If like millions of other people you wonder why your Website receives so little traffic from popular search engines like Ask, Bing, Google, and Yahoo! you should consider how closely you have followed the fundamental teachings of search engine optimization theory. The vast majority of SEO gurus have little to no real knowledge or experience in the theory behind search engine optimization. They tend to just repeat what they read on the Web and hear at conferences without learning ow to apply the scientific method to their work.

In a practical or applied search engine optimization environment you can still benefit greatly from following three important scientific principles: Experiment, evaluate, and adjust. This is called the SEO Method and it describes very succinctly how people have learned to decipher the mysterious, cryptic behaviors of search engines. But where most people falter is in assuming that by studying the behaviors of search engines they are studying search engine algorithms. The reality is that algorithm analysis is very difficult and it escapes the grasp of all the popular SEO writers.

Rather than merely pursue algorithms, SEO theory studies how search engines interact with Websites and searchers, so as to better understand how search results change over time. Change is inevitable because new Web content is appearing all the time, and because old Web content is changing or vanishing, and because search engines change their systems, and because searchers change the way they search as well as the search engines they use.

Is only through the science of SEO theory that the Web community can develop long-lasting strategies for promoting their sites. People who teach “paint by numbers” SEO as an art are ill-equipped to show you how the searchable Web ecosystem is a constantly evolving system of complex and highly volatile interacting components.

While some people have recognized the innate value of studying SEO theory it must be said that nearly all the SEO books and tutorials you can find or buy are just compilations of step-by-step replays of tricks and methods that rarely stand the test of time. Instead of teaching people how to match the growth of search technology with wisdom populist SEO book authors capitalize on Webmaster desperation for the next quick fix. SEO theory takes the high road and teaches people to be patient, observant, and flexible.

RSS is the latest craze in online publishing. But what exactly is RSS?

RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally understood.

RSS allows publishers to “syndicate” their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks.

It has actually been around for a while, but with the advent of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers.

However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.


Why Search Engines Love RSS

Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes,or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines.

For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets.

Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages.


But where does RSS figure in all this?

RSS feeds, usually sourced from newsfeeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche.

By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site’s content without having to write a single line on your own.

It’s like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free!


How can RSS improve my Search Engine Rankings?

There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders.


1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content

There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme.

Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for.

Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content.


2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content

RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.

These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day.


3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering

One thing I never anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the Googlebot visited my site almost daily.
To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily.

What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.

How does this benefit you as a marketer?

Well, for example, let’s says a top Internet Marketer comes out with a new product that you review and write up a little article on, and that your competitors do the same.

Google generally tends to index pages at the start of the month and if you miss that update, you will probably need to wait till the next month to even see your entry in.

But, since your site has RSS feeds, it now gets indexed more frequently. So the chances of getting your page indexed quickly are much higher.

This gives you an advantage over the competition, as your review will show up sooner in the search results than theirs.

Imagine what an entire month’s advantage could do to your affiliate sales!


Why Javascript Feeds Are Not Effective

Some sites offer javascript code that generates content sourced from RSS feeds for your site.

These are of absolutely no value in terms of search engine rankings, as the googlebot cannot read javascript and the content is not interpreted as part of your page.

What you need is code that parses the RSS feed and renders the feed as html content that’s part of your page.

This is achieved using server side scripting languages like PHP or ASP.

A good free ASP script is available from Kattanweb
http://www.kattanweb.com/webdev/projects/index.asp?ID=7

An equally good PHP script is CARP
http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

So in conclusion, besides optimizing on page and off page factors, adding RSS feeds to your pages should be an important part of your strategy to boost your search engine rankings.

Satyajeet Hattangadi is the CEO of Novasoft Inc, a software
solutions provider, that specializes in affordable
customized software solutions. http://www.novasoft-inc.com
Get the Free Email Course “RSS Riches” and learn how to use
RSS to get high search engine rankings and monetize your
website at http://www.trafficturbocharger.com

Why shouldn’t I use a submission service that submits my site to 5000+ search engines?

Some Company’s claim that they submit your website to 5000+ search engines.
The majority of these 5000+ so called search engines are free links for all pages, very special interest web pages or, even worse, websites masquerading as search engines.
Submitting your web page to these 5000+ search engines means, that you’ll receive 5000 spam e-mail messages. Quality matters so much more than quantity.

Can Visual Orange guarantee top 10 search engine rankings?

