Adsense Optimization : Getting more Clicks on your Adsense ads

More CTR (Click Thru Ratio) means more clicks on your Google Ads. But, is CTR all about position and colors of your ads? No! It's a lot more than that. CTR also depends upon the quality of traffic, relevancy of ads, and even the subject of your website. Let's get in detail:

Do you own a High CTR website?

Yes! CTR varies from Industry to industry too. It depends upon the keywords you are using to make your web page. It has been observed that more technical the topic is (but not necessarily) less CTR it will give you (for example Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Network - exceptions are always there), but still works if the Ad content is well written.

However, this is only one condition; there are many undiscovered conditions that affect the CTR of keywords. At times, a particular season also has an effect on the performance of keywords. For example family of 'Turkey recipe' keyword is more active around November and December only and a quite sluggish rest of the year. It becomes really necessary to study the behavior of keywords before starting a massive website of Adsense around a topic.

Your Ad Position and Color: Old, but very effective

Google heat map helps improve the CTR (Clicks Thru Ratio) of your website by suggesting you the most converting areas for your Adsense Ads. You can have a glance at the Google's Survey that illustrates the ideal placements of ads on your web page.
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html#17954


Darker the area, better will be the performance of your ads. Your visitor tends to click on these darker areas more often than the other areas of the web page. Ads placed near rich content usually do well because users are focused on those areas of your web page. For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the concluding part of high quality content tend to perform well, as the visitors are left with no other choice except clicking the Ad block.

Get Targeted Traffic - The Most Essential Part

Traffic that is interested in your content (also called targeted traffic) is interested in your ads too. Thus, there is every likelihood that your ads will be clicked more frequently. Targeted traffic means more CTR, more earnings, and enhanced ad convertibility. On the other hand, the untargeted visitors are not interested either in your content or your ads, so keep your website's traffic targeted.

You can gather highly targeted traffic for your website by web promotion strategy and effective optimization of your web page structure. Effective web promotion strategy requires an appropriate Anchor text and more back links from relevant websites. And, to develop an effective web page structure, you have to optimize your Title Text, internal linking of your website, and most importantly your web content, in the best possible manner.

Choose the Right Anchor Text for Back Link Campaigns

Choosing the right anchor text for back links promotes your website to the traffic you exactly need from the search engines. Choose the Anchor text that directly speaks to your visitors and pulls the traffic that your web page requires. Targeted traffic results in increased CTR of ads. It helps promote your website to that segment of traffic, which is precisely searching for your content (or you can say the traffic that is most profitable to you). Targeting irrelevant keyword reduces your CTR by gathering the traffic which is not interested in your content or ads.

Wisely Choose the Title Text of Your Web Page

Title text of your webpage appears in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) as the Title link to your web page. Therefore, it is the title Text that directly speaks to the surfer on SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) about your content's theme. It acts like a Free Advertisement Link to your website. If your title text does not interest the surfer, you lose considerable amount of much-needed traffic. Figure out a Title text that directly communicates with your potential visitors, brings targeted traffic, and enhances the CTR of your AdSense Ads. Don't overdo your title text, and use less than ten keywords in your title text.

Help Google Detect the Theme of Your Web Page

There are many on-page and off-page elements that affect your ad relevancy. Better targeted ads increase both your CTR and EPC. Here is how to optimize your ads:

Meta Tags

If there is NO CONTENT on your web page, the Google Mediabot will consider the Meta Tags while displaying ads. Meta tags have a considerable affect on the relevancy of your ads. It is advised never to leave this space empty. Also, try to make it as easy as possible for Mediabot to understand the theme of your web page.

Title Text

Google Mediabot gives good weightage to the keywords used in the Title text, which in turn gets reflected in your ads. Choose effective keywords for your Title text. Even the order of words in a keyword can affect the ads that are appearing on your web page. So, choose your keywords wisely.

Headings

Google Mediabot gives importance to the Heading text enclosed in <H1>, <H2> tags present in your web page. After Title text, here is another chance for you to dictate keywords to Google Mediabot.

Boost Relevancy Artificially - Use Google's Section Targeting

Now, you can enhance Ad relevancy by using Google's Section targeting. Using this technique you can advise Google mediabot about the areas of your content which should be considered or ignored while matching the Ads with your content.

