SEO Traffic King

Search Engine Optimization For Images

Images are great they make the whole experience of web browsing that much better. The problem is Search Engines can’t read them, neither can mobile devices nor screen readers. So don’t let the picture tell the whole story of the page. The key is to make sure your site is accessible and can be understood by visitors viewing your site with the images turned off. If you do that, the SE’s will properly index your site. Here are 3 simple steps to ensure proper Google Image Indexing:

Best SEO Image Practices

1. Take advantage of alt tags for all of your images. Alt attribute was originally developed to display alternate to the image i.e if the image doesn’t load on the browser the alt text loads explaining what image was supposed to be there. Selecting a good filename for the image is a good SEO practice. Select a name that suits the content of the website. For instance, alt text such as “picture1″ or “image1″ doesn’t provide much information about the image. “Soaring Blue Bird” and “Honeycomb Shades Almond Color” give more details for Google Image Indexing.

2. Don’t overload your alt text. Be descriptive, but don’t stuff it with extra keywords.

3. Look at the image-to-text ratio on your page. How much text do you have? One way of looking at this is to look at your site with images turned off in your browser. What content can you see? Is the intent of your site obvious? Do the pages convey your message effectively?

Taking advantage of Google Image search

Shoppers are now more then every relying on image search to see the things they want to buy. If you have a retail site, make sure that you have images of your products (and that they can be easily identified with alt text, headings, and textual descriptions). Searchers can then find your images and get to your site using Google Image Search.

One thing that can help your images be returned for results in Google Image search is opting in to enhanced image search in webmaster tools. This enables Google to use your images in the Google Image Labeler, which harnesses the power of the community for adding meta-data to your images.

Someone asked me, “What’s the maximum number of images per site that Google accepts for the Image Labeler.” There is no maximum or minimum, Google allows you to opt in no matter how many, or how few, images your site has. You too can practices good Search Engine Optimization for images and start ranking within Google Image Search!

SEO Question and Answers With Seth Godin This is a great interview, so I have added it to my Weekly SEO Q&A Pick

Seth Godin is the Founder & CEO Of Social Search Service Squidoo

Seth Godin is widely known as one of the foremost advocates of “permission marketing,” promotional campaigns that don’t rely on interrupting the attention of your customers, but rather engage them and even turn them into enthusiastic advocates that volunteer time and effort to help you promote your products or services.

This article is from Search Engine Land by Chris Sherman

More Information on Social Search Service Squidoo

What are the common words that vex our searchers? We applied our best spell checking skills to the data and came up with this list of the top 20 misspelled words in Search…

Everyone has certain words they struggle to spell correctly. Mine happens to be (unfortunitley) doh When it comes to spelling, we’re not perfect—you can count on us to occasionally botch recieve (sic), thier (sic), and relavant (sic).

The superb spellers at the Bee (Scripps National Spelling Bee) will rake in even more What’s Hot Today this year with the finals being televised in prime time on ABC. Searches on “spelling bee” have doubled over the last week and we’ve seen related search spikes on “national spelling bee,” “spelling words,” and “commonly misspelled words.”

1. Wallmart (Wal-Mart)
2. Rachel Ray (Rachael Ray)
3. Amtrack (Amtrak)
4. Hillary Duff (Hilary Duff)
5. Katherine McPhee (Katharine McPhee)
6. Britany Spears (Britney Spears)
7. Geneology (Genealogy)
8. Jaime Pressley (Jaime Pressly)
9. Volkswagon (Volkswagen)
10. Wikepedia (Wikipedia)
11. William Sonoma (Williams-Sonoma)
12. Tatoo (Tattoo)
13. Travelosity (Travelocity)
14. Elliot Yamin (Elliott Yamin)
15. Kiera Knightley (Keira Knightley)
16. Kelly Pickler (Kellie Pickler)
17. Brittney Spears (Britney Spears)
18. Avril Lavinge (Avril Lavigne)
19. Rianna (Rihanna)
20. Jordan Sparks (Jordin Sparks)

What words give you the most trouble? We’d love to know. Leave us a coment beelow... Sorry I can’t help myself. hehe

In its latest technological leap, Google will begin showing videos on its main results page along with photos, books and other content previously separated into different categories. Let me break it down for you… Google is basically combining all their search records (Search, News, Video and Images) on to one page. Which means they are saying they figured out how to identify the type of search-query entered and provide a single set of results that it is confident will include all the information you could possibly want.

