Sunday, April 30, 2006

To Link or Not To Link. That Is The Question

Author: Allan Gunneson

You know the drill. Everybody claims that in order to obtain and maintain a favorable ranking on the search engines you MUST have reciprocating links on your website.

This supposed “must have”, so the theory goes, is necessary because the search engines look at links to your website from other sites. The search engines then rank the importance of your site based upon the number of inbound links to you. The more inbound links, the higher the ranking on the search engines. Or so the common wisdom would dictate.

While I am not saying that linking doesn’t have its benefits, it is my belief that most SEOs over-emphasize the importance of this area. Ask yourself this…if my business sells domain names, why do I have a reciprocal link for www.nosehairtrimmers.com? How insipid do you think Google really is?

Besides the obvious amount of time that managing a linking program takes from other more important tasks, such as improving your site content, are you really getting any bang for your buck?

Ask yourself these questions:

. How many site visitors actually LOOK for your link partners as a resource? . How many referrals are you getting from your link partner’s site a month? . Can site visitors even FIND the links page without a GPS and a magnifying glass? . Are you offering a benefit to your audience or just playing the “Search Engine Two-Step”?

I submit to you that a linking program can be more effective if you follow these guidelines:

. Keep your links within your “industry umbrella”. . Linking to a site that has no advantage or benefit for your visitors shouldn’t be there. . Make your links “findable” on your website and offer them as a value-added service. . Organize your links into categories to enable quick searching. . Limit the number of links and categories to those YOU would want to use.

Links can be a valuable tool if managed properly but I firmly believe you would be better served taking all the time you are now using for linking activities and use it to write better, fresher and more readable CONTENT.

Search algorithms change and evolve all the time. What worked yesterday to artificially inflate your search engine rankings will not necessarily work tomorrow. Google is already been said to be “de-weighting” the importance of linking and placing more importance on relevant content.

When this whole internet thing began there was an expression that sadly we don’t hear much anymore although it is truer today than ever before: Content Is King! Ergo: You had better possess the ability to tell a good story, regularly update your site and have relevant, thoughtful content. I don’t care how many links you have, without content you are just playing the game.

Remember; design your site to tell as good story because robots and spiders are not the only visitors to your website. Real live human beings might just show up one day looking for something to read!

About the author: Allan Gunnneson is the CEO of Gunner Web Group (www.gunnnerweb.com), a website design and marketing company based in Kansas.

Online reprint rights granted as long as the article is published in its entirety, including links (www.gunnerweb.com). Copyright © Gunner Web Group, 2005

How To Rank Your Articles Higher in Search Engines

Author: Subhendu Sen

All of us, the authors, know that to enhance our sites' listings in search engines we need to do certain things and some of them are :

(a) get fresh content on our sites on regular basis (b) get backlinks from high PR (page-rank) sites

Get Fresh Content:

Inserting RSS Feeds on related subjects is a great way to create automatic fresh content in a website. However, we can also put our own published articles in a section, say, 'My Articles'. Many authors aim to write at least one article every week. So, every week whenever search engine robots come to our sites, they can get fresh content.

Get Back-links

Back-links are considered an important factor in search engine placements. When we submit our articles in article directories, we get a link back from those sites. Mostly all article directories have good PR (page rank). The benefit of submitting articles in article directories is that not only is there a fair chance of getting our articles published, but also our articles get published in many other web sites with our resource boxes. So, when different sites link to our site from a related page (the page where our articles are published), there are chances that search engines would look at our sites respectfully and rank us well. So, submitting articles to article directories is a good choice. We get link back from a page, which talks about related subjects.

Actually, upto this part, I have not talked about anything special. Authors write free articles knowing these features.

But, how many of our articles are positioned high in the search engines? If not, what could be the reason?

Outbound Links

The another important factor of ranking high in search engines is 'Outbound Links'. Search engines consider this factor equally important as back-links. As back-links from related sites are important, outbound links to related sites are equally important. In fact, that's one of the main reasons why mostly all article directories have high PR. Because, in every article directory, there is a huge amount of outbound links. And each outbound link is sent out to a related site from a page where the subject is being discussed!

