Saturday, September 17, 2011

Robots.txt or Meta NoIndex Tag?

For SEO professionals or webmasters that are managing their own online marketing campaigns, understanding what pages to greater emphasize to the search engine spiders is a key element in setting up a website to succeed in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Utilizing the robots.txt file and the meta noindex tag are two ways to do this, by indicating what pages should be blocked out from a search engine's index. Ultimately, the faster the search engine spiders are able to crawl and navigate a website the better. And a great way to do this is to send them to the most important pages of the site by indicating exactly where they don't need to be. The question becomes - what is a better way of doing this, blocking out pages by adding them to the robots.txt file or applying the meta noindex tag to the HTML coding of of the web pages?

Monday, September 5, 2011

Link Building Strategies: Improving Anchor Text for Better SERPs Rankings

It is well established in the SEO community that the number and quality of keyword rich anchor text backlinks that a website has is the number one determinate of ranking positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This is due to the fact that Google's algorithm is link based - meaning, their search engine robots crawl the web via links, and these robots arrive at websites by following these links.

The anchor text of those links (the link title that one clicks on) demonstrates to the robots what the page they are crawling to is all about. As such, when someone performs a search query, Google retrieves web pages from their index (that have been crawled by the robots) that may be relevant to what that individual is searching for. The anchor text directed towards a website allows the search engine to, generally speaking, assess the subject matter of the site's content, and how valuable it may be to online users (once they have actually crawled the site). While we know of many standard ways to go out and build links to a website, there are a couple of strategies that interestingly enough often elude webmasters and SEO professionals alike.

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Hiring an SEO Company: What to Look For and the Questions to Ask

There are a number of important thing to consider prior to hiring an SEO company to manage your online campaign. As one would expect, digital marketing for most companies, small or large, has become essential in order to reach their target audiences. We no longer live in a world where consumers grab the Yellow Pages to look for a company, or grab their note pads and scribble down a business' information after listening to a radio ad. Why would they? People have become accustomed to the comfort of knowing that if they happen to forget a piece of information, a phone number, or an address, all they have to do is "Google it." For businesses, this means that ranking well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for keyphrases that will generate valuable traffic and a steady revenue stream is absolutely vital. So what should these people be looking for in an SEO company to help them achieve those rankings?