What is working for SEO now

So how is everyone doing recently? Have you ever felt SEO is getting harder and harder. What used to work well for SEO nowadays is falling out of the picture. Here is a list of techniques that used to work well:

-excessive keywords repetition in webpage

-social bookmarking site like digg.com

-buying links from other websites

-commenting on blogs

Although some of the techniques listed above are still worth trying, how effective it would be is unknown. Personally, i have been searching for new ideas and techniques that adapted well to Google's change. One thing that i have recently started to adopt is the creation of sub-domains. First of all, these squidoo like sites usually have a very high homepage PR and therefore that PR can get transferred over to the sub-domain over time if you can keep the page fresh and unique. Secondly, a lot of sites usually have "do-follow" link, which is much more valuable than "no-follow" links. There are so many websites that let user generate their own contents and their sub-domains, one of the sites I would recommend is weebly.com. So take the action and get your keywords picked before it is too late.

External Factors for Search Ranking Position

Reciprocal Links
A long time ago, webmasters used to trade links strategically to achieve radical improvements in rankings. This created an artificial number of self-serving votes. Over time, search engines became wiser and they devalued such reciprocal links. In response, search engine marketers created link-exchanging schemes with multiple parties to avoid detection. Modern search engines can detect such simple subterfuge as well. That is not to say that reciprocal linking is bad, but it should be balanced by several one-way links as well. The combination of the two models something more natural-looking and will result in higher ranking.

Number of Links on a Page
A link on a page with few outbound links is generally worth more than a link on a page with many outbound links. This concept is also implied by the formula for Google’s PageRank.

Semantic Relationship among Links on a Page
A search engine may assume that a page with many links to pages that are not semantically related is a links page, or some sort of page designed to manipulate rankings or trade links. It is also believed that even naming a page with the word “links” in it, such as links.php, may actually devalue links contained within that particular page. So do name your URL wisely such as resources.

IP Addresses of Cross-Linked Sites
It is sometimes useful to think of an IP address as you do a phone number. For this example’s sake, format a hypothetical phone number, (123) 555-1212, differently—as if it were an IP:
IP addresses located in the same C class — that is, addresses that match for the first three
octets (xxx.xxx.xxx.*) — are very likely to be nearby, perhaps even on the same server.
When sites are interlinked with many links that come from such similar IP addresses, they will be regarded suspiciously, and those links may be devalued. For example, a link from domainA on 100.100.1.1 to domainB on 100.100.1.2 is a link between two such sites. Done excessively, this can be an indicator for artificial link schemes meant to manipulate the rankings of those web sites.

TLD of Domain Name for a Link
It is widely believed that .edu and .gov domain names are less susceptible to manipulation and therefore weighed more heavily. This is disputed by some search engine marketers as the actual factor, and they assert that the same effect may be as a result of the age (most schools and governmental agencies have had sites for a while), and amount of links that they’ve acquired over time. It is mostly irrelevant, however, what the underlying reason is. Getting a link from a site that fits this sort of profile is very desirable — and most .edu and .gov domains do.

Link Location
Links prominently presented in content near the center of the page may be regarded by the search engines as more important. Links embedded in content presented near the bottom of a page are usually less important; and external links at the bottom of a page to semantically unrelated sites may, at worst, be a criterion for spam-detection. Presentation location is different than physical location. The physical location within the document was historically important, but is less of a factor more recently. Ideally, the primary content of a page should be early in the HTML source of a web page, as well as prominently displayed in the center region of a web page. More on this topic is discussed in Chapter 6, "SE-Friendly HTML and JavaScript."

External Links influcing the search engine ranking

Seeing so many subscribers still interested blog, i have decided to keep posting here. So welcome come back and let us learn more together. I am going to talk about the external factors can influence the search engine rankings of a web site today:
-Quantity, quality, and relevance of inbound links
- Link churn
- Link acquisition rate
- Link anchor text and surrounding copy
- Reciprocal links
- Number of links on a page
- Semantic relationships among links on a page
- IP addresses of cross-linked sites
-TLD of domain name for a link
- Link location
- Web standards compliance
- Detrimental “red-flag” factors

Quantity of Inbound Links
A site with many inbound links is likely to be relevant because many people voted for it by placing the link on their sites. There are some caveats here with regard to whether the links are detected to be part of an artificial link scheme, and quality is also a concern as explained in the next section. However, more is generally better.

Quality of Inbound Links
A popular web site that links to you prominently that itself has many inbound links and a good reputation is likely to mean more than a link from a random page from an unimportant web site with few links. There is no absolute definition that describes "quality." Search engines themselves struggle with this definition and use very complicated algorithms that implement an approximation of the human definition. Use your judgment and intuition.

