So, what can you do about it? If you are a webmaster you’d know that most of the search engines consider website speed while ranking a page. This is a blessing and a bane for you depending on which side of the line you are. If your site loads faster it gets an upper hand over all others that loads slower. Whereas, if it loads slower you are in for trouble as your site might not even be seen by users.

Website speed becomes a crucial issue if your website is an e-commerce site, or in other words, if you do your business through your online presence. If you find your website becoming listed among those slow loading sites, well, it is time to wake up and do something about it. So first of all, what is a slow loading website? Today, if a website takes more than even 2 seconds it is considered to be a slow loading site. So you know how important it is to get it faster and smarter. Let’s check out a few ways in which you can make a website load faster.

Get a fast server host

Most of the shared hosting servers are cheaper but slower as well due to high traffic. Hence, if you find your site getting slower and slower to load its time you change the hosting server. The best option would be to get an independent one or go for lesser known ones.

Use fewer images for your web pages

An image-heavy page can take time to load. Same is the case for a page with Flash and animations. For a site that sells a product it could be difficult to lessen the number of pages. However, fewer images can make your site load faster. Even reducing the resolution can make a difference to the site, even if it is that of milliseconds.

Use external Java

Javascript can slow down your site for many seconds. Of course, you cannot help using Java and what you could do here is to externalise it so that viewers find it after the page is loaded.

All these methods can increase the website loading speed considerably; however, at the same time you cannot simplify your website so much that no user is interested to browse it. Also, if it is an e-commerce site you’ll definitely have images of products that you cannot help adding. There are in fact many ways in which you can keep up the speed while making the page attractive. Check out a few of the methods here – http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html.

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What is a static URL?

Static URL is one that doesn’t change. It won’t have any URL parameters and would be quite simple. These are the favorites of search engines. Updating such URLs are time consuming. This is so in the case of shopping websites and blogs that stores a lot of information and frequently needs to be updated. In the case of such websites, webmasters normally go for dynamic URLs.

What is a dynamic URL?

These URLs are created from searching a database-driven website. They are generated from specific queries to a website’s database. Here the date is changed in the database instead of in the HTML code. These URLs normally contain many variables and are difficult for the users to understand.

Why are static URLs preferred to dynamic URLs?

Search engines rank and index static URLs better than dynamic ones. Besides, static URLs are visibly more pleasing for the users as they are more simple and understandable. A brief glance through a static URL gives the reader an idea of what the page is all about. Whereas a dynamic URL contains variables and does not make much sense to a non-technical person. For this same reason users are more likely to click on static URLs that they understand than the dynamic ones.

Dynamic URLs take the last positions in search engines for another reason. That is, they normally do not have any keywords in them. Major search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN give a lot of weight to URLs with their main keywords in included in the domain name. Google now has made some progress with ranking dynamic URL, but if the webmasters try to make the URL look static and hide the parameters, it makes crawling difficult. And this might have an adverse effect.

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Google News is one of the prominent news website that is followed religiously by many individuals and organisations. To establish your presence in Google News you need to play a very different game. In other words the algorithm for Google News is quite different. Let’s see some of the factors that can affect the ranking in Google News:

• Freshness

When it comes to news, whether it is online or offline, freshness matters most. If you come across an event that happened some 2 weeks back you are not going to be very amused or thrilled, right? It’s the same principle that you follow for offline news. Nobody reads a newspaper that is a week old. Same way, if you post some news that is just not the latest or the most updated you can’t expect Google to rank it high.

• Relevance

Being relevant to what a user is looking for is what qualifies a news article to be listed by Google. Google is believed to classify news articles based on the topic. If your article is original and contains substantial information regarding the topic with the right keywords, it would naturally get a good listing.

• Treatment of recent developments

If you post an article about a hurricane that happened last week and another about an archaeological discovery you can rest assured that your article about the hurricane would get more clicks and therefore more ranking. This is because when it comes to news, users would prefer to hear more about something that involves more urgency and directness than something that wouldn’t affect them, however breathtaking that news is.

• Local reporting

The idea of local reporting strikes with Google News. If there is an event that happens in a particular place Google would prefer those in that region to report it with their own local version.

• Credible authority

The best thing about Google News is that you don’t have to have the label of BBC or CNN to report something. Google gives weight to the news source for each news and each category. Therefore, all you need to do is to become a trusted source for the category of news you report and your article will be ranked accordingly.

• Speed

Do you want Google to rank you high as well as other news sites to refer your site? Then be the first to report an event. It is of course not news for you that speed matters a lot in news reporting. This is one field where “early bird actually catches the worm”. Hence, report something as soon as it happens and before someone else reports it and get your position safe in Google.

• Originality

Remember that if you copy and paste the news from another site or even reproduce sentences from other news sites Google would recognise the similarity. Make sure that the content you provide is original and unique. Even if you provide the original source of the content Google would rank that original source higher than your content.

Reporting for Google news is almost like reporting for a newspaper or television channel. Not only from an SEO perspective but also from a journalistic perspective the factors mentioned above would help you in creating and submitting news that can bring you under the visibility span of Google News faster.

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So what is Yahoo directory?

It is a huge human created and managed library of websites, divided into different categories and sub categories. By making an annual payment of $299 you can enlist your website in yahoo directory under the category which your website falls in.

The link that your website gains from enlisting in Yahoo directory does nothing more than adding to another back link. Still, yahoo directory is beneficial to a website in many ways. How so? Let’s check out.

Benefits of Yahoo directory

• Visibility

For a new website, a position in Yahoo directory adds to its exposure. It is seen by the human visitors as well as Yahoo Slurp, especially if the slurp is finding it difficult to crawl your site. In other words, Yahoo directories enhances your web presence.

• Help in organic listing

Yahoo has never admitted this, but from the existing users, the hint is that being in the directory helps a website to be included in the organic listing of Yahoo. Though the impact is not very high, it indeed creates an effect indirectly.

• Quality inbound link

Yahoo directory also serves as an inbound link to your site depending on your position and the category in which you are positioned.

Yahoo directory is not as relevant as it used to be. Still, it brings the necessary visibility to a new website. And if you are careful of the category in which you place your website, you can reap the benefits you had in mind while enlisting.

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The biggest advantage of internal linking is that it is under your control and you can use it the way you want. They tell the search engines how the content of each page in your website is relevant to the site. Here are a few of the common internal links found in a website. You can also find how each of them is relevant to the website.

• Internal text links

Text, as you know, is mightier than images when it comes to SEO. Image links, Javascript links, image map links – none of these are as effective as text links.

• Category/subcategory links

Any website would have categories and sub categories, though the hierarchy might change depending on the kind of website. It shows the search engines how you want to group your content.

• Related groups links

This is important in the case of ecommerce or news websites that have advantage in showing the related products or related stories links. It increases the usability as well as topical relevance of the page.

• Single item links

Single items in a website have their own importance. However, in the eyes of the search engines they gain their importance not when they are given randomly here and there but when they are given under a proper category, title, etc.

• Sitemap links

The importance of sitemaps is almost a globally agreed point and is worthy of an altogether different post. For search engines as well as users, sitemap link is equally important.

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