I inspired myself to write about this list of 10 search engine factors (SEO), that is to say, those what search engines (SE’s here on) consider to make its mathematical calculations and give as result the ranking/position of every website in its listings. Obviously there are confidential data that these corporations are not going to disclose never for free competition and privacy reasons; this besides the fact that they’ve been modifying them (the importance of each factor) because of bad use that users/webmasters did in the course of the last years.

It’s worth mentioning that these factors are under my personal appreciation, which I have experienced and may change in the course of time, this doesn’t mean they are completely true. I am going to subtitle/classify all factors into 2 groups: primary and secondary.

Primary Factors

1. Website Title: it’s no one secret to anybody that SE consider this factor as very important, specially Yahoo and Bing. The title is all content that is into tags of your HTML code, within it should contain your most important keyword. Taking as sample that mine would be “Texas Real Estate”, a title could be..

 <title>Texas Real Estate | Other keywords here </title>

2. Incoming Backlinks: this is the heavyweight factor to Google than the rest of SE’s. Quality more that quantity links from the different websites that “point to” or “link to” your site, is what Google considers most important. What do I mean by quality? For example, a link from New York Times or Washington Post is more important that one from Peter Smith blog; and about quantity? the more links better…

The conditions that a optimum backlink needs to have are:

• Be a “dofollow” link, i.e. that the link doesn’t have the HTML tag rel=”nofollow”
• Have an adequate structure, i.e. the main or secondary keyword contained into that link.

For example, an adequate link for using to my blog (and I’d like to be backlinked), using the keyword “e-commerce blog” would be:

 <a href="http://ovalencia.com/en/">E-commerce Blog</a>

3. Headers: they’re the famous <H1> and <H2> HTML tags, and have as a main function to stick out subtitles or keywords relevant to the paragraph that comes after. It’s not known if the SE’s give more importance to, whether H1 or H2, is a long discussion topic; I guess nobody can asseverate respecting to SEO but approximations about how it does work.
Into these headers is advisable also to include the main keywords of your website, the same that should be before the main content section or paragraph, as follows:

<H1>Texas Real Estate</H1>
<H2>Texas Apartments</H2> or <H2>Texas Houses</H2>

4. Content: first of all, it must be an unique content, i.e. original, not forged or copied/pasted from other sources, like a book, website nor document, since SE’s could deduct points to your website if they find forgery and do not publish that in their web search results, especially Mr. Google. Besides, the same has to be focused on the keywords you have thought beforehand (in this example “Texas Real Estate” and “Texas Houses”), that is to say, you have to develop a writing context around them. Some people say that keywords have to be as high as possible into the content, it may be valid. And as a last point, it should have a minimum of words, be generous here, several lines instead of few words.

5. Sitemaps: used in different formats, like XML (most popular), xHTML and WML (both for cell phones) and others. They consist in a simple file text containing a list of every singular web page of your site, added to a place into your common web content (usually through FTP). e.g. sitemap.xml. They make the SE’s work easier by mapping the entire web, based on the assumption that all your content is into that file. For example, in this website, this is my sitemap. I recommend to read some XML tutorial if you want to implement it, this factor is not mandatory but pretty important. It’s interesting how fast is your website added by SE’s when sitemaps are used, required if you got a new blog.
A well built map besides the right web notifier (ping) and indexation process will be even faster.

6. Some metas: and I don’t say all of them, because Google, at least, has acknowledged that they don’t take into consideration the “meta-keywords” field, usually spammy. But what are they? Metas are HTML fields that help to index websites by providing your important keywords to SE’s; they are located into <HEAD> tags, and are many, but the most important are:

meta http-equiv="Content-Type" [Only informative, about character type]
meta name="keywords"           [Keywords, Google does not care]
meta name="description"        [Description, SE's take care]
meta name="DC.Language"        [Only informative, about language]

