO. However, if you do bad SEO, it can actually be more harmful to your site than doing no SEO at all. Here are some SEO errors you should try to avoid.

Don’t use a lot of flash and other scripts. Many search engines can’t see anything that’s embedded in flash. This means all of that information is not indexed and does not count towards your page ranking. While using flash can make your site look more interesting (and it shouldn’t always be avoided), remember that you’re giving up some SEO potential.

Don’t forget to put ALT tags on your images. While these tags were originally designed to describe an image that didn’t load due to slow internet connections or missing images, today these tags can be used for SEO purposes. Try to work in a few keywords into each ALT tag, but remember to make the tags readable to humans as well.

Don’t write for search engines. While you may think that working in a lot of keywords is going to get your page ranked higher, the truth is that it actually won’t. Some SEO robots actually rank pages down if they see an over-abundance of keywords. Another issue with this is that your human readers will find your text sounds awkward, and they may even stop reading it after the first few paragraphs if it’s obviously written for SEO purposes.

Don’t repeat page titles over and over. While this won’t detract from your page ranking, it doesn’t help, either. Use page titles as another place to slip in a few keywords. Search engines will recognize different titles and will take note of them.

Don’t steal your text. Plagiarizing text from other websites will be noticed both by humans and by search engine robots. Duplicate text will mark down your page rank. In addition to being a bad SEO practice, it can also get you and your business in legal trouble.

You also want to avoid using any SEO practices that are considered bad or fraudulent. This includes keyword stuffing or using hidden text. Keyword stuffing involves cramming as many keywords onto a page as possible. This creates a webpage that is worthless to humans. Search engines will rank these pages down. Likewise, hiding keywords at the bottom of your page is a bad idea. While this technique did work at one time, it is no longer a good SEO practice.

Remember that good SEO can quickly and easily move your website up several spots but bad SEO can cause your site to lose ranking. Use only good SEO practices when working on your site and you’ll be fine.

2009
10.27

SEO Tips and Secrets

Increasing your website traffic doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, with just making use of a few SEO tips and tricks can result in a lot more traffic to your site by moving it up on the list of relevant pages. Your goal should be to get your site on the first page of search results; getting it in the top five results on that page is even better. To do this, just follow some of these SEO tips and your site will become more attractive to search engines.

Keywords are very important to your website. They tell the search engines what categories your site should be filed in and what searches your site should be included in. However, there are more places to put keywords than just in your text. You can add Meta tags to your website that will describe it to search engines. You can also put ALT tags on all of your images that make use of keywords. Putting titles on each page that include different keywords is also a good tactic. When it comes to your text, though, don’t overdo it. If you stuff too many keywords in there, the text may not read naturally. This can make readers think you care more about keywords than you do about providing them information, and they may leave your site.

Remember that flash applets and plugins generally can’t be seen by search engine robots. They won’t be able to gather any information from flash menus, videos, slideshows, and the like. While these are great ways of displaying information and work very well on some sites, you may need to compensate for them by using keywords in other areas like ALT tags and Meta data.

Frames, likewise, can cause some issues. Sometimes, search engines will decide one of your sub-pages actually ranks better than your main page. However, if that sub-page is in a page, the search engine won’t see it as a separate page, and it won’t get ranked in the search results. In fact, the search engine won’t really see it as a page at all.

Another important SEO tip is to remember that SEO isn’t just a one-time deal. In fact, you may need to update your keywords and SEO practices on a regular basis. This is especially true right after you do SEO on a site. If it doesn’t seem to rank as high as you’d like after a few months, you may have to go in and redo all of your SEO for a new keyword or two. Then you have to watch the rankings and, in a few months, may need to make another minor adjustment. As the industry changes, you may need to tweak your keywords every now and then to maintain your ranking.

By continuously looking at how your keywords are working and by following some of these SEO tips and tricks, you can get your site ranked higher on search engine results. Just remember that you can’t do SEO and then forget about it—the process requires some fine-tuning along the way.

2009
10.27

With the growing trend of having phones that can do just about everything, it isn’t surprising that more and more people are using their smartphones for searching the internet and sending emails. As this development has continued the internet has made some interesting changes to keep up with these changes, and this has also meant a change to the world of search engines and marketing. This is because when you use a phone to search the internet, it pulls up a different view than you would if you were to browse the internet on a computer. So, websites were created to specifically target this growing population of smartphone users.

