As launched by Google EMD update, it’s now officially proclaimed that there is no free lunch for EMD.  EMD that means Exact Match Domain in general, are the domain names that are unerringly those keywords which a website wishes to compete for. It worked well for a long time and industry on the whole of brokers and EMD tools came up with huge premium prices for good names undergoing through the roof when it was all “money keyword”.

With free lunch, it was quite a while possible to be ranked in TOP 3 with no back links as compared to non-EMDs within just few days in literally every market niche one can think of. Pretty slow but Google has now closed this loophole as well though others were already closed earlier. This cheap way of attracting the maximum web traffic to your page is now closed and instead of complaining about it, SEOs must be thankful that they once have had it!

What all was included in EMD lunch Bonus?

EMD, where if the keyword that a website wants to rank with is “beauty care”, the domain name will be exactly matched as “beautycare.com”, included web spam techniques in the bonus. The two of popular SEO techniques including link building and on-page keyword optimisation are closely related to typical sorts of web spam. Thus, there is an aroused need for focussing upon the abidance of some standard SEO techniques in constructing the websites for people and not search engines.

EMD were often cited with excessive stuffing of keywords, spam techniques and not constructing quality sites. The easy breezy technique that can be followed is to have keyword phrase in exact match domain name and start with the keyword throughout the page.

While it was the scenario of EMD bonus, the money keyword was the website’s name that one wanted to rank for. It also seemed to be a good option to use brand name as Google wasn’t able to differentiate between the brand name and other phrases. However, the scenario has twirled now and a better option for linking is to use links of your brand names in the body as it makes a good sense.

Google Knew it, we knew it

However, it will be wrong to say that the EMD algorithm came just out of blue and had no basis to it. The EMD algorithm, system and method for detecting commercial queries was filed for patenting back earlier in September 2003 which was finally approved on 25 October 2011.

On March 7, 2011, Matt Cutts also talked about changing the whole EMD concept in video.  The question that is answerable here is about the transparency of Google in warning us that it is giving so much relevance to EMD. From the weekly list of SEO analytics of winners and losers while there were many EMDs that dropped out sharply a week ago from their stable rankings miserably, we also found many EMDs who actually gained high rankings after this update!

The question here is if Google is the actual culprit?

Google is often entitled to be an Internet police, giant, ruthless regime etc. etc. that keeps telling us that they are trying best to be transparent on their part. Many say that when it comes to SEO, they don’t follow their own evil mantra but Google is being evil whereas, on the other hand, Google as a corporation is aiming to be transparent to serve its people.

The surprising fact is that many governments, associations and corporations are trying to be transparent if you hear them in a different way or welcome correct information. This can be cited from the fact the even smallest plans are not implemented without being written down. This is the only reason why the ranking reduction algorithms developed by Google are sort of spelled out.   All you need to do to gain higher rankings is to create high quality websites with good content and abidance to website’s quality standards.

The Google’s mission that actually is spelled out is to organise well the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful for all the navigators. Just give it a thought for a moment that you get the top results displayed on your search engine’s first page that is relevant to you of what you desired. Now, simply ask to the people who design the content if abiding by some standards of SEO and laws is really costly for the relevant engine results?

No free Lunch- Google EMD Update – Really A kick in the teeth?

When people heard of the Google EMD update for no more free lunch, there was a bit panic, outrageousness and astonishment amongst SEO Experts. SEOs are worried of the consequences of this update that might harm their site ranking and web trafficking. They are totally scared, confused and anxious on the update. It was really amusing to read all the cursing and caps at Google in the blogs following the Sept. 29th EMD update.

We wonder and amaze at the people’s expectations of learning a few SEO techniques, abusing the guidelines, and developing a website whether or not it has relevant content and still expecting of not being caught at all?

