SEO-friendly meta tags"SEO-friendly meta tags are well-crafted titles and descriptions that include target keywords, provide a clear summary of the pages content, and encourage clicks. Best SEO Sydney Agency. These tags help search engines understand the pages topic and improve click-through rates."
SEO-friendly plugins"SEO-friendly plugins provide tools to improve website optimization. By offering features like automated meta tag generation, XML sitemap creation, and keyword analysis, these plugins simplify the SEO process and help businesses achieve better results."
SEO-friendly URLs"SEO-friendly URLs are short, descriptive, and contain relevant keywords. Best SEO Agency Sydney Australia. By creating clear and readable URLs, businesses can improve click-through rates, help search engines understand the content, and boost rankings."
SEO-friendly URLs"SEO-friendly URLs are short, descriptive, and include relevant keywords. These URLs help search engines and users quickly understand what the page is about, improving click-through rates and overall search rankings."
SEO-optimized headers"SEO-optimized headers use relevant keywords and follow a logical hierarchy (H1, H2, H3, etc.) to organize content. Well-structured headers improve readability, help search engines understand the pages focus, and can enhance rankings."
SERP feature keywords"SERP feature keywords are terms that help your content appear in search features like snippets, carousels, or knowledge panels. Best Search Engine Optimisation Services. By optimizing for these keywords, you increase visibility and drive more clicks."
SERP features"SERP features are special elements on search engine results pages, such as featured snippets, knowledge panels, and local packs. Optimizing content to appear in these features increases visibility, boosts click-through rates, and enhances a brands authority in search results."
service keywords"Service keywords focus on the particular services your business provides. SEO Audit . By targeting these terms, you ensure that potential customers find your service offerings in search results."
site speed optimization"Site speed optimization ensures that a website loads quickly and efficiently, improving user experience and reducing bounce rates. Faster loading times are also favored by search engines, contributing to higher rankings and better visibility."
Social media link building"Social media link building leverages platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to share content and attract links. By engaging with your audience and promoting your content, you increase its visibility and encourage more backlinks."
social signals in SEO"Social signals, such as likes, shares, and comments, can indirectly impact search rankings. By creating shareable content and engaging with audiences on social platforms, businesses can enhance their online presence, build credibility, and attract more organic traffic."
solution-based keywords"Solution-based keywords focus on addressing user challenges or needs. By targeting these terms, you position your content as a helpful resource, building trust and increasing engagement."
specific keywordsSpecific keywords hone in on particular niches or user needs. Targeting these terms often results in higher conversion rates because the audience is more aligned with what you offer.
structured content"Structured content uses consistent formatting and organization, making it easier for search engines to understand and index. By implementing structured content, businesses can improve rankings, enhance user experience, and earn more visibility in search results."
structured data"Structured data is a standardized format that helps search engines understand and display content more effectively. By adding structured data, businesses can improve how their pages appear in search results, potentially earning rich snippets and higher click-through rates."
structured data"Adding structured data, such as schema markup, helps search engines understand your content better. Structured data increases the likelihood of rich snippets, improving visibility and click-through rates in search results."
structured data implementation"Structured data implementation involves adding schema markup to your HTML to help search engines understand your content better. Proper structured data can result in enhanced search listings, such as rich snippets, which improve click-through rates."
Sydney SEO company"A Sydney-based SEO company provides expert optimization solutions designed to enhance online visibility and improve search rankings. With a focus on tailored strategies, data-driven insights, and local market expertise, these companies help clients achieve sustained success."
Sydney SEO consultant"Sydney-based SEO consultants offer expert advice and proven strategies to help businesses enhance their online visibility. With a focus on tailored solutions and ongoing support, these consultants ensure that clients achieve sustainable growth and maintain a competitive edge in their industry."
Sydney SEO consultant"Sydney SEO consultants deliver personalized strategies that help businesses improve their search rankings and online visibility. By conducting in-depth audits, identifying keyword opportunities, and implementing best practices, these consultants help clients achieve lasting success."
