How to improve the page rank of your website

Page Rank (often denoted by PR) is Google’s ranking software that calculates the relevance of a webpage with its content. Page Rank is a quantity (between 0 and 10) defined by Google that provides a rough estimate of the overall importance of a web page. The Google Toolbar can be obtained free of charge for Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Google has a page rank of 10 which is the highest your site can attain. The PR of your site is updated about once of month when Google updates their database of web pages. It exports new backlinks, PageRank, or directory data approximately every three months.
One highly effective method for attracting more web traffic is to first optimize the design of your web site. This will increase your page rank because search engines love sites that have clean code, are fast loading and contain lots of well written content. This ultimately results in gaining traffic which leads to more sales, a sign you have developed a profitable web site.
Below are few factors which can be incorporated to improve page rank of your website:

1.Backlinks are vital
Links to and from your site are an important off page factor for determining PageRank. Back links are Links pointing to your website from another website. The more back links you have the higher your PR will be. You can always check out your backlinks by querying Google using its link operator.
Learn how to increase the backlinks
All the links are not Equal – Quality, Relevancy and Quantity of Links Effect PageRank
•Quality of LinksLinks with high PR, who link to your page, carry more weightage than links with equal or less PR.
•Relevancy of LinksHowever, relevancy of links is equally important. If your website is about selling online lays chips and you want to get a backlink from a interior designing website then it is irrelevant.
Google looks to title tag an on page criterion of incoming links to determine relevancy and similarity. Pages whose relevancies are equal or similar to your page are given more weightage.
Another relevancy criterion for incoming links is how pages link to you. Ideally, you want the incoming link to use your keyword in its anchor text. For instance, if you want to create a link for “how to increase backlinks” then anchor text should be increase backlinks not click here.
•Quantity of LinksIf a high-ranking page links to your page, it has value. However, if the high ranking page links to you and a hundred other pages it has less value. Essentially, the voting weight of the incoming link is divided among all the links on that page.
Another quantity issue is “link Mills”/ “Link Farms”. A link mill is a page with nothing but links on it. Linking to link farms or mills can be extremely harmful. These “bad neighborhoods” are often banned sites.
The final quantity issue is timeliness of links. Too many links to your site too quickly sends a flag to Google.
In addition to taking into account the number of links to your page and the ranking of the linking page, to compute a page’s PageRank, Google considers hundreds of other factors including
• the click through rate (CTR) of Google’s search results, cached pages, favorites on the Google Toolbar
• when your site acquired the links
• how fast a site is gaining links
• the stickiness of your site (i.e., the effectiveness of your site in retaining individual users)

2.Update your website every day by adding more unique content
If you site has unique content for the visitors they will surely revisit your site.

3.Include useful high-quality information on your site
Web copy that is well written will naturally drive more traffic. And Make sure that you have your targeted keywords included in the content on your pages in a natural way. It will help your website listed in various search engines. Website owners reading your content will naturally want to link to your site without even asking for a link back.

4.Provide inside linking to your website
Internal links are links between internal pages of a website. For example if you have written an article to enhance the page rank of the website it could be interlinked with another article which is about page rank.

5.Create sitemap for your website
Create sitemap (XML based for Google and text based for yahoo) then submit sitemap to Google and submit sitemap to Yahoo. Get a Google webmaster account and sign in there to see your website statistics. It will also tell you if your site is indexed or not, and your page rank in Google.

6.Publicize your site to everyone with whom you communicate
Add your site’s URL, e.g., www.himshilp.com, to every piece of communication you initiate. Your Web address should be listed everywhere that your phone/fax number and mailing address e.g.,
• Letterhead
• Business cards
• Newsletters
• Brochures
• Press Releases
• Fax cover sheets
• Email signatures

7.Write a newsletter and send it out.
Inform people what’s new or remarkable on your site. The newsletter will remind people about your site and encourage them to visit to find appealing content.

8.Provide a Rich Site Summary (RSS).
RSS is “a lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”
In addition to making it easy for other sites to distribute your headlines and content, your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including Technorati, BlogSearch, and Ask.com Bloglines.