For more information on the same topic, visit:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=23168&topic=371

Use Channels for Analyzing Your Ads' Performance

Try to relate your traffic logs with your CTR stats. You will get to know which Traffic source is giving you what CTR. This will help you recognize the traffic segment which is most converting for your website. Channels allow you to analyze your ads' performance, so that you can pin point the changes that your website needs to boost your AdSense income. There are two types of channels available - URL Channels and Custom Channels. You can use the URL channel to track your performance, without modifying your Ad code. Through URL channels, you can analyze the performance of individual page or a group of pages, based on the directory system of your website.

Custom channels can help you measure the performance of different Ad formats presented in your web pages. And, by pasting channel-specific ad code into your pages, you can track CTR, Impressions, number of clicks each individual ad format is generating, and compare its performance with other web pages.

Block Junk Websites and Competitor Websites from Showing Ads

There are many junk websites that might be displaying ads on your website. These websites steal the traffic from your website and recycle it on their own Adsense ad blocks. Recognize such websites and stick them in Adsense Competitive Ad filter. Also, you can block your competitor websites using this competitive filter.

This trick can sometimes double or triple your Adsense income, augment user experience, and makes look your Google ads more genuine. For more information about this tool, visit:
https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=21593&ctx=sibling

To study the behavior of high CTR keywords, there is no better place than
http://www.keywordcountry.com/adsense/. Go-ahead and snatch the highest CTR keywords that exist on planet earth for Adsense

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Search Engine Optimization: 10 SEO Tips Which Will Make Difference

Every business with a Web site should make Search Engine Optimization -- trying to get your site as high up as possible on Google and Bing search-results pages -- a part of their growth strategy.
At its most basic, "SEO" means finding ways to increase your site's appearance in web visitors' search results. This generally means more traffic to your site.
While intense SEO can involve complex site restructuring with a firm (or consultant) that specializes in this area, there are a few simple steps you can take yourself to increase your search engine ranking.
All it requires is a little effort, and some re-thinking of how you approach content on your site.

Monitor where you stand

You won't know if your SEO efforts are working unless you monitor your search standings. MarketingVox suggests that you keep an eye on your page rank with tools like Alexa and the Google toolbar.
It's also important to check your referrer log regularly to track where your visitors are coming from and the search terms they're using to find your site, according to PC World.

Keywords, keywords, keywords!

You should be conscious of placing appropriate keywords throughout every aspect of your site: your titles, content, URLs, and image names. Think about your keywords as search terms -- how would someone looking for information on this topic search for it?
The title tag and page header are the two most important spots to put keywords, PC World notes.
BEWARE: Putting ridiculous amounts of keywords on your site will get you labeled as a spammer, and search engine spiders are programmed to ignore sites guilty of "keyword-stuffing." Be strategic in your keyword use.

Link back to yourself

There is probably no more basic strategy for SEO than the integration of internal links into your site -- it is an easy way to boost traffic to individual pages, SEO Consult says.
You should make it standard to link back to your archives frequently when creating new content. MarketingVox advises that you also make the anchor text search-engine-friendly: "The more relevant words point to a page, the more likely that page is to appear in search results when users run a query with those terms."
As with all other SEO approaches, be sure your links are appropriate, and be careful not to cross the line into excessive linking -- you don't want your visitors to get annoyed.

Create a sitemap

Adding a site map -- a page listing and linking to all the other major pages on your site -- makes it easier for spiders to search your site.
"The fewer clicks necessary to get to a page on your website, the better," advises MarketingVox.

Search-friendly URLs

Make your URLs more search-engine-friendly by naming them with clear keywords.
SEO Consult explains: "For instance, it’s easy to understand what

Avoid Flash

Flash might look pretty, but it does nothing for your SEO. According to the Search Engine Journal, "Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page... Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results."
"If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold," the post continues.

Image descriptions

Spiders can only search text, not text in your images -- which is why you need to make the words associated with your images as descriptive as possible.
Start with your image names: adding an "ALT" tag allows you to include a keyword-rich description for every image on your site. Perfect Optimization explains an easy way to do this.
The visible text around your images is valuable for SEO: MarketPosition suggests adding captions to all your pictures and being descriptive with the text in immediate physical proximity to your images.