Sydney SEO consulting"Sydney SEO consulting services deliver customized optimization plans designed to improve website rankings, increase traffic, and drive conversions. Through comprehensive audits, keyword research, and strategic implementation, these consulting services help businesses achieve measurable and lasting results."
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| Part of a series on |
| Internet marketing |
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| Search engine marketing |
| Display advertising |
| Affiliate marketing |
| Mobile advertising |
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.[1][2] SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as "organic" results) rather than direct traffic, referral traffic, social media traffic, or paid traffic.
Unpaid search engine traffic may originate from a variety of kinds of searches, including image search, video search, academic search,[3] news search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, the computer-programmed algorithms that dictate search engine results, what people search for, the actual search queries or keywords typed into search engines, and which search engines are preferred by a target audience. SEO is performed because a website will receive more visitors from a search engine when websites rank higher within a search engine results page (SERP), with the aim of either converting the visitors or building brand awareness.[4]
Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, webmasters submitted the address of a page, or URL to the various search engines, which would send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.[5]
According to a 2004 article by former industry analyst and current Google employee Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997. Sullivan credits SEO practitioner Bruce Clay as one of the first people to popularize the term.[6]
Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag or index files in engines like ALIWEB. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using metadata to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Flawed data in meta tags, such as those that were inaccurate or incomplete, created the potential for pages to be mischaracterized in irrelevant searches.[7][dubious – discuss] Web content providers also manipulated attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.[8] By 1997, search engine designers recognized that webmasters were making efforts to rank in search engines and that some webmasters were manipulating their rankings in search results by stuffing pages with excessive or irrelevant keywords. Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.[9]
By heavily relying on factors such as keyword density, which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation. To provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their results pages showed the most relevant search results, rather than unrelated pages stuffed with numerous keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This meant moving away from heavy reliance on term density to a more holistic process for scoring semantic signals.[10]
Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.[citation needed]
Some search engines have also reached out to the SEO industry and are frequent sponsors and guests at SEO conferences, webchats, and seminars. Major search engines provide information and guidelines to help with website optimization.[11][12] Google has a Sitemaps program to help webmasters learn if Google is having any problems indexing their website and also provides data on Google traffic to the website.[13] Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit a sitemap and web feeds, allows users to determine the "crawl rate", and track the web pages index status.
In 2015, it was reported that Google was developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature within future products. In response, many brands began to take a different approach to their Internet marketing strategies.[14]
In 1998, two graduate students at Stanford University, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub", a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to rate the prominence of web pages. The number calculated by the algorithm, PageRank, is a function of the quantity and strength of inbound links.[15] PageRank estimates the likelihood that a given page will be reached by a web user who randomly surfs the web and follows links from one page to another. In effect, this means that some links are stronger than others, as a higher PageRank page is more likely to be reached by the random web surfer.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998.[16] Google attracted a loyal following among the growing number of Internet users, who liked its simple design.[17] Off-page factors (such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis) were considered as well as on-page factors (such as keyword frequency, meta tags, headings, links and site structure) to enable Google to avoid the kind of manipulation seen in search engines that only considered on-page factors for their rankings. Although PageRank was more difficult to game, webmasters had already developed link-building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods proved similarly applicable to gaming PageRank. Many sites focus on exchanging, buying, and selling links, often on a massive scale. Some of these schemes involved the creation of thousands of sites for the sole purpose of link spamming.[18]
By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation.[19] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages. Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization and have shared their personal opinions.[20] Patents related to search engines can provide information to better understand search engines.[21] In 2005, Google began personalizing search results for each user. Depending on their history of previous searches, Google crafted results for logged in users.[22]
In 2007, Google announced a campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank.[23] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links. Matt Cutts, a well-known software engineer at Google, announced that Google Bot would no longer treat any no follow links, in the same way, to prevent SEO service providers from using nofollow for PageRank sculpting.[24] As a result of this change, the usage of nofollow led to evaporation of PageRank. In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated JavaScript and thus permit PageRank sculpting. Additionally, several solutions have been suggested that include the usage of iframes, Flash, and JavaScript.[25]