Few take-home tips to guide the developers-

• Review all the website’s construction guidelines as mentioned by the Google so that you are not violating the obvious tactics. If you do not want to lose your EMD bonus as others did, make it sure to abide by the keyword stuffing guidelines and imply same in brand domains names.
• The custom EMD algorithm didn’t need good quality links to rank high and this never made a sense. However, today domain strength is an important factor and what makes sense is to have a good content to be the winner and rank high!
• With increased social networking there are the estimations can further shares of links in social site can help in boosting site’s rankings, though the results are yet to confirm it. However, it is evident from the Google’s Bullet Point “the topics are driven from genuine interest of readers on the site’ that Google takes Social Signals and gives value to the sites as high quality if they are liked socially.
• The overall link and quality of the website is evident from domain popularity growth of the winners.
• It is not simply enough to build links to get your website on first page of search engine. Good quality site, relevant information and more links will also lead the web traffic to your page even if it is an EMD.

Finally we can say that Matt Cutts has actually given reality to his words about cracking down the web Spam in 2012 and has successfully closed the loopholes that were still working in early part of 2012. We are left to wonder if he is actually cracking down one tactic per month as his secret 30-day challenge.

In my personal opinion I feel that there are lot more things to fix as yet and based on data that we have received from our Link Detox Technology, there are still many useless websites with really appalling link profiles and redundant SEO practices that can be easily detected. For this reason we should expect more of such updates to continue on regular basis.

In any case, you must be thankful to Google and Matt Cutts for freeing you from EMDs loopholes that were prevailing since very long.

The opinions expressed in this article are by guest authors and not necessarily by search engine land.

Besides the fact that there exists a lot of information published over the internet, in magazines and other sources regarding the techniques, process, usability, tactics and required software necessary to make a renowned drift into world of web through search engine listings, the art and science of Search engine optimization remains anonymous to an average internet professional.

An article featured in Website Magazine’s, covered the frequently answered questions (FAQs) relating to effective SEO. The article though provided some useful insights in the limelight of issues and attempted to alleviate at least some of the confusion, but fell short of meeting to one’s expectations not because the answers were incomplete but because of the fact that there were even more questions that required answers for.

Here in this article, you will find below the list of SEO questions of website magazine which is an ongoing effort to answer (real one) and document the most asked SEO related questions of the day. While the website magazine community is vast and there are different skills and levels of expertise here, we ensure to keep you updated with this list of questions and answers on consistent basis.

And here the Website Magazine BIG LIST of SEO Questions begins-

• What’s the procedure of search engines to locate a website?

The search engines commonly use “crawling” technique to locate a website on the web to reach to your site though there exists many more ways. The best alternative to get your site searched by these engines is to advertise your link on the website that is regularly crawled. It will show faster results and improve your online visibility as well.

• Can other algorithm elements can lead to fall in value of link popularity or the quality or number of citations ever?

Thanks to the transformation sin digital media and improvements in searches based on behavioural tracking, the search engines specifically understand about the relevance of a particular item of content or a product to the particular user. This sophistication of search engines will always make them rely on the quality and quantity of a website link and determine the rankings accordingly.

• Is there any better way to get rid of unauthentic or non-authoritative links from a portal?

There are many websites that are low in quality and linked to your websites from content spammers and content scrappers. These low quality sites can diminish your portal’s credibility and give an overall low value to your total link profile. Thus, the best alternative is to remove non-authoritative links from your website which are unresponsive to direct requests as the Google offers a way to disavow links from sites.

• How is Linkbait treated and valued by Google and Bing?

As far as Linkbait is concerned, it is mere a practice of using a highly appealing content to grab the attention of navigators from various search engines and social media networks. The Google or Bing do not typically treat or value the Linkbait and its respective content more or less highly than any other content missing out to have a linkbait label.

• Can we call PPC as an effective link building tool?

