Google treats hyphens as spaces. Google does not treat underscores as spaces. Because of this, the string “search_engine” will not show up in a search for “search engine”, but the string “search-engine” will show up in that search. The end result is that hyphens are much better, from an SEO perspective, than underscores. This rule seems to hold true for use in text, in file names, and in domain names.

Googlebot is the web crawler which Google uses to find web pages on the Internet. Googlebot is known by it’s referrer tag, which looks like this: Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) The Google AdSense Googlebot The Google AdSense bot is confusingly named and therefore causes frequent confusion as webmasters mistake it for Googlebot. The Google AdSense bot crawls web pages which contain Google AdSense advertisements, in order to determine what advertisements are most relevant for that page. The Google AdSense bots referrer tag looks like this: Mediapartners-Google/2.1 (+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html) Being visited by the Google Read More

SERPs are “Search Engine Result Pages” If a search engine user types in a search for “rubber baby buggy bumpers” and your web site is the first result, then you can be said to have the #1 SERP for “rubber baby buggy bumpers.” The whole purpose of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is cause web pages to rank highly in the SERPS. The higher your web pages rank in the SERPS for their chosen keywords, the more traffic your web site will receive. Tracking SERPs Check How can I track my Read More

OBL is “Out Bound Links” — these are links from your web site to other web sites. IBL is “In Bound Links” — these are links from other web sites to your web site. Inbound links are also referred to as “backlinks”. Inbound links are very important in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) because inbound links raise your Page Rank (PR), which in turn raises your SERPS.

Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique where one set of content is shown to human visitors and another set of content is shown to search engines. In cloaking, human visitors are shown the actual web page, but search engines are shown a web page which is full of spammy SEP techniques such as keyword stuffing. Cloaking by User Agent To effectively cloak a web page, the web server must be able to determine if the visitor is a human or a search engine. One technique for doing this is Read More

Doorway pages are pages which have been highly optimized for one specific search phrase and are designed to then redirect the web site visitor away to another web page. A web site which sells sporting goods might, for example, create one page which is focused completely on sleeping bags. The sleeping bags page would be designed to rank highly in the SERPS for the term “sleeping bags”. Once the user found this doorway page, however, he would be quickly converted to the main web site of the sporting good company. Read More

Writing press releases about your web site and submitting them to press release distribution services is a good way to market your web site. These press release distribution services will help you get in touch with your potential market: United States PR Newswire PRWeb Free Press Release Press Flash dime-co United Kingdom PR Newswire UK Pressbox.co.uk RealWire Response Resource Russia InThePress.ru A much larger list of press release sites can be found in the Press Release Sites thread at NetBuilders.

SEO, an abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization, is the practice of optimizing a website for web search engines. With a comprehensive optimization technique implemented on a website, the search engines will be able to index and crawl it in an effective way. The goal of website optimization is to get your website listed in the first several search results for particular keywords. There are two ways of optimizing a website for search engines: On-Page Optimization and Off-Page Optimization. On-Page Optimization On-Page optimization method includes webpage structure and content fine tuning. Read More

All modern search engines rely on a number and quality of inbound links when determining how high a particular web page should rank. Finding which sites link to a web page can help gauge how well the site is doing in terms of its link popularity, which helps in the process of optimising the site for search engine rankings. Here are a few ways you can find out which pages link to a given page. Finding Inbound Links Through Google To see inbound links for a page indexed in Google, Read More

These tools will help you keep track of where your pages rank for your defined keywords: SERPS Tool Search Engines Supported DigitalPoint Keyword Tracker Google Rank Monitor Google Top25Web Search Engine Ranking Report Google RankWhere Google, AltaVista, MSN, Alexa, Inktomi, Lycos, AllTheWeb Free Monitor for Google Google Google Rankings Google Mike’s Marketing Tools Search Engine Ranking Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Teoma Search Engine Position Checker Altavista, Excite, Google, Yahoo, HotBot, MSN, WiseNut, AllTheWeb, Teoma GoYa-Rank Google, Yahoo, MSN Yahoo Search Rankings Yahoo