CONTENT

Your content needs to be fresh -- updating regularly and often is crucial for increasing traffic.
"The best sites for users, and consequently for search engines, are full of oft-updated, useful information about a given service, product, topic or discipline," MarketingVox explains.
One way to ensure that your site gets new content on a frequent basis is to integrate a blog. "Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless!" the Search Engine Journal suggests. An executive blog is an excellent way to reach out to your clients, create more opportunities for internal and external linking, while giving your site a more personal voice.

Social media distribution

A CEO blog is just one element of social media distribution, an important SEO strategy according to SEO Consult. You should be distributing links to fresh content on your site across appropriate social networking platforms.
Whether displayed on your company's account, or recommended, re-tweeted, and re-distributed by someone else, this strategy exponentially muliplies the number of places where visitors will view your links.

Link to others

An easy way to direct more traffic to your site is by developing relationships with other sites.
PC World suggests that you personally ask the webmasters of well-respected sites if they'll include a link to your site on theirs. Be sure to return the favor -- then everyone wins!
Make certain that your partner has a good web-reputation, of course. MarketingVox warns against getting tied to a "link farm" whose bad SEO habits could bring you down.

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Earn More with Adsense: Tips & Layout Optimization Tricks for High CTR

Google Adsense is perhaps the easiest way to attract advertisers from across the globe to your blog. Just submit your blog or website to Google for approval and if their content team approves your content, you are ready to place contextual text ads on your websites. Every time a reader clicks an AdSense ad link, the AdWords advertiser pays Google a small fee and Google splits the revenue with you.

Now you know how to make money with Google Adsense but to help you improve AdSense performance (and advertising revenue), here are some of the best Google Adsense Tips and Tricks for making more money (profit) from the Google Adsense program.

Tips to Increase Google AdSense Earnings

a. Strictly follow the rules mentioned in Adsense policies. You will always earn more revenue from Adsense by playing it clean.

b. Never modify the Google Adsense HTML code. If have trouble embedding AdSense code in your WordPress or Blogger template, take help of the AdSense support forums or send an email to your AdSense account manager.

c. Never ask your friends or visitors to click on your Google ads. Google takes click fraud very seriously. Do not include incentives of any kind on your site for users to click on your ads. Don't label Google ads with text other than "sponsored links" or "advertisements".

d. Don't click on your own ads - Google is much smarter than you think and can discover invalid clicks through IP addresses, site navigation patterns, etc. If you working on a new design for your site, avoid reloading your pages (with AdSense) excessively. You can turn off AdSense temporarily and avoid invalid CPM impressions. Or you can use the unofficial Google Adsense Sandbox Tool that is accessible from Firefox, IE and other browsers to see what kind of Google ads will be served based on content (website address URL) or keywords.

e. Don't place ads in pop-up windows, error pages or even empty pages. Update: With the new AdSense policy change, you can probably place ads on 404 pages. Check with the AdSense support team

f. Don't start a "adsense asbestos" or "home equity loan rates" website merely to make money from accidental clicks. You will never make money out these Made for Adsense websites. Instead, write on topics what you are passionate about. Don't waste your money on high-paying adsense keywords lists. Stay away from AdSense Adwords arbitrage.

g. For short articles, CTR is best when ads are placed just above the content.

h. For long articles, CTR will improve if you place ads somewhere in middle of the content or just where the article ends - when visitors are done reading the article, they may be looking for related resources.

i. Use Text Ads instead of Image Ads as users get more options and the payout is often higher. If you still want to display image ads (for CPM), consider ad formats like the 300x250 medium rectangle or the 160x600 wide skyscraper as they support also support rich multimedia and the new gadget ads.

j. Google Ads with no background color and no borders will always perform better. Make the border color and background color same as your page background color.

k. Always put ads above the main fold. Make sure that the ad unit with the highest click through rate is the first instance of the ad code that appears in your HTML source. Since the first ad unit is always filled before the rest, you want to make sure that ad unit is located in the best placement on your page.