Though, calling the PPC or pay-per-click advertising method a link building tool directly would be wrong, rather one could say that PPC helps in creating a flow of interested prospects to your web portal. The technique plays an effective role in exposing the product information and information regarding services offered by the organisation to the prospective buyers or customers so as to make better online sales. This technique tends to build up vast connections to the networks of social communities as the portion of audience interested and impressed by your company’s products will share its link to other website pages and it will be shared further in other social networks following a chain. Thus, your product brand and its message will be distributed further ultimately resulting in acquiring the links from websites interested in your products.

• Can link building be added value with help of article directories?

For both big and small brands, the article directories were once the mainstay in link profiles. However, with the prominent changes in search engine algorithms in past few years, the link building scenario has changed all through. The article content containing links can be counted as citations or rather good quality citations if the content written in the article is relevant to query and is not plagiarised. It can be a good quality citation if it includes the link to primary website.

• Do press releases offer an opportunity to build better and more links?

Similar to the article directories, the submissions of press releases were once a famous yet efficacious method to create more links. However, with the changed scenario and transformed market demands, these have no longer remained a link building tool. Instead, the press release submissions present a better opportunity to enhance your product’s exposure to your key audiences including bloggers, writers, journalists etc. nevertheless, one can add value to the content by distributing the press releases to right and appropriate web portals including those of newspaper websites and curation blogs.

• How can keyword research be explained?

The navigators make use of a variety of combinations of words and phrases to get the desired information from search engines. These words are used by the search engines to unlock the connection between your site and the user by seeking out those key words and key search phrases.

he process of Keyword research holds great importance as these are the words which are mentioned in your page’s content to optimise your website and its pages. To make it easier for the search engines to locate your content using the set of keywords and phrases entered by the users, make it sure that you use the words and phrases that matter most to your business. The two concepts to use for SEO to select your website are popularity and relevance.

• Can website rankings be influenced by the order of keywords in content’s title?

Though the order of keywords in your content’s title can play a crucial role in web page’s rankings but nevertheless it is simply a small factor. However, to use the keywords in title is more important for some reasons. One of the reasons is that the page is being optimised for that keyword and the other reason embodies that your page becomes more visible to the users as well as to the search engines searching related information. Thus, the title tags must include those keywords for which your page is being optimised.

• To make a search engine optimisation campaign a complete success, can website design play an effective role?

All thanks to the search engines giving due importance to the quality of user experience, the design of any web portal plays a prominent role in success of SEO campaigns. However, there are numerous barriers on the website designs with broken links and poor designs to maintain an optimal user experience. The search engines have openly warned against the obvious barriers for better search engine performance and user experience.

• Is SEO affected by social interactions as well?

The search engines were once indexed with stacks of tweets from twitter and Facebook profiles of people when their privacy settings were all set for public crawling. Though the increased volume of re-tweets had no impact on site’s rankings, but thanks to deeper integration with Bing, Facebook citations have and will also in future impact the rankings of a page over the web. Also the most prominent network system these days by Google being Google+ is offering vast opportunities to the companies to expose their brands and their community. More than ever before, the social interaction is playing a direct and prominent role over Google+.

• Are directory submissions still needed?

The days of SEO have gone past, where the SEO’s rather used to submit the titles, descriptions as well as links to stand-alone digital website directories. These methods now have lost their relevance and value to the enterprises and their SEO campaigns. Mere a handful of large somewhat valuable Web directories are remaining. The SEOs these days are in search of more typical, smaller and niche directories so as to optimise the content according to users’ needs and direct more web traffic to your website on their own.

• From the perspective of search engines, what factors hold credibility in bringing optimum results?

It might surprise you, but the reality is that in the virtual eyes of search engines, it doesn’t take much time to attain credibility. If the website is designed well, well-optimised, hosts no malicious scripts (malware), is available (not suffering from downtime), and links to known authoritative websites, it is credible and is not subjected to excessive filtering by the search engines.

• Should we follow any specific or definitive keyword density?

