Ten Tips for Writing Press Releases which are effective from SEO Superstars
1. Remember that you’re trying to grab the reader’s attention and you want them to read the whole story.
2. Aim your content within the first paragraph at your target audience.
3. Get two or three different opinions on your press release, get some feedback off of other team members.
4. Ensure your content is written well and proof read it before posting it.
5. Don’t use confusing words; keep things simple and easy to understand.
6. Only state true facts and stay away from talking nonsense.
7. Make plenty of contact options available to the reader i.e. email, phone, fax and so on.
8. Ensure there applicable hyperlinks in your news article, this will take the reader to your site where it will be possible for them to learn more about the product or services you offer.
9. Make certain that if a reporter/journalist was to use your press release to produce an article that all essential and interesting information is present.
10. Start the press release with the most interesting piece of the article, after this, add the major news item, and then finally speak of the Organization that brings the story to the readers.
Friday 21 December 2007
Tuesday 11 December 2007
Most Commonly Used SEO Terms
Link Text/Anchor Text
Link Text/Anchor text refers to the text around which the hyperlink is placed. For example:
[a href="http://www.seosuperstars.blogspot.com/"]Link Text/Anchor Text[/a]
Bot/Spider
Bot is short for robot. Refers to a program created by the owners of a search engine that crawls the web. Spiders/bots differ in function, from producing e-mail addresses for spammers to cataloguing web pages for search engines.
Cloaking
Cloaking refers to the practice of showing a different page to a human visitor and a different page to a search engine spider. This practice is misused by spammers to stuff keywords. Cloaking violates the Terms of Service for the majority of search engines and may even get your site banned.
Conversion
Conversion relates to traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as purchases made on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to moderate the efficiency and return on investment (and ROI) of pay per click (PPC) and other marketing operations.
Back Link
A link on another webpage which points to the to another webpage, also known as an inbound link.
CPC
Means Cost Per Click. Used to measure the amount agreed to by the PPC campaigner and search engine when bidding for keywords.
CTA
Stands for Content Targeted Advertising. It refers to the placement of PPC ads relevant to the landing pages of a link.
CTR
Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
Doorway Page
Same as67 a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific key-phrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
FFA
Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
Gateway Page
Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
IBL
Abbreviation for In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.
Keyword/Keyphrase
Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.
Link Farm
A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Mirror
In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/keyphrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
PFI
Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.
Portal
Designation for websites that are either authoritative hubs for a given subject or popular content driven sites (like Yahoo) that people use as their homepage. Most portals offer significant content and offer advertising opportunities for relevant sites.
PPC
Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.
PR
Abbreviation for PageRank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.
SEM
Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)
SEO
Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of
making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases
SERP
Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.
Spam
In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning.
Spamdexing
Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine's index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Spider
Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Spider Trap
A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and "ban") spiders that do not respect robots.txt.
White hat
An ethical SEO method that follows search engine TOS.
Grey hat
An SEO using both methods.
Link building
A method of creating back-links to your own website.
Stop Word
Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as "the".
Black hat
This is Unethical SEO. Search Engine Optimization techniques that defy search engine TOS.
I hope you found these helpful. There was no body there to help me understand the meaning of the majority of these words, I had to learn what they meant the hard way.
Link Text/Anchor text refers to the text around which the hyperlink is placed. For example:
[a href="http://www.seosuperstars.blogspot.com/"]Link Text/Anchor Text[/a]
Bot/Spider
Bot is short for robot. Refers to a program created by the owners of a search engine that crawls the web. Spiders/bots differ in function, from producing e-mail addresses for spammers to cataloguing web pages for search engines.
Cloaking
Cloaking refers to the practice of showing a different page to a human visitor and a different page to a search engine spider. This practice is misused by spammers to stuff keywords. Cloaking violates the Terms of Service for the majority of search engines and may even get your site banned.
Conversion
Conversion relates to traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as purchases made on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to moderate the efficiency and return on investment (and ROI) of pay per click (PPC) and other marketing operations.
Back Link
A link on another webpage which points to the to another webpage, also known as an inbound link.
CPC
Means Cost Per Click. Used to measure the amount agreed to by the PPC campaigner and search engine when bidding for keywords.
CTA
Stands for Content Targeted Advertising. It refers to the placement of PPC ads relevant to the landing pages of a link.