l. Try setting the ad link URL color to a lighter shade. If your text is black, you may make the adlink as light gray or something like #666.

m. Go Wide - The large rectangle (336x280) is the best paying Adsense format especially for text ads. Try using the 336x280 large rectangle, 300x250 medium rectangle, or 160x600 wide skyscraper.

n. Don't places images next to Google ads as that will invite a permanent ban to your AdSense account.

o. Blend AdLinks with other navigation links or place horizontal adlinks at the top of your webpage. AdSense publishers are permitted to click on link unit topics on their web pages, provided that they do not click on any Google ads on the resulting page.

p. You should try adding a unit near the comments senction of your blog. See more AdSense tweaks.

q. You can put upto 3 adsense units on a page. Try putting a large skyscraper on the right navigation sidebar of your website. That area is close to the browser scrollbar. You can also add 2 AdSense for search boxes and 3 adlink units.

r. The first few lines of your content are an important factor for determining what Ads are served on your webpage. That's the right place to put keywords in bold (strong or <b> tags) or header tags (h1, h2, etc).

s. Always select the setting to open Google Adsense search box results in a new browser window, so you won't lose your visitors. Click the Open search results in a new browser window checkbox and this add target="google_window" to your form tag.

t. Maximum people think the search box is on the top right corner. So you know where to put it.

u. Always syndicate full text RSS feeds and then monetize your feeds with a 468x60 ad in RSS feeds.

v. Monitor the AdSense performance of individual web pages with Google Analytics

w. For low CTR pages, try changing titles or adding more relevant content to get better focused ads. Alse see: Get relevant Google Ads

x. Block low paying advertisers with Filters. Why to loose a visitor for an ad that will only pay you a cent. Use Overture or Google Adwords Keywords tool to discover keywords that are less popular with advertisers.

y. Learn how to implement AdSense Revenue sharing if you run a site with multiple authors and need to pay your writers based on advertising revenue generated from their articles.

z. Experiment with color schemes and layouts using split testing. You are the best judge when it comes to choosing ad formats for your own website.

Even Google doesn't offer the best advise always. For instance, in the visual heat map, Google suggests that webmasters are best served by positioning ads on the upper left-hand side of a Web page but if you go to any search page on Google, the ads the mostly in the right.

Bonus Tip: Use the AdSense Preview tool to determine what ad campaigns are currently targeted for your site in different geographic regions of the world.

Enter any keywords or a website address (URL) and choose a geographic location of the visitors to see all the related related Google Ads.

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10 Best Google AdSense WordPress Plugins

Are your web site advertisements not performing like they should?  Would you like to have more control over your Google AdSense ads and how they are displayed in your WordPress powered web site?  I have searched the Web for the ten best Google AdSense related plugins.  We have plugins here that will help you manage your ads better, put them in better places, offer other adverting opportunities and much more.

Advertising Manager
This plugin will manage and rotate your Google AdSense and other ads on your WordPress blog. It automatically recognizes many ad networks including Google AdSense, AdBrite, Adify, AdGridWork, Adpinion, Adroll, Chitika, Commission Junction, CrispAds, OpenX, ShoppingAds, Yahoo!PN, and WidgetBucks.
AdSense Attachment Page
This great way to earn some money and show large images in new window. This plugin show attachments with thumbnail image, and when you click on it will show image in full size. You can setup plugin not to show image in full size if you want.