As far as density of keywords in the content is concerned, make it sure that you do not stuff your content using them. Rather, a right amount of keywords and use of relevant keyword derivations must be included in Web copy to enhance your online results. All what holds importance is the practice of ensuring a right amount of keywords and keyword derivations (including related terms) particularly for which the individual pages are optimized.  The density of a keyword matter not too much and not too little and thus it’s best to have some density. However, it must be made sure that there are certain other factors that impact your content and those are not ignored to have appropriate citations.

• As far as the brand keywords are concerned, can search results be modified?

To offer a strong level of authority, the websites are provided with appropriate “sitelinks”. These are the additional hyperlinks that are present under the primary website listing on the SERPs (search engine results pages). The sites that are provided such site links have an authority to discard or prevent the unauthorised URLs that show in those positions.

• To analyse the SEO performance, what are the best metrics that can be used?

Once, the single most important metric to analyse an SEO performance was the actual position of a website for its specific keywords. However, with the changed scenario and as a result of increased personalization, it has become imperative to measure broader aspects such as context, behaviour, location, the number of unique visitors, page views resultant from new content published on the site are being used as these are yet as revealing metrics to analyse the performance of an SEO for the purpose of improved ranking.

Do search engines use any particular formula to distinguish amongst paid and unpaid links?

Today, every business is looking forward to gain more returns from an online business and therefore almost everyone is indulging into buying and selling of links/citations. The search engines are frowning up on these activities as these are polluting the “natural” optimisation techniques and interrupting with the search engine performances. The unpaid natural citations were “natural” in a way that those were based on the product, the services and the quality of information.  Nevertheless, the search engines have taken certain crucial steps to kick out of the index those websites which were consistently and openly found violating these practices and have penalized them.

Is there any particular type of website software that makes it most/least crawl-able?

Amongst a range of software designed and developed today to be used by the Internet professionals on their websites, majority of them are SEO friendly which tells that these are not prevented by the search engines from crawling through it.

• Is there any link value carried by blog comments as such?

Similar to any other link, the comments mentioned over the blog also carry certain link value under some conditions. The condition to this is that the blog where the comment is appearing must be a “no-follow” – open to crawl for the search engines.

• Is it possible to swap an acceptable link with a small scale link?

It can be a good thing to find the websites exchanging their links especially if they are from reputable source and refer the users on their own. Thus, exchanging links is not necessarily a bad practice. As where the direct links tend to count the most, their reciprocal links also matter a lot in taking a measured approach. Thus using the “swapping link” as one of your link building strategy is undeniably a smart approach.

• Recovering from an update can take how much long?

If the search engines’ regular update victim is your website and has suffered a loss of lost in engine’s rankings and visitors as a result, there are lot more things that you can do. Begin with identification of any potential barriers to indexing, modification of any unwanted behaviours that could put your website in jeopardy, and last but not the least, removal of anything from your portal that may lead to fall in value of your site and lower its rankings.

• Can removing the duplicate content from your website help in upgrading its rankings?

The genuine problem that arises in internet market world is of duplicity of content. The more the duplicate content you publish on your website, the lesser the value your original document holds. The best practice is to either remove it normally or is to ask the search engines to use canonicalized version of pages.

• Amongst HTML, PHP, ASP, which page language can be categorised as best?

When it comes to rankings to be given to any website, the search engines are neutral to any language of the page. Thus, by the time the users’ reaches to the page, it is merely rendered as HTML. Therefore the aspect to be focussed on by the SEOs is the organisation and structure of the rendered page. Also, the SEOs must concentrate on prioritizing the page according to the importance to a user.

Have we failed to answer any of your queries? If yes, you need not to worry. Submit your comment below with the question and ideally an answer too and we will include you and your company’s name and link your website with ours. We would appreciate your efforts to expand this crucial knowledge base further.

