Reviewed Search Engine Optimization Articles

Search Engine Optimization Technique Tutorials

SeoPros is developing this resource of optimization tutorials for Members and non members of the Organization to develop their optimization and submission skills. Links to information on search engine optimization, submission and "best practices" techniques are reviewed to insure they are within the guidelines and standards of the Organization.

Members of the Organizations have written some great articles on a number of different search engine optimization topics. You can see the index of these superb articles in the Members Articles Archives. In the near future there will also be an archive of Case Studies which have also been written by Member Consultants and SEO Firms.

The archive of Search Engine news, press releases, quarterly and annual reports and SEM industry news provides a great resource for information on specific engines. If you are debating about services provided by these Search engines there is a lot of financial and other information including partnerships (where their results are found) that can aid in this research. For Partnership info you should also check out Doug Heil of IHelpYouServices Search Engine Partnership Chart!

Terry Van Horne, Bob Gladstein, Editors

Importance of Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization:Keyword Research is by far the most important aspect in any Search Engine Optimization initiative. This article shall discuss the important aspects- of keyword research process.
How to Optimize Your Press Releases for Search (and Why You Should):Learning to write press releases that can be easily found by search engines can exponentially increase the size of the audience that sees your release.
The Art and Science of an Effective Link Building Campaign:Is it wrong to buy or sell links? How far is too far in optimizing your internal link structure? If you operate a network of sites, can natural interlinking be perceived as link spam?
SEM and Reputation Management:The term "reputation management," once squarely in the PR domain, is increasingly sneaking into the search engine marketing (SEM) realm.
Reciprocal Linking: A Disturbing Trend in Search Engine Marketing:SEM has become a much sought after entity, with SEM specialists, who focus on optimization of a site, routinely adding linking campaign management to their overall repertoire of services.
Search Engine User Attitudes:With so much interest in search, it's amazing how relatively little research has been done into how people interact with search engines, especially from a search marketing perspective.
Optimizing Your Site for Local Search:Things may change in how the search engines eventually refine their local search technology, but it can’t hurt to do a few simple things…and get a jump on your local competition.
highrankings issue #098:Information on copyright laws for SEO's and some general info on PPC and PFI. Good reading!
Domain Names and Google Search Engine Ranking:Other than the usual domain name hype, some which, IMO, is categorically false not a bad article on using keywords in IA (Information Architecture).
Do your homework on XML feeds to search engines, experts warn:But to assure good placement in search results, marketers still need to assure that their web pages have a lot of relevant content and links from other related web sites
Search Engine Optimisation and Accessibility:search engine optimisation as a marketing technique creates new opportunities for making web content accessible... how accessibility of a site can help maximise both it's search engine promotion potential and increase user conversions and ROI.
Search Engine Loyalty Is Key, According To iProspect Survey:... more than 65 percent of respondents who use Google use only one search engine... Over 55 percent of Yahoo! searchers stick with the portal, 53.7 percent of MSN users ... and 48.6 percent of America Online's
Yahoo Search Manager Spills the Beans...:The info on links and keyword meta data were very telling of Yahoo! searchs quest for excellence. IMO, this is one that could beat Google and this under the hood discussion is a good way to get a grip on Yahoo! search.
Yahoo Keyword Density Analysis Comparison to Google:The goal of this analysis is to compare the keyword density elements of Yahoo's new algorithm with Google's algorithm. The top 10 results for over 2000 keywords were analyzed from both Yahoo and Google
Website SEO Is Really Only Sub-optimization:The best part of this article: "The front end thinking relates to the whole Company marketing strategy. Strategy determines what assets are put in place to achieve the objective." IMO, your real strategy starts here!
Does website hosting affects rankings at Google ?:...if the domain sharing your server and IP is penalized by Google on account of spamming then your website is also expected to be banned or penalized, this is a condition if there is virtual shared IP
2003's Most Wanted Search Terms:The results are relatively similar at Google, Lycos and Yahoo, with pop tart Britney Spears featured prominently on all three top ten lists. Stars, movies, and sports dominate the top ten.
Business Blogs Increase Visibility and Credibility:I noticed that searching for "Weblogs and Business" (a category name) yielded a #1 ranking on Google. From this point on, I saw each of my category names grow in rank on Google.
Topic-Sensitive PageRank:Taher H. Haveliwala wrote this paper and researched this algorithm while a student at Stanford. It discusses using topics to improve PageRank "authority". In a sense what is counted as a link.
What Happened To My Site On Google?:I'll take a Q&A-style approach to examine many of the issues and questions that have arisen from the change. Also be sure to see other articles about the recent changes on the Florida Google Dance Resources page.
Google Dance Case Studies:... discussion about the recent Google changes, specifics about particular situations are often lacking. It's much more useful to look at real life examples rather than deal with generic situations.
Hilltop: A Search Engine based on Expert Documents:A link to the paper discussing the method of using ODP topics as the basis for determining "authority" for a topic. Note the author and researcher is now an employee of Google.
Search Engines and Web Server Issues:...how can you communicate to the search engines that old URLs should be redirected to new URLs without affecting positioning? A panel of experts addressed these and other server-specific issues.
The Top 5 SEO Myths:Since SEO is still an emerging form of marketing, myths and misinformation run rampant across email, newsletters and web sites.