Sometimes we exchange links with related sites and both the parties put those link in a seperate pages. That 'links page' contains only links and links -- no content! So, how would search engines consider them as valid outbound links?

How can authors like me factor this element in our sites?

Not many of us would want to link out to sites which are of our competetors. But wait, article writers can do this wisely.

As I have discussed above, authors should publish their own articles in their own sites, before submitting them to article directories. There is a reason for this. When multiple sites publish our articles, the search engine finds duplicate content in large number of sites. Therefore, search engines list on top the site from where it got the article first. So, if we publish our own articles first on our sites, it is possible that our own sites would be listed on the top of all other sites that published our articles.

After submitting the articles to article directories, we should keep track of when our articles are published in those directories. Most of the directories inform us when when our articles get published. We must visit those sites and get the URLs of our articles.

Let us put the links of those pages in article pages of our sites. If we put, ""These article is also published by :"" with a list of links of the sites where those particular articles are published, we cleverly send out links to pages where our subject is discussed. This will definitely help us creating authenticated outbound links and rank well in search engines without hampering our businesses.

About the author: Subhendu Sen is the owner and the webmaster of The Web Content - an article directory, which uses XML/RSS feeds. Authors may also submit their articles at : http://www.thewebcontent.com

SEO Keywords - the starting point

Author: Lee Rixon

When you look at search engine optimisation for a site, probably the most important thing to think about are what keyphrases you want to be found under in the search engines.

If you are selling widgets, then it really won't help you if you get a high listing for another search term, as its not relevant.

Its also important to be very selective about your keywords and phrases. If you decide to target the phrase 'toronto', then you are going to have an uphill climb, as there must be thousands or potentially millions of sites that are indexed for that term. When you are faced with stiff competition for a keyword, then unless you want to spend the rest of your life optimising the site, the chances are that you will be so far down the index, that a potential customer will need a microscope to find you.

So - get specific. Try to put yourself in your customers shoes and ask the question:

If I was looking for whatever it is I sell - then what phrase would I put into the search bar?

Write the phrase down and think about it a bit more. Can I refine it and come up with something even more specific that works?

Once you are happy, try to think of a second keyphrase.

Done that? Ok, now you stop.

You can optimise a site for a two or three keyphrases, but unless you are a word smith superhero that is pretty much your limit. If you try to optimise for more than that - all you will do is end up making a poor job of all of them.

The next thing to start thinking about is how you 'thread' your keyphrases into your content.

We'll talk more about that later....

About the author: Lee is one of the principals at Spinnaker Systems which provides Web related services to the small business owner. Lee can be contacted at lee@spinnakersystems.com and is a regular contributor to the Spinnaker Blog

The Best Wordpress Tips & Tricks!

Author: Bud Wiser

By: Bud Wiser

This article is about optimizing Wordpress blogs for search engines. I will share with you the best tips, tricks, hacks, and plugins I use for my wordpress blogs. All of these tips will save you many hours and even days or weeks searching for how to do every thing. All the important stuff is here in one place!

Tips are suggestions, tricks are different ways to do things all ready available, plugins are additional scripts to enhance the capabilities and add new features. Hacks are done by replacing existing codes with new codes to make WP do different things.

Before I begin it's important for you to consider what name you will call your blog. Be as specific as you can. Remember that we optimize for popular keyword phrases. Don't worry you can always change the name. I suggest before you begin to seriously promote your blog and start exchanging links, to first take a week to experiment with it, trying out different ideas. If you do not already have a domain name picked out, this is also very important! Again, keep in mind what main keyword phrase you plan on optimizing for. You should also register your domaon for a minimum of 2 years in advance. The reason for this is it is believed that Google will look at this as a long term commitment by you, and therefore treat you better. Also make sure you have the latest version of WP. Check with

http://wordpress.org/ if you need to upgrade now! Don't worry it's quick and easy! Later I will show you how to back up your database too!

Permalinks

The first thing you need to do is change the default setting of WP Permalinks.