In today’s world of fiercely competitive web market, almost everyone is concerned about enhanced online sales to meet the challenges of business world. Web workers in general, can be broadly classified into three major categories that include- information publishers, merchants and service providers. Belonging to any of these categories and undertaking any distinctive jobs, they have one concern in common regarding the impact of their web portal optimisation campaign over the results of their Search Engine Optimisation campaigns.

Nevertheless, we are fortunate that we have an easier option of making the necessary changes to our website than to making changes in our SEO campaign which will in turn enhance an overall user experience as well as improve the website rankings over search engines. To fix up your website and make it gain higher rankings on search engine results page (SERPs), below mentioned are Ten great SEO friendly on site optimisation techniques-

#1-Title Tags

A good title to any content gives a specific meaning to it. This is the best place to start with in getting the viewers directed to your portal. Until and unless your web content has a good title related to it that is appealing enough, you are not going to get any response from the web traffic. Also, these tags contain the keywords that link the search engines to your page so that it is easily identified over the web to gain higher rankings. It should be no more than 70 characters including spaces.

#2- Heading Tags

Similar to title tags, the heading tags of the content can also be created innovatively to give your website a complete ranking capability. These tags are used to define the content hierarchy on a Web page, and can be efficaciously employed to highlight your keywords.  Though, these can range all amongst <h1> to <h6>, however, using the most competitive keywords in the <h1> tag can add value to your site.

# 3 – Title Attribution

Specifically when you are using the navigational tabs, what could be very beneficial to users is adding the title attributions to your Web pages. This will not simply give a boost to your SEO but also ensure an effective use of keywords by making the indicating text clear on your upcoming pages.

Implement the below mentioned code with your unique information to add title attributions:

<a href=”http://www.Example.com/html/services.html” title= “know in detail about our Optimisation services”>

#4- Image Alt Attributions

A great way to add descriptions to images and make them searchable over SERPs is to make use of Image alt attribution technique. This will add value to your online business by enhancing your web traffic. In simply 5-10 words describe your image the best you can using search friendly keywords to a variety of image types, including .gif, .jpg, .png and clickable buttons.

You may use the following code:

<img src=”/blog/companylogo.jpg” alt=”leading professional website company”/>

#5- Meta Descriptions

Not just can you move your page up in rankings over SERPs, but also with the help of attractive Meta descriptions, you can portray your page link is worth clicking over the web. You may add these descriptions to either on header sections or in footer area to make it easily apparent. However, make it sure that you blend in most used keywords in your description keeping it short from 25-40 words.

# 6- URLs

The easy to remember, self definitive and robust URL can amazingly boost your online presence over the Search engine pages thereby increasing the turnover ratios of your visitors. A domain name that is indicative of your brand and the content that is well optimised for SEO purposes will bring relevant traffic to your page. Mostly the companies use title of the content in their URLs to make easily navigable.

# 7- Sitemap

To make your web page easily crawl-able and amplify its standing on the SERPs, a simple way is to develop a sitemap. All you need is to input a little additional effort and a .xml file at the root of your portal. These maps outline the navigable pages on the site that are accessible by the users.

# 8- 404 Errors

The bunches and bulks of 404 errors will not simply smash your user approach but will also make your website lose its credibility and rankings over the search engines making it difficult for your site to be indexed properly. Thus, if you are managing a big website with many pages in it, make it sure that you check it continuously and diagnose and debug the errors well.  You can easily do this with help of Google’s Webmaster Tools.

#9- Content: Keyword Density

Content is the important aspect of your website and reflects the image of your company’s brand. How well you make use of the important keywords and how well you incorporate keyword phrases in your information defines Keyword density. Nevertheless, it is crucial that your writing is all natural and authentic reflecting an appealing tone to the web navigators. The best is to make use of the keywords once in your initial paragraph that is introducing the content, once in content’s main body and for the last in final paragraph to give it a good closure.