Relevance of Inbound Links
A search engine is likely to view a link from a semantically related web page or site as more valuable than a link from a random unrelated one. Usually, a series of links with very similar anchor text from unrelated sources is an indicator of an artificial link scheme, and they may be devalued. Too many links from irrelevant sources may result in a penalty. This has led to speculation that competitors can hurt your web site by pointing many such links to your web site.

Link Churn
Links that appear and disappear on pages are likely to be part of a linking scheme. The rate at which these links appear and disappear is termed “link churn.” If this happens frequently, it may be regarded as spam. Those links will either be devalued, or at worst your web site will be regarded as spam and penalized. Unless you are participating in such a scheme, this should probably not be a concern.

Link Acquisition Rate
An algorithm may view the acquisition of many thousands of links by a new site as suspicious, if not also accompanied by relevant highly ranked authority sites. Usually this is an indicator of a linking scheme. This consideration was affirmed by Google engineer Matt Cutts in one of his videos at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-seo-answers-on-video/.

Link Anchor Text and Surrounding Copy
Inbound links that contain semantically related anchor text to the content they point to have a positive effect on rankings. The copy surrounding the link, if present, may also do the same. Some even posit that this copy is as important as the link anchor text itself. Links with such surrounding copy are widely believed to be valued more by search engines, because links without copy surrounding it are frequently purchased and/or less indicative of a vote.

I will discuss more tomorrow, so keep an eye on it.

It is time to move this blog

Well, I've had this blog for over a year I have decided that it is time to move this blog. For those of you who'd be still interested in the news of bestplatformbeds.com. you can check platform bed blog here. For those of you who would like to keep updated on SEO news and techniques. You are welcome to look at my new SEO blog here. I will keep it updated regularly and all suggestions are welcome.

Bedding Industry: One in Three of the Households Don't Buy

The article "buying gap data reveal big bedding opportunity" reported by FurnitureToday shows that the bedding has the third highest buy-shop ratio of 71%.

What does that mean? 71% of people who shop for bedding actually bought the item. This does look like a good number to most of the marketers. However, if we look at the other side of the story, there are 29% of people who just walked away. An estimated of 4.8 billion was lost last year in the bedding category.

That does represent an opportunity to the bedding industry. Before we start thinking about how the marketers can further bump the ratio up a bit, let us take a look at the main reasons that caused the "walk away without action taken":

• Many consumers are confused by the shopping experience. They see beds have very similar components but offer only slight differences
  
• They see beds that are almost the same with a large price gap
• They walk away for more choices, but at the end, they decide to delay the purchase

We should wait to see how the industry would handle this situation and whether they can make an improvement on the buy-shop ratio.

How important is a good night's sleep to people?

A few days ago, I read an article on cnn.com - "Is a good night's sleep worth $50,000?" that I think I should share with all my audiences here. First of all, I was really stunned by the fact that mattress is actually costing more than cars and college tuitions. Vividus bed, which was produced by the Swedish manufacturer Hastens, cost approximately $50,000. Can you imagine that? I am wondering what is the mark-up on this incredibly priced mattress? Is it 100%, 200% or even more than that....?



Not surprisingly, since people are valuing more towards a good night's sleep, the market value of the wholesale mattress industry has increased nearly 40 percent, climbing to $6.4 billion in 2005, according to the trade group International Sleep Products Association. The luxury market makes up much of the trend here. Premium-priced mattresses, which costs more than $1,000 -- represents 21 percent of sales in 2005.

The driving force of the supply has always been the demand. The higher demand to the luxury mattresses drives more and more manufacturers to focus on the luxury market. What's behind these high demands? It is not hard to notice that the high demand towards the luxury mattress signals that people are valuing a peaceful night's sleep over their hard-earned dollar.

Platform Bed Shopping Guide is Out of Sandbox

Well, all the hard work starts to pay off. I have found that the traffic to my site Platform Bed Shopping Guide got tripped during the last few weeks. What's all about that?

By using Google Analytics, I found 80% of the traffic is from Google search! Isn't that amazing? Specifically, I found that the key word "platform bed" and "platform beds" ranked #13 and #15 respectively. I used to have these key words ranked well on MSN and Yahoo, but I value the ranking much more when it is on Google simply it is so much harder to get ranked well on Google than on Yahoo and MSN.

So here I would like to take this chance to tell all the web masters that, keep working on your on-page and off-page optimization and do not give up simply because you did not see a boost of the ranking. If you keep adding fresh and quality content and building quality inbound links to your site, I promise that some day you will see your site get recognized by Google. Once Google recognize your site, sooner or later, Yahoo and MSN will pick it up.