Here is how the default urls will look,

http://www.mywordpressblog.com/blog/index.php?p=3

not very search engine friendly, and it gets worse with more pages, posts, and archives

Better would be this,

http://www.mywordpressblog.com/realestate/agents

Not hard to do. Go to your admin page, Options>Permalinks

Here you will edit your permalink structure. The default structure is this,

/archives/%post_id%

WP gives you a couple of alternative structure options,

Structure: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/

Result: http://befuddle.info/blog/2005/07/17/sample-post/

Structure: /archives/%post_id%

Result: http://befuddle.info/blog/archives/123

But you can even do better! I use this structure I made up, you can make up your own too!

Structure: /%postname%/

Result: http://www.mywordpressblog.com/blog/realestate

If you installed WP in your main directory it would be,

Result: http://www.mywordpressblog.com/realestate

next you can add a

Category base which further makes your blog more kw rich! last option is

Category base:

add, agents

now the result would be: p://www.mywordpressblog.com/realestate/agents

this last mod is optional. I like to use it.

Once you save your changes you may have to copy and past a code on a test editor, and save it as a .htaccess file and upload it in the directory WP is in. If you do not see a code generated at the bottom of the page, check your server, it was probably already created and uploaded!

This is the bare bones required to optimize your pages for search engines. You can also go further with plugins!

Plugins

Plugins greatly enhances WP capabilities! Most plugins are free! Here are a couple you will want to get. Installations is very easy! Most of the plugins can be found at WP !

But the one plugin you should get is not free and can only be had from a ebook called,

Top 10 Tricks To Conquer Your Niche With Wordpress

It only costs $37, so you might want to get it. Most of the information in it is readily available throughout the Web, and common knowledge, however it is valuable for newbies, and I think worth it just for the cool plugin you get with it!

The plugin is called utopia. It produces keyword rich meta tags that can be customized any way you like. Installation is easy but requires a few simple WP hacks. Hacks are simply replacing codes with new codes. The ebook provides easy step by step instructions. Since it is not a open source plugin I can not give it away. This will be the only plugin you will have to pay for. Alternately you can search the WP codex for similar plugins and experiement with them until you find one you like. personally I love utopia!

Ok, on to the free plugins!

You need a good stats program for your blog. It's vital you know how many times each page is getting hit, who your referrals are, and what keywords were used to find you from search engines. By far the best is

StatTraq . I've tried a dozen different stats plugins, none come as close to this one. A MUST HAVE! Installation is very easy!

Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress

another must have plugin, easy and fast to install and works like a charm!

Go get it now!

Image Browser : a easy way to add images to WP! Easy installation! place kw in alt tags of images, makes thumbnails and links them to full size pics. great plugin.

Final Tips

Choose keyword rich Categories for WP! Don't pic lame category names that do nothing to improve your serps. The category names end up on your URLS! Don't be affraid to use hyphens! Don't forget to add a description to your categories too! In fact add descriptions to every post, and page! Choose the best kw rich titles for your posts, and make sure you sprinkle those keywords in your post! Any links that leave your blog should have the target_blank code. Post at least a couple of times a day. if you can't, make several posts in advance and date them in the future as drafts. They will then be posted around the date and time you select, depending on how much or little traffic you get. try to exchange as many links as you can. Exchanging links with other related blogs is easier then you think!

Happy Blogging!

About the author: SEO Traffic Rank http://www.seo-traffic-rank.com

SEO - keywords - do your research

Author: Lee Rixon

In the last segment we talked about relevant keyword phrases, so at this point you have two or three phrases that you think might work well for your site.

The next step is to check out those keyphrases.

Open up your favourite browser and go to the search page of the search engine that you are trying to optimise for. Type in the keyphrase that you want to check and run the search.

You will get back a list of results. Make note of the following: The words that were actually used for the search

The number of pages returned

Rinse and repeat for each of your potential keyphrases.

What you now have for each of your keyphrases is a list of the relevant words that need to be 'woven' into the elements of your web pages, and also the number of index entries that you are competing against.