The problem with that is now we (SEO Community) have to compete with all 5 results shoved onto one page that only has 10 spots! We will be forced to either stick with web search (4 or 5 spots) or figure out how to optimize content such as photos, videos and news items.

The other big news within the story is Google plans on showing Video ads on it result page!

Social Media Optimization (SMO) or Social Bookmarking is a new tool within the search engine optimization professional toolbox. Social Book Marking, is the term used for bookmarking sites on the web and sharing them with friends, peers and family members. Have you ever booked marked a site using your browser by adding it to your favorites? It’s that easy, but now you can share those bookmarks within a community of friends.

These are some popular social bookmarking site.
http://www.foxmarks.com
http://www.del.icio.us
http://www.digg.com
http://www.furl.net
http://www.myweb2.search.yahoo.com
http://www.simpy.com
http://www.blogmarks.net
http://www.feedmarker.com
http://www.lookmarks.com

Get more Social Media Links

Most of these Social Bookmarking services are free of charge. All you have to do is create a free account or install a browser plug-in at which point you can begin adding bookmarks to your account. The cool part is now you have the chance to share them with friends at the same time being able to access them from any browser window.

Let’s look at why social book-marking is so useful for SEO purposes?

Social bookmarking sites are “tag based”- which means you can “tag” them with keywords so your visitors that bookmark your site can find them easily later. Here comes the good part, the Search Engines actually index these tags at the same time the spider the link, which means you are getting a free one-way links from high-traffic sites. Remember your keywords are attached to them, so choosing the proper tag name is critical it plays a very important role in your book marking campaign
.
Not to mention it’s a great way to get your website customers/surfers working for you. In addition when a visitor bookmarks your site, the Social Bookmarking services checks the tag to see if the link already exists. One way to make the system work in your favor is to changing your bookmark tags. This way you can get multiple links with different tags on the same site. Pretty cool huh? Because these sites are regularly crawled by search engines, your site will most likely be crawled more often.

So get out that start playing with those social bookmarking services, its funs and easy!

Perhaps the whole sex video-as-path-to-stardom thing isn’t so bad after all. Well, there is the whole losing-of-dignity issue, but who needs dignity when you can reap publicity? Searches on socialite Kim Kardashian soared in February when a purloined sex tape made the rounds online and on DVD.

At the time, we figured she’d slip her lacy undergarments back on and slink off into obscurity. However, Kardashian has displayed startling staying power in Search thanks in part to gossip blogs. The wags of the Web have been fueled by the story of the fame-hungry gal and her flings.

Thanks to her infamy, the brunette stunner has set up shop in our top 2,000 search terms and her latest beau caused Buzz to boil over. Rumors of a relationship with Saints star running back Reggie Bush caused a 139% increase in Kardashian searches. Of course, related searches on Kim “pictures,” “video,” and “nude” all jumped in the wake of this tantalizing tidbit.

As for Bush, queries on the former Heisman winner leapt 78% and related lookups on “reggie bush dating,” “reggie bush girlfriend,” and “reggie bush photos” all made strides in Search.

What’s next for Kim? Blue skies and puppy dogs. Vivid Video reached a settlement with her and will stop distributing her sex tape at the end of May. And with the elusive Bush by her side, she’s ready to break out big in What’s Hot Today yet again.

Everything warms up in the summer, and that includes music festivals. As the Toledo Blade calculated recently, why pay for multiple, high-priced concerts when you can see a couple hundred bands in one bacchanalian weekend?