# 10- Content: Keyword Proximity

The proximity of any keyword reflects how efficiently you make use of it. A keyword does not necessarily mean that you have to stuff it in your content regardless of the fact that it retains the meaning or not. Rather, make it sure that if you are using a three-word keyword phrases for your content, make it sure that it holds its meaning and relevance accordingly. Use them next to each other or separate them using few words, the target is to use them in a manner that they sound natural and ordered well. Make it sure that you are not sacrificing on the quality of content simply for the reason to fit keywords or keyword phrases in there.

Though the social media campaigning is in trend since long and still amongst the leading internet marketing tools, many businesses are struggling to measure their ROI from social media. Many small and large organisations have integrated this internet marketing instrument with their traditional marketing efforts, but the question has still remained in grey and unanswered.

Social media is all about the community with whom you have to conduct your business further and media holds actually less relevance, but every business wants to know what returns are coming out from their campaigns. In real, the success can be measured from the insights into the members of community and impact of their engagement in group on your business. Social media is a platform to regulate and monitor about what people are saying about your working styles and business and respond to them appropriately. However, if you fail to measure the selective metrics of success, it is mere a wastage of time, money and efforts.

The social media measurement metrics includes first and the foremost the engagement of members of the group.  You, being a crucial member of the group are responsible to hold the people’s attention and interest in the group through your comments, replies, games etc.  Tracking and analysing the responses of your status, tweets, comments etc will help you know what best interests to your group and keep them engaged with you.

Another thing is your reach, the bigger the size of your network, the better will be the results if responded appropriately. To take care of all this, you must have a reliable team of professionals before you lose your market to competitors.

Internet has emerged to be a great platform for creating an effective online presence and digital persona. There is no better alternative or low cost marketing tool than social media to promote your business. Here are some simple and effective methods to use social media to take your business to new heights of achievements-

• Join appropriate social media

MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn are certain popular social connection medias that can be picked in your list. Connecting through them to right groups can help easily spread your message. You simply need to think about your target market and the related groups to get associated with.

• Highlight your short message over the social media

Position your company as an emerging market leader and highlight certain short messages in media group regarding ypur product and service offerings. Many of these networking sites are best medium to write a small paragraph that effectively summarizes your company’s offerings.

• Be active

Another thing to be considered is to be active in social communities. Until you are responsive and welcoming to the responses of others in group to your social media page, you can’t promote your business.

• Be suggestive and help others

Suggest certain articles, links and blogs in conversions that could of help to others in the group. You can also add blogs on your page and invite the same from other group members as well. Comment frequently on popular blogs within your social networks.

• Build inbound links

To drive more web traffic to your page, build more inbound links. Add other friends and spread yourself!

Your company’s website may be very attractive and good looking in the internet world, but if no one sees it and you don’t get web traffic directed to your portal, it is worthless. People having interest in the services that you provide will search on the search engines like Yahoo, Bing or Google to find most appropriate websites.

It is critical that the search engines direct searchers to your page to make effective conversions. The need for more web traffic has spawned a huge industry called search engine optimization SEO.  Here listed are certain easy ways to increase your web traffic and maximise the output from SEO-

• Search engines direct the searchers to the pages that can best meet the information requirements of the navigators to let them have best experience possible. This, they will direct them to your page, if your page has relevant content and best matches to the information requirements of navigators. Based on your content, the search engines also either upgrade or downgrade the position of your website.
• You need to decide the means by which you will improve the position of your website by improving the information, & get organic ranking or Inorganic ranking by doing Pay Per click Advertisement. Either add relevant High quality content and get the top rankings or spend more on advertising to get on navigated.
• Consider hiring the professionals. Yes, hiring the services of professional website designers and SEO optimizers can do great to drive maximum traffic to your page. Being experienced in using the tools, techniques and industry specific keywords, these professionals can help you in optimizing the output of your SEO efforts.

However, whatever you do, an ultimate improvement can only occur if the base is robust, i.e., your website is best in contributing to your Business if search engines are displaying it.