At this point, you need to look at the number of index entries - if this number is in the tens or hundreds of millions, then you really need to revisit the keyphrase, as it probably isn't specific enough. You have to think of all of the pages listed as your competition, and if you can't get on the first two or three pages of the search, then for you, that seach phrase just isn't going to be effective.

You can also page through the search results until they start to lose relevance. Search engines sort pages, with what they regard as the most relevant at the top. They may well have 20 million entries for your search phrase, but after the first 60, when you look at them, they really don't seem to make sense. That is because the search engine found some or all of your search terms in each document, but it was more a random collection of the occurrance of the words than the page targetting that subject. If you find very few really relevant pages, then you have a good search key phrase.

This could take some time to do, but its time well spent. If you choose your key phrase well, then even partial page optimization will reap excellent rewards. If you choose badly, then you can optimise the page completely, and not manage to get any results.

About the author: Lee is one of the principals at Spinnaker Systems which provides Web related services to the small business owner. Lee can be contacted at lee@spinnakersystems.com and is a regular contributor to the Spinnaker Blog

Saturday, April 29, 2006

SEO - threading your keywords

Author: Lee Rixon

Having carefully selected your keyword phrase - now its time to start 'threading' it into your web pages.

A number of years ago - it was simply a matter of entering it into your meta tags under keywords and away you went. Not so anymore!

Search engines providers such as Google are in the business of trying to deliver relevant content to their customers. To that end, for them to be successful, they need to have proprietary algorithms that they use to rank pages for particular search phrases. Those algorithms are continually being revised and are a 'trade secret' of that search engine.

When you optimise a page, really what you are doing is trying to guess how the search engine's algorithm will 'score' your page, and do everything you can do to increase that score. Each search engine is different, and having a page that works well for Google will not necessarily work as well for Yahoo or MSN . What we are going to do is talk about some general optimisation techniques that will help your page relevance, but discussion of full optimisation is much more complex. If you want a detailed review of any of your pages, then contact us and we will be happy to provide one for you.

The HTML page consists of three levels of information.

Always visible content

Sometimes visible content

Never visible content

Visible content consists of items such as page title, headings, page verbiage and hyperlink text.

Sometimes visible content consists of items such as image tags and hyperlink titles.

Never visible content consists of items such as meta tags.

These days, the search engines are paying much more attention to visible content, than either sometimes visible or invisible. Don't ignore these categories, but spend your time on the visible content for best results.

Page title

This is a key element for most search engines. You should try to ensure that the words contained in your keyphrase are threaded into this page title. Again, remember that this is something that will be viewed on search engine result lists and also in browser windows, so try to make it a good marketing phrase as well. Keep the title relatively short.

Headings

Most search engines consider headings to be more important than plain page text. They also consider H1 headings to be more important than H4 headings. Try to thread your key phrase into a heading somewhere in the page, preferably close to the top. Don't go overboard with this, as the search engines will also be looking at the ratio of heading text to plain text and will most likely penalize you if your whole page is a heading.

Plain text

You need to strike a balance here. It is important that your key phrase is contained in the boy of the plain text of the page, but too much can get you penalized. A reasonably good guideline is to 'thread' it into the content twice or three times. Also remember that this is your marketing copy too, so ensure that the insertion of your key phrase doesn't mess up your copy.

More later......

About the author: Lee is one of the principals at Spinnaker Systems which provides Web related services to the small business owner. Lee can be contacted at lee@spinnakersystems.com and is a regular contributor to the Spinnaker Blog

SEO - keywords - image and alt tags

Author: Lee Rixon

Last time we talked about the always visible elements on the page, specifically headings and visible text. If you have done a good job, you have 'threaded' your key phrase into the headings, title and content and still have excellent copy. It is important to get high rankings on the search engines, but that won't count if your page copy is gibberish because its stuffed with your key phrase.

Next we will look at the 'sometimes visible' elements on the page. Specifically these are the 'alt' tags on each image, and the text descriptions associated with hyperlinks. I call these 'sometimes visible' as they only appear after the cursor has been resting over the element for a little while.

