SEOTops

Google’s Universal Search and other search engines’ blended search prefers different kinds of content that is a combination of news, images, PDF documents and video. A screen shot or even an immaculately drawn diagram or flow chart speaks volumes to aid written passages for any specified topic. These accompanying aids changes the scenario prompting better optimization, changes the equation for SEO as different kinds of content turn up in a blended search by the browsers. An article on suppose ‘Affiliate marketing’ can accompany a flow chart showing relationship and transaction between the Brand Seller, Affiliate and Customer. A topic on ‘Tubers of a Potato’ can depict images and even an video to describe the look and feel of a tuber. Hence if content on your website is totally based on text your website could be alloted a lower position in in the search engine results pages leading to fewer visitors resulting in dwindling of hit count.

Google and the other search engines have begun displaying blended results containing more than mere text for the ensuing search terms provided by the net browsers.. You can still perform specific searches for videos, images and blogs, however Google’s universal Search lets you to find them in general results as well. Hence your SEO strategy needs to keep pace with these changes to adapt to the circumstances for accomplishing the desired results of seeing your website at the top of the heap for relevant search terms. These kinds of results can turn up for just about anything now. Hence a search term can spurn up a variety of information reaching out to us through various forms of media like image results, text based articles, a link to a YouTube video and some precise flow diagrams to get the point across.

What do we seek to learn from this change in Google’s Universal search? It is becoming impossible to get in text-based results into a good position on Google, but they are definitely going to be pushed down the order to accommodate more informative websites with a variety of aids to their credit. Even if you have worked hard towards your good position, you now need to spend many hours creating not only good content utilizing SEO techniques to optimize your web site but also be on your toes to flexibly adapt to changing trends to retain your indomitable position. So, mix it up and mix it well and having a different approach is the key to it.

The unimaginably growing complexity of web design and its related activities have necessitated the proper usage of two files namely robots.txt and .htaccess.

To start from the beginning let us say that both the files can be created using any text editor such as notepad and both of them must be placed in the root folder of your web server which implies that whenever your are opening the file system of your host, these two files must be visible to you. Please note that some web servers prefer to keep the .htacces file hidden. BUT search engine crawlers and spiders can easily trace them.

Let us now try to define the individual purpose. Robots.txt basically controls the movement of the robots, sent by the search engines, inside the existing file system of your web server. So, if you want some prohibitions, you can mention it in robots.txt. You can even customize the robots.txt according to your needs. On the other hand .htaccess file primarily serves the purpose of URL redirection and module rewrite.

Let us take an example: while revamping your website, you want to omit some of your old pages, which had been already crawled by the search engines. Now, such sudden omissions of web pages, which have been already crawled, casts a tremendous negative impact and they treat it as unfounded tagging the infamous URL Not found. The best way is to redirect the old pages intelligently to the existing pages, so that crawlers don’t fall in a soup, instead they find a landing platform, wherein they also redirect the visitors.

Module Rewrite has gained importance when people have started noticing that search engines prefer user friendly URLs instead of automated URLs generated by several programs. This is worth mentioning that even popular software packages like PHPLd and WordPress also have kept provision for module rewritten URLs to earn you the additional advantage of generating Search Engine friendly URLs.

It is to be mentioned that the presence of either robots.txt or .htaccess is mandatory in your web server, but it gives you a complete control over the web server and moreover you can dictate the crawlers and spiders in your own way.

Just as any title by default shows the inner meaning of the content so also web pages have relevant titles. A web page containing a title ‘Professional web solutions provider’ implies that the page is going to talk about web solutions and associated fields. Along with the ages search engine crawlers and spiders have also started emphasizing on the title as a gateway to the content of that page.

Today there are several web tools to cross check the relevance of a title with its attached content as well as stipulations have been imposed by the browsers regarding the permissible width of a title. Hence, the title does not mean only the collection of asymmetric words or keywords rather the challenge is to make the title meaningful and attractive to the visitors as well as to the search engines remaining within the limited character length as stipulated by most of the common browsers.

Here comes the role of CMS or most reputed link directories or customized software which can automate the title without or with very little intervention of the site owner or webmaster. Most of the CMS packages acquire meaningful keywords or sentences to build up the titles unless exclusively mentioned otherwise. This is to be noted that CMS, link directory or customized software prefer to use the category name or the name of the post header/article in the title. Some of them also embed name of their own software in the title. The significant disadvantage of this method being the appearance of the software name in the title page dilutes one’s potential or dignity a bit. While on the other hand the advantage being the popularity of the software increases the chance of your page being touched upon by a wide gamut of visitors who prefer to search by the name of the software or associated keywords.

Usage of popular software as a web development tool has been found to work positively even in the eyes of the search engines. So why not give it a try?

Google stated to the LA Times reporter that they were more than willing to work with online privacy officials regarding the online privacy of online users.  Privacy protection officials claim Google is holding user information and cookies for up to 2 years.  Google was warned in May of 2007 that they may be in violation of user privacy rules making Google be one of the first engines to cut down the time they store cookies to 18 months and later to 13 months as time passes.  (Imagine Google being the one being warned!)

The new requirements are recommending that Google and other search engines should only store cookies for up to 6 months.

This could play a big factor in Google’s current ways of providing users with targeted ads.

Google was reported last Friday to say they were looking forward to helping the online privacy officials to explore ways to improve privacy online for all internet users.

As an Internet user myself, I have to wonder what way Google will use to get around this so they can continue to target users with geographically correct advertisements, as I know this is a big business for Google and it’s advertisers currently.  Will it be an opt in to Google Ads? Or will they just simply have to reset the cookies once every 6 months in order to comply with the privacy issues under the gun?