Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is SEO?

   Search Engine Optimization is the term used for search engine optimization and is a method in making a website optimized for the best results in search engine. As your website achieves a higher rank on all search engines, the more likely it is going to be visited.
   SEO is a way of improving the amount of traffic to a website from a search engine using its organic search results.
   Search Engine Optimization typically includes keyword research and development, meta tags optimization, linking strategy and implementation and website submission.
   To improve your organic (natural) results optimization of a certain website needs to be its best, these include:

   • Keywords in the title tag.
   • Keywords in links pointing to the page.
   • Keywords appearing in visible text.
   • Link popularity.
   • PageRank of the page (for Google).
   • Keywords in Heading Tag H1,H2 and H3 Tags in webpage.
   • Linking from one page to inner pages.
   • Relevant website link backs

   SEO involves optimization a websites code, structure and presentation with out making very noticeable changes to human visitors, such as avoiding or fixing problems that might keep search engines indexing all your pages.
   SEO is vital to a website to increase visitors and traffic, a website without traffic is rendered useless.

   When a web site is especially developed with search engines and rankings in mind, this is known as search engine optimization. Over 80% of internet traffic is generated by search engines. In fact, you probably found us through a search engine or some form of internet marketing.

   According to the Internet World Stats, in Australia there are around 14 million active Internet users (70% of population.) These numbers are almost overwhelming when you think about it. But just imagine if your web site was in the top 10 or 20 search results. The internet can be a limitless resource of potential customers for your business.
   
   

2. Search Engines

   One official definition of a search engine is that it is a tool that enables users to locate information on the World Wide Web.
   Search engines allows someone to ask for content meeting specific criteria (typically those containing a given word or phrase) and retrieves a list of items that match those criteria. This list is often sorted with respect to some measure of relevance of the results.

   There are basically three types of search engines: human indexed (a.k.a. directories), spider (a.k.a. robots or crawlers) indexed and those that are a combination of the two. Without search engines it would be basically impossible to find anything on the internet without knowing the specific URL address.

   Search engines are a major part of the internet. Most internet traffic (around 80%)is generated through the use of search engines.

   Search engines use spider software which combs the internet looking for documents and web addresses. The documents and web addresses are collected, indexed and stored in a database. Different search engines index different information. Some index all the content in a web page, some index the content and meta tags, while others only index the title.

   When a search engine user enters words to be searched, the database looks for words that match. The search engine then generates results with links. So in effect, you're not really searching the web, you are searching through the database of indexed pages that the spider/crawler/robot has found previously.
   
   

3. Search Engine Optimization, Directories

   A directory is different to a search engine. A directory can be searched in the same way a search engine is searched, but the difference between them is that a directory is human indexed whereas as search engine uses software and computation.

   A big distinction between directories and search engines is that directories index web sites and search engines index web pages.

   Yahoo and DMOZ are the two of the biggest directories on the web, but there are smaller ones for your own country, state or town such as CitySearch.com.au or WhatsInMelbourne.com.au.

   Submitting your commercial site to be reviewed for indexing in Yahoo costs $299 (US dollars). This fee covers the costs of paying a human to review the web site and determine whether or not it will be indexed. After paying the $299, you are not guaranteed a listing. If your site is accepted, then there is a recurring fee of $299 per year.

   Submitting your site to DMOZ is a simple process, but again, you are not guaranteed a listing. You submit, wait for a human to review it (this can take up to 3 months, as of 01/2007), and hope that it will be accepted into the listing.
   

   Why submit to a directory?

   Two main reasons:

   1. Targeted traffic
   2. Link popularity

   Directories are an excellent source of targeted traffic. Traffic is one thing... what is the "conversion rate" (customer:visitor ration) on this traffic? There is not much point in generating traffic to your site if the point of having your site is to generate sales. This is the bigger picture of SEO and Internet Marketing.
   
   

4. Keywords & Keyphrases

   A good search engine optimizer knows how important it is to use the right keywords. It is essential that you narrow the field.

   For example: you sell cars. But what type of cars? Making "car" your keyword would be a mistake. Firstly, the field is so broad that the search result for "car" comes up with everything from "car yards" to "rental cars" to car magazines.

   Narrow the field! What type of cars to you sell? Used cars? New cars? A particular brand? Where are you located? Where do you sell? You could come up with a couple of keywords: "used car sales" or more along the lines of a keyphrase: "used car sales Sydney" or "Sydney used cars for sale".
   