This is good, because it means that there are going to be more people who are now capable of browsing your site and finding your company via the internet. However, this also means that you will have to make a few changes in order to meet this new demand. You will want to make sure that you build a mobile website that is geared specifically toward people using their phones. When you are doing this you should make a list of everything you think is essential to have on your mobile phone website, and you will want to make sure that your layout is proportionate and is easy to navigate.

That’s because the mobile websites are not going to be able to have the complexity of the standard sized website. You are going to have to gear your new website toward the core of the problem so that you can be sure that you are getting the important information out to your audience. See, most people who use smartphones can only process a very limited amount of bandwidth at a time, and some of them are even limited on the amount of bandwidth that they can use each month. To this end, you will want to make sure that you design your mobile website so that the information can be found quickly and easily.

For most sites this means that the normal method of using SEO optimization techniques are not going to be available as you will not want to use elaborate menus, a lot of text, or large images, because this can prohibit some people from accessing your site. So keyword rich articles are not going to be a very helpful tool in a mobile site. Instead, you will want to make sure that you understand how mobile search engines work so that you can be sure that you are designing your site properly.

This means that you will want to make sure that you have as much relevant information that is relayed as quickly as possible on the first page or two of the mobile site. Most people using smartphones are constantly on the go, so they want their information as quickly and as easily as possible. Almost all mobile users limit their keyword search to just two words, so you will want to make sure that you narrow down your field to very specific search for your website.

2009
10.27

Using SEO Keywords Naturally

When it comes to using Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, keywords on your website, some people tend to go overboard. They believe that the more times a keyword is on your site, the better it is. This is actually not true. While it certainly helps to feature keywords in your text, titles, and heading on your site, you can do it too often. There are several dangers to overusing your keywords.

The first is that Google and other search engines know that people are doing SEO now. In the beginning, their search robots didn’t recognize that people were stuffing all these keywords in their site, and they actually thought websites with hundreds of repetitions of their keywords were really good, authoritative sites. Today, search engines have programmed their robots to recognize sites that are only trying to get high page rankings, and they penalize them accordingly. This means if you’ve got the same keywords in every sentence, your site is probably not going to be ranked very well.

There’s another issue here, and that’s your human visitors. If an actual human is viewing a site that’s full of keyword-stuffed sentences, they’re going to find the information provided very awkwardly written. They’re going to wonder why you used the same words over and over, and they may even stop reading after a few sentences because the site is so poorly written. Those who understand SEO will see your site for what it is—a site designed for search engine robots and not for humans. This will send them off to other websites without a second thought.

So what can you do to work keywords into your website naturally? First of all, don’t try to cram a keyword into every sentence. You can work a keyword into your site three or four times in a 400-word article and be fine. Keep your keyword density low: two to three percent is plenty (i.e., use the word two times in a one hundred word paragraph). Even that may be too much in some cases.

Placement is important, too. Try to use a keyword in the first sentence or two, or in the title of your article. Also try to use it again at the end or in a few sub-headings here and there. It’s more important to put your keywords in the proper places than to spam them all across the page.

Remember to put your keywords in areas that your human visitors may not see but that search robots will. This includes the Meta description of your site (which is imbedded in the sites HTML code), the ALT text on images, and the title text that appears up on the internet browser window. These are great places to add a few extra keywords that human visitors usually don’t see or pay attention to but search bots will.

Remember that with keywords, it is quality over quantity. You’ll see much better results if you place your keywords in the optimum places rather than trying to put as many keywords as you can into your text.

2009
10.27

Free Web Hosting

If you’re looking for web hosting, you may come across companies that actually offer free web hosting. While many of these sites are no longer in business, there are still some out there. You may be very tempted to make use of these free web hosts for your website, but there are some reasons why you may not want to use them, especially if you’re creating a professional website for your business.

One of the largest downsides to free web hosting is that you almost always get a pop up ad of some sort when you visit the site. This is how free web hosts keep their sites free. These ads may actually appear on the side of the browser window, making your site a bit smaller, or they can appear in a separate window that visitors have to close. Either way, these ads are incredibly annoying and are going to make your site look very unprofessional. If you’re simply making the website for yourself, you may not mind these ads so much, but if you’re creating a business site, the ads are going to be a huge detraction. They will drive visitors away from your site or make it appear so unprofessional that no one will trust it with their personal information.