Visual Orange helps you to optimize your web pages so that they get the best possible rankings.
No one can guarantee a number 1 ranking on Google -
Beware of SEO’s that claim to guarantee rankings, or that claim a “special relationship” with Google, or that claim to have a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google.
In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly, is by using the page at http://www.google.com/addurl.html
You can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

Does my web page need to be continually resubmitted to get on and stay on the search engines?

We keep hearing this question and it is around for at least 8 years! Resubmitting dates back to the time when Webcrawler was the biggest search engine and no Pentium yet around!
It does not guarantee ranking, but it makes sense to resubmit at some engines every three months, because they simply cancel after this period your web site.

What we can conclude is the following:

Submission is necessary but does not guarantee inclusion in search engines. We do not add all of your pages to search engines, and cannot predict when or if they will appear.”
http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/1.html#A2

What is link popularity?

The more other web sites link to your web site, the higher is your link popularity. Link Popularity helps you to increase the search engine ranking results of your web site. Web sites that have many links from other good rated web sites, get much better search engine rankings than web sites with no other sites linking to them.

It’s really easy: you name the category of your web site and Visual Orange searches for web sites that might place a link to your web site. Web sites will link to your web site and the link popularity of your site will be improved. As a result, you’ll get higher search engine rankings, more customers and more sales.

Billy Horner is the author of this article,and has many years of experience in the SEO world.
He worked for many companies and helped to show the way to succes.He now works for Visual Orange Co., Ltd. based in Ayutthaya Thailand.

http://www.visualorange.net

http://www.visualorange.com

Thanks to a unique algorithm that produces most relevant results
to any given query, Google has become, indisputably, the best
search engine on the Internet. On the last count, Google has
indexed over 4 billion pages and tackles around 200 million
searches a day! A cluster of 100 thousand servers are used to
store, crunch and spew out the query results with lightning
speed that you are so accustomed to see.

This phenomenal growth has made Google from a garage startup to
an Internet behemoth faster than any company has done before.
The prodigies behind this unique search engine, Larry Page and
Sergey Brin in the process already got enlisted themselves in
billionaire club.

Google is no longer a mere search engine! It is increasingly
broadening its offerings to include great new services and
excellent tools. Among these services, most notables are
News - a news aggregation and searching service,
Blogger - an online journal-keeping solution,
Froogle - a marketplace for comparison shopping,
Groups - online discussion groups, Answers - a place to get
hard-to-find information for a price, etc.

Google also recently unveiled two more programs.
Orkut - a social networking service and Gmail - a free web
mail service. Orkut is an online community, where a person
can participate in it by invitation from a member only.

If you constantly frown over limited space of your hotmail
or Yahoo accounts because they get filled up with junk mails
and force you to delete old messages frequently, you will
love Gmail with its 1 GB of storage capacity. There are
several great features available in Gmail system too.
One of them, dubbed as Conversations, allow you to view
all exchange mails with somebody, once you select one of
the mails. Sorting and searching emails also become much
easier with Gmail. The only catch is Gmail displays
relevant ads - based on the keywords found in your
email - on the right side of the screen when you view an
email, much like Google displays ads when you view search
results.

Although, Google is constantly adding new and extremely
useful features, most of us unfortunately do not use all the
capacities of the search engine itself. The following tips
will make your Internet browsing more effective if even
you are an avid net user.

Choose most specific search words

Google returns web pages that contain all the words in your
query. If you would like to see the most relevant pages on
the first page of your search result, be very specific with
your choice of words. For example: if you would like to
research on former NHL hockey player Makarov, you should
start your search with Makarov not hockey player. Even better
if you search for the words: hockey player Makarov. Because
just the word Makarov will show web pages on “Makarov” a
Russian-made handgun and numerous other people and products
with the name Makarov. Refining your query in Google means
adding more specific words to your initial search. In this
example you will hit the right web pages if your search
contains: NHL hockey player Makarov.

Sets - a new feature

What if you are looking for a pair of Valentino designer
jeans but can’t recall the name of the designer? Query on
Italian designer jeans may bring you the right result; however,
there is a better tool that Google is planning to implement
soon, called “Sets”.

Fill up the names of some designers that you remember in the
given form such as Levis, Wrangler, Versace and click either
of the two buttons and voila! You will get a list of
designers name and probably, Valentino will be there. But
bear in mind that this feature is still at Beta stage.

Calculator

The other day, I was sitting in a colleague’s office. She
needed to calculate some basic stuffs and looking for her
calculator on her desk. Much to her dismay, she could not
find the calculator and started to fumble through her
computer programs in her attempt to find Microsoft calculator.
I noticed that she was online and the browser was open.
I, politely, asked her whether she knew that Google could
actually calculate most common mathematical expressions.
It came out to be, she did not! She was just amazed after
trying it herself. Google is even capable of unit conversion!
Give it a try!