The 'alt' tag on an image is an alternate description that is loaded if the browser has its image loading turned off. This used to be important when people surfed the web using slow modems, but these days, hardly anyone has their image loading turned off. This gives us an excellent opportunity to put content into the page that can be loaded with our key phrase.

Again, be aware that the 'alt' tag description will show if the cursor is left over that image for any length of time, so you still have to write good copy, but as its an image description, there is a little more latitude than with visible copy.

The same is true for hyperlinks. There is an optional elemt called 'title' that again only shows when the cursor moves over the hyperlink, and is really designed to give the user a bit more information about the hyperlink.

Great! - another place for us to put our key phrase. Again, its worth repeating that this text is still visible, so don't go overboard, but some creative writing should allow you to do some threading.

More later.....

About the author: Lee is one of the principals at Spinnaker Systems which provides Web related services to the small business owner. Lee can be contacted at lee@spinnakersystems.com and is a regular contributor to the Spinnaker Blog

Strategic Internet Marketing - Use Search Friendly Redirects To Improve Search Engine Marketing

Author: Gaston Collins

Quickly learn how search engine rankings can be dramatically improved by using a simple redirect. You'll learn how search engines and browsers interpret your redirects differently as well as why you should be using a redirect.

Any strategic Internet Marketer will tell you that page redirects will either dramatically hurt your search engine rankings or drastically improve them. It depends a lot on how you use the redirect, but most importantly which type of redirect you decide to use. their are typically only two redirects that are used most frequently. The first type, which is the ""meta refresh"" technique, only serves your web site's visitors and is not search engine friendly. The second, which is the 301 permanent redirect, will serve both your visitors and the search engines and improve your sites overall performance. First, let's understand what a redirect is and why it is used.

Redirects are a useful way of funneling traffic to a web page of your choosing. You might choose to funnel traffic for a number of different reasons such as having an expired web page that is still indexed in the search engines. You would simply redirect that page to a more recent one so that your traffic will continue to flow smoothly to your web site rather than be given the dreaded 404. Or, you may wish to use a few different domain names and direct them all to one ""main"" url. Whatever the case may be, if you're using the ""meta redirect"" instead of the 301 permanent redirect, you're killing your search engine rankings .

To better understand the effects of the two different redirect techniques, let's look at how a web browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox) reads them as compared to the search engines.

The code used to create the ""meta refresh"" type of redirect is:

meta http-equiv=""refresh"" content=""0; url=Your-Domain.com""

META HTTP-EQUIV - this tells the browser to find another HTTP equivalent item - another web page in other words.

REFRESH - tells the browser to refresh or reload the page after a certain time has passed. It also can tell the browser which page to refresh.

CONTENT - tells the browser the number of seconds to wait after the page loads until it refreshes.

URL - this is the url of the new page that should be opened when the browser refreshes.

A web browser will scan the page, find the refresh code and redirect to the new url. So how do search engine bots respond to this? That's easy - they don't! They don't scan the page or refresh the page to find the new one. They simply disregard it and keep going like they never even saw your web page.

So, the way we fix this problem is by adding a 301 permanent Redirect. This is a pretty simple tactic to implement (takes about 3 minutes), but could be very beneficial to your Search Engine Rankings. A 301 is implemented by inserting a single line of text in your "".htaccess"" file on your server. It tells the search engines, that for instance, ""yourdomain.com/page.html"" will redirect to ""yourdomain.com"". The search engine will follow the url, index and rank the page, and pass along any Page Rank that it has with Google.

This is a really simple technique that is completely search friendly, and also a widely accepted method by those who know about it. Using the 301 permanent redirect properly along with some creativity and you can easily increase your search engine rankings for the keywords of your choice.

About the author: Gaston Collins is a successful Marketer and Author. If you'd like to learn the best way to dramatically improve your search rankings by using the 301 permanent redirect , visit Gaston's Strategic Internet Marketing Blog and register for free VIP access. Gaston is also the Author of the Free Affiliate Marketing Report .

