Category Archives: searchandizing

The notion of using search mechanisms, or channels, to merchandise a company’s products or services.

SEO and Article Farming: An Update

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Stop Article Farming

The SEO honeymoon is over.

Eric Schmidt himself admits other sites are doing admirable things to be found online.

Are you of the opinion that article farming is the next best way of building links and gearing traffic to your web pages? It WAS a valid (though tedious) trend of augmenting SEO campaigns until Google updated its search algorithm to limit the impact of article marketing!

Due to article farming, relevant results had almost become a needle in a haystack. Users had to sift through multiple result pages, only to find regurgitated junk. Google needed to clean its SEO landscape if it had hopes of surviving the competition unleashed by Yahoo! and Bing. This search engine giant responded with an update that changes all article marketing rules.

Quality Metrics Have Been Upped

The SEO campaigns that survived, did it solely on spins and extensive submission to hundreds of article directories. The change will give top priority to brands. Now the thrust will be on high-quality content. Therefore, webmasters should concentrate more on:

  • Becoming an industry expert or authority in their niche. The quality of the content should be made very high. If such content cannot be written in-house, it can easily be outsourced.
  • Restructure the importance of article directories in online marketing strategies. Reduce publishing content on article directories; keep more content on their web sites.
  • Attain more natural link progression, rather than quick, paid links. An effective method can be to interact with audiences on niche forums, sell ideas and bring them to the site.
  • Social media integration. Google has already started giving importance to social media content in its search algorithm. Thus, social media, now, will have dual benefits. It will help in direct customer engagement and indirectly, increasing search ranking.
  • Create mechanisms to track metrics from your search results. O-p-t-i-m-i-z-e.

So, content will continue its reign as the king. However, for a bigger impact, webmasters should aim at creating an authoritative presence.

The Search Engine Optimization Honeymoon

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The SEO Honeymoon
The SEO Honeymoon

Search engine optimization techniques are no more industry secrets. Web sites, and even blogs, use keywords to enjoy higher search rankings. The term ‘SEO honeymoon’ was coined to emphasize a specific phase during a web site life cycle when SEO strategies bear maximum results. Basic understanding of SEO techniques can earn you an exciting honeymoon period, in terms of user traffic and search engine ranking.

How to Enjoy Your Honeymoon With Search Engine Optimization?

The duration of your honeymoon with search engine optimization depends entirely on the quality of content and user experience. However, adhering to the basic SEO fundamentals will also help in achieving better search ranking and extend this happy period in time.

Here are some simple tips to enjoy your official honeymoon with search engine optimization:

  • Spend time on keyword research. Select the most relevant keyword as per your specific business requirements.
  • Optimize your web page title tags with the most relevant keyword.
  • Use Meta description tags.
  • Include a Site Map in the website to help search engines with indexing the pages on your site.
  • Generate high quality content and semantically display the content on every web page.
  • Use ‘Alt text’ for all images and videos. Accessibility is important for those who don’t or can’t view your images.
  • Focus on inbound and outbound external links.

To measure the effectiveness of your SEO strategies, include a keyword and user traffic analysis tool in your website. Such a tool will help you in understanding which keywords are paying off and which webpages are attracting greater traffic.

When Will Your Search Engine Optimization Honeymoon End?

According to experts, search engine optimization period ends soon for most of the websites. After achieving good search rankings for the initial months, you may start feeling that your SEO efforts are not paying off. Does this mean your SEO honeymoon is over?

Since SEO fundamentals are employed by most websites, search rankings are bound to differ over a period of time. However, by developing a long-term SEO strategy, it is possible to extend the duration of SEO honeymoon period. Such a strategy should focus extensively on inbound external linking and social media integration. Capitalizing on these two areas is certainly a daunting task. Hire an SEO expert to guide you through these troubled waters.