9.Keyword density:
Keyword density is the ratio of the word that is being searched for (the keyword) against the total number of words appearing on your web page. It has often been observed that Google considers keyword density a large factor in ranking pages in search engine results, more so than many other search engines. For example if your webpage is of “Page rank” and if you have used the keyword “page rank” only once in your webpage of thousand words then it has a lower keyword density than a keyword that occurs (say) four times in a page of similar length. Then the page wont be listed for that particular keyword since its keyword density is low.
So in order to improve your site's placement in the search engine results one needs to work on the keyword density on his page.

10.Perform the necessary Keyword research.
Keyword research plays very important role in determining the page rank. Your web copy is filled with words that visitors enter in the search engines. Intertwine these words throughout the content of your web site.

11.Construct meta tags that include your targeted keywords
Make sure you write an attractive description for your description meta tag. This gets listed first to the visitors when search engine find your website relevant for that keyword. If the description does not capture your visitor’s attention immediately you will lose your visitor to a competing web site.

12.Construct a meaningful Title tag.
The title tag is what visitors will see at the top of the browser window when your site first appears. It is the most important tag to consider when designing your web site. Place your main keywords at the beginning of the title tag. Don't place you site's name first. Most visitors will not be searching for your site name. They find you with the keywords they entered in the search engines.

13.Use heading tags for the headings and sub headings of your web site content.
Incorporate your keywords in < h1 > to < h6 > tags. Search engines give a little more weightage to these tags. They also grab your visitor’s attention faster than normal text.

14.Name files using your targeted keywords
When naming your css, image, javascript files etc, include your targeted keywords. Don't use the same keywords again and again in every file. It may be flagged as keyword spamming by the search engines.

15.Include keywords in page and directory names
Instead of giving your pages generic names, be creative and incorporate keywords in their urls.
For example rather than giving names to your pages like page1.htm, page2.htm… try to incorporate the keywords in their names, like improve-page-rank.htm will be a better choice for a webpage which is about improving the page rank of a webpage.
This will help the search engines to identify the keywords in your page url. If a site owner links to this page you will benefit by already having your keywords in your web page address.

16.Use keywords in your link text
If the links on your page have relevant keyword text in them, your page will receive higher rankings in the search engine results than those sites that don't.
For example, a link on your with the text "improve your page rank" will cause your site to be listed earlier if a visitor searches for "page rank" than if the link simply said "click here."

17.Optimize your images
Try to avoid using images to display important names, content, or links. Search engines don't spider images only text. Use ALT tags if any of the main content on your web page can't be written in regular HTML.
18.Create external files
Instead of loading your site with lots of css or javascript code, place all the code in an external file between your header tags. This will drastically reduce the load time of your pages and allow the search engines to easily spider your site.

19.JavaScript & SEO
JavaScript and images, conveys nothing to a search engine. The second thing is size. Search Engines actually have a limit to how much page content they will crawl. For instance, Googlebot has a 100 kb limit. Even though the Googlebot directive is to search for keywords and phrases, which are placed after the 100 kb limit are invisible to it.
Don't overload the HEAD section of your page with styles and scripts. Instead, you should link to external files.

20.Proximity & Hierarchy
Before you start optimizing the individual pages consider the closeness of keywords and phrases to the beginning of a page. The importance of the webpage decreases from left to right and from top to bottom. So the top left part of a webpage has highest importance. The search engine spider will read the content which is in the beginning of the page BEFORE the actual content of the page. For example if you have links tabs in the page, it is more important than the actual content of the page. Whereas human visitors generally ignore the links first and directly jump to the content of the page.
Search Engines also consider textual hierarchy. Just like writing an exam paper, a search engine looks for code clues to understand the outline of your page. To a spider, text in heading tag is more important than the normal text. Similarly bold, italicized, or underlined text has more importance than the plain text.
Google periodically changes how it calculates a page’s importance, thereby resulting in shifts in rankings, known as a Google Dance.

Benefits of using Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the followers. That’s why information on Twitter is short, to the point and effective. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. You can access Twitter via Web, Desktop Applications and even SMS. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
I started using tweeter some time ago. Surprisingly after few days of posting some tweets it started getting indexed in Google. While Google continues to dominate the world of “search”, it has a long way to go in offering real-time search capabilities.
Twitter is a powerful communication platform providing social networkers the opportunity to post updates in real-real time. The growth of twitter has been so phenomenal that Google also started paying attention and it is indexing Tweets. Many Twitter pages and individual tweets can be seen on the first page of Google.
Then I started learning more about it. Rather than using it just as a social networking platform, if used properly, it can benefit you in so many ways including by boosting your personal brand and enhancing website traffic.