Good News for SEO Consultants: Searchers Use Two Words

Author: Shell Harris

I just read a small article by David Utter at Search Newz that intrigued me. Mr. Utter posted data from www.onestat.com that reveals some very helpful information about your typical internet searcher. In other words we have been given some insight into the mind of how our customers search.

One of the biggest obstacles in Search Engine Optimization is convincing the client to target keywords and phrases they might not agree with. Often the topics of which keywords to target turn into which keyword to target. The education process starts by us explaining to the client that targeting one keyword is foolhardy and a huge waste of our time and their money.

An example: A potential client asked if we could rank them for the term ""toys"". We convinced him that toys could lead to many results that would be of no use to him. Cat toys, dog toys, other kinds of toys not fit for a G or PG audience as well as his own types of products, children's toys.

And now that I have used three paragraphs to get to my point, here it is. People searching on the Internet use more than one keyword when searching. They most often use two words. This is substantiated by a study done by OneStat.com.

OneStat.com reports that two-word searches rate just above three-word searches, 29.6 percent to 27.55 percent. The figures they show for July 2005 are an average of searches done over the last two months.

""Search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo can drive a lot of traffic to a web site. It is important that a webmaster or SEO expert knows what kind of search phrases they have to use to drive more traffic to a site,"" said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com, in a statement.

Remember, specific is good on the Internet and targeted is even better. Two-word searches are wonderful, three-word searches are even better and four-word searches are sale waiting to happen. So don't waste effort for a keyword unlikely to bring people to you Internet door, focus on the phrases that will bring sales to your business.

About the author: Shell Harris is an Internet marketing consultant and an SEO Specialist . He provides proven results for Website promotion. More articles can be found at http://bigoakinc.com/seo-articles/seo-articles.php

This article may be freely reprinted as long as all links and author information remain.

How to Avoid Being Dropped by the Search Engines

Author: Michael Turner

For websites, one of the most important things in their existence is their ranking with the search engines. The reason why this is so important is because when websites are ranked high by the search engines, they get flooded with free, targeted web traffic from visitors who are looking for information or products. Obviously, any kind of activity that might hurt a websites chance of getting a premium listing should be avoided at all costs. The following tips are things websites should completely avoid if they want to optimize their results with the search engines.

Tip #1 Don’t Spam

Almost none of the search engines index websites long term that practice spamming. Also, search engines frequently update their definition of ""search engine spam"" than say the average Internet user, so it would be worthwhile to educate yourself and stay current on the definition of spamming by the major search engines. Search engines frequently blacklist URLs that engage in spamming, so not only will you not get indexed but you could get blacklisted for life. Certainly worth avoiding.

Tip #2 Don’t Use Frames

Search engine spiders that crawl the web do not respond well to websites using frames and frequently miss many of the pages that are listed within the website. As a result, you should avoid using frames on your website because search engines do not treat them favorably. Tip #3 Don’t Have Pages Under Construction

Make sure when you submit your URL to the search engines to get indexed that you do not have pages currently still under construction. Search engines as a rule don’t like to list pages that are still under construction, so if you have these be sure to finish them before submitting for indexing. Also, never use the phrase ""Under Construction"" on your pages that are unfinished!

Tip #4 Don’t use Invisible Text or Other Sneaky Tricks

Do not use invisible text with keyword stuffing to try and beef up your search engine rankings. Your viewers might not know that you are using invisible text, but the search engine spiders will catch you and may blacklist your URL. Play fair and by the rules.

Tip #5 Free Hosts

Frequently businesses that use free web hosts find their websites not getting indexed by the search engines. The reason for this is that free hosts have a lot of restrictions and cause a lot of problems for users, not to mention sites that are down because the server is down. Problems with your server will cause problems with SE indexing, so avoid it if at all possible.

These are just a few of the more popular suggestions to keep your web pages indexed by the search engines and ranking in the SERP's. If you ignore these tips, you should not be surprised if your pages are not spidered, indexed, and ranked.

About the author: Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Friday, April 28, 2006

SEO - 3 rules for success.

