Researching Keywords

There are many keyword tools and tutorials out there that can keep you reading for months and testing new techniques. My two favorite tools for keyword research are WordTracker(http://www.wordtracker.com) and Nichebot (http://www.nichebot.com/). In my personal opinion I like to use Nichebot the best. The reason for this is it's a free tool, but it also uses the WordTracker database and Overture keyword base, you can check your Google rankings on the fly, and you can do a keyword analysis on specific keywords. This site has a lot features that most keyword research sites/tools don't have and gives you faster results.
When chooing keywords keep in mind the competitiveness of the word. You don't want to choose words that are really competitive because it will just make it harder for your site to rank for them and will take a lot longer. Instead look for words that are still related but are low in the competitive area. Nichebot tells you at the bottom of the page what each column represents and how the numbers will effect your site. Remember.... When choosing your keywords it is important to choose words that are related to your sites' content for each page.

 

Submitting Your Website

There are many submission services and submission software programs out there for webmasters to use in submitting their site to the search engines for indexing. But are they safe for you to use? Well as far as software programs are concerned, many search engines can detect if it is an automated submission or if a human is submitting the site. Some even have security codes you must enter when submitting to prevent the automated process. I don't believe that your site will be tagged as a spammer; it just won't be submitted to that particular search engine. Now, if you are repeatedly submitting to the same search engine then yes there is a chance you could get tagged.

What about submission services? I can't say that I have first hand experience with these, but a few things to watch out for is if the service does submissions by hand or if it's all an automated process; some search engines you must submit by hand entry. One other thing that you should be concerned with is the number of times this service submits your site. In all honesty, once your site is indexed in the major search engines is there really a need to keep submitting? I would say the answer to this would be no. If you keep your site updating regularly then the spiders and bots will continue to visit your site on a regular basis. Submitting your site monthly is not going to increase your rankings. You should keep watch on your site access logs and make sure that the bots are hitting your site regularly.

So what is the best way to submit your site? The best way that I have found is not to submit to search engines but let them find your site naturally and one way to do this is through a link from a site to your site. If you still haven't been indexed after a month or so then I would go ahead and do a manual submission from the search engines submission page; once should be all that it takes.

You may also want to check out Googles new sitemap feature that lets you tell Google how often certain pages in your site are updated, important pages that should be indexed by Google, and more. For more information visit Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login?source=gsm&subID=us-et-seo

Happy submitting!

 

Meta Tags - To Use or Not To Use

Back in the day meta keywords and meta descriptions were a very important aspect of Search Engine Optimization. You needed to have the right combination in order to get your site to rank well for specific terms; but are they still just as important today as they were then? With search engine algorithms changing and continously improving, some say no they are not important and others say yes. So what's the real answer? It's both, let me explain. In some search engines Meta tags do not make a difference. The search engine gathers their information from the title of the page and the actual page content. Other search engines still use this data for their descriptions etc. So how do you make sure you are giving the search engines what they need to index your site properly? Well simply put, use the meta tags. You are not going to get penalized for using them by search engines that don't rely on them; they will simply be bypassed during the crawl, but at the same time you are giving the search engines that do use them the needed information.