CTR
Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
Doorway Page
Same as67 a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific key-phrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
FFA
Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
Gateway Page
Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
IBL
Abbreviation for In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.
Keyword/Keyphrase
Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.
Link Farm
A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Mirror
In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/keyphrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
PFI
Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.
Portal
Designation for websites that are either authoritative hubs for a given subject or popular content driven sites (like Yahoo) that people use as their homepage. Most portals offer significant content and offer advertising opportunities for relevant sites.
PPC
Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.
PR
Abbreviation for PageRank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.
SEM
Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)
SEO
Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of
making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases
SERP
Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.
Spam
In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning.
Spamdexing
Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine's index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Spider
Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Spider Trap
A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and "ban") spiders that do not respect robots.txt.
White hat
An ethical SEO method that follows search engine TOS.
Grey hat
An SEO using both methods.
Link building
A method of creating back-links to your own website.
Stop Word
Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as "the".
Black hat
This is Unethical SEO. Search Engine Optimization techniques that defy search engine TOS.
I hope you found these helpful. There was no body there to help me understand the meaning of the majority of these words, I had to learn what they meant the hard way.
Thursday 6 December 2007
10 Press Release Writing Tips
1. First sentences need to grab the readers' attention and make them want to read the news story to the end.
2. Content within the first paragraph should be aimed at your target audience and should be interesting.
3. Get two (2) or three (3) second opinions on your press release by people in a similar industry.
4. Ensure content is written well and proof read for any mistakes that could make it seem un-professional.
5. Language must be kept simple so that everyone reading it understands it fully.
6.Don't make things up, state facts only.
7. Provide the reader with as many options to contact you with as possible, email phone, fax.....
8. Ensure you there are relevant links in the article to take the reader to your website where they can learn more about what you're writing about.
9. Ensure that all necessary and newsworthy information is included so that if journalists wanted to use your article for their press release so that they would not feel let down.
10. Start the press release with text which grabs the readers attention, thenyour main news and then speak about wherethe article came from and who is responsible for it, ie "YOU/YOUR SITE".
2. Content within the first paragraph should be aimed at your target audience and should be interesting.
3. Get two (2) or three (3) second opinions on your press release by people in a similar industry.
4. Ensure content is written well and proof read for any mistakes that could make it seem un-professional.
5. Language must be kept simple so that everyone reading it understands it fully.
6.Don't make things up, state facts only.
7. Provide the reader with as many options to contact you with as possible, email phone, fax.....
8. Ensure you there are relevant links in the article to take the reader to your website where they can learn more about what you're writing about.
9. Ensure that all necessary and newsworthy information is included so that if journalists wanted to use your article for their press release so that they would not feel let down.
10. Start the press release with text which grabs the readers attention, thenyour main news and then speak about wherethe article came from and who is responsible for it, ie "YOU/YOUR SITE".
Wednesday 7 November 2007
3 HTML Tags To Remember
The Title Tag
The Title Tag is the first most essential bit of information you should provide for the Google-bots. When the Google-bots read the title tag they take it to be relevant to the topic, and content within the web-page.
A lot of webmasters simply don’t understand the importance of having a Title Tag which is relevant to its content, and just forget to put one in.
In some cases, people will put the title tags in the wrong part of they’re code, halfway down the page. The Title Tag should be the first tag placed in the head section of the code, in it you should put your most important keywords consisting of between 40 and 60 characters, which includes spaces too.
The Description Tag
The Description Tag which looks like this: META NAME=”description” content=”This is where the description of your page goes”.
This is important because the Google-Bots take this to be the description of the page it belongs to, and quite often will display the information in this tag on the search results when someone enters a search query using the keywords which match those words in the description tag.
Many people do what they did with the title tag, put it half way down the code, or just make it completely irrelevant. The Description Tag should be the next tag under the Title Tag in the head/head section of the code, and keep in mind that the content of the Description Tag should be no more than 250 characters, which includes spaces too.
The Keywords Tag
The Keywords Tag which looks like this: META NAME=”keywords” content=”This is where your keywords go”,can still play a role in some search engines, although it is widely believed that Google doesn’t rate it any more. Never the less, by using the Keyword Tag you will not lose any thing, you can only gain, so include it in all your pages. There are still some search engines that use will use the content of the Keywords Tag to determine the content of a web-page.