The big opening acts in Search were Coachella in the west, and New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in the south. Now that fans have been warmed up, they’re checking out line-ups, ticket prices and dates for monumental summer gatherings. The family metal affair Ozzfest leads the top 10 sought-after shows, noted below. Yes, we know it’s a traveling tour, but we can’t resist a free show…

1. Ozzfest (July 12 kick-off, 24 cities). The musical circus offers the best deal of the summer: free. You still need to get the tickets to see Lamb of God, Lordi, Circus Diablo and the wizard of Ozzfest himself.
2. Summerfest (June 28-July 8, Milwaukee). The 40th anniversary features wildly diverse fare including Violent Femmes, Def Leppard, Weird Al, Tool, Bon Jovi, BB King, Lupe Fiasco, and INXS.
3. Bonnaroo (June 14-17, Manchester, Tenn.) The Police headline a massive force, which includes Ziggy Marley, Wolfmother, Ben Harper, and comedians like Lewis Black.
4. Lollapalooza (August 3-5, Chicago). The line-up includes Pearl Jam, Modest Mouse, Amy Winehouse, and Lupe Fiasco.
5. Rock Fest (July 19-22, Cadott, Wisc.) The concert gives us a KISS, as well as acts like Chicago, Hinder, Third Eye Blind
6. Rock on the Range (May 19, Columbus) Tickets are sold out for the marquee that features Hinder, ZZ Top, Papa Roach, and Evanesence.
7. Virgin Festival (August 4-5, Baltimore) The Police take the lead, but other worthy acts include Beastie Boys, Amy Winehouse, and The Smashing Pumpkins.
8. Essence Music Festival (July 5-7, Atlanta) A powerhouse who’s who line-up includes Ciara, Ludacris, Beyonce, Ne-Yo, Mary J. Blige, and Chris Brown.
9. Live 105 BFD 07 (June 9, Mountain View, California) Strutting onto the main stage will be Queens of the Stone Age, Social Distortion, and Bloc Party.
10. Rock the Bells Festival (July 28 New York, August 11 San Bernardino, August 18 San Francisco) Deemed the hip-hop version of Coachella, the three-part series features headliners Rage Against the Machine and the Wu-Tang Clan.

I recently was present with this question… “How do you measure link building success and effectiveness?” The marketing world is filled with various metrics. Quantifying SEO can be challenging and you’ll see why. An easy answer would be for me to say by search rank improvement or click traffic. Unfortunately, it is a little harder then that because these are moving targets ever changing which means nobody knows where they are headed. A link that is giving me or my client’s page one rank today might stop helping tomorrow. This is why you can’t count on the algorithms of tomorrow, because they are always changing. In addition the click traffic you get from social media sites such as “Digg” or “Stumble Upon” will decompose over time.

For every online promotion there is somebody somewhere wanting to measure it from basic questions to hardcore metrics. Questions like did it work? How? In what way? And why? Why didn’t it work? Do you think we can make it work? For many they want a solid measure for ROI. This is the hard part, because it’s easier to measure for some online marketing promotions then others. When it comes to measuring marketing effectiveness such as email, PPC campaigns, banner ads and various media buys it can be tested, tweaked measured, re-measured and compared to other past marketing campaigns.

However link building is a different kind of animal, measuring ROI is much more difficult. In order to measure it you end up having to employ linking strategy that are ineffective, but are measurable.

An example is buying a link building package from a link broker. A link broker is a service where you will get x number of links for y number of dollars. That’s an ROI you can measure. The problem is most of these links are not relevant to your content, its subject, intended audience and purpose. This does not make packaged link building services bad or wrong, it makes them somewhat ineffective.

