Attention everybody: it’s time to take out your thesaurus.

We’ve known for sometime how Google uses synonyms to determine the context of the search terms entered by search users. Recently Google Software Engineer Steven Baker brought back the importance of synonyms to focus in his post “Helping Computers Understand Language”. There he discussed how Google recently analyzed just how well their synonyms system works.

According to Steven Baker 70% of search queries made in Google are actually affected by their synonyms system. However, most of the time we don’t even realize it because everything happens in the background. We tend to take the relevance of the results we get for granted, not realizing that a lot of analysis takes place to narrow down the index and spew out those results.

Furthermore Steven baker also said that they found out that out of every 50 queries made that are affected by Google’s synonyms system, only 1 returns a truly bad synonym. That makes for pretty good search results, don’t you think?

However, how should this information affect your SEO approach? Simple. As I said earlier its time to take out your thesaurus and start using more synonyms. Don’t get stuck with technical terms and use laymen’s terms in the same page. This will not only help Google contextualize your pages’ contents but also provide more keywords and key phrases, hence, increasing your pages’ searchability. So don’t get stuck using the same term over and over, expand your vocabulary and do better in SERPs at the same time.

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Were you convinced by the debunking we did on some web site optimization myths in the previous post? I sure hope so. Yet that was not the end – there are more myths out there than we can count. Let’s try to look at some more myths and see if we can provide alternatives.

I have no time. Web site optimization is too time consuming.
How true is this idea? Practically untrue, I would say. Web site optimization is not an added task to your daily web site development task. The truth is, a lot of the basic principles involved in web site optimization can be incorporated into what you are already doing. Focusing on content so that you can optimize your web site is one of the major things. What you need to do is have a vision of how to optimize your web site and take the steps towards this goal as you continue to work on the site.

I need at least 1,000 submissions to be visible.
Gosh, every time I see an ad promising 1,000 search engine submissions to potential clients, I want to tear my hair out by the roots. Even more frustrating is that some people actually buy this line! Think about it, how many search engines are there? Do you really think there are 1,000++ search engines in existence?

I just need to pay someone to do the job for me – I don’t need to do any work myself.
Well, you can pay someone to optimize your web site for you but that does not mean that you do not have to exert any effort. You know your content best. Optimization professionals may not know your topic inside out as well as you do. Though you can pay someone to do the technical stuff, do not totally exclude yourself.

Photo courtesy of G&M

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Here is the continuation of the previous post on some of the best – and easiest – SEO tips. There are actually ten of them in the whole article at About.com but I am only choosing the ones that I myself have done and can attest to. Here goes.

Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines.
This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those “someones” are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.

I have written about this before and I do not hesitate to keep repeating it. The problem that some people encounter is that they become too obsessed with what the search engines want. The human side oftentimes becomes ignored. This, I believe, negates much of the efforts put into the site. So the search engine spiders love your site but who is going to read it and keep coming back for more? People! Need I say more?

(to be continued)

Photo courtesy of Martin Heigan

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We have already taken a look at two questions that you can ask your potential SEO consultant, courtesy of Terence Chang. I have found another resource article that provides more questions that you can use to determine if the SEO consultant is right for you. This is written by Jon Rognerud. Let’s take a look at them.

What ranking guarantees do you provide?
If the answer is anything but “none,” look elsewhere. You might tell them you heard a page one ranking can’t be guaranteed, since nobody owns the search engines, except search companies. A superior search firm may add that while ranking is important, keyword research, relevant traffic and a steady increase in traffic that turns into sales are more important.

This one is a very important question. Although we love to hear guarantees, when it comes to SEO and rankings, there are really no guarantees. And if a potential SEO consultant will guarantee you a specific number with regard to ranking, you should see that as a red flag. Remember, SEO is not simply all about numbers and rankings – it is all about the overall performance of your web site AND the conversions.

Are you going to make changes to my website?
Changes are crucial for SEO, especially changes to content and structure within your site. If you have a lot of graphics, flash and complex navigation with pull-down menus and hierarchical trees that spiders can’t follow, you have a serious problem. Visit some of the sites they have optimized and see what SEO tactics they have applied.

You have to know at the outset how much work it will entail on your part. If you need to re-write a lot of content (or come up with a lot of new content), then you should know at the beginning so that you can come up with a strategy that is feasible for you.

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…that even your mother would love. That is how Richard Burckhardt titled his blog post on this and I love it! The original title of the post is “51 Quick SEO Tips Even Your Mother Would Love” but we cannot cover ALL of those 51 tips here so I am picking out my favorites of the bunch. Here they are.

Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.

I have written about this topic many times so nothing more needs to be added to this. However, here is a related tip:

If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks using your keyword phrase as the link. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for that site to link to you, you don’t want the link.

I think that it is very important to stress the quality of the link. I have seen so many propositions for link exchanges and even though they may be tempting, it is vital that the unrelated sites be weeded out. Google is not stupid. Just because many sites link to your site does not mean that they are “legit” – that they linked because of your content. They know that people exchange links as easily as they change their clothes. If I were you, I’d choose who I link to and who links to me as well.

More of these quick SEO tips in the next post.

