SEO News Tip of the Day!

It’s been a long time since my last post, too much work and not enough time. Anyway, a short while ago the SEO forums were a blaze with the latest patent release from Google. The patent included loads of different techniques a search engine could use to determine relevancy and I say could because it would be very difficult to use all of the items covered in the patent. My own thoughts on the patent are many items have been included to dilute the true gems.

One part that really caught my eye was using domain registration information as part of a search engines algorithm. I remember several months ago reading a news story that Google had become a domain registrar and many were presuming domain registration would be one of Google’s many new adventures. This gossip was stopped as quickly as it started with Google announcing no domain registration service was on the cards. So why become a domain registrar?

Length of Domain Registration, logical ranking criteria

Well as mentioned above part of the patent focused on using domain information to determine the reliability of a website. In short, if a domain has only been registered for one year it may be more volatile than a domain that’s been registered for ten years. If you’re serious about your online venture, it makes sense to register your domain for a longer period of time. Google could use this fact as part of their ranking criteria and I suspect they have been doing so for some time.

So if you haven’t already done so, I would recommend contacting your domain registration Company to register your domain for at least five years. It may not affect your rankings at all, but on the other hand it may give you just enough of a boost to push some of those keywords onto the front pages. With domain registration costing as less as it does nowadays, it may turn out to be the most cost effective ranking boost you’ve ever paid out for.

If it doesn’t produce any results, no harm done and you may have just saved yourself a couple bucks on next year’s budget :)

The Hottest Tip On Getting A Web Site Listed Quickly by Yahoo, Inktomi, MSN, FAST and AltaVista

Every webmaster knows that the free search engines are a major source of traffic.

They also know that applying all the SEO techniques in the world will not in itself get their web pages spidered, indexed and listed. Yes, sure, a "perfect" page, once indexed and listed will surely rank high for its keywords but unless it is found by the spiders, it is pretty useless.

It is no secret that the process of a web page being found by the spiders can be helped by placing links to that web site on other web sites (e.g. by doing a links exchange with other web sites, by putting one's URL in one's signature file when posting on a forum, by writing and submitting articles for free distribution and placing one's URL in the author's resource block etc.) All of this will surely work but it can take months before anything happens. The webmaster has no option but to be patient and wait...and wait...and wait.

Now there is something very easy and very effective one can do to speed up this process. Actually, using this method, will get a web page indexed and listed in less than 48 hours. And the whole process is controlled by the webmaster. It is easy, fast in terms of setting it all up and what's more it is free!

Here is what one does:

• Go to http://www.blogger.com and sign up for a new account (free - they even host the blog on their server at no cost)
• Give your blog a name.
• Navigate to 'Settings' and then choose 'Site Feed'
• Check that the 'Publish Site Feed' option is set to 'Yes'
• Copy the 'Site Feed URL' to the clip board (you can paste is some where .. you're going to use it when you've set up your my.yahoo account)
• Save your changes
• Navigate to 'Posting' and create your first entry.
• What should you write? Anything, actually - your words do not make that much of a difference. What is important is that you add the URL of each page you want listed to the blog. Remember to add them as live links (to enable all the spiders to follow them!)

  Mmm, you don't know how to do a live link? Here is an example. Just copy the HTML code

  link to Perfect Party Ideas

  Replace the URL with your URL and the description ("link to Perfect Party Ideas" with your own.

  As a suggestion, why not make your blog a log of this experiment?

• Publish your blog by hitting the 'Publish' button.

• Now you have to go to http://www.yahoo.com and open a My Yahoo! account. Just follow Yahoo's very clear instructions.
• Click on the 'Add Content' button.
• Click the ' Add RSS by URL' link.
• Paste the 'Site Feed URL' you've copied earlier in the 'URL' field and
• hit 'Add'

Mmm, you don't know what a news feed is? I've written a document explaining it all. You can read it here.

• Last step: go to http://www.pingomatic.com
• Enter your blog's name and URL (similar to mine: http://www.perfect-party-ideas.blogspot.com)
• Select all the services to ping (of which My Yahoo! is one) and click the 'Submit Pings' button.
• Navigate back to your My Yahoo! account and refresh your browser.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page where you'll see your blog's feed appearing.

Now for a bit of excitement. Start watching your web site's stat's to see how quickly the spiders find their way to your web site. You could even throw a free stats counter on your blog and watch the spiders visiting your blog.

Next step: Play "blog-and-ping" every day or so. More often if you have the time! Whenever you feel like it, add another posting to your blog. Remember to throw in some links to specific pages on your web site.

Let me know how successful you were - leave a comment in my blog or use my Contact Us page on my web site.

Here's to your success!

Kind Regards
Anne-Marie
P.S. If this article had any value to you (and I'm sure it did ;-) ), why not read more hot tips in my blog?

Anne-Marie Killer is a mother of two teenagers and a toddler. She is the webmaster and owner of Perfect Party Ideas, Read her blog where she documents the process of setting up Perfect Party Ideas.