What Is Doorway Page?

Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase.  In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.  Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our webmaster guidelines.  Google’s aim is to give our users the most valuable and relevant search results.  Therefore, we frown on practices that are designed to manipulate search engines and deceive users by directing them to sites other than the ones selected, and that provide content solely for the benefit of search engines.

What is W3C Validation?

W3C (short for World Wide Web Consortium) is an international consortium, where a group of experts, the public and it's staff work together to deliver and maintain standards on the world wide web, called as "Web Standards".

The W3C was started way back in 1994, by Tim Berners-Lee (founder of the World Wide Web) and a few colleagues who created W3C as an industry consortium dedicated to building consensus around Web technologies.

The consortium has a set of guidelines or technical specifications specified for all languages known to the world wide website deisgn platform. You might be aware of the popular languages like HTML, XHTML, CSS etc. For each of them the W3C have specified their technical guidelines, which more or less are like the official vocabulary for these languages. So anyone who uses these languages on the world wide web are supposed to abide by the specifications and follow the rules of usage.

So W3C validation is actually the process of checking and measuring if one of the specified languages (like HTML, CSS, XHTML) is abiding by the technial guidelines and if yes, by how much.

There are free tools suggested by the W3C to do this, and anyone who wishes to check the validity of any code available on the world wide web can use it.


You can check W3C Validator @ :  http://validator.w3.org/

Top Free Web Directory List (More Than 3700) For SEO Link Building

The list of  more than 3700 web directories are given below. Please check the link.

http://www.directorycritic.com/free-directory-list.html?sort=pr&pg=1

What is canonical Tag ?

The canonical tag is a page level meta tag that is placed in the HTML header of a webpage. It tells the search engines which URL is the canonical  version of the page being displayed. It's purpose is to keep duplicate content out of the search engine index while consolidating your page’s strength into one ‘canonical’ page.

How is canonical tag used?

The canonical tag is a relatively quick solution to resolve duplicate content. If your website generates and displays the same (or very similar) content on multiple URLs, the canonical tag could be used to bucket them together and assign one master (canonical) version. Lets look at a list of common duplicate content URLs.

• http://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm (the main page)
• http://www.example.com/quality-wrenches.htm (oops! all pages also resolve with the www sub-domain)
• http://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?ref=crazy-blog-lady (this looks like a way to track referral sources)
• http://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm?sort=price (how users view the products by lowest to highest price)
• http://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm/print (the ad-free and graphic light print version)

A canonical tag that references the main page, http://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm, could be placed in the header of all of the above pages.

How is canonical tag implemented?

The canonical tag is part of the HTML header on a webpage. This is the same place where we put other fun SEO stuff like the title tag, meta description tag and the robots tag. The code, as in my example above, would look like this.

<link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/quality-wrenches.htm"/>

What is 301 and 302 redirect ?

What is a Redirection?

A redirect is a way to send both users and search engines to a different URL than the one they originally requested. Below are descriptions of some of the commonly used types of redirects.

301 Moved Permanently

A 301 Redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.

302 Found (HTTP 1.1) / Moved Temporarily (HTTP 1.0)

A 302 Redirect is a temporary redirect and passes 0% of link juice (ranking power) and in most cases should not be used. The Internet runs on a protocol called HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) which dictates how URLs work. It has two major versions, 1.0 and 1.1. In the first version 302 referred to the status code 'Moved Temporarily'. This was changed in version 1.1 to mean 'Found'.

307 Moved Temporarily (HTTP 1.1 Only)

A 307 Redirect is the HTTP 1.1 successor of the 302 redirect. While the major crawlers will treat it like a 302 in some cases, it is best to use a 301 for almost all cases. The exception to this is when content is really moved only temporarily (such as during maintenance) AND the server has already been identified by the search engines as 1.1 compatible. Since determining if the search engines have identified this essentially impossible, it is best to use a 302 redirect.

Top 25 SEO Tactics & Techniques To Avoid For Google SEO

On-page Tactics To Avoid…

1. White text on a white background (I know what you're thinking, but black on black won't work either.)
2. Hidden text over an image 
3. Hiding text with CSS 
4. Linking/keywording in tiny text (font size '0' doesn't work either, smarty pants)
5. Linking from a hyphen, period, comma, or any other little character

Keyword Related Things To Avoid…

6. Use the Meta Keywords tag. This is a giant waste of time.
7. Use your Title Tag as a place to list keywords.
8. Fill up your Meta Description with keywords, forgetting about click-thru rates
9. Name your images with the character limit in keywords
10. List every city and zip code within a 10 hour drive
11. Put 2000 words of keyword rich content below the footer
12. Keep track of your keyword density

Link Network Schemes To Avoid….

13. Link Schemes
14. Reciprocal Linking
15. Link Farms
16. Link Wheel
17. Link Exchange (unless it is a real and substantial business partnership or relationship)
18. Three Way Linking (or Two-way, Four-way or any other way)

Other Link Types To Avoid….

