Duplicate Content Penalty?

Posted on November 29, 2008, under SEO.

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There’s a lot -a hell lot- of misleading SEO information out there. Really. There’s a huge misconception on what SEO principles are. Today I just realized that, as many bloggers out there, I happen to be one of the many victims of all this.

Google’s Duplicate Content Penalty is probably one of the most debated SEO topics in the last few years. One one hand, there are some affirming that republishing the same contents on many different sites leads to penalization. On the other hand, others say that there’s no such thing as duplicate content penalty. Who is right? (more…)

A Quick Guide To Search Engine Optimization In Three Steps

Posted on November 27, 2008, under SEO.

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SEO Troubleshooting“If you want to rank in search engines, then you need to focus on SEO”. That is a phrase that can be seen almost everywhere in the blogosphere. And it’s true. Optimizing your sites for search engines is vital for success nowadays. However, how does all this SEO optimization thing goes?

This humble post of mine pretends to be a quick, practical guide on How to SEO Optimize your sites. Don’t expect any advanced stuff, though, since I’m only covering some practical examples on SEO optimization - sometimes it’s best to stick to the basics.

SEO Optimization Guide

  1. SEO and Site Validation:
    Validating your sites is not entirely essential to SEO. However, a lousy code structure might be keeping web spiders from parsing your code correctly. I won’t extend myself on this point since I’ve already posted an entry on Site Validation some time ago. Here’s also a great article on this topic at SearchEngineGuide.com: An Argument for Website Validaton.
  2. SEO Troubleshooting:
    Assuming that you don’t have any validation issues -or that you have already corrected them-, it’s time to run a small diagnosis on your site to check for SEO issues on your site. You can either do this by yourself, or as I suggest, use any of the free SEO Tools out there. I recommend WebSiteGrader.com for the job. You also need to check that your site does not violate any of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, not because Google rules the Internet or something -not yet at least- but because these rules applies for all search engines in general.
  3. Fixing issues:
    Once you have identified all potential issues in your site, you should spend some time fixing them (eg. adding alt tags to images when required, using headings properly, etc.). Again, WebSiteGrader is a great tool for identifying these issues (no, this is not a paid review. This tool really deserves your attention!)

Happy SEOing! ;)

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Guide

Posted on November 17, 2008, under SEO.

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Search Engine Optimization is still a taboo to many. Bloggers, web developers and webmasters in general are in pain when it comes to do some SEO optimization to their sites - specially because of all the misleading information out there.

Because of this, Google has finally stepped out into the spotlight to release their very own Seach Engine Optimization Guide to help those new to SEO improve their sites (why did they take so long to do this, anyway?).

On this ebook, you’ll find info on:

  • Metatags optimization
  • Improving your permalinks for SEO
  • Best practices for using headlines
  • How to make effective use of robots.txt
  • Why you should be aware of rel=”nofollow” for links
  • etc.

While I found it a good read, Google’s SEO Starter guide just contains a few basic ideas on SEO which more experienced bloggers are already aware of. However, I strongly suggest everyone to read it and keep it around for future references.

Have you read it yet?

Black Hat SEO (And Why You Should Avoid It)

Posted on November 13, 2008, under SEO.

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In the past 4-5 months I’ve been carrying out research on SEO optimization to discover what are the best performing SEO techniques to have a good SERP ranking (SERP is short for Search Engine Result Page) and increase the amount of traffic to my blog.

While I was at it, I found a couple of techniques that clearly cross the borders of the moral leading you to the dark side of SEO - Black Hat SEO. (more…)

Keyword Research & SEO, Part II: Working your Keywords

Posted on November 2, 2008, under SEO.

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Keyword Research & SEO is a two-part series on selecting the right keywords for your site to improve your SERP rankings and drive more traffic into it. Part I covers the basics of Keyword Research and SEO; what are Keywords and its importance. Part II covers the best practices on Keyword Research and a few examples.

You can optimize your pages for search engines, get the most outstanding layout for your site and write all these greats contents for your readers but without the right keywords your SEO efforts will be lost.

Finding the right Keywords

Finding the right keywords for your site is one of the most tedious task for a blogger. You can probably come up with some search terms and build a pretty decent list - however, it doesn’t guarantee that your picks are the actual words people are entering into search engines to find what they need. You may be selecting keywords that are too broad or poorly related to your contents. That’s when Keyword Research tools come in. We’ll discuss on that later. (more…)

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