And continuing this example, I will declare this:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />  [Only informative]
<meta name="keywords" content="texas real estate, texas apartments" />     [Google does not mind]
<meta name="description" content="Website about texas real estate and.." /> [Google does mind]
<meta name="DC.Language" scheme="RFC1766" content="en" />            [Language info]
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en" />                  [Language info]

7. Domain Name: this factor is important to get into the SERP’s (Search Engine Result Pages) fast, specially in Yahoo and Bing, more that in Google. In general words, a good domain name should be choose under the following criteria:

• Contain your goal keywords or be related: if your keywords are “black shoes” and “leather shoes”, ideally is to buy a domain name containing or starting with “shoes”, e.g. www.ShoesTim.com
• Location by country: do you want your website get ranking only locally? (in your country and in your language), you should look for a country domain. That is to say, if you comes from USA, buy a .US, if your are from UK, buy a .CO.UK and so on….If your aim is to get an internationally audience or your country domain prices are too high, it may be good to get a .COM
• Lenght: for SE aims, domain is better containing your most important keywords, be short and not using a hyphen if possible (1 at most).
  I’ll post a complete article about this factor ASAP.

8. Broken links and penalizations: this point is noteworthy, due SE’s consider that a website is less important (or deduct points) when your site links to other that: doesn’t exist (404), permanently down, have a kind of penalization (because many reasons: black hat technics, virus), be a link farm or other similar.

Every SE wants users get the best possible experience when using their applications, this comprise the user search for a keyword, obtain the search results and get a quality information; therefore is important to have a website that comply with all their requirements. Now, you know, check if all your external links work and do not backlink any little known (or unknown) site, because yours may be blacklisted.

This tip might be important from this 2010, as Matt Cutts (Google engineer 100% responsible of web ranking) announced that the “web server time response will be more important for Google in the next future”, let’s see…

9. Internal folders: this point is important if the page you want to rank in SE’s is not the homepage; you have to name folders using your keywords; continuing with the example of Texas, let’s assume the domain you bought is RealEstateHill.com and your kw’s are “Texas Houses” and “Texas Apartments”, the advisable structures your pages should have are:

realestatehill.com/texas/houses.html ó
realestatehill.com/texas-houses.html (according to your taste and language)

realestatehill.com/texas/apartments.php ó
realestatehill.com/texas-apartments.php (in this case, using PHP)

The idea is not repeat keyword (out of the domain name) once at most, if more is found, usually is not valuable by SE’s and it just looks untidy. Thus get additional traffic from people who search for “real estate texas” and “real estate texas apartments”.

10. Language: probably you wonder in which country rank your website better, the answer is: where your goal public is living. Let me give an example close to reality, as webmaster, we’d like our site rank well in all countries who speak the same language (e.g. english: USA, Canada, England, Australia and so on). This factor is quite related to the number 2 (Incoming Backlinks) in the fact that: if you want rank well, you must get backlinks from local websites related to those countries.

Example: got the domain CoolTires.co.uk and I want to rank in Google Ireland with keyword “Car Tires”; well, you need to get backlinks from Irish sites or related to them (especially .IE) pointing to your website using that keyword. And I don’t mean “link exchange”, that method has lost importance for SE’s in the last years, if possible get a “one-way backlink”, that has a greater value that the first.

And, so far the first part (and most important) of Search Engine factors, in the next I’ll indicate the rest of them (secondary) that SE’s consider to make its ranking calculations (according Google there are over 200 factor, but I don’t know all, I just suppose them). I will attach the link below in “Related Posts”.

Thank you for reading and Regards

Jon

SEO, stands for Search Engine Optimization.

But what is SEO?

R: It’s a set of techniques to make a website (personal or not) ranks well on search engine sites (Google and Yahoo mainly), i.e. that it shows up in the first positions on web results when someone (potential customer, buyer or just visitor) searchs for a particular keyword. Personal Definition.