19. Forum/comment spam

20. Submit to thousands of directories for $12.42.
21. Segment your content and launch sub-domains so you can link to yourself

Some More Things To Avoid…

22. Measure your website's strength or success with PageRank.

23. Blindly target keywords just because your competitors are.
24. Submit to hundreds of search engines automatically for $9.99.
25. Use robots.txt to control robot access 

Top 20 Off-page SEO Strategies

1). Community Creation in Social Networking Sites

Also known as online reputation management, this is the first and foremost step with which you have to initiate your process. Try to become a member of the most popular social networking sites like Orkut, Myspace, Facebook, Linked In, Ecademy, etc., and create a profile of your own. By doing this you can extend your network online, get connect with your friends, share things with each other, and promote your company/website to build an online reputation. This is most likely the same as Web 2.0 (Participatory Web), which means you have to show your active participation on a regular basis.

2). Blogging

This is one of the most powerful ways to promote your company/website online. Write a blog of your own for your company/website and include lots of unique content. Be precise in what you're trying to convey for the users in your blog entry and promote your blog in blog directories and blog search engines. You can also promote your blog/website by posting comments in other service-related blogs which allow links in the comments section that are crawlable by the search engines (these blogs are commonly identified as Do-Follow Blogs). If you're not very good at writing content for blog posts, hire a guest blogger for your blog and ask him/her to write precise and unique content so that your blog can gain more credit from a search engine point of view.

3). Forum Postings

Create a forum/online discussion board of your own and start a discussion or share topics with your friends. You can also post/reply to a thread in other service-related pre-existing forums that allow links in your signature which can be crawled by the search engines (aka "Do-Follow Forums").

4). Search Engine Submission

Submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, Alexa, Alltheweb, Lycos, Excite, etc., to get listed for free.

5). Directory Submission

Many people may say that directory submission is dead. As far as I'm concerned it is still alive. It is purely based on how effectively we are selecting those directories and how efficiently we are choosing the category for submission. Of course, I agree that it gives quite delayed results, but it is worth doing it. Submit your websites to the topmost quality directories like DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, ZoomInfo, One Mission, Pegasus, etc. Nowadays many web directories may offer paid listings but don't go for it.

6). Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is yet another powerful way of promoting your website, but nowadays most people are spamming social bookmarking sites without knowing how to use them. Since content in these websites update frequently, search engines like these types of sites and often visit them (this is commonly termed as Tagsonomy & Folksonomy in Web 2.0). Do some social bookmarking in popular bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Propeller, etc. You should be very careful while doing this and you must properly handle the tags which are very essential to broadcast your news on a wide area network. This may increase your website traffic based on how effectively you have participated.

7). Link Baiting

Suppose you have copied/published another website's news or content in your blog/website. Don't forget to place their website link as a reference. Do it for others and, if your content is trustworthy, let others do it for you. This is another way to increase your link popularity.

8). Cross-Linking

Link to internal pages within your site wherever necessary (this is commonly termed Internal Linking). This increases your internal link popularity ,which is another major factor of Google Page Rank algorithm. The best known example of successful internal linking is Wikipedia. Also try to get a content link from websites/blogs that are related to your site theme. Try getting a link from within their site content using a targeted keyword as anchor text (much like Wikipedia does). We know that this strategy can often be hard to implement, but these types of links have more weight from a search engine point of view.

9). Photo Sharing

Publish/share your website product pictures and make them public. Let your friends see them and comment on them too, which will help drive traffic towards your website. Do this in major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, Photo Bucket, Picli, etc.

10). Video Promotions

Like with photo sharing, you can publish/share your product videos, expert opinions, and reviews of your product and make them public in YouTube, Metacafe, Dailymotion, etc.

11). Business Reviews

Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, Stylefeeder, etc. 

12). Local Listings & Yellow Pages

Instead of going global and facing huge competition, make your website local so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, Superpages, Hotfrog, etc. 

13). Article Submission

Write articles of your own and submit them to popular article sites like Ezine, Go Articles, Now Public, Buzzle, etc. This will help you to attain some deep links for your website (though it's usually a slower process).

14). Press Release Promotion

If you are a business/service provider then go for PR submission in popular PR websites like 1888pressrelease, Open PR, PR Leap, etc. This will help you to publish your site in Google News.

15). Classifieds Submission

Do some classifieds submissions to advertise your products for free. Try Craigslist and other major classifieds sites like Kugli, Myspace, iMadespace, Vivastreet, etc. 

16). Social Shopping Network

If you own an e-commerce website, this is a good strategy for advertising and easily branding your products for free. Submit your products to Google Product Search, Yahoo Online Shopping, MSN Online Shopping, and other major social shopping network sites like Kaboodle, Style Feeder, Wists, Five Limes, Buzz Shout, Ohmybuzz, etc.

17). Answers

Participate in Answers by asking and answering relevant questions and placing a link to your website in the source section if necessary. If you don't spam, this is another great way to increase your link popularity (Yahoo Answers, Cha-Cha, Answer Bag, etc.) 

18). Document Sharing

Share your website documents like business documents, information brochures, and slides in Google Docs, Slide Share, etc. This will help you brand your website.

19) CSS, W3C & RSS Directories Submission

If you have a web design site or offer services related to web design, submit your website to CSS and W3C website directories which may drive traffic towards your website. Also submit your website to RSS feed directories which, again, will help you attain more traffic.

20). Widget / Gadget Development

Develop some interactive and innovative widget/gadget applications (such as an online poll or game widgets) for your website and publish them on your blog/website or in other popular social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace. Let your friends and others vote/play/use the widget/application, which will help you increase your branding and website visits.