The website URL is another issue. A free web host is not going to let you easily use a domain name with your site. Instead, you’ll end up with some very odd looking address that few people can easily remember. It will, again, look unprofessional. It’s much better to go with a paid web host that allows you to create a domain name and point it at your website.

There are a few bonuses to using free web hosting. Again, if you simply need a personal website that you’ll only be sending out to your friends and family members, a free web host is fine. The ads won’t be that big of a deal and neither will the long URL. You won’t have to pay for the hosting, which is a great benefit.

Another benefit, especially for those who have never created a website before, is that many of these free web hosts include tools to help you design your site. You don’t have to know any HTML code at all. Their interfaces are usually pretty simple—just click and drag on objects you want to include on your site. Adding images, changing backgrounds, and changing text size and colour is all very quick and easy. This allows beginners to focus on the overall layout of their site. Later, as they gain experience, they can start learning more complicated website layout features and move on to other design programs like DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression.

Overall, free web hosting really is not an option for anyone looking to make a professional or business site, but for those who are just getting their feet wet, it can be useful. There’s no reason, after all, to pay for web hosting if you just want to make a small website designed to provide information to your friends and family.

2009
10.27

With all the concern about the environment, more and more people are looking for ways to cut back on their energy usage. After all, the amount of energy that is used on a daily basis to power all of the computers, servers, and other electronic devices continues to grow in ever-increasing numbers, with no sign of slowing down. Many businesses that are concerned about the environment are looking for a way to reduce the output of their overall energy consumption. There are computers that are being created that require less and less power, and many of them are preset to go to sleep after a certain amount of time.

However, one of the latest steps in reducing a company’s carbon footprint is the introduction of green web hosting services. In fact, while this may not be something that you have heard of before now, there are actually quite a few different hosting services that are based around eco-friendly options available. One of the main reasons that these web hosting services are considered green is that they rely mainly on renewable energy sources to meet the demands of the servers that they have in operation. These energy sources could be anything from solar panels to wind turbines.

One thing to check into if you are considering a green web hosting service is to make sure that they have been certified by an ecological agency so that you can know for sure that you are dealing with a company that is operating on completely renewable energy sources.

There are other things that these green web hosts can do to help the environment. For example, many of these offices rely on compact fluorescent bulbs, recyclable products, completely electronic workspaces that reduce paper output, and equipment with the lowest energy usage possible. They might work to make sure that they have employees who can telecommute, that way they are working to promote a work zone where people do not have to worry about contributing to the CO2 in the air by using the emissions of their vehicles. Some companies have even been known to plant trees to help with counteract their carbon footprint.

The downside to using a green web host is that if they rely completely on renewable energy sources there could be times when your website might not be up and running because they do not have enough energy to power their servers. This could be a problem to larger companies who need to make sure that they have a continuous web site presence, but some smaller companies are willing to put up with this possibility in return for their contribution to the environment. The good news is that this is rarely a problem with the green web hosts, and many companies have not experienced any problems with the loss of energy. So, if you are looking for a way to make sure that your company is run in a manner that will hold to your eco-friendly ideals, then you may want to look into green hosting services.

2009
10.27

Hosting an Online Game

If you’re running a company that produces online video games, you’re going to need to look at online game hosting. Multiplayer online games are very popular among today’s gaming community, but hosting these games requires different needs and hosting options than a traditional website. Your web host contains much of the gaming information. This is so players can’t hack into the game files stored on their computers and cheat at the game. Of course, this means that your hosting server is going to have to hold a lot of the gaming information. The players’ computers can store some graphics, audio files, and other non-specific information to help ease the load, but overall, it’s your gaming server that’s going to hold the majority of the information.

Another thing your host server is going to have to do is have a lot of bandwidth. It’s going to be sending a lot of information to the players’ computers, and their computers will be sending a lot of information to the server. When you consider this along with the huge amount of information your host server is going to have to hold, you have to realize that your server is going to have different needs than other servers. When it comes to looking for hosting for online games, there are two different options available: centralized hosting and distributed hosting.

Centralized hosting is the term for games the run directly off a web server. This means your host server is going to have to have a large hard drive and is going to have to be capable of handing thousands of users at once. If the server can’t deal with this many users, it will crash, and your players will be very upset. Sometimes, host servers will have to send real-time changes in the game back and forth to the users very quickly, such as in an online action game. Other times, they may send information back and forth in bursts, like in an online card game. Either way, your host will be dealing with a lot of information very quickly.

