Search Engine Optimization

Supplies for Search Engines

Providing a search function is one of the requirements for managing your agency’s website. A search engine will help the public find the government information and services available on your website.

In limited cases, such as small websites, a site map or subject index may be used as a substitute of a search function. The search purpose should allow visitors to:

  • Search all files on the website that are anticipated for public use
  • Display outcome in order of relevancy, based on search criterion
  • Offer a timely reaction, comparable to industry best follow

Web Analytics Products and Services

There are many different commercial web analytics products and tools used by government agencies. Key criteria for selecting products are:

  • Price
  • Training available for your web staff
  • Ease of use
  • Vendor viability
  • Features and functionality

Because most leading metrics tools have similar features and functionality, you may find that other criteria such as vendor support and cost are more important.

Don’t Duplicate Existing Content

Avoid duplicating or recreating content that already exists on your own or another federal public website. This is a best practice for managing your agency’s website.

Your audience can become confused if they find overlapping or inconsistent information on the same subject, either on your own website or on another federal website. The best practice to ensure accurate and quality web content is to create it once by the organization having the greatest expertise and use it many times, through links. By focus your efforts on creating content related to your own mission and using links to related content you save time and resources. It normally takes much less effort to spend some time looking to see if content already exists than (re)creating it.

Quality Contents

  • Ensure your home page has at least 150 words of relevant, descriptive text about your products and services. Include the keywords your customers are most likely to type into a search engine when looking for your services.
  • Stand firm and say no when your web designer insists on an animated “Flash” intro page to your site. Search engines disregard them and your customers have seen enough of them!
  • Provide as much useful content as possible on your site.
  • Create fact sheets and expand your existing content. Search engines view a 50 page site as more “important” than a five page site.
  • Create a news section – It’s a great way to have a continual stream of new, relevant content. Archive the articles even if they may seem out of date – search engines will love you!

Search engine optimization and Website Design: Better collectively

Search Engine Optimization is a pretty new conception in the world of web design, but if you want a winning, profitable website, it’s something you cannot ignore. Rivalry for rankings on popular search engines like Google is fierce, and without Search engine optimization, your website is at a huge drawback. So when closely, in the process of setting up your new website, should you seek an SEO professional.

Preferably, you should consult with an SEO skilled before you meet with your web designer, since your idea or vision of what you want in your website might not be SEO friendly at all. Reviewing the basics with a search engine optimization company early on can save you never-ending heartache and expense down the road.

After that – when presenting your thoughts to a designer, you should also include your SEO practiced. If it is not sufficient to all meet in person, a phone consultation can easily be arranged. Some designers might try to induce you that they are search engine optimization knowledgeable, but it is actually better to hire a part company to handle search engine optimization matters, as it is very doubtful that web designers have the time to reside up to date on the frequently changing details of the search engine optimization world.

RSS Feeds

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (among other things). It is a web content format which, when used with an RSS aggregator, can allow you to alert users to new or exciting content on your website. These news feeds enable users to avoid the conventional methods of browsing or searching for information on websites. Now the content they want is delivered directly to them.

RSS feeds are commonly used on weblogs (blogs), news web sites and other places with frequently updated content. Once users subscribe to an RSS feed, they can gather material from web sites of their choosing. It’s a very convenient format because it allows users to view all the new content from multiple sources in one location on their desktop.

Blogs and the Blogosphere

Create a blog. Not just for the sake of having one. Post frequently and post great content. Good implementation is what gets the links. Give link to other blogs from your blog. Outbound links are one of the cheapest forms of marketing available. Many bloggers also track who is linking to them or where their traffic comes from, so linking to them is an easy way to get noticed by some of them.

Comment on other blogs. Most of these comments will not provide much direct search engine value, but if your comments are useful, insightful, and relevant they can drive direct traffic. They also help make the other bloggers become aware of you, and they may start reading your blog and/or linking to it.

Main tag pages rank well in Yahoo! and MSN, and to a lesser extent in Google. Even if your blog is fairly new you can have your posts featured on the Main tag pages by tagging your posts with relevant tags. If you create a blog make sure you list it in a few of the best blog directories.

Challenges of Blogging

Writing blogs can be time consuming and can take time to succeed. Building credibility and trust takes time. So don’t expect that, if and when you launch a blog, that it will be an overnight success. Blogging is a form of publishing and most publications that do succeed generally take a long time to build up a sustainable readership. You must be willing to put in quality blogging time week in, week out. A good idea might take up one paragraph, but could have taken a day or more to research and think through.

You need to consider issues of proprietary or confidential information, and how to handle potential defamatory language. These should be policies that your agency already has in place for other forms of communication.

In government, we must adhere to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Some government blogs such as USA.gov’s Gov Gab state that it is unable to post comments from children under the age of 13, and invites children to email them rather than post public comments.

The emergence of blogging has brought a range of legal liabilities. Employers have fired their employees who maintain personal blogs that discuss their employers.

As informal as blogs are meant to be, if they’re appearing on a government domain, they’re official government communications. They’re on the record and fair game for being picked up in the mainstream media. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a blog you just need to think carefully about how to use it as an effective communications tool that can benefit both your agency and the public.

Ten Tips for Effective Internet Article Writing

1 .In the first paragraph obviously state what the article is about. In standard journalism you would tell who, what, why, when and where an event is occurrence.

2. Organize your material in a point-wise fashion. Before you start writing think of the points that your article is leaving to cover.

3. Place the reader at ease. You are not writing for a scientific or literary society, but to your peers on the Internet. Write in an easy style and if you bring in new terms, describe them for your readers.

4. Explain your points in little paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier for the reader to follow. No one likes to appear at a long block of solid text. Three, four or five sentences are typically enough for one paragraph.

5. Dont be afraid to fall all the beans! Tell your deal secrets!

6. Give real examples and personal experiences to back up your points

7. Emphasize the benefits of your product or service. When it comes to selling, it is the benefits that sell, quite than the features.

8. Give resource in arrange to your readers. Give the addresses of websites where your readers can obtain more information on the subject that you are talking about.

9. Get another view on your article. Demonstrate it to your friends and colleagues, and dont worry if they disapprove of you, it is better that your friends find the mistakes than your customers. Always remember, a good editor is a writers best friend

10. Keep your most significant information near the beginning of the article and summarize what you want to say at the ending. Editors typically cut things near the end, so keep your most important points and ideas in the beginning of the article. At the very end of the article you can summarize what you set out to achieve in your opening paragraph.

Link building solutions Backbone of SEO operations.

Link building is one of the popular SEO solutions, which helps in providing higher page ranks. It is the backbone of the SEO operations and it helps in attracting quality traffic. It is important that while choosing a SEO company you ensure that they are offering quality web development services and quality write ups that generate one way links. Smooth web traffic is ensured by quality content management solutions which gives a professional look to your website and even user friendly features.

Link building benefits can be acquired by generating quality and keyword rich back links. Once your bank links are ready you can submit them to some of the good directories lie Digg, Sphinn, Reddit, Ezine and Yahoo! and many others.

You can also use some of the link building strategies like URL links, text links, image links and dynamic links. It is to be kept in mind that back links are crawled by the spiders. So incase you want to attract the spiders then one sure short way is the well written professional write ups rich in articles. This will definitely facilitate both one way as well as two way links.

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