For example: we look up the keyword ‘blue pencil’ on Google or Yahoo, and then, it shows up 10 relevant results (by default) relevant to the search that we key in; good, the higher our example site be on these results, the more chances the searcher gets into the website and could end being a customer.

Google through its extensive algorithms has clasified and indexed billions of websites according to a set of factors, and thus, determined which ones have been more relevant for a keyword, in this example ‘blue pencil’, and they show up a list of results with high probabilities that match with our searching. These factors and the order of importance of each one (the “weight”) is top secret for each company (Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on) due to the high chances of misuse for getting first places positioning.

These techniques have been undusted gradually by worldwide web developers or people related to these corporations through “trial and error” techniques or internal information; although it’s hard to believe that someday the order of importance of each factor will be known or released as I previously mentioned.

Why is SEO important?

Because it’s more likely that the website gets more visitors if it’s well ranked on search engines like Google or Yahoo. If someone comes into that site through the search results and gets a proper information, usually, that person looks for more related info. Now, if the site offers products or services, the chances are bigger that this visitor becomes a customer.

In few words, the answer to the question is: “it is important because it makes websites get more visitors who could be future customers.”

Graphic Example

Look this example when I search on Yahoo and Google for the keywork ‘blue pencil’:

And, as you may have realized, it’s a common search, when we got the results, our sight goes directly to the 3 first ones and possible those below. Writing this post I want to demostrate the importance of a good SEO to any website nowadays.

Finally, I want to comment I offer my SEO personal services to personal or private organizations. More info on the services page.

Thanks for your attention and Regards

@JonVe

Hi, my dear audience, here is my second formal post. I decided few weeks ago to write in both languages to make this site more interesting and to grab more international audience.

Making money always requires time, effort and knowledge (and a bit of luck). Make it on internet is different that make it in real life. Technology that comes out the last years has pros and cons, although is true that people get information massively, competence is each time bigger and faster on business, corporations and society. Something is very true, those who get information first and venture to practice it, get more benefits over those who don’t.

There are many ways to make money online (legally), the 2 biggest categories are:

1) Physical Products Sale: consists on commercialization of real products (tangible), through online shopping carts, an intermediary or similar.

Examples: book, watch, computer or a pen sale.

2) Virtual Products Sale: consists on commercialization of non-physical products (e.g. computer programs and software in general) or provide a service online (voip phone calls, translators, freelancers solutions, etc.)

Now, the first category is divided into 2 subcategories:

1.1) Direct Sale: is when someone deals directly with other one without intermediary, whether through a personal website or a public one, using specialized software or not, as shopping cart. It’s not even mandatory to have a website, but is very recommended.

1.2) Indirect Sale: in this case, the physical product deals through someone else’s website, such is the case of ebay or similars, where there are different types of sales (as “buy it now” and auctions). These sites usually collect you some money for commissions and others are free.

Second category is much bigger due to services and virtual products are the new trend for these reasons: they are easier to ship, easier to mass production (examples are Word and Excel®) and usually take less investment risks. Namely:

2.1) Software or Program Sale: this is a quite lucrative field, or just ask Bill Gates about it, whose corporation is responsible of selling massively these types of products with high rates of profits. Also, it’s the case of simple digital information sellling, like music, e-books or some cell phone ringtones.

2.2) Virtual Services: this specific field is big and I’d say that internet comunity is focusing on.