Links are Good for Business:There are debates and "facts" on whom you should link to and whether reciprocal links are good or bad. The reality is that the Web is made up of links and you should link to sites that your users will find helpful.
Motivating Your Web Site Visitors To Take Action: Personality Targeting:this article is based on a variation of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Kiersey Temperament Sorters.... personality targeting is that people are generally motivated to different degrees by the following four qualities
SEO 101 A Beginner's Guide to Search Engine Optimization:Search Engine Optimization doesn't come with a bag of magic tricks these days. Although there will always be ways to trick the engines into temporarily placing your site higher in the rankings
More on the Robots exclusion protocol:If used incorrectly, this small and innocent looking text file can cause a lot of problems. It can even cause your site from being excluded from the search engine's databases, it it's not written correctly!
Link Text - Revisited:I, and other SEOs, have noticed within the last couple of weeks, is that the weighting given for link text appears to have risen sharply.
Making Sales on the Internet:... be *better* than the rest! Why would someone buy from your site when there are likely to be many sites out there selling similar products or services? What is your unique selling proposition (USP)?
Give your site visitors what they want and they will buy:Less than 21% of respondents would visit a website more often if it incorporated Flash technology or other rich media features... 42% said they would visit a site more often if the pages would load faster
Figuring out Web Traffic Analyzers :Information on web traffic analysis. This augments the earlier article T released a few weeks back Traffic Analysis and Rank Reports
SEO Writing Strategies for Graphic-Oriented Sites:Many sites simply produce better sales when they use more graphics than words. Since search engines are hungry for words, you simply have to use copy if you plan to get ranked high.
Niche Retail puts search engine marketing to the test:Some keywords performed so well in natural search results that they didn’t need help from paid placements.. This I found very interesting. Organic optimization was used to lower costs of PPC.
Keyword Research - Employ a More Lateral Thinking Approach:... it can be used to actually identify the target audiences behavior, I completely changed my style of questioning, when talking with people who I might feel are part of my target audience.
Is RSS the Answer to the Spam Crisis? :Replacing newsletters with RSS feeds could be a great alternative for publishers. Spam detection has been a menace, but,Presently I am skeptical because aggregators aren't as widely used as email.
How to use landing pages effectively and why:...create a “landing page” system that will tell you precisely how many new visitors uniquely come from that ad campaign and, with the right tools, can accurately compute your final conversion rate.
Beware Buying Used Domain Names For Your Website Addresses:Moral of the story? If you are buying a used domain, buyer beware. Find out who used it before, and how.
http://www.robotstxt.org:This is the main source for information on the robots.txt Robots Exclusion Standard and other articles about writing well-behaved Web robots.
Optimizing Flash for Search Engines:Macromedia Flash and other non-HTML formats can pose problems for search engines, unless you take appropriate steps to optimize the content.
RSS: Gateway to News and Blog Content, Part 2:Danny Sullivan article on RSS feeds. Pt2
RSS: Gateway to News and Blog Content, Part 1 :Danny Sullivan article on RSS feeds. Pt1
Google Indicateur: Directory of information on Google's search services:Very slick directory structure for Google information. Most of Google's services and directories are featured.
In Defense of Dashy Domains:Discussion of pros and cons of hyphens in domain names.
Link Popularity and the Myth of the Guestbook Link:By Eric Ward, Link popularity is crucial for your pages to rank well in search engines, but the value of guestbook links is questionable, at best, and potentially lethal, at worst.
Missing Backlinks in Google...:When your backlinks totally disappear in Google (but your site is still showing up in the cache) you've probably done something that takes away from your users' visitor experience.
Being Tops with Your Users and the Search Engines, Part One:Discussion of usability, site testing and its role in a search engine marketing strategy. Getting found is just the first step.
Being Tops with Your Users and the Search Engines, Part Two:PT II: In order to design a fully functioning site that is highly usable by all, it's got to be organized.
Data Mining the Lycos 50:Great article on demagraphics and search engine marketing. Based on top 50 Lycos results. The article provides some useful Keyword marketing trending info.
Making An RSS Feed:From Danny Sullivan's SearchEngineWatch: Making An RSS Feed. I am looking into these further to see determine if they have a role in optimization.
The Second Eigenvalue of the Google Matrix:Discussion of the Stanford University papers on PageRank. Very technical but very useful for understanding current and future computations of Google PageRank.
Topic Distillation: Hits, Clever, DiscoWeb then Teoma:Mike Grehan's excellent papper on link analysis being used by the "new age" search engines such as Google, Teoma and Wisenut. This article contains descriptions of how this analysis is done and implemented by the engines.
Power tips for prime positioning and hot conversion rates:Excellent article on writing good SEO copy that converts. Many good tips on calls to action and other techniques to increase conversion.
Optimizing Frames for Search Engines:Tutorial on optimizing framed pages. Contains scripting for ensuring pages load in frameset. Frames usually aren't a good idea but this does add more usability to the solution.
Deal May Freshen Up Google's Links:NY Times article on Google/Pyra deal. Interviews discus link architecture of blogs and possible affect on Google indexing. Good stuff all the way around. Entered in optimization area because of linking info.
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine:The original whitepapper on search by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page googles founders. This is a must for anyone who wants to get a grip on PR.
Monitoring Your Search Engine Positions - Five Tips:Good tips to use in a search engine optimization campaign. Most important is the mention of doing this on an ongoing basis. The 5 tips are good for spotting problems in a campaign.

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