Definition

If you are looking for a definition of a particular word or
a phrase, Google is the best place to get it. In Google search
box, write “define: the word or phrase” without the quotation
marks and click search button. If there is a definition
available for your search term you will, most certainly,
get it. It’s a very useful feature for students and people,
those who write research papers.

Synonyms

You may think that search engines are too dumb to show
query results of the synonyms of your search term. It’s
not so! At least, in the case of Google! If you use tilde
“~” in front of a keyword in your search term, Google will
bring results on the synonyms of that word as well.

Searching within a website

Another great feature of Google search engine allows you
to make your query within a specific website. First you
write your search term in the Google search box and then
write “site: the website or domain name”. For example:
if you are looking for word “Microsoft” within the website
www.micromedia.com you will write: Microsoft site:
micromedia.com.

Check backward links to your website

If you have a website, Google search engine also has a nice
feature to show you which web pages are linking to yours.
In the search box, write: Link: you website address.

Other important tips to remember are:

There is no need to use “AND”. Google always relate all the
words in a search term with Boolean “and”.

However, if you would like to make your query for two
words - one or another - you can use “OR”. You have to write
“or” in capital letters to give it Boolean value.

Google is not case sensitive. You can write your search terms
either in capital or in small letters. You can even mix them
up.

Google omits most of the very common words, such as the,
in, etc. If you, indeed, need to add a specific word
forcefully, use plus (+) sign in front of that particular word.
Same way, you can exclude a word from your search expression
by putting minus (-) sign in front it.

If you would like to make a search on an exact phrase or
expression, put the words within quotation marks. That way,
your search result will show only those pages where the exact
expression was found. In order to search the phrase: For whom
the bell tolls, write “For whom the bell tolls” in the search
box.
I’ll also suggest you to download the Google Toolbar. Apart
from the search box and its ability to block pop-ups, Google
Toolbar also shows the pagerank of the website you are
visiting now. Pagerank is a system of evaluating web
pages - developed by Google founders and used as the core of
Google’s search engine algorithm. The Toolbar also includes
feature with the ability to fill up online forms from stored
information automatically. You can also keep your daily journal
or blog right from the toolbar.

Much to net users delight, Google, in accordance with its
ambitious mission statement to organize world’s information
and make it universally useful and accessible, so far doing
a great job by providing us the best search engine and
extremely handy features and services. We can only hope that
the flow of innovative ideas from Google will not slow down
in future, when it becomes a public company.

Nowshade Kabir is the founder, primary developer and present
CEO of Rusbiz.com. A Ph. D. in Information Technology, he
has wide experience in Business Consulting, International
Trade and Web Marketing. Rusbiz is a Global B2B Emarketplace
with solutions to start and run online business.
You can contact him at mailto:nowshade[at]rusbiz.com,
http://ezine.rusbiz.com, http://www.rusbiz.com

So which is the better option, pay per click listings or working towards strong natural listings? This answer depends on you and what you want to achieve in the long run. From my point of view, I would look at using both methods of optimisation with a technique that changes as time progresses. Let me explain…

For those who are not quiet sure what pay per click listings are, they are the listings that appear before all the natural search results for a particular search. To appear in those positions, a set amount must be paid for each time a user clicks on your link. For the website owners who have just built a new website or have a very low search engine visibility, ppc is a great option to get your website indexed and to start receiving quality traffic, provided you have the necessary funds to cater for all the clicks. Daily budgets can be set so you do not overspend on your ppc account.

What about achieving a strong presence in the natural listings? This is a very important point not to overlook. The most obvious reason being is you do not have to pay for each time someone clicks on your link. Pay per click is the fast and easy option however, over a long period of time the amount of money spent can add up to a large sum. So it would be very wise to take on search engine optimisation for your website to achieve those strong natural listings.

As time progresses and your website starts to built a strong reputation within the search engines, pay per click optimisation spends can be cut for the keyword phrases where you are at the top of the competition. If you are satisfied with your incoming traffic from the natural listings, then pay per click optimisation can be stopped completely. In my opinion, I would recommend to continue running ppc listings for those keyword phrases where a strong presence has yet to be made in the natural listings.

To recap, until a strong search engine presence is made in the natural listings, pay per click optimisation is strongly recommended. As time progresses and your website gains more popularity within the search engines, ppc optimisation spends should be reduced or can be stopped. At this stage, your focus will be primarily on keeping your natural listings at the top of the competition and seeing that it has all paid off in the end.