The Keywords Tag should contain no more than 10-12 keywords, separate all keywords with a comma and a space, ensure that you use those keywords which are present in the content of the page too, do not repeat your key-words, always use lowercase lettering in the Keywords Tag, and make sure that all Keywords Tags are relevant to each page.
The Title Tag is the first most essential bit of information you should provide for the Google-bots. When the Google-bots read the title tag they take it to be relevant to the topic, and content within the web-page.
A lot of webmasters simply don’t understand the importance of having a Title Tag which is relevant to its content, and just forget to put one in.
In some cases, people will put the title tags in the wrong part of they’re code, halfway down the page. The Title Tag should be the first tag placed in the head section of the code, in it you should put your most important keywords consisting of between 40 and 60 characters, which includes spaces too.
The Description Tag
The Description Tag which looks like this: META NAME=”description” content=”This is where the description of your page goes”.
This is important because the Google-Bots take this to be the description of the page it belongs to, and quite often will display the information in this tag on the search results when someone enters a search query using the keywords which match those words in the description tag.
Many people do what they did with the title tag, put it half way down the code, or just make it completely irrelevant. The Description Tag should be the next tag under the Title Tag in the head/head section of the code, and keep in mind that the content of the Description Tag should be no more than 250 characters, which includes spaces too.
The Keywords Tag
The Keywords Tag which looks like this: META NAME=”keywords” content=”This is where your keywords go”,can still play a role in some search engines, although it is widely believed that Google doesn’t rate it any more. Never the less, by using the Keyword Tag you will not lose any thing, you can only gain, so include it in all your pages. There are still some search engines that use will use the content of the Keywords Tag to determine the content of a web-page.
The Keywords Tag should contain no more than 10-12 keywords, separate all keywords with a comma and a space, ensure that you use those keywords which are present in the content of the page too, do not repeat your key-words, always use lowercase lettering in the Keywords Tag, and make sure that all Keywords Tags are relevant to each page.
Wednesday 31 October 2007
Tips on How to Select the Right Keywords
Has your site been indexed by the search engines? I know it’s not easy to get your site indexed, so I’m going to give you a few little tips which will help the search engines give your site some relevance.
An important element of getting your site indexed by the search engines is to have the right keywords, and many people have no idea of how to select the right keywords, so here’s a tip on how t choose the right keywords.
To start with, log onto www.overture.com. What you’ll see is a tool in which you type in a keyword, and it will give you the figure of how many searches were made for that word.
Select “Advertiser Center” at the top of the page on the right hand side.
Then, near the top of the page, select “Tools”.
Next, in the new page that pops up, select “Term Selection Tool”
Now, in the search box that appears, enter a Keyword or Key-phrase that you think that your target audience might use when searching for your product/service, and click on “Enter”.
You will now see a list related search terms, with the number of searches made in a 1 month time frame.
It might just be that you’ve chose a good keyword, or it may be that there are a better choice of keywords that you’ve come across.
Select the Keywords you wish to target, and now analyze the web-page which is offering the service or product. Ensure that your chosen keywords are present in the various Headings tags, and in the main content. This will ensure that the Google Spiders index your web-pages and show them on the search results pages when someone makes a relevant search query.
An important element of getting your site indexed by the search engines is to have the right keywords, and many people have no idea of how to select the right keywords, so here’s a tip on how t choose the right keywords.
To start with, log onto www.overture.com. What you’ll see is a tool in which you type in a keyword, and it will give you the figure of how many searches were made for that word.
Select “Advertiser Center” at the top of the page on the right hand side.
Then, near the top of the page, select “Tools”.
Next, in the new page that pops up, select “Term Selection Tool”
Now, in the search box that appears, enter a Keyword or Key-phrase that you think that your target audience might use when searching for your product/service, and click on “Enter”.
You will now see a list related search terms, with the number of searches made in a 1 month time frame.
It might just be that you’ve chose a good keyword, or it may be that there are a better choice of keywords that you’ve come across.
Select the Keywords you wish to target, and now analyze the web-page which is offering the service or product. Ensure that your chosen keywords are present in the various Headings tags, and in the main content. This will ensure that the Google Spiders index your web-pages and show them on the search results pages when someone makes a relevant search query.
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