AdSense Revenue Sharing
AdSense Revenue Sharing is a WordPress plugin which allows you to easy display ads in your posts by using a quick tag and share your AdSense impressions with your friends and co-authors.
AdSense Under Image
Places specified AdSense code under the first image in a post. If there are no images no AdSense code will be inserted. Also the ads will only appear in single post pages.
WhyDoWork AdSense Plugin
WhyDoWork AdSense is a WordPress plugin that allows you to insert AdSense ads on your blog without modifying the template. More then that, you can set it up to show different AdSense ads for articles older then X days (x is the number of days you decide).
WP Simple AdSense Insertion
Use this plugin to quickly and easily insert Google AdSense to your posts, pages and sidebar by using a trigger text or calling the PHP function.
Easy AdSense
Easy AdSense provides a very easy way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. With its full set of features, Easy AdSense is perhaps the first plugin to give you a complete solution for everything AdSense-related.
AdSense Integrator
This plugin was developed to insert and manage your AdSense ads, based on the last Google rules and AdSense updates.
AdSense Now!
AdSense Now! is the simplest possible way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. Aiming at simplicity, AdSense Now! does only one thing: it puts your AdSense code in up to three spots in your posts and pages (both existing ones and those yet to be written).
AdSense Immediately!
AdSense Immediately! is a simple way to generate revenue from your blog using Google AdSense. AdSense Immediately! is a simple plugin to ad AdSense ads into the body of your content. It can add one, two or three AdSense block to your article body in any Google ads format.
There is my top ten choices for the best Google AdSense plugins for WordPress.  Have another that does the job better?  Let us know in the comments!

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Google Panda Update Slams Content Farms

Whether you call it “Panda,” as Google prefers, or “Farmer,” as the media labeled it, one thing is certain: the search engine's latest update sent shock waves through the Internet. Many sites lost their positions in the SERPs, while others were apparently unaffected. How can you maintain or regain your standing?


Before you can figure out what you need to change, it's worth looking at what got devalued. There seems to be a consensus emerging. If a site's pages are thin on content, or have a poor ad-to-content ratio, or contain content that has been copied from elsewhere, chances are they lost some Google love. So what is Google looking to reward?

Aaron Wall came up with a list of defining characteristics for “useful” content. These include the ability to pass a human inspection; not being a copy of another document, or ad-heavy; being well-linked externally; being created by a brand with a distribution channel that goes beyond the search engines; and not having “a 100% bounce rate followed by a click on a different search result for that same search query.” But how, exactly, has this change to the algorithm taught Google's search engine to figure out whether the web pages it analyzes could pass a human inspection? That's just one of many questions that Wall's suggested criteria raises.

Nevertheless, there are certain things you can do if the Panda Farmer took a swipe at your rankings. Start by looking at your ad-to-content ratio. If your site seems to be ad-heavy, you may be able to improve your rankings by reducing the number of ads you run on your pages, or beefing up your site's content. Feel free to do both in combination.
Vanessa Fox, writing for Search Engine Land, pointed out a telling quote from Google: “In addition, it's important for webmasters to know that low quality content on part of a site can impact a site's ranking as a whole...Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content.”

The third thing you can do to help boost your website, according to Scott, is get involved in social media. This way, you're interacting with customers and potential customers outside of search. That's a good idea regardless of whether your rankings fell with the Panda Farmer update. With Facebook alone accounting for one out of every ten page views in the US, social networking and social media is one part of the Internet that is here to stay.

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Free SEO Tools For Quick Analysis Of Your Website

Hi ! How is everybody ? 

I am here with some quick links having tools which will provide you a better analysis result including-

•  Browser Compatibility    
•  Page size
•  Load time of a particular page.
•  HTML errors
•  Java Script/ Flash/CSS/Frame – analysis.
•  Robots
•  W3C Validation

Above all are Design analysis factors.

So, once try these tools to analyze your website a little bit. I think you will get best....!!

1. http://tools.pingdom.com - Specially for the Load time.
2. http://browsershots.org - Check browser compatibility.
3. http://www.ranks.nl  - Tools to analyze website keywords research combination and KW proximity   and more.
4. http://analyze.websiteoptimization.com/ - Here you will get full detailed analysis of your website.
5. http://validator.w3.org/checklink  -  Free online Link Checker Tool that gives information about link errors etc.

 Tell me after use, to what extent these tools are helpful for you.

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Some Useful Google Commands for SEO Professionals

You can use these commands on your browser using Google Search Engine Site.

These are the commands basically used in Google, by a SEO perspective these are very useful, so get ready to learn them.

• Command to check that a particular page is indexed “cache:(page url)”

Type in the google search box - “cache:http://seoforadsense.blogspot.com”. Then you will look an image like below,

which shows you the information about when this get cached by Google and in this image you will two options named as “current page”- it shows the current page, but the second one “Text only version” – shows you actually how Google’s (Crawler) views your webpage and matches your keywords. This is very important for Search Engine Optimization.