There is an alternative to centralized hosting, but this type of hosting is rarely used by web hosting companies. In this version, called distributed hosting, a number of different servers host the game. Players can get their updates from any of the different servers, although one master server coordinates all of the information. This distributes the load across several different hosts. However, as far as a web hosting goes, this method doesn’t really work unless you want to pay for multiple servers. If you can afford to purchase multiple servers and run a distributed network, there are several advantages, but if you can’t, your only web host option may be to go with centralized hosting.

Finding a web host that can meet the challenges of hosting an online game can be difficult, and chances are, you’re going to have to pay more for the extra bandwidth and server space. You will probably want to lease a dedicated server for the game, in fact, but it may be worth the expense if your game is popular.

2009
10.27

Many people outside of the computer world probably do not know that much about either Linux or Unix based hosting, but the truth is that these can be very important to someone who is looking for a company to host their website. Many small businesses who are building websites are turning to a hosting service that is based on Linux and Unix rather than Windows because of some basic differences that many people find appealing.

The first thing you need to understand if you are looking into using these two platforms is that they are basically the same because they are completely platform independent. Both Linux and Unix are meant to be open source operating systems, and this is a bonus to people who are interested in making sure that their potential customers can view their websites no matter which operating system they are running. This is not always true when a website is designed by someone who is running a Windows operating system, and that is why many people have begun to prefer that they build their websites using either Linux or Unix, this way everyone will be able to see the site exactly as you have designed it and intended for them to see it.

Until very recently many people did not realize the benefits of using Linux and Unix because they were mainly operating systems that were used almost exclusively by people with extensive computer knowledge and background understanding. In short, they were not really very easy to use and understand by people with just a basic sense of computer knowledge. This has changed in recent years as the operating systems have undergone something of an overhaul and have become a lot easier to use. Meaning that even someone with a basic knowledge of computers could easily navigate their control panels to update and control your website.

Often people prefer to use Linux or Unix because they are seen as more reliable operating systems overall. This is because there are not that many bugs in the operating systems and the programs that are run on these systems do not tend to crash as often as programs that run in Windows. Another reason for the proficiency for these operating systems is that they are designed to be capable of running several different processes at the same time, which means that the server will be able to work at a high level of efficiency.

If you decide to use a Linux of Unix based hosting system, then you will want to make sure that all the components of your website will match up correctly so that they can be uploaded and viewed in the proper manner. For example, if you are running a Microsoft MSSQL database, then you cannot use either Linux or Unix, instead you would want to make sure that you used a mSQL or MYSQL database. However, the good news is that you can use any scripting language with Unix or Linux, so you do not have to worry about this when you are setting up your website.

2009
10.27

If you have a new business that is looking to build a website, then you are probably a little confused about the different types of web hosting services that are available. Or, maybe you did not even realize that there were different options for web hosts. Either way, checking into the different options and services that are offered by the web hosts out there will help you to understand what kind of service your business needs to get it up and running correctly. One of the first things that you should understand is that you can choose from three different options, a private server, a virtual private server, and a shared server.

The private servers are those that are owned by the company. This means that you will need to invest in the servers yourself and run it from your company. This is an extremely costly option so it is often not something that many small businesses can afford to invest in. But, if you are certain that you want t private server it is possible to rent one from a web hosting company. While this is still a fairly costly option, it does have quite a few benefits that you wouldn’t get if you were going to use a shared server. For example, it is a lot easier to use the server in the manner that you want because you will have complete control, and you will be able to access and use all of the memory on that specific server to fit your needs.

Another option for people who are looking to capitalize on the use of a private server but at a reduced price is the virtual private server. This means that even though your website will be stored on a shared server system it will be run by a virtual private server. This means that the actual physical server is divided up so into virtual servers. This means that these individual servers can act like private servers. You can have the ability to use whatever operating system you like and install the programs that you want without a problem. The main difference is that you do not have access to all of the memory available on the main server, but rather you get your divided portion.

Then you have the most common form of server, which is a shared server. This means that your website will be stored on a server that contains many other sites besides your own. Because of this shared space you will only be able to have a certain amount of bandwidth at your disposal each month and you will not be able to decide which operating system you will use because this has all been predetermined for you. The only real thing that you will be able to do is to upload your webpage. However, the benefit is that this is considerably cheaper than either a virtual private server or a private server application. Because of this, the shared server is the option for most small businesses.