Parasitical Value Vs. Brand Value

•April 5, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Choosing the perfect domain name for your website can be quite a challenge; generally, you can simplify the process down to two competing factors: parasitical and brand value.  The idea behind parasitical value is to purchase a domain name containing long tail keywords to benefit from organic search.  By looking at search trends in your niche, you can take advantage of the existing organic search.  In short, you want to select an available domain name with keywords that you plan to target in organic search to generate traffic.  Examples of domain names with parasitical value are:

  • keyword-seo.com
  • webmaster-discussion.com
  • keywordseodiscussion.com

The other factor that you should consider when selecting a domain name is brand value.  Brand value refers to how well people will recognize, remember, and associate keywords with your website.  To create a domain with brand value, you want to pick a domain name that is short, catchy, and memorable.  Some examples of domain names with brand value are:

  • digg.com
  • reddit.com
  • slashdot.org

Parasitical value and brand value are competing factors in domain selection.  Unless you are able to purchase a one or two word generic, you will need to choose between parasitical and brand value when choosing your domain name.

Typography Tips

•April 4, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Capitalization – Do not capitalize an entire sentence or paragraph of text.  This may grab a visitors attention, but capitalized letter are quite hard to read.  It is hard to read capitalized letters because all of the letters are the same size, which makes it hard to see a difference between them.  Capitalizing a word or two is acceptable to provide emphasis, avoid capitalizing large chunks of text at all costs.

Spacing – Ensure that there is enough spacing between your context, links, etc., so that a visitor can see a clear difference between these areas.  Also, it is common to have a larger space between headlines compared to the usual spacing because this allows the headlines to stand out.

Alignment – Left align text.  In some cases it may be appropriate to right align text, but remember that left aligned text is easier to read.  Additionally, you should avoid justifying the text as this makes your context harder to read.  Justifying the text maximizes the width of the columns, and narrower columns are actually easier to read than wider ones.

Font Type – When choosing fonts, try to pick one that fits the theme of your website.  Remember that you can mix and match font types for different parts of your website – ex. titles (h1 tags), content (p tags), links.   When using different font types, ensure that they blend together well and give a solid feel to your website.  Also, always ensure that your font type is readable by your visitors.

Font Size – Choosing an appropriate font size is just as important and picking the right font type.  Usually, webmasters use three different font sizes to distinguish between the main heading, sub heading, and the body context.

Emphasis – Italics or emboldening (bold) can be used for emphasis quite effectively.  Try not to over use italics or bold because if you over do it, then nothing will stick out from the content.

Image SEO

•March 30, 2009 • Leave a Comment

Below are some basic tips that will maximize your search engine rankings for images on your website.

Image Location:

  • Do not store your images in the root directory of your website.
    • If you maintain a small website, simply put your images in a folder called “images” (ex. http://***.com/images).
    • If you run a larger website, store your images in a more categorized manner, such as “images/category” (ex. http://***.com/images/category).
  • Never store your images at an external host, such as an image hosting website.

Image Naming:

  • Save the image in a gif, jpeg, or png formatting.
  • Name the image with targeted keywords that accurately represent it.
    • Appropriate
      • http://***.com/images/keyword1-keyword2.png
    • Inappropriate
      • http://***.com/images/picture1.png
      • http://***.com/images/catid10353.png

Those are just some simple tips that can help your website’s search optimization regarding images.  Optimizing your images can also improve the overall seo of your website.

.Org > .Net?

•March 19, 2009 • 1 Comment

Recently, I created another blog which has the theme of controversial issues.  I bought the domain name controversialissues.net and later purchased the .org version.  The .net held a stable rank of #14 in Google for the search phase “controversial issues”.  I  bought the .org version and proceeded to 301 redirect the .net to the .org version.  The blog did the Google dance and bounced between the ranks of #3 to #19 for the keyword phase “controversial issues”.  It finally stabilized and maintained the ranking of #9 in Google for that keyword phase.  The blog also gained search engine rankings for other search phases.  During the time that the blog changed domain extension, no changes were made to the content, nor were any links added (to my knowledge).  This means that all factors which affect the search engine ranks were equal, except for the domain extension. From this experiment, one can conclude that the .org extension ranks higher than the .net extension.  In general whether a website has a .org or .net extension should not matter for seo purposes as search engines  treat gTLD (generic top-level domains) the same. It is possible that in this particular niche of medical, government, social, etc. topics that the .org extension has more trust than the .net counterpart, which would account for its boost in search engine rankings.  When discussing domain extensions outside of the realm of seo, the .org may also be preferable over the .net in certain situations.  Many people still recognize .org websites as more trust baring than a .com or .net because the majority of people believe an organization is in charge of the website.  However, this is not true, and there are no restriction upon who can own a .org domain name.  For this reason many webmaster choose the .org over the .net in certain niches, such as health, medicine, law, etc.  This experiment and these facts are some of the reasons that the .org can be seen as superior to the .net.

SEO Tips for WordPress

•March 17, 2009 • 1 Comment

Matt Cutts discussion regarding whitehat seo tips for bloggers can be very useful regarding your WordPress blogs seo; below is a summary of the search engine optimization tips that Cutts mentioned which will help your WordPress blog.

  • Don’t put your blog at the root of your domain – You might want to expand upon your website later down the line.
  • Name the directory “blog” not “WordPress”.
  • Make category names that are quality keyword (which you target in your seo).
  • To help your blog to get listed in Google News, have multiple authors for your blog.
  • Use a WordPress plug-in that gives each post a unique title that matches the keyword you are targeting for it.
  • Ensure that your WordPress blog is crawlable.
  • Use the alt tags on all types of media content, images, videos, audio, etc.