| SEO - Using Dashes Underscores or Neither in Domain Names (internet business)
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SEO - Using Dashes Underscores or Neither in Domain Names
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SEO Tips for Instant Results
People ask me on a daily basis how to do a couple of quick fixes which will make their site appear higher in the search results. The type of people that ask me are usually people who have been doing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) themselves but have not had any great success. This article is for people just starting to do SEO or for people who have been doing it for a long time. The tips are eas... Read internet business article
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A "bad credit home loan" can help you climb your way out of debt and get you started back on the road to upstanding, good credit. There are many lenders who are willing to make bad credit home loans to you - a loan based on your equity in your home even if your credit has slipped or isn't as perfect as it could be. By taking out a bad credit home mortgage or home equity loan, you can consolidate a... Read article
SEO - Using Dashes Underscores or Neither in Domain Names
One of the biggest challenges we face as internet business owners is trying to secure domain names that have the keywords we need to help in the Search Engine Optimization process. Over the last few years the number of domains being registered is growing exponentially and Internet marketers are now reverting to domain names that use a combination of dashes and underscores, however you need to be careful using dashes and underscores in the domain names because you can in fact make it very difficult for a client to actually remember your website and come back to it if they did not add it to their favorites. In the long run, this can challenge the ability of your business to grow.
From a number of focus groups we have run in Australia and also in conversation with our customers, we have found that a domain using dashes is in fact harder for a customer to remember then one with underscores. One of the core reasons that people find using underscores easier to remember goes back to the bad old days of DOS. The DOS operating system did not allow for names to have spaces and the substitute for spaces was the underscore, consequently people remember underscores between names better than those that use dashes.
If you were choosing a Key Word Rich Name the best choice would be to have the domain with no dashes or underscores. For example if I was trying to setup a domain for a car detailing service in Los Angeles, the best non-company name specific domain for the location would be -
LosAngelesCarDetailingService.com
The key advantage of this name is that customers will easily remember the name and that there are no underscores or dashes. This domain is also far more easier for people to remember if they see the domain using off-line marketing techniques like bumper bar stickers. The domain name is also far more easier for you as the business owner to explain to the client to lookup on the web.
For example we could have rewritten this domain -
Los_Angeles_Car_Detailing_Service.com or
Los-Angeles-Car-Detailing-Service.com
If I had a choice between the two names above, from experience I would recommend the first one over the second. The reason for this is that your clients who are not extensively internet savvy will tend to interpret a dash, whether spoken or seen as an underscore. Once again this occurs because of the history people have with the DOS operating system.
The other issue you need to be very cautious of doing is using a combination of dashes and underscores. In a recent survey my company did of 200 keywords in the three major search engines, we found that more and more companies are registering domains with either dashes or underscores in the domain name and then use the alternative with the file names. Let me show you an example ...
Los_Angeles_Car_Detailing_Service.com/Platinum-Car-Cleaning-Service.asp
You can see in the domain above that we have used a combination of dashes and underscores. Doing this is really poor practice because if a person visits your website and wants to get back to the page above, they will get mixed up as to whether they should be using underscores or dashes.
When using underscores or dashes in your domain, make sure that you stay consistent and only use either all dashes or all underscores. It is unwise to use a combination of these elements as shown above.
Look the bottom line is this; from a client user perspective the best domain to register is one without spaces. If that domain is not available then the next best one is one that uses underscores and finally the dashes option should only be used in the worst case scenario.
One of the other issues you need to be cautious about when registering a domain is to not make the domain name to long. In online advertising sites like Google Adwords the domain name display allows only a maximum of 35 characters. If your domain name is longer than 35 characters you will not be able to type it into the Display URL box the domain which will mean if you do not display the right URL then Google will ban your Adwords campaign. In the examples I used above I would not be able to run an Adwords campaign because the number of characters in the domain exceeds the Display URL's capability and as such limits your advertising options for pay-per-click advertising.