In December 2009, Google announced it would be using the web search history of all its users in order to populate search results.[26] On June 8, 2010 a new web indexing system called Google Caffeine was announced. Designed to allow users to find news results, forum posts, and other content much sooner after publishing than before, Google Caffeine was a change to the way Google updated its index in order to make things show up quicker on Google than before. According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[27] Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant. Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings. With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs, the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.[28]
In February 2011, Google announced the Panda update, which penalizes websites containing content duplicated from other websites and sources. Historically websites have copied content from one another and benefited in search engine rankings by engaging in this practice. However, Google implemented a new system that punishes sites whose content is not unique.[29] The 2012 Google Penguin attempted to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.[30] Although Google Penguin has been presented as an algorithm aimed at fighting web spam, it really focuses on spammy links[31] by gauging the quality of the sites the links are coming from. The 2013 Google Hummingbird update featured an algorithm change designed to improve Google's natural language processing and semantic understanding of web pages. Hummingbird's language processing system falls under the newly recognized term of "conversational search", where the system pays more attention to each word in the query in order to better match the pages to the meaning of the query rather than a few words.[32] With regards to the changes made to search engine optimization, for content publishers and writers, Hummingbird is intended to resolve issues by getting rid of irrelevant content and spam, allowing Google to produce high-quality content and rely on them to be 'trusted' authors.
In October 2019, Google announced they would start applying BERT models for English language search queries in the US. Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) was another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing, but this time in order to better understand the search queries of their users.[33] In terms of search engine optimization, BERT intended to connect users more easily to relevant content and increase the quality of traffic coming to websites that are ranking in the Search Engine Results Page.
The leading search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, use crawlers to find pages for their algorithmic search results. Pages that are linked from other search engine-indexed pages do not need to be submitted because they are found automatically. The Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ, two major directories which closed in 2014 and 2017 respectively, both required manual submission and human editorial review.[34] Google offers Google Search Console, for which an XML Sitemap feed can be created and submitted for free to ensure that all pages are found, especially pages that are not discoverable by automatically following links[35] in addition to their URL submission console.[36] Yahoo! formerly operated a paid submission service that guaranteed to crawl for a cost per click;[37] however, this practice was discontinued in 2009.
Search engine crawlers may look at a number of different factors when crawling a site. Not every page is indexed by search engines. The distance of pages from the root directory of a site may also be a factor in whether or not pages get crawled.[38]
Mobile devices are used for the majority of Google searches.[39] In November 2016, Google announced a major change to the way they are crawling websites and started to make their index mobile-first, which means the mobile version of a given website becomes the starting point for what Google includes in their index.[40] In May 2019, Google updated the rendering engine of their crawler to be the latest version of Chromium (74 at the time of the announcement). Google indicated that they would regularly update the Chromium rendering engine to the latest version.[41] In December 2019, Google began updating the User-Agent string of their crawler to reflect the latest Chrome version used by their rendering service. The delay was to allow webmasters time to update their code that responded to particular bot User-Agent strings. Google ran evaluations and felt confident the impact would be minor.[42]
To avoid undesirable content in the search indexes, webmasters can instruct spiders not to crawl certain files or directories through the standard robots.txt file in the root directory of the domain. Additionally, a page can be explicitly excluded from a search engine's database by using a meta tag specific to robots (usually <meta name="robots" content="noindex"> ). When a search engine visits a site, the robots.txt located in the root directory is the first file crawled. The robots.txt file is then parsed and will instruct the robot as to which pages are not to be crawled. As a search engine crawler may keep a cached copy of this file, it may on occasion crawl pages a webmaster does not wish to crawl. Pages typically prevented from being crawled include login-specific pages such as shopping carts and user-specific content such as search results from internal searches. In March 2007, Google warned webmasters that they should prevent indexing of internal search results because those pages are considered search spam.[43]
In 2020, Google sunsetted the standard (and open-sourced their code) and now treats it as a hint rather than a directive. To adequately ensure that pages are not indexed, a page-level robot's meta tag should be included.[44]
A variety of methods can increase the prominence of a webpage within the search results. Cross linking between pages of the same website to provide more links to important pages may improve its visibility. Page design makes users trust a site and want to stay once they find it. When people bounce off a site, it counts against the site and affects its credibility.[45]