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We have taken a look at several reasons your efforts at SEO may not be giving you the results that you have been aiming for. Just to recap, we took a look at several things such as wrong keywords, infrequent updates, and lack of inbound links. You can probably say that these are quite on the technical side. What do you do if you keep on doing the right things with regard to these points but your efforts at SEO do not seem to be gaining you anything?

Perhaps you might be overlooking one simple aspect – your content. It might be simple but it is quite important as well. What do I mean? You may be using the right keywords and your content may be dense with them BUT if you do not provide interesting content, how do you think you can maintain the attention of your readers?

One problem that many people engaging in SEO practices have is that they tend to forget all about the “humans” who read their web site. What happens is that they tend to focus on getting the search engines’ attention. The result is dry and uninteresting content. Now put yourself in your readers’ shoes. If you visit a site which has great SEO strategy but does not really present the content in an engaging way, would you keep returning to that site? Probably not.

So if I were you, and I was not getting the results I want, I would check on my content. I would make sure that I am giving my human readers something useful, something to look forward to.

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So have you checked your keywords yet? Are you targeting the appropriate keywords for your web site or blog? If you are and you are still not getting the results that you are aiming for, then maybe you are still missing out on something.

Why don’t you check how regularly and how often you update your blog? E. Branter also talks about this point:

Infrequent Updates- Search engines have a passion for fresh content. They crave fresh content because it keeps their results relevant. For this reason, it’s crucial that you give the search engines the new content they desire. Updating your website regularly shows both the search engines and your website visitors that your company is active and worth their trust.

It is as simple as that. You need to always offer something new. For blogs, I suppose that this would be a bit easier. You can post every day, every other day, or even twice a week. The format of the blog is easier to update and by its very nature, you really should provide fresh content a lot. For web sites, you can create a page or a section where you can update the content regularly. Perhaps you can have a section for articles and you can provide fresh content weekly. You can provide a section for news and do the same, maybe on a more frequent schedule. You can even create a blog and use that to provide fresh content!

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We have talked about blogs that spam anchor text links and blogs that have fake links (that is, links that point to ads and trick users into clicking on them).  Are there any other kinds of blogs out there that you would want to avoid if you want to make a good name for yourself in the blogosphere?  I am sure that there are several more but for now, I shall feature one more and then move on to another topic in the next posts.

The last type of blog that I want to focus on is the “I am a blogger not a writer blog.”  I know a LOT of bloggers who do not want to admit or acknowledge the fact that writing IS blogging.  When you blog, you use written words.  There is no going around this fact.  When you blog, you write.  As such, it follows that you have to be at least a decent writer if you want to be a good blogger.

You might be thinking that what is important is that you have good ideas to present.  That it does not matter if you do not write well.  Think again.  Think of those blogs which present the most interesting topics.  Then use your imagination and pretend that the posts are rife with misspellings, grammar mistakes, and incoherent paragraphs.  Punctuation marks are not present, capitalization is non-existent, and sentences are all run on.  How much do you think you would enjoy reading the posts?

The bottom line is that to have a good blog, you must at least know the basics of writing.  This is learned in school and honed through practice.  Do not use the excuse that you are not a “professional” writer.  Everyone can write decently if they tried.

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When it comes to SEO, there is one thing that we can never overlook. That is, content writing. I am a strong believe in SEO techniques and other strategies that help you get on the top of SERPs. However, I also believe that the bottom line is having great content. You can employ all the best SEO tactics there are but if your content is not worth it, then all your best efforts will simply go to the dogs. As such in the next few posts, we will probably be focusing on content writing.

In this post, I want to answer two questions that have been bugging me lately. How often should one post? More so, is it alright to change posting frequency? I think that there is no simply answer to the first question. How often you post really depends on what you have to post. If you have no new (and worthwhile) content, why post at all? Then again, if you want to keep your readers coming back, then you have to have new content up and running as often as you can. I think that a good frequency would be at least a couple of times a week. If you have the time and the content, once a day would be great.

On the second question, what if you wanted to increase or decrease your frequency? Would it matter? I think so. If you post too much – say 3 times a day, it might bug your readers, making it hard for them to catch up. On the other hand, if you post rarely, your readers might get bored waiting for new content. The idea is to be able to maintain a good balance. And remember the bottom line – post when you have something worthwhile to write about.

Photo courtesy of Leo Reynolds

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Comments are a blogger’s best friend – well, among many other things. We have been focusing on increasing Page Rank in the past several posts. However, as many of my friends online have pointed out, commenting can bring about more benefits than Page Rank. Google’s PR does have its value, but it would be good to not lose sight of the bigger picture because of it.

So what can we do with comments? Let us look at the situation from the other perspective – us bloggers commenting on other blogs. As I pointed out in the previous post, we love receiving comments but may be a bit lax when it comes to dishing out comments.

However, when we comment on other blogs, we take advantage of the chance of making new friends. This, in turn, can translate into attracting more traffic to our own blog or web site. Real traffic is something that also takes some time to build up. It depends on many factors, delivering quality content being one of them. Once you have this down pat, you still need to let the world know that your blog or web site exists. This is where commenting comes in.

I call this technique the “manual” way. That is, instead of depending on SEO professionals and techniques alone, you do your own advertising by visiting as many relevant blogs as you can and leaving quality comments as well. Remember, spamming is not the idea here. You are leaving comments because you want other people to become interested in your blog, to visit it, and to become returning visitors.

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