   Keyword and Keyphrase Tips:

   • Try not to use highly competitive keywords

   • When constructing keywords think from your searchers point of view - what words would you type into the search field? What exactly are you looking for?

   • Do a search on the keywords you have come up with. What are the top search results? Are they your competitors? If they are, see what they use as their TITLE tag.

   • Never, ever list your keywords anywhere in your page content. This is called search engine "spamming" and is frowned upon. It is cheating and ethically inappropriate. Search engines are smart enough to find and eradicate sites that do this.

   • Fix the title and meta tags on each page to include the keywords specific to that particular page.
     
     For example: for this page, "Keywords and Keyphrases", the title tag is "Keywords and Keyphrases for SEO - iPower Search" and the keyword meta tags include "keyword and keyphrase" and "keywords". It would be senseless to add keyword meta tags such as "copy writing" or "link popularity" in this page.
     
     

5. Common Mistakes

   Top Most Common SEO Mistakes (not necessarily in order):

   
   Optimizing your site for the wrong keywords
   Keyword flooding/spamming
   Creating lots of similar doorway pages
   Using Hidden Text
   Flash/Splash sites
   Javascript navigation
   Pages that contain only graphics
   Header area duplication
   Not utilizing the TITLE tag

   Many search engine optimizers have been guilty of an SEO mistake at some point in their career. Even yours truly.

   When optimizing web pages it is important to remember a few basics:

   • Your text needs to be visible to search engines. This means it needs to be in HTML, and full of substance and meaning. Don't use a lot of marketing babble. Keep the content rich, concise and focused. Be sure to include a few relevant keywords and keyphrases here and there without making the content confusing or unreadable for the visitor.
   • You might come across sites that are flash-driven or highly graphical. These types of sites are great for highly recognized brands such as Coca-Cola or McDonalds who don't really need to get those high rankings. Trying to optimize a flash-driven site is extremely difficult.
     
     Search engine spiders can't see your content. So they think you don't have any. All you can really do is set up your meta tags and hope that one day the spiders can read everything in a flash file! That might be a little way down the road...
   • I still come across sites that don't utilize title tags and meta tags. Meta tags are probably the simplest, almost-any-one-can-do-it, method of optimizing a web page. One of the most important and easiest things to do when optimizing a web page is to have your keyword or phrase for that particular page in the title tag.
     

   Prevention is better than cure! It is much easier to do it right from the start. Constructing a new web site with the end user AND the search engines in mind is always going to be simpler than trying to amend months or years of damage.
   
   

6. Algorithms

   Search engine algorithms are some of the most confidential, tightly-kept secrets in the world.

   An algorithmic search is also known as a natural search or an organic search. The types of results you get from such a search are the listings that are not paid for, i.e. the listing that are not sponsored, paid inclusions, paid placement or pay-per-click.

   An algorithm is basically a set of rules that a search engine spider follows in order to index web pages and determine web page relevancy.

   Most search engine algorithms follow some general rules. One of the main ones is tracking the location and frequency of keywords in a page. Those pages with higher keyword frequency are deemed to have a higher relevancy.

   Search engines are smart enough to know if you are "spamming" them by having a high frequency of keywords.

   When writing content (copywriting) for a web page, it is important to remember to write for the visitor as well as the search engine spider. The page could be confusing and unreadable if the content is written using repetitive words and phrases for the sole purpose of attempting to get a higher ranking.

   No two search engine algorithms are the same. Which is why search results differ between search engines.
   
   

7. Spiders, Robots and Crawlers

   A spider/robot/crawler is a software program that automatically fetches web pages. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. It's called a spider because it crawls over the web.

   Because most Web pages contain links to other pages, a spider can start almost anywhere. As soon as it sees a link to another page, it goes off and fetches it.

   This process is called crawling or spidering. Search engine use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data and relevant search results. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine, that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches.

   Spiders work by following links. So it is essential that it can see your links and that they are not hidden in flash or javascript code (see Common Mistakes). A spider only traverses the web's "hypertext" structure.

   Spiders can't see anything in javascript, graphical elements or Flash. Where possible, try to keep javascript to a minimum by placing it in a separate script file. Use appropriate ALT text for your images.
   