Writing content that includes frequently searched keyword phrases so as to be relevant to a wide variety of search queries will tend to increase traffic. Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site. Adding relevant keywords to a web page's metadata, including the title tag and meta description, will tend to improve the relevancy of a site's search listings, thus increasing traffic. URL canonicalization of web pages accessible via multiple URLs, using the canonical link element[46] or via 301 redirects can help make sure links to different versions of the URL all count towards the page's link popularity score. These are known as incoming links, which point to the URL and can count towards the page link's popularity score, impacting the credibility of a website.[45]
SEO techniques can be classified into two broad categories: techniques that search engine companies recommend as part of good design ("white hat"), and those techniques of which search engines do not approve ("black hat"). Search engines attempt to minimize the effect of the latter, among them spamdexing. Industry commentators have classified these methods and the practitioners who employ them as either white hat SEO or black hat SEO.[47] White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.[48]
An SEO technique is considered a white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. As the search engine guidelines[11][12][49] are not written as a series of rules or commandments, this is an important distinction to note. White hat SEO is not just about following guidelines but is about ensuring that the content a search engine indexes and subsequently ranks is the same content a user will see. White hat advice is generally summed up as creating content for users, not for search engines, and then making that content easily accessible to the online "spider" algorithms, rather than attempting to trick the algorithm from its intended purpose. White hat SEO is in many ways similar to web development that promotes accessibility,[50] although the two are not identical.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines or involve deception. One black hat technique uses hidden text, either as text colored similar to the background, in an invisible div, or positioned off-screen. Another method gives a different page depending on whether the page is being requested by a human visitor or a search engine, a technique known as cloaking. Another category sometimes used is grey hat SEO. This is in between the black hat and white hat approaches, where the methods employed avoid the site being penalized but do not act in producing the best content for users. Grey hat SEO is entirely focused on improving search engine rankings.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black or grey hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether. Such penalties can be applied either automatically by the search engines' algorithms or by a manual site review. One example was the February 2006 Google removal of both BMW Germany and Ricoh Germany for the use of deceptive practices.[51] Both companies subsequently apologized, fixed the offending pages, and were restored to Google's search engine results page.[52]
Companies that employ black hat techniques or other spammy tactics can get their client websites banned from the search results. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.[53] Wired magazine reported that the same company sued blogger and SEO Aaron Wall for writing about the ban.[54] Google's Matt Cutts later confirmed that Google had banned Traffic Power and some of its clients.[55]
SEO is not an appropriate strategy for every website, and other Internet marketing strategies can be more effective, such as paid advertising through pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, depending on the site operator's goals.[editorializing] Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of designing, running, and optimizing search engine ad campaigns. Its difference from SEO is most simply depicted as the difference between paid and unpaid priority ranking in search results. SEM focuses on prominence more so than relevance; website developers should regard SEM with the utmost importance with consideration to visibility as most navigate to the primary listings of their search.[56] A successful Internet marketing campaign may also depend upon building high-quality web pages to engage and persuade internet users, setting up analytics programs to enable site owners to measure results, and improving a site's conversion rate.[57][58] In November 2015, Google released a full 160-page version of its Search Quality Rating Guidelines to the public,[59] which revealed a shift in their focus towards "usefulness" and mobile local search. In recent years the mobile market has exploded, overtaking the use of desktops, as shown in by StatCounter in October 2016, where they analyzed 2.5 million websites and found that 51.3% of the pages were loaded by a mobile device.[60] Google has been one of the companies that are utilizing the popularity of mobile usage by encouraging websites to use their Google Search Console, the Mobile-Friendly Test, which allows companies to measure up their website to the search engine results and determine how user-friendly their websites are. The closer the keywords are together their ranking will improve based on key terms.[45]
SEO may generate an adequate return on investment. However, search engines are not paid for organic search traffic, their algorithms change, and there are no guarantees of continued referrals. Due to this lack of guarantee and uncertainty, a business that relies heavily on search engine traffic can suffer major losses if the search engines stop sending visitors.[61] Search engines can change their algorithms, impacting a website's search engine ranking, possibly resulting in a serious loss of traffic. According to Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, in 2010, Google made over 500 algorithm changes – almost 1.5 per day.[62] It is considered a wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.[63] In addition to accessibility in terms of web crawlers (addressed above), user web accessibility has become increasingly important for SEO.
