Now a day’s online business is becoming the preferred choice of most of the entrepreneurs who are bringing their business online in order to make their business accessible to larger audience base. As a matter of fact, most of the people prefer Google over other search engines so as to find desired search results. Google on the other hand strives hard to provide the best search results for which it has included the use of synonyms for certain words.

The question now arises as to how the use of synonyms affects the search engine ranking of your website. In order to improve search engine ranking of your site it is very important that Google algorithms identify the terms used during the search process. The crucial part of recognizing the terms is to be acquainted with the synonyms.

Google results show that about 70% of the user search is influenced by synonyms across more than 100 languages supported by Google. Making use of synonyms is part of a process called Latent Semantic Indexing. Since search engines are becoming more and more compound in their ranking process, it would be advisable to write content using synonyms instead of resorting to keyword stuffing and other such practices for gaining good rankings among the search engines.

It would be better if you avoid the usage of technical jargons and make use of possible synonyms of keyword. Keywords should fit naturally to your web content, so avoid the usage of multiple key phrases for a web page, instead a particular web page should be optimized for a single key phrase.

Tags: improve google ranking, increase search engine ranking, latent semantic indexing, ranking factors, tips and tactics
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Google Alert is a very simple and useful SEO tool by Google. Google alert is an email update based on the specific search term defined by you. The alerts can be delivered to your specified email address or as a feed to your feed reader.

For example, if you are interested in Soccer news and events, you can set up a Google alert with search terms like World Soccer, Soccer events, Soccer championship etc. You can opt whether you would like to receive upto 10, 20 or 50 related articles, news or blog posts. Google will send an email with all the related content to your search term to your email address.

You can also define the type of content you would like blog, news, videos or discussions. If you want all the types, you can opt for everything.

Setting up of Google alerts

To set up a Google alert, simply go to http://www.google.com/alerts. You can sign in using your Google account. After login, you can create a Google alert by filling up the simple form. While setting up Google alerts, it is very important to ‘quote’ the search terms. This narrows the search operation, as it specifies the topic. So, undesired stories are not emailed to an account.

You can create multiple alerts for different search terms of interest. You can also click on Manage Alerts and make changes to the alerts. While setting up Google alerts, it is very important to ‘quote’ the search terms. This narrows the search operation, as it specifies the topic. So, undesired stories are not emailed to an account.

Google alerts can be used in many ways helpful to your SEO and Internet Marketing efforts.

Tags: google alerts, seo tool
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Local searches have been gaining more and more importance on the internet. In fact, the growth of local searches over web searches has been more in last few years according to ComScore.

According to Wikipedia, “Local search is the use of specialized Internet search engines that allow users to submit geographically constrained searches against a structured database of local business listings.”

Now, if a person is looking for web design services, he or she would tend to add “My Town” in the search string like “web design delhi”. This way the user narrows down the search looking for a local service provider or local vendor for the goods and services he or she is looking for.

Local Search and SEO

Now how does this information translates into leveraging the business growth? Its very important now to optimize and promote your website for local searches. The major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing have already started a local business directory and it is positioned on the top of search results if the search string contain the location.

For example, if you search for Dry cleaners in Noida on google, you will get the results like this.

In fact, even if you don’t have a website, you can list in the google’s local business center. So, this is a great way to promote your business to the locality.

Local Search Optimization

If you own a website, make use of location as one of the keyword or use it with your services or products. Apart from local results, you will gain from the web results also. You can take following actions to leverage the local search growth to benefit your business:

1. Submit your website or business to Local search engines like:
   1. Google Local Business Center
   2. Yahoo Local Merchant
   3. Bing Local Listing Center
   4. Ask Business Search
2. Submit your website to Local Yellow Pages like:
   1. Indianyellowpages.com
   2. Superpages.com
   3. Sulekha.com
   4. And many others
3. Submit your website to Local directories:
   1. Hotfrog.com
   2. Justdial.com
   3. Citysquares.com
   4. Yelp.com and Burrp.com
   5. Many other directories
4. Local Press Releases are very important to promote the new products or services launches. You can use a number of free PR directories to submit and distribute your press release.
5. Location specific keywords optimization is of paramount importance to rank higher for local searches.
6. Contact Information on website.

As the local searches are gaining importance, don’t forget to include it in your digital marketing strategy.

For a Local Search Optimization strategy, contact us for a free consultation and website analysis.

Tags: google business listing, Local search optimization tips, local searches
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Google has completed the new web indexing system called Caffeine. As the name suggests, the search results are going to be high on relevancy and freshness. Now about 50% of the search results you see on the google will be fresh entries on the web. So, if now somebody search for World Cup Soccer, the related news and blogs will be available much sooner in the search results as compared to before.

The growing volume of content is one reason to build this new search indexing system. But then the other good reasons are increasing number of posts of videos, news items, images and real-time updates that make the web all the more complex.  Moreover, the expectations of people are also rising. Surfers want instant access to relevant content and publishers too want to be discovered the moment they upload a file. So, Caffeine is giant step forward in the evolution of the web. Caffeine being multi-dimensional overcomes the drawbacks of the old indexing system. The old system had the structure of layers and so it took more time to refresh a layer as the entire web had to be analyzed for updating information.

With Caffeine, it is completely different. According to Google Blog, “With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.”

Will Google Caffeine affects SEO?

There is no appreciable effect on the rankings of normal web pages. But as the core concept behind Caffeine is better results based on freshness of content, its really important to generate unique and fresh content on regular basis.

Tags: google caffeine, google search results
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