I want to list down some of the methods by which Twitter can benefit us:
1.A Powerful Tool for Obtaining Information / news. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. This is very useful for active social news participants as they can subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows them to receive and view content quickly.Twitter can be quite an effective search tool for researching any kind of information. The results can complement other methods or sources of information. Twitter has a wide range of users, who constantly update Twitter with new information on different niches.
2.To reinforce Personal Brand and awareness. Twitter is a social media platform which has the primary advantage of developing a social brand that is well-connected and accessible. Due its vast usage, Twitter can be a used for promoting your products and services and establish your brand. If you have established business you can use Twitter to enhance your brand image. On the other hand if you have a smaller business with limited brand awareness then Twitter can be excellent for promoting and establishing your brand among enormous audience.
3.Get Feedback. Twitter provides you with an opportunity to join a group of interest by following others who are influential within your niche. Twitter also allows businesses to communicate with customers and receive feedback in a casual and cost effective manner. It can prove useful in understanding and obtaining consumer opinion about new products or services or new ideas. You can also use Twitter to communicate new ideas with people and test public opinion. Bloggers sometimes use Twitter to discuss ideas for new posts.
4.Use it as HR tool to Recruit People. Want to hire a good web analyst, web designer, or programmer? Send out a tweet asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
5.Marketing Opportunities. Twitter can be used in promoting your products and services. It is a cost effective method to increase awareness about your products or services. You can use it to inform customers about any new announcement or special offers. Twitter offers all the advantages of traditional text message marketing and more. It can prove to be a useful tool for conducting market research by better understanding of potential or existing customers.
6.Boost your website traffic. Twitter can be used to direct traffic to your websites. If you tweet about your website, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up and re-tweet it. Bloggers often use Twitter to inform their audience of any new posts on their blog by posting links on Twitter. Thus Twitter can be seen as a traffic generation tool. The placement of links within profiles and conversations can direct visitors to a specific website and is especially powerful if you pitch to early adopters and influencers.
7.Make new friends. Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is a simple way for you connect with like minded people outside of your usual circle. A Twitter association can be developed into a long term acquaintance.
8.Spreading Social Network. Twitter is an excellent tool to help bloggers share links to content which is of mutual interest to like minded people. On a personal level Twitter allows one to communicate with friends and family or close network of connections. On an organizational level Twitter allows colleagues who are not co-located to communicate with each other or businesses to communicate with their customers. With Twitter it is also possible to target a specific niche or audience by following others from your industry. It can thus allow a business to build contacts within the industry. Communities have developed around many of Twitter groups or niches. Twitter can be used to establish reliable and long term relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
9.Get Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Your followers might vote up the stories if they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites
10.Event Updates. Twitter can be used as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes by entrepreneurs. This is a stress-free way to broadcast information. Businesses have also used Twitter effectively to measure the performance of campaigns.
11.Promotion. Twitter can be used as a promotional tool to announce offline endeavors or upcoming online events (webinars, virtual tradeshows etc). If you are an e-commerce site, perhaps you have a deal of the day or seasonal offers where you can promote these deals. The fact is you do not want to be too promotional, but Twitter does present the opportunity to promote your products or service and brand to your friends.
12.SEO Boost. If you have good content on your website and you want to drive additional traffic to this content on your website, you can use Twitter to do so. A quick tweet with the URL can help drive additional traffic to a preferred landing page on your site to help persuade the conversion on your site.
13.Find future Prospects online. Twitter allows you to interact with potential prospects and your target audience. While you do not want to be in direct touch all of the time, Twitter does allow you to engage with your prospects by re-tweeting their posts or responding to something that they may have tweeted about. Discretion and tact is needed in this area.
14.Twitter and Mobile. Since Twitter is very simple to use and is limited to 140 characters, mobile use with Twitter is also easy. You can both send and receive updates what you and your friends are doing on the go using a simple SMS. Twitter can be a great mobile communication tool. As we know in business, this can be a pretty powerful thing.
15.Offer live exposure. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.
In short, Twitter allows you to monitor how influencers think or feel, you can also get into their attention zone via active networking. For businesses, Twitter is another channel which connects current and potential customers with your product or brand. It allows deeply infiltration into the lifestyles of interested participants, which helps to build brand persistence/loyalty. So twitter can be used a tool to achieve simple aim of tracking and directing attention from various groups of your interest and in turn drive business.

