The idea of unique content is closely tied to the problem of duplicate content. Even the most inexperienced internet marketers know that duplicate content is something to avoid, even if the exact rules—and what actually counts as duplicate content—can be a little unclear. Because of that, “unique content” is often treated as the solution. But […]
Algorithms-The Foundation of Search Engine Optimization
In the ninth century, Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a Persian mathematician, introduced algebraic concepts and Arabic numerals while working in Baghdad, which was then an international center for scientific study. His method for performing arithmetic with Arabic numerals was called algorism. By the eighteenth century, the term had evolved into algorithm. Algorithms are […]
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #7 “Avoid Black Hat Techniques”
Every so often, they show up on internet marketing forums: people claiming they’ve discovered a foolproof “black hat” search engine optimization technique. For a price, they say their method will push your website to the top of the search engine results—and, of course, they promise you’ll never get caught. But think about it. We’d all […]
Monitoring Search Engine Positions
Search engines are often the first place people go online when they are looking for goods or services, so where your website appears in the results matters. If your URL is buried far down the list, the chances that a potential customer will never find you increase. Once you earn a strong search engine position, […]
What Is SEO?
“SEO” stands for “search engine optimization.” As the name suggests, it’s about setting up and improving your website so search engines can find, understand, and rank it more easily. When someone looks for a website, they usually type a few key words into their preferred search engine. For example, if they’re looking for a restaurant […]
What Is Robots.txt?
Search engines keep their listings current and show the most accurate results by performing an action known as a “crawl.” This means sending out a “bot” — sometimes called a “spider” — to move through the internet and look for new pages, updated pages, or pages the search engine did not previously know existed. After […]
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #5 “Hosting Viruses, Malware or Other Nasties”
This may seem obvious, but no search engine is going to rank your site well if its bots find spyware, malware, viruses, or any other internet nasties on your website. In fact, if a bot discovers that kind of content, your site will likely be removed from the results and blacklisted. That sounds simple enough. […]
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #3 “Duplicate Content”
Among people who understand internet marketing, duplicate content can be a tricky issue. The main debate is over what actually counts as duplicate content. Some internet marketers argue that anything previously published on another website qualifies, while others say it only matters when the same text appears more than once on the same website. The […]
The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO: #1 “Hidden Text”
Anyone with a basic understanding of search engine optimization knows that the text on a website plays a major role in how it ranks in search engines. In fact, you could argue that a site’s written content is one of the most important things search engines look at. So it’s easy to see why someone […]
Evaulating Web Site Performance
Setting up a website is the first step in an Internet marketing campaign, and its success depends heavily on how clearly you define your goals. If you do not know what you want your site to accomplish, it will likely fail to accomplish much of anything. Without goals to guide how you build and monitor […]