Optimization techniques are highly tuned to the dominant search engines in the target market. The search engines' market shares vary from market to market, as does competition. In 2003, Danny Sullivan stated that Google represented about 75% of all searches.[64] In markets outside the United States, Google's share is often larger, and data showed Google was the dominant search engine worldwide as of 2007.[65] As of 2006, Google had an 85–90% market share in Germany.[66] While there were hundreds of SEO firms in the US at that time, there were only about five in Germany.[66] As of March 2024, Google still had a significant market share of 89.85% in Germany.[67] As of June 2008, the market share of Google in the UK was close to 90% according to Hitwise.[68][obsolete source] As of March 2024, Google's market share in the UK was 93.61%.[69]
Successful search engine optimization (SEO) for international markets requires more than just translating web pages. It may also involve registering a domain name with a country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) or a relevant top-level domain (TLD) for the target market, choosing web hosting with a local IP address or server, and using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to improve website speed and performance globally. It is also important to understand the local culture so that the content feels relevant to the audience. This includes conducting keyword research for each market, using hreflang tags to target the right languages, and building local backlinks. However, the core SEO principles—such as creating high-quality content, improving user experience, and building links—remain the same, regardless of language or region.[66]
Regional search engines have a strong presence in specific markets:
By the early 2000s, businesses recognized that the web and search engines could help them reach global audiences. As a result, the need for multilingual SEO emerged.[74] In the early years of international SEO development, simple translation was seen as sufficient. However, over time, it became clear that localization and transcreation—adapting content to local language, culture, and emotional resonance—were far more effective than basic translation.[75]
On October 17, 2002, SearchKing filed suit in the United States District Court, Western District of Oklahoma, against the search engine Google. SearchKing's claim was that Google's tactics to prevent spamdexing constituted a tortious interference with contractual relations. On May 27, 2003, the court granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint because SearchKing "failed to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."[76][77]
In March 2006, KinderStart filed a lawsuit against Google over search engine rankings. KinderStart's website was removed from Google's index prior to the lawsuit, and the amount of traffic to the site dropped by 70%. On March 16, 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.[78][79]
| Authority control databases: National |
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A web directory or link directory is an online list or catalog of websites. That is, it is a directory on the World Wide Web of (all or part of) the World Wide Web. Historically, directories typically listed entries on people or businesses, and their contact information; such directories are still in use today. A web directory includes entries about websites, including links to those websites, organized into categories and subcategories.[1][2][3] Besides a link, each entry may include the title of the website, and a description of its contents. In most web directories, the entries are about whole websites, rather than individual pages within them (called "deep links"). Websites are often limited to inclusion in only a few categories.
There are two ways to find information on the Web: by searching or browsing. Web directories provide links in a structured list to make browsing easier. Many web directories combine searching and browsing by providing a search engine to search the directory. Unlike search engines, which base results on a database of entries gathered automatically by web crawler, most web directories are built manually by human editors. Many web directories allow site owners to submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.