Boost traffic to your website by optimizing images

In terms of esthetics, images are an integral part of website design. They provide site visitors instant visual stimulation. In terms of SEO, images can be optimized and bring additional visitors to a website.
But images are often overlooked in SEO. But if we see next to regular search on a search engine Image Search is the fastest growing vertical search in the space. Compared to shopping, news, blogging, etc., image search has them beat by a mile. However, what's even more important about image search, is how the search engines are utilizing and incorporating them into their regular search results.
Nowadays images are incorporated in a lot of different ways. You'll see images coming up with the news one boxes, with descriptions of videos, a group of images could appear at the bottom of a page, as opposed to the top of the page. All of the search engines are striving to make the results more relevant and incorporating images into the results is definitely part of that strategy.
Here are few tips to optimize your site’s images for the search engines.

• Names of the images:
Avoid using any needless, uninformative words such as 'and', 'thus', 'or' and so on because they makes your content longer and complicated and make the reader lose interest. Make file names as clear and short as possible. The image name will appear beneath the graphic image in search results. Make the image names of your files match what is actually represented in the file Do NOT expect your photo editing program's default settings to give you optimized file names Default names communicate nothing to the search engines on their own. Make sure to set up your own file naming structure in advance. Use dashes between the words of images, rather than underscores. Nobody likes detailed data. Try to think of keywords that usually grab your attention and frame the filenames.

• Use Alt attribute of the img tag:
Search Engines only know what you tell them. Therefore, if we want a search engine to understand that a graphic is an ad, decorated text or coupon for your services you have to tell it. We do this via ALT (alternative) tags. ALT tags should contain a description of what the image is. It is a labeling device to translate your image into text for search engines. It also translates your image into a textual reference for users with visual handicaps. Finally, if a user has images turned off or a slow connection, they are presented with your textual alternative so your page remains relevantly contextual.
Search engine also gives importance to alt tag to determine the page rank of the website. Google indexes the text given in the ALT tags of images. The ALT attribute is also shown when the user pass over the image with his mouse.
Things to keep in mind while preparing alt tags for images:
1. Alt text is the best description of the image.
2. It should be short and simple. Avoid giving unnecessary details using alt tag.
3. If your image is decorative text then just use the same text in alt text.
4. If the image is the bullets we can leave the alt text blank.
5. Use two or three keywords at the most while optimizing images with alt text. Don’t use so many keywords.

Alt tag is a useful source to serve the problem of many web browsers displaying the image differently, and some browsers even don’t support some types of images in such cases alt tag is very useful.

• Robots.txt file:
Ensure that the folder you are storing your images in is not blocked by your robots.txt file. Store your navigational and "structural" type graphics in one folder, and block that from the spiders, store the pictures of products, events, or news related images in another folder and open that one to the spiders.

• Image freshness
Keep images fresh. If you're targeting high popularity keywords it's worth experimenting with re-uploading images. Image freshness is a contextual clue for the search engines and could affect relevancy. Re-uploading your images to keep them fresh.

• Reasonable image file size
The image size also plays an important role while loading the page. If the image is too big the page will take too long to get displayed, always specify height and width of the image so that the image will be loaded easily.

• Limited number of images per page
Don’t use too many images in a webpage it makes your webpage slow.

• Check images aren't being filtered out in Google Safe Search Filter

• Use a Caption for Your Image:
Placing a small caption directly under, on top or on the side of your image will help queue the search engines what the image is about. With a caption, you can be a little more descriptive about the picture than with the alt attribute, but again, make it flow natural.

• Design unique images to differentiate yourself

• Include Images With Articles, & Press Releases:
If you are sending out an article or a press release, don't forget to include an image, or a url to an image that the news outlets can utilized for their version of your news. By supplying the link to the image, it can encourage them to link to the image itself straight from your own website. Adding images to articles and press releases makes them more appealing to the reader.Boost internal linking and traffic by linking images to the relevant articles.