Recent Articles From EvanCarmichael.com http://www.evancarmichael.com/ http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/What-to-look-for-in-an-SEO-Firm.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/What-to-look-for-in-an-SEO-Firm.html If you are looking to hire an SEO firm, here is some of what you want to look for in that firm. Keyword Research and Copywriting Skills Both SEO and search engine advertising require keyword research and copywriting skills. With ad copy, writers deal with only a limited set of words, including: http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Anchor-Text-How-Important-is-it-Anyway.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Anchor-Text-How-Important-is-it-Anyway.html What is Anchor Text? Anchor text is the hyper-linked text that allows the user to move around web sites. Anchor Text Relevancy From a search engine stand point it is important that the anchor text be relevant to the information that it points to. If it is it can improve your ranking in the search engines. So for example if your web site is dedicated to selling exercise videos and the page that you are going to point to has numerous articles on exercise videos then you have a high relevancy. http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Link-Popularity.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Link-Popularity.html Link building is a targeted way of building a web sites link popularity. You may ask why is link popularity important and why does my site need it? Good Question. And the answer is because search engines like Google put a lot of emphasis on inbound links that come into a web site. The anchor text that is used to point to that inbound web page should also match the optimized phrase for the page, but that's a different topic. Link building will over time get you to place better with the major search engines. http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Proper-Usage-of-Web-Site-Redirects-in-SEO.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Proper-Usage-of-Web-Site-Redirects-in-SEO.html The main reason to redirect anyone to another site or another page on a web site is because a page and or web site has moved. The redirect may point to another site or a subdirectory. You may also have different domain extensions like .net, .org, .info that you want to point to your main .com extension. There are numerous ways to redirect domains, but it's important to note the correct ways to do redirects. http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Does-a-Domain-Name-Help-with-Higher-Rankings.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Does-a-Domain-Name-Help-with-Higher-Rankings.html Based on the latest patent filing from Google the answer to this question is yes. Google states that how a site is hosted and the length of time that a domain name has been paid for does help in how a web site ranks. Google considers a domain name that has been paid for, for more than one year a more credible domain since throwaway domains are rarely used for more than one year. Google looks at the following information: http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/What-Does-Google-Look-for-in-Links.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/What-Does-Google-Look-for-in-Links.html Reading Google's patent filing it appears that they rely heavily on web site links and anchor text in their algorithm. The items below were some of the items the patent said they look for: http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Your-Firewall-Could-Get-You-Delisted.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Your-Firewall-Could-Get-You-Delisted.html Some web sites in the latest Google update were removed from top positions on Google that had been there for years. Webmasters were trying to figure out what had happened and couldn't figure it out. After further analysis of the web sites and the web servers that they were on it was determined that their firewall was blocking access to the robots.txt file which in turn was causing their site to be removed from the index. http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Should-Web-Sites-Use-Cloaking.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Should-Web-Sites-Use-Cloaking.html Strangely enough a lot of web site owners don't take the time to have their web pages optimized for the search engines. The effects of optimizing a web site will pay off greatly over time, but some webmasters not wanting to invest the time in proper optimization resort to cloaking. Cloaking is the design of special pages that are written for search engine spiders. They identify a spider based on a set of IP address's and return special optimized pages instead of what a web surfer would normally see. If the search engine catches the cloaked pages they will ban a site from their index. It is just a matter of time before a site that implements cloaked pages will be caught. http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Transferring-an-Existing-Domain-Name.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Transferring-an-Existing-Domain-Name.html How to transfer an existing domain name and keep your rankings If you have a web site that needs a new domain name due to rebranding or a change in company name, and you don't want to loose your current rankings in the search engines then this article is for you. Search engines don't recognize that your domain name has changed and they see a new domain name as a new domain which is subject to their aging delay which can put your rankings on hold for a period of 6 to 18 months depending. If you've worked hard to get your current web site traffic and rankings then of course you don't want to loose that. http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Carefully-Choose-to-Whom-You-Link-To.html http://www.evancarmichael.com/SEO/1229/Carefully-Choose-to-Whom-You-Link-To.html Websites that you link to create your neighborhood of websites if you will. If websites that you link to are known to be spammy websites by the search engines then the search engines may also think that your web site is spammy. Link farms would most likely be included as spammy websites.