Web directories may be general in scope, or limited to particular subjects or fields. Entries may be listed for free, or by paid submission (meaning the site owner must pay to have his or her website listed).
RSS directories are similar to web directories, but contain collections of RSS feeds, instead of links to websites.
During the early development of the web, there was a list of web servers edited by Tim Berners-Lee and hosted on the CERN webserver. One historical snapshot from 1992 remains.[4] He also created the World Wide Web Virtual Library, which is the oldest web directory.[5]
Most of the directories are general in on scope and list websites across a wide range of categories, regions and languages. But some niche directories focus on restricted regions, single languages, or specialist sectors. For example, there are shopping directories that specialize in the listing of retail e-commerce sites.
Examples of well-known general web directories are Yahoo! Directory (shut down at the end of 2014) and DMOZ (shut down on March 14, 2017). DMOZ was significant due to its extensive categorization and large number of listings and its free availability for use by other directories and search engines.[6]
However, a debate over the quality of directories and databases still continues, as search engines use DMOZ's content without real integration, and some experiment using clustering.
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There have been many attempts to make building web directories easier, such as using automated submission of related links by script, or any number of available PHP portals and programs. Recently, social software techniques have spawned new efforts of categorization, with Amazon.com adding tagging to their product pages.
Directories have various features in their listings, often depending upon the price paid for inclusion:
rel="nofollow" attribute associated with the link, meaning search engines will give no weight to the link|
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A human-edited directory is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory. Human-edited directories are often targeted by SEOs on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines. Some directories may prevent search engines from rating a displayed link by using redirects, nofollow attributes, or other techniques. Many human-edited directories, including DMOZ, World Wide Web Virtual Library, Business.com and Jasmine Directory, are edited by volunteers, who are often experts in particular categories. These directories are sometimes criticized due to long delays in approving submissions, or for rigid organizational structures and disputes among volunteer editors.
In response to these criticisms, some volunteer-edited directories have adopted wiki technology, to allow broader community participation in editing the directory (at the risk of introducing lower-quality, less objective entries).
Another direction taken by some web directories is the paid for inclusion model. This method enables the directory to offer timely inclusion for submissions and generally fewer listings as a result of the paid model. They often offer additional listing options to further enhance listings, including features listings and additional links to inner pages of the listed website. These options typically have an additional fee associated but offer significant help and visibility to sites and/or their inside pages.
Today submission of websites to web directories is considered a common SEO (search engine optimization) technique to get back-links for the submitted website. One distinctive feature of 'directory submission' is that it cannot be fully automated like search engine submissions. Manual directory submission is a tedious and time-consuming job and is often outsourced by webmasters.
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Bid for Position directories, also known as bidding web directories, are paid-for-inclusion web directories where the listings of websites in the directory are ordered according to their bid amount. They are special in that the more a person pays, the higher up the list of websites in the directory they go. With the higher listing, the website becomes more visible and increases the chances that visitors who browse the directory will click on the listing.
Web directories will often make themselves accessing by more and more URLs by acquiring the domain registrations of defunct websites as soon as they expire, a practice known as Domain drop catching.
Reciprocal links may not help with competitive keyword rankings, but that does not mean you should avoid them when they make sound business sense. What you should definitely avoid are manipulative reciprocal linking schemes like automated link trading programs and three-way links or four-way links.
Web syndication is making content available from one website to other sites. Most commonly, websites are made available to provide either summaries or full renditions of a website's recently added content. The term may also describe other kinds of content licensing for reuse.
For the subscribing sites, syndication is an effective way of adding greater depth and immediacy of information to their pages, making them more attractive to users. For the provider site, syndication increases exposure. This generates new traffic for the provider site—making syndication an easy and relatively cheap, or even free, form of advertisement.
Content syndication has become an effective strategy for link building, as search engine optimization has become an increasingly important topic among website owners and online marketers. Links embedded within the syndicated content are typically optimized around anchor terms that will point an optimized[clarification needed] link back to the website that the content author is trying to promote. These links tell the algorithms of the search engines that the website being linked to is an authority for the keyword that is being used as the anchor text. However the rollout of Google Panda's algorithm may not reflect this authority in its SERP rankings based on quality scores generated by the sites linking to the authority.