Choosing the right domain is an important step and if you get it wrong it can limit your abilities to market your website and cost you money.
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LSI - Latent Semantic Indexing And SEO
Indexing has always been considered a highly targeted science. Enter a search query into Google search and the pages that are displayed are generally optimized towards that exact word or term. However, in their continual battle to server the most relevant but most natural pages with genuinely useful information Google has injected latent semantic indexing (LSI) into its algorithms.
What Is LSI?
LSI is a unique indexing method that potentially takes Google search one step closer to becoming human in its way of thinking. If we were to manually search through web pages to find information related to a given search term we would be likely to generate our own results based on the theme of the site, rather than whether a word exists or doesn't exist on the page.
Why Search Engines Might Adopt Latent Semantic Indexing
The extremely rigid form of "keyword indexing" also meant that black hat SEO techniques were easier to implement. Search engines could be manipulated into ranking a site highly by using set formula. Originally, cramming a page with a particular keyword or set of keywords meant a site would rank highly for that search term. The proceeding set of algorithms ensured that your link profile played more of an important part than your keyword density. Reciprocal linking soon followed once again making it possible to manipulate the search engine spiders by exchanging links with tens, hundreds, or thousands of websites.
Reciprocal linking was soon beaten as Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo and MSN gave less credence to a reciprocal link as they did to a one-way inbound link. Latent Semantic Indexing is another, particularly powerful, method to try and make their result pages appear more natural with natural pages filled with natural content.
The Effects
The introduction of LSI has seen some dramatic changes in the search engine result pages already. Sites that had previously performed well because of an impressive link profile based on a single keyword have found their pages slip in the rankings. Other pages with a more diverse portfolio of inbound links are taking the lead with search terms for which they had not previously performed.
SEO is far from dead because of LSI, in fact if anything, it has probably increased the need for professional white-hat SEO on your website. The field of SEO, though, has almost certainly changed. Website content copywriting for Google's benefit is not merely made up of keyword density and keyword placement as it once was and link-building techniques will need to change to incorporate LSI algorithms but it can be done.
Writing Content For LSI
If optimizing solely for Google then a web page can, theoretically, be naturally written and naturally worded. When we write we instinctively include the appropriate keyword in our text. In order to avoid repetition (or keyword optimization, as it was once called) we would often alter some instances of these keywords for other words with the same or very similar meaning. We naturally include the plural or singular form of a keyword as well as different tenses and a number of different stems of that keyword. In the eyes of LSI algorithms this is all good news.
Looking At Your Link Profile
A link profile should no longer consist of thousands of links with the same anchor text (that of your primary keyword). There's no reason to panic if you already have this kind of profile. Instead you should look at relevant and similar terms and improve your link profile by gaining links using these as your anchor text.
What It Offers Web Searchers
From the point of view of web searchers, LSI offers some distinct advantages over its earlier form of indexing. For example, LSI recognizes that the word "engine" in "search engine optimization" is not related to searches for terms like "steam engine" or "locomotive engine" and is instead related to Internet marketing topics. In theory, LSI results give a much more accurate page of results as well as providing a broader range of pages still geared towards a particular topic.
Where Google Leads, Others Generally Follow
It is widely acknowledged that Google is the search engine at the forefront of latent semantic indexing. On the whole they try to generate results pages that are literally filled with genuine, useful results and LSI certainly provides another string in their bow. Yahoo and MSN, for now, seem more than happy to go along with keyword specific indexing although Yahoo are known to look at singular and plural keyword variations as well as keyword stemming when judging keyword density.
The Effect On Your Website
How it affects the individual Webmaster is dependent on how they go about promoting their site already. If the pages are filled with natural content including keywords and keyword alternatives, and the link profile is similarly diversified for a number of related keywords then the fact is it won't change very much. However, if all of your efforts have been concentrated, either on-page or off-page, with a single keyword then it's time to readdress the balance.
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