   

8. What is Internet Marketing?

   The main goal of Internet Marketing is to drive targeted internet traffic to your web site.
   Although the term 'Internet Marketing' might imply marketing on the internet, Internet Marketing is really about both online and offline web site promotion.
   Online promotion could be anything from search engine marketing (SEM) to banner advertising. Offline promotion can consist of traditional forms of advertising such as TV ads, radio or print advertisements.
   Internet Marketing can be a very useful strategy for business promotion. It can be used to promote brand awareness, improve a corporate identity, create and online presence or simply increase the number of visitors to a web site.

   Internet Marketing is a major component of electronic commerce. Internet marketing can include content management, online public relations (email), customer service and sales. As internet access is becoming more popular electronic commerce and internet marketing is playing a larger part in business marketing strategies.

   Internet Marketing includes:
   Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites and search engines.
   Advertisers big on keywords that attract their target market, these ads are called sponsored links or ads and appear next to organic results on a search engine page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

   E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing using electronic mail.
   E-mail marketing refers to:

   • Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its customers, often to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
   • Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers

   Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting business in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, customer and/or sale through their efforts.

   Internet marketing also includes search engine marketing.
   Search engine marketing is a set of methods use to increase a websites visibility in search engine.

   • Search engine optimization attempts to improve rankings for relevant keywords in search results by improving a websites structure, content, and relevant backlinks.
   • Pay per click advertising uses sponsored search engine listings to increase traffic to a web site.
   • Paid inclusion can provide a guarantee that the website will be included in the search engines organic listings.
   
   

   Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

   Pay-per-click advertising can be a cost effective method of internet marketing. The main idea behind PPC advertising is that you drive internet traffic to your web site by targeting a web audience using keywords specific to your product, business, industry etc.

   Search engines generally list the PPC advertising in sections entitled "Sponsored Links". As a PPC advertiser, you can 'bid' on keywords to have your site listed as close to the top of the search results for those keywords as possible. Your keyword 'bid' price is usually known as a cost-per-click (CPC).

   The CPC amount depends on what the advertiser sets. You can set any amount as your maximum CPC. Setting the 'right' amount for maximum results takes time, monitoring and tweaking of CPC's and keywords.

   What you actually spend on an ad 'click' will depend on where the ad was positioned in the results at that time.
   
   

   Paid Inclusion

   Paid inclusion means that you can pay to have a guaranteed listing in a particular search engine. However, you are not guaranteed that your web site will rank well or better. There's also no guarantee that your web site will get any additional internet traffic.

   The benefit of paid inclusion programs, as opposed to paid placement or pay-per-click, is that you pay an annual flat-fee. A much cheaper option of internet marketing if your budget doesn't allow for ongoing costs.

   Not everyone needs to partake in a paid inclusion. It could be simply a waste of money if your web site is already indexed by the search engine. Paid inclusion would only really be suggested to you if you have a really urgent need to be listed/indexed. If you are already being indexed, why pay for something that you are already getting for free?

   
   

   Paid Placement

   Paid placement programs work a lot better than paid inclusion programs do. Paid placement is about paying a search engine for a high ranking based on selected keywords.

   We here at iPower Search use the term "paid placement" to refer to guaranteed placement, but you may come across web sites that call it "pay for placement," "pay for performance," "CPC (cost-per-click) listings" or "PPC (pay-per-click) listings". CPC and PPC listings are generally ads that are only paid for by the advertiser when a user clicks on the ad. Read more about PPC here.

   Most major search engines with large amounts of traffic accept paid listings.

   Although you are guaranteed inclusion and a ranking, your ranking position itself can vary.

   Paid placement is a great internet marketing tool for those who want online exposure quickly. And if your budget allows, paid placement can be a viable long-term strategy.

Link Popularity

Link popularity, as the name suggests, is about the number of links that go to your site (a.k.a. backward links). Link popularity has been deemed and important internet marketing strategy as many search engines use it as a factor in determining the ranking of your web site.

Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of the sites that link to yours. Search engines don't just count the number of links to your site, but also the quality of those links. Quality is measured on the links coming from sites similar to yours, focusing on similar keywords and also on the links coming from categorized directories or industry-specific portals.

If other sites are willing to link to your site, then yours must have something of interest on it and be 'worthy' of being linked to. This is where writing appropriate, interesting, relevant content (a.k.a. copy/copywriting) comes into play. Over time you'll probably find that if your content is consistently relevant to a specific subject, topic or industry, people will start linking to your web site, and thus your link popularity increases! So it is really important that your web site content is written with purpose and intention.

Be warned though... there are a huge number of "link farms" offering to increase you link popularity. Stay away from them! They rarely, if ever, equate to quality links.