Author: Ryan Jones

If you have a website, you’ve no doubt heard of SEO. If you haven’t, you might want to read a few of my earlier articles before continuing with this one. If you’ve done any reading on the topic, you’ve probably noticed that people seem to constantly contradict each other. This is exactly why SEO is the favorite part of my job; it’s never boring!

I have to confess, I lied to you in the title. If you’re looking for a how-to blueprint to get the top rank in Google or Yahoo you won’t find it here, or anywhere for that matter. There is no formula. There is no way to manipulate Google, if there were they’d be out of business.

Why does Google constantly change their algorithm? To prevent us from finding a formula for high rankings. Think about it. If there was an easy way to get top 5 rankings in Google, would you still need your Adwords account? Most of Google’s revenue comes from paid search, and you can bet they’re going to do everything in their power to keep paid search profitable. (and judging by my Google stock, it definitely is)

While there may not be a guaranteed formula, there are a few solid SEO rules that, if followed, will help your site out perform the competition.

Rule #1: Correlation is not causation. I can’t stress this enough. Just because two things are related, doesn’t mean that one caused the other.

Before I talk about correlation and causation however, let me say this plain and simple: Your site rankings will fluctuate, regardless of what changes you make. Why? The web is constantly evolving. New sites are being added, and old sites are being modified. Keep in mind that

My favorite example of this involves a study I read in the paper saying that of the 1000 elderly people surveyed, those that frequented casinos were in better health than those who didn’t. The newspaper article concluded that occasional gambling must be healthy. While gambling and health may be positively correlated, one surely doesn’t cause the other. A little bit of reasoning will show that people who are in bad health don’t leave the house as much, and therefore don’t frequent casinos.

Ok so where are you going with this? I wanted to make sure we’re on the same page, because now I’m about to deliver the shocker: PageRank isn’t as important as you think it is. While it’s true that higher ranking sites often have higher PageRanks, neither one is a direct cause of the other.

To help you better understand, let’s discuss how PageRank works. PageRank is based off of what we computer scientists call the wandering drunk algorithm, but I’ll try to use a more appropriate example.

Suppose you’re given a computer with a random website. From there you click 1 link at random. From there, you click another link at random, and so on. Do this for about a month straight, clicking a different link every 5 seconds.

Now count how many times you actually visited each site. If you found widgets.com 10 times and sprockets.com 4 times, widgets.com would have a higher PageRank than sprockets.com

This is the basic principle of PageRank. In fact, it’s what Google Co-Founder Larry Page did with his program. He pointed it at Stanford’s home page and let it go.

Now, the actual PageRank formula has changed significantly, but the basic underlying theory is still the same. What causes a higher PageRank? Links! Not just how many links, but the PageRank of the linking site is also taken into account.

The important concept to remember is this: PageRank does not determine your position in Google, links and content do.

This brings me to my 2nd rule: There are no bad links. I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about link farms, reciprocal links, and off topic links, and you may have even declined a reciprocal link request or two. Don’t. Many of you are probably cursing under your breath about link farms and getting banned from Google, but let’s look at it rationally.

Site owners have no control over who links them and where they’re linked. If I know this, Google knows this. If a link could hurt a site’s ranking, it would be very easy for me to sabotage all of my competitors by linking them from “bad sites”. The ranking system could be manipulated, and Google would lose.

Link building is important, and this is where your SEO company can help you develop a strategy.

This brings me to my 3rd and final rule. As this is a long article, you may want to pause here and visit the restroom or grab some more coffee before continuing(anything other than getting back to work right?).

If you only remember one thing from this article, remember this: your site visitors come first. No exceptions. Your pages should make sense to a reader.

Make your text flow, in fact I recommend hiring a professional copywriter to write it for you. You hire one for magazine and print ads, and they reach less people than your website.

While keyword-rich content is the meat and potatoes of SEO, it does NOT mean placing keywords in every possible place. People may find your site, but if it sounds like it was written by a 5th grader taking English as a second language, you can bet they won’t buy anything.

If an SEO company makes a suggestion that compromises a user experience, you should re-evaluate the company. Sure, there may be minor trade offs like using text instead of images for links, or stripping out flash content, but if an SEO technique breaks up the flow of a website