In house link building is where you find sites that are truly relevant to your content. The real value of any link must is proportionate to how much work I had to do to identify and evaluate its potential, plus the work the webmaster of the other website had to do in order to add my link on their page. Yes there are a handful of exceptions, but let’s keep it “White Hat” for now. With that said, true value link building requires spending serious time doing research and web surfing to find the most relevant and legitimate websites to obtain a link from. Then you have no assurance you will even get the link. The other webmaster of said site has to make a qualitative decision about whether or not you website deserves a link or how much to charge you for said link.

When it comes to SEO and link building it very much part science and part feeling. Who’s to say what a proper link building package should be for one site versus another site? What’s the magic number of inbound links to get you placed on page one of Google? How many PR 5 sites lining to yours will help you move up the SE rankings. Some links that send you absolutely zero click traffic will have tremendous impact on your search rank, and some links do nothing to help your search rank but send you a steady flow of targeted click traffic. But which ones and how many and how do you get them and how long will it take?

These are just some of the innate challenges of measuring link building accurately. I know it’s frustrating and I know we all long for spreadsheets and charts and graphs that always go upwards and to the right. But don’t let the pursuit of statistical satisfaction get in the way of the reality, and don’t believe bundled and packaged link building approaches will be the key to your success.

As the teen drama “One Tree Hill” comes to an end of its 4th season, crazed fans are asking, “Will The CW bring the show back for a fifth go-round?”

Network executives are debating if there is enough love to keep “One Tree Hill” afloat, however search says something different. People searching the term “One Tree Hill” is in the top 900 searches for today, buzz about the show remains extremely strong.

Obviously teens are making up the most enthusiastic searches for the series; however interest extends up through the 25 to 29 year old age bracket. Nevertheless leave the men out of this report. Searchers for “One Tree Hill” skew primarily female.

The question still remains Will “One Tree Hill” remain standing—or will it fall? Either way, it’s What’s Hot Today.

Part 1 of 3

How do I get to the top of the Search Engines naturally? Or more accurately “What are the ranking factors that determine my position in the organic listings for a precise keyword or phrase and what is their relative importance?”

These two questions are on the minds of everybody who is trying their hand at Internet Marketing. The big trend taking place is Natural SEO or Search Engine Optimization as known as Organic SEO. So let’s work through some answers.

To be truthful, the only people who can answer this question honestly are the search engine engineers who are making the rules each and every day. However, I have over 5 years of experience of working knowledge not to mention every once in a while we will get a disclosure from the Search Engines themselves. I am also a ferocious reader of all things SEO/SEM related. I have compiled a comprehensive list of the most important factors which determine position in the various SERP’s.

Let’s first explore, what determines ranking position in the natural position.

Ranking for a particular keyword or phrase is dependent on the search engine ranking algorithms. Lets start from the beginning, but don’t worry I won’t get to deep into search algorithms.

Once you enter a search query and hit submit an algorithm uses various rules to identify the most relevant pages, based on the Keyword Use Factors, Page Attributes, Site/Domain Attributes, Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes and various outside influences such as inbound links. Inbound links also known as (IBL’s) indicated by links from other pages and sites to your website.

Every search engine uses its own set of algorithms. Some of the smaller SE’s use the other larger SE’s as their engine. To see a graphic example check out this Search Engine Decoder. The algorithms are always striving to produce the best relevance to better server its user. These algorithms have developed over the past ten years based on a long history of indexing and retrieval history. Search engine engineers are consistently refining the process and change it. However, these search engines tend to use common search engine ranking factors. Ok… Ok… I hear you out there saying get with the ranking factors already!

Now for the four key ranking factors and sub factors…

1. Keyword Use Factors

2. Page Attributes

3. Site/Domain Attributes

4. Inbound Link Attribute

In the next article I will touch upon each of these sub ranking factors (part 2 of 3). The following article I will discuss “Negative Crawling/Ranking Attributes.”(part 3 of 3)

Please bookmark the site and come back soon!

NOTE: This is not a document that attempts to reverse-engineer Google’s algorithm, nor does it attempt to inform web developers or marketers about how to optimize their sites.