• Command to find backward links: “link:(page url)”

Type in the search box “link:http://www.pagetraffic.com”
this result will tell you how many sites or pages are pointing to pagetraffic.com site. In other words there are 52 web pages that have a link to www.pagetraffic.com. And this are called back links and is the big factor works behind the mystery of Page Rank (PR).

• Command to find the list of pages in your site that Google has indexed "site:(domain url)"

Type this command e.g site:http://alekhverma31.blogspot.com, in the google search box.
You will now see that alekhverma31.blogspot.com has got around 6 pages indexed. Test it on your blog or site. Ok now you know quite some stuff about SEO. Its time we started the real work. You may try thse commands without "http://www." in the url part and get different but more accurate results. All these commands are also valid in Yahoo too.

• Command to find the list of pages on Google's list that have some particular     word or phrase in the title "allintilte:(key word)"

Type this command e.g "allintitle:MCA Result " in the google search box without the double quotes. The result that appears is the list of all sites that have "MCA Result" in their title tag. Other tags in the same category are allintext which will give you the list of sites that have a particular word or phrase in their body text. These are very effective commands to implement SEO.

• Command to find the list of  email addresses  from any website which are public in Google database “(www.example.com *@example.com)”

 For example if you are searching all the email address registered by the extension @example.com and “example” is any company then you have to make a search on Google like this *@example.com. Means you can use this command to extract email addresses from the Google database which are saved as public email addresses.

In this way you can also find Phone no.’s having specificity, like all phone no.’s starts with 011****. Means in this you will notice that continuously I am using astric (*) command.

In this way you can use this wild symbols as a Google cheat commands in your searches to find the relevant search results.

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New SEOQuake Version Has Been Updated - A SEO Extension Toolbar.

I think you had already heard about the SEOQuake extension - its a powerful toolbar which is very useful for Search Engine optimization purpose and for webmasters.

Few days back this toolbar only available for Mozilla Firefox but now it is also available in Google Chrome extension list, going to make search on Chrome Browser more informative for SEO's.

SEOQuake shows number of parameters to the user which helps us to analyse the website for internet promotion, but the main thing is - Seo Quake also works in SERP (Search Engine Result Page), for example see the image, in the image you will be able to notice the certain features of this toolbar, like we can compare the Search Engine results, and it makes us easy to investigate all the parameters at one place, if we are using a Seo Quake toolbar then we don't need to extract parameters from different - different tools, by the use of SeoQuake we get all these parameters at a single place and at the same time.

If you see the image clearly, then some part is encircled by red circles - that is the seo quake toolbar result, showing certain parameters on SERP of different pages at the same time, so you can compare which is very useful for SEO purpose.

If we talk about the parameters which it shows, some of them are listed below :

1. PageRank (Google PageRank)
2. Google Index (No. of pages Indexed in Google Database)
3. Yahoo Links (No. of links as per yahoo)
4. Yahoo link domain
5. Bing Index (No. of pages Indexed in Bing Database)
6. Alexa Rank
7. Age (age of the certain domain)
8. Whois (Who is information)
9. Page Source
10. SEMRush Rank (Tool useful for keyword research)
11. Density (Density of keywords on the certain page)

These are the parameters which you can see on SERP during making search as well as on the certain web page automatically if you already enabled the toolbar

So, in this way by the use of SEOQuake you will be able to investigate lot of information about the Search Results together and for the certain web page individually.

For example if you make a search in Google - Search Engine Optimization , then Google return number of results and by the use of this toolbar you will be able to get all the information about your as well as competitor webpage.

For any further query post your question here.

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What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) ?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the visibility of a website or a web page in search engines via the "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Other forms of search engine marketing (SEM) target paid listings. In general, the earlier (or higher on the page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local

search, video search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a website web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work, what people search for, the actual search terms typed into search engines and which search engines are preferred by their targeted audience. Optimizing a website may involve editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. Promoting a site to increase the number of backlinks, or inbound links, is another SEO tactic.

The initialism "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site and site content, SEO tactics may be incorporated into website development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe website designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, uses methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the quality of user-experience with search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

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