How can i select best seo company for my online business? I have been trying out many companies.
But i am not happy with their output. Please guide me
thanks.

There are a lot of SEO companies with good reputation. But take care about it. I know a good SEO company from where I get good result for my online business. Try (www.influxwebtechnologies.com)…

In the next few days I am posting a brand new website that will primarly feature photography of a particular Canadian province. I am also planning to publish at least one photography poster featuring my work. With these elements in mind, is there a particular seo tool that I really should work with(?) or is there a set of tools that are considered the absolute best and most valuable?

Sprank was too harsh regarding SEO.

Well SEO is one of the best and cost effective things which you can do with your business and gain lots & lots of popularity.

First step you should do is to look out for keywords using the following tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Search for keywords and you will also find some similar words related to your keywords. Decide on keywords which are most related to your business and do the following activities:

Social Bookmarking - It means bookmarking your website on various Social Bookmarking websites like digg.com, delicious.com, jamespot.com, fanpop.com etc.

Question & Answers websites. Answers questions related to your business and get visitors to visit your website. There are many Q & A websites like Yahoo Answers, Blurtit.com, answerbag.com. yedda.com etc.

Above two will help you get referral traffic and some dofollow links from bookmarking websites will also help you in increasing website popularity.

I have an existing website with a combination of html and php pages. I want to optimize some of these pages for search engines. Will the same techniques (keywords, descriptions, etc) that work on html pages work on php pages?

You optimize .php pages the exact same way you optimize .html pages. The search engines NEVER see your PHP code… they see the resulting HTML that gets rendered server-side by the PHP. It’s the HTML that is returned when the crawler requests the page that gets indexed and used for ranking.

As far was "what" to optimize, there is basically two types of optimization… on-page and off-page optimization. On-page optimization means using elements ON the page to help your page rank. Off-page optimization is using elements OFF the page (on other pages of your site as well as on pages on other sites) to help your page rank.

Overall, it is off-page factors that carry the most weight… i.e. inbound links from other pages using your targeted keyword phrase or slight variations as the link text… preferably from pages that are relevant to the topic you’re trying to rank for and pages with high PR or link popularity. It’s estimated that off-page factors might influence 70-80% of your overall ranking while on-page factors might influence 20-30% of your overall ranking.

Here’s a quick rundown of on-page factors:

Optimizing the title element is very important since it’s generally the most important on-page ranking factor for most search engines ranking algorithms. The title should target a single keyword phrase (possibly 2-3 IF they are VERY similar… almost identical in meaning and keywords). Minimize "fluff" words in the title element as they reduce the keyword density within that HTML element and thus make the real keyword phrase(s) you want to rank for seem less important. Put the most important keyword phrase first in the title element if you have multiple keyword phrases in the title. Avoid putting your site name in the title as it only hurts your page’s ability to rank.

The h1 element is generally the 2nd most important on-page ranking factor. It should reinforce the keyword phrase(s) targeted in the title. Since it’s less important from a ranking perspective, it’s ok to add a few fluff words to give it more pazzazz or marketing flair. But again keyword density withing the h1 element does affect rankings slightly. Every page should have a single h1.

The h2 element is generally the 3rd most important on-page ranking factor. If your content lends itself to have sub-headers, then use them… again targeting keywords from the title element.

Words that are emphasized using bold or strong/italics or em are given a little more weight than words that are not. But I avoid this as it tends to make pages look spammy.

Using keywords that your title is targeting in the page name is also useful. It’s a very minor ranking factor but MOST ranking factors are minor. It’s rarely any single thing that you do that makes a page rank well. It’s the sum of lots of small things that you do that when taken as a whole leads to good rankings.

Optimizing the meta keywords element is virtually worthless. Google and most search engines ignore it in their ranking algorithm because it has been sooooooooooo abused by blackhats and spammers over the last decade. Yahoo! is still using it to rank pages as Danny Sullivan (a renowned seo) proved just days after a Yahoo! exec announced at SMX that Yahoo! did NOT use it. I include a meta keywords element in all of my pages just for completeness (not for rankings). I use 5-10 keyword phrases and ONLY words/phrases that appear on the page.

The meta description is also ignored by Google and most search engines for the same reason… it is not displayed on the page so it has been abused by spammers and blackhat SEOs. BUT optimizing the meta description element is VERY important since having a good meta description with a call to action can greatly improve click-thru-rate when your page appears in the SERPs and the meta description is shown as the snippet of text for your organic listing. At Google they only show your meta description if all keywords in the user’s search phrase appear in the meta description. So I recommend including all keywords from your title in the meta description since the keyword phrases in the title "should" be the pages most often used to find your page if it is well optimized. This will maximize how often it is shown as the Google snippet.

As far as off-page factors (which are the absolute MOST important ranking factors at almost all engines):

The link text used in hyperlinks pointing to your page give the search engines STRONG clues as to what your page is about. Using "Click here" as link text for a hyperlink is worthless… it only helps you rank for the keyword phrase "click here". Be very cognizant of how you link to your pages both on your site on from other sites where you might drop a link.