• Personal Services: today is normal to send a personal job to someone else located thousands of miles away. This is the case of “virtual freelancers”, who make almost any kind of difficult work, like language translations, writing articles, homeworks, etc. There are the called “virtual teachers”, who charge people per minute/hour depending on the service they offer. Do you need any fashion adviser with excellent reputation and available on webcam? Well, there are some and at different rates.
• Advertising: the main business of Google, but I am not going to talk about this monster (in the best sense of the word). In general words, one person or corporation pay a fee to a website for showing off theirs ad/banner as this action makes a return on revenue. Besides, it is logic that advertisers are prone to make an agreement to related business to them
• Investments: the new trend, someone out there have heard about Forex? online stocks exchange? I knew a guy a pair of years ago who was making his living with just this.
• Affiliate Programs: an affiliate (in few words) is a reseller of any product, whether tangible or not, this person makes some money per sale/lead. Have you ever seen shoes reseller entice to sell theirs products? Well, many of them actually are not the product owners, they are there just for selling that merchandise and getting paid for percentage of individual sales.
• Software Development: there are people with large and quality amount of knowledge about technologic tools like programs and computational coding which ease the resolution of a particular problem. Some people trades with this, some not. If they got a good product and know how to profit, it could be a very lucrative business.
• Casino and gambling: well, I am not going to obviate this way of making money, there are thousands of persons who dedicate time to produce or be partipant of these kind of websites. Although many people lose even their shirt here (“house always wins”), many others make money by getting the tricks or “skills” of this entertainment. I personally don’t like playing this, but exists for sure.

There are many ways that I am passing over. It’s a very true that many options exist, I recommend to start out slowly, trying the ones that don’t need technical knownledge or similar.

Thanks for your attention

@JonVe

Hi there

Well, this is my first serious post. I am giving away some Facebook coupons, 4 x 100 USD each (400 USD total)

What are they for?

R: For advertising your products, services or website on the biggest world social network.

What do I need to use them?

R: you need this requirements:

1. A Facebook account (obviously)
2. Some article, a FB group or a website to promote
3. A Visa, Master Card or Amex debit/credit card

Some limitations:

1. You only can use 1 coupon per account, this means that if you want to use a second coupon, you have to open a new one or borrow a fellow account.
2. All coupons expires on the date mentioned between parenthesis, you have to active them before, but you can use the credit afterwards if you like.

Other info:

1. You may open several ad campaigns you like using this coupon (e.g. 1 for a FB group, 1 for ebay, 1 for your website, etc.) besides choosing limitations/segmentations for your demographic target such as age, sex, city, country, sexual orientation, keywords and more.
2. Ad Approval usually takes between 4 (min) to 24 (max) hours.
3. I suggest using them on CPM (Cost Per Mille) or cost per 1000 impressions that on CPC (Cost Per Click), because credit usually last less on clicks. CPM and CPC vary according to your target country (in USA and Canada are expensive), but you have to test and test till you find a good results.
4. For activate them, please go the following link (click here) and follow the onscreen instructions.
5. You have to be vigilant on your credit no reaching over 100$, because your credit/debit card may be charged to pay the surplus, although you can set up spending limitations to avoid this situation (let’s say 15$-20$ per day).

The coupons and their codes

1X80-Y754-7642-HT53 (100 U$, activate before January/08/2010)

W9JM-Y289-CE2Y-02E0 (100 U$, activate before January/10/2010)

HETP-6430-65CJ-6EK5 (100 U$, activate before January/15/2010)

895E-V44P-NYWC-K98N (100 U$, activate before January/15/2010)

Update July 2010: Unfortunately, I don’t have any more to offer. If you are from some North American or European countries, you can get several ones for free on Qapacity (click here to go). If you are not, you can buy it on Digital Point Forums (click here to go) for 10% of its value (e.g. 100U$ coupons are sold for about 10U$)

It’s important to mention that you need a valid debit/credit card to activate these coupons as aforementioned. In case you have not one, I may sell one to you for the activation process. They’re 100% legit.

I have more coupons (nowadays), if you need one, buy a card for activation or more info about how to activate them correctly, you are free to contact me.

In these days (or weeks) I will give away a second group of codes, I inform it as soon as I do this on twitter (look my below signature or right-up in the column), so you may follow me, if you want. At this time, I don’t have any other way, no e-mail newsletter but RSS feeds.

With no further to say, please send me your comments

Thank you for reading this post and Regards

And, here we go

This is my first post.

HeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeLLoooooooooooooooooo WooooooooooooRLD

I hope you like my future ones.

Post ends here.