The prevalence of web syndication is also of note to online marketers, since web surfers are becoming increasingly wary of providing personal information for marketing materials (such as signing up for a newsletter) and expect the ability to subscribe to a feed instead. Although the format could be anything transported over HTTP, such as HTML or JavaScript, it is more commonly XML. Web syndication formats include RSS, Atom,[1] and JSON Feed.
Syndication first arose in earlier media such as print, radio, and television, allowing content creators to reach a wider audience. In the case of radio, the United States Federal government proposed a syndicate in 1924 so that the country's executives could quickly and efficiently reach the entire population.[2] In the case of television, it is often said that "Syndication is where the real money is."[3] Additionally, syndication accounts for the bulk of TV programming.[4]
One predecessor of web syndication is the Meta Content Framework (MCF), developed in 1996 by Ramanathan V. Guha and others in Apple Computer's Advanced Technology Group.[5]
Today, millions of online publishers, including newspapers, commercial websites, and blogs, distribute their news headlines, product offers, and blog postings in the news feed.
Conventional syndication businesses such as Reuters and Associated Press thrive on the internet by offering their content to media partners on a subscription basis,[6] using business models established in earlier media forms.
Commercial web syndication can be categorized in three ways:
Commercial web syndication involves partnerships between content producers and distribution outlets. There are different structures of partnership agreements. One such structure is licensing content, in which distribution partners pay a fee to the content creators for the right to publish the content. Another structure is ad-supported content, in which publishers share revenues derived from advertising on syndicated content with that content's producer. A third structure is free, or barter syndication, in which no currency changes hands between publishers and content producers. This requires the content producers to generate revenue from another source, such as embedded advertising or subscriptions. Alternatively, they could distribute content without remuneration. Typically, those who create and distribute content free are promotional entities, vanity publishers, or government entities.
Types of content syndicated include RSS or Atom Feeds and full content. With RSS feeds, headlines, summaries, and sometimes a modified version of the original full content is displayed on users' feed readers. With full content, the entire content—which might be text, audio, video, applications/widgets, or user-generated content—appears unaltered on the publisher's site.
There are two methods for selecting distribution partners. The content creator can hand-pick syndication partners based on specific criteria, such as the size or quality of their audiences. Alternatively, the content creator can allow publisher sites or users to opt into carrying the content through an automated system. Some of these automated "content marketplace" systems involve careful screening of potential publishers by the content creator to ensure that the material does not end up in an inappropriate environment.
Just as syndication is a source of profit for TV producers and radio producers, it also functions to maximize profit for Internet content producers. As the Internet has increased in size[7] it has become increasingly difficult for content producers to aggregate a sufficiently large audience to support the creation of high-quality content. Syndication enables content creators to amortize the cost of producing content by licensing it across multiple publishers or by maximizing the distribution of advertising-supported content. A potential drawback for content creators, however, is that they can lose control over the presentation of their content when they syndicate it to other parties.
Distribution partners benefit by receiving content either at a discounted price, or free. One potential drawback for publishers, however, is that because the content is duplicated at other publisher sites, they cannot have an "exclusive" on the content.
For users, the fact that syndication enables the production and maintenance of content allows them to find and consume content on the Internet. One potential drawback for them is that they may run into duplicate content, which could be an annoyance.
Web syndication has been used to distribute product content such as feature descriptions, images, and specifications. As manufacturers are regarded as authorities and most sales are not achieved on manufacturer websites, manufacturers allow retailers or dealers to publish the information on their sites. Through syndication, manufacturers may pass relevant information to channel partners.[8] Such web syndication has been shown to increase sales.[9]
Web syndication has also been found effective as a search engine optimization technique.[10]
Media related to Web syndication at Wikimedia Commons
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