Inbound links from relevant and/or high PR pages on external sites with your targeted keyword phrase (from your page’s title) or slight variations are the MOST important thing you can do to help your page rank for its

What do people mean by improving local search engine optimization?

optimizing your website for local queries. In other words, if you stay in South Africa, optimizing your website for traffic originating from South African servers.

Hi, I would like to know what the best seo company is on the internet. What company can get my website to or near the first page of search engines,specifically Google, in the fastest time possible? Thank you very much.

I doubt very seriously you can afford the best SEO company on the internet… even if someone could narrow it down to just one. Companies like SEOmoz.org get $1000/hr or more. I am an independent SEO consultant with no where near the resources of a company like SEOmoz.org, and I charge $100-125/hr depending on the job and type of work.

Most people online looking for SEO think $5-15/hr should get them a good SEO. But most of the people willing to market themselves that low are either 1) VERY inexperienced or 2) live in a 3rd world company, have learned a few buzz words related to seo, and now "claim" to be SEO experts.

Figure out how much money you’re willing to invest in SEO and then search for the best SEO firm that fits within your budget.

I read an article this week and then heard mention of something on the news as well. One of the most popular search engines has been criticized for censoring and not giving people certain answers, particularly when it comes to political questions and things of that nature.

What search engine to you use more frequently?
Do you ever experiment and seek information using other search engines? Is so, what the the ones you use more regularly?
Note that I put this in politics and the accusations were with regard to political searches.

Sweetie, the censoring has been happening for a while.
When I really got involved in this forum during the 2008 elections, I would find an incriminating article or video about His Majesty, bookmark it, and it would be gone in a matter of days, if not hours.
My answers have been deleted with regards to Internet Czar, nothing outside of the Terms….
I don’t know if it’s any particular search engines, although granted Google is literally in bed with the current administration, and they probably all have a vested interest ($$$) in "net neutrality."
Disgusting. But what I noticed were actual newspaper articles, from the Chicago Trib, for example, that went missing.

How important is it to put a BLOG on the top level of a DOMAIN in terms of search engine optimization?

I’m guessing that you are asking whether your blog should be installed in the domain’s root directory (and have the blog’s home page be the same as the site’s home page) or if the blog should be installed in a subdirectory or subdomain (and have a link to the blog from the domain’s homepage–or from elsewhere on the site)

As far as SEO goes, it doesn’t really matter much whether the site is in the root directory or a subdirectory. Installing it in a subdomain is a different matter, though. At Metapilot, we tell clients that as long as you have links pointing to the blog from other areas of the domain (and from other domains of value), the blog will most likely get crawled and indexed by search engines. If your blog posts are well focused on keywords and phrases, the posts can show up in at the top of the search results, provided the posts have enough links pointing at them from other web pages of quality.

There are plenty of examples of sites with blogs installed in the root directory and in subirectories, as well as in subdomains. If the whole reason for having the domain is to have a blog on it, then you have every reason install it in the root directory. If the blog is not to be the main focus of the domain but the blog’s content is relevant to the main focus of the site but the information on it will be complementary to the rest of the site, why not install the blog in a subdirectory.

If the blog covers an entirely different topic than the primary purpose of the domain, install your blog on a subdomain. The search engines will treat the subdomain as an entirely different domain and though, from an seo standpoint, it won’t directly benefit from the authority and popularity of your top level domain, its presence won’t confuse your visitors, either.

I wonder writing articles and posting it on article websites like ezeline etc, how can it help increasing the traffic ? Is there any other advantage for seo for this ?

When you post articles on article directories like Ezine Articles, it not only increases targeted traffic but helps with SEO due to the high page rank of these directories. Pick 10 or 12 out with good page ranks, post articles to them often, and you will see after a few months that your site starts ranking higher. When you will submit Article to Article Directory there are option to put your website link in the author resource section you are allowed to put two links there by this you will get back link for your website. When some one will read your article they will click on your link which you already put author resource section they will redirected to your website by this you will gain targeted traffic

I have Internet Explorer and I think it is Internet Explorer 6. I downloaded this thing and it came along with the search engine Fast Browser Search which I do not want. How to I change this to be google.

You may want to consider upgrading to IE8 (the latest version of Internet Explorer) as it is more safe and reliable. You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx?ocid=ie8_sm_b.

Also, here is a handy guide for adding search providers and add-ons to IE: http://www.techsuperb.com/net/add-search-engine-to-internet-explorer-make-it-default/1524.html

Cheers,
Feran
IE Ountreach

Google is apparently the best one, one can have..I haven’t tried Google wave yet but wonder if a search engine could have more features with its main work ’search results’.. For example, sth which allows you to do social interaction with other users who search for the same thing you search for.. Life would be easy right.. Need you ‘Internet geeks’ help!!

Hi,
I was looking for something with similar features and got to know through one of my friend.. ‘Broadseal’.. Ya!! That’s the name of the search engine..It works amazing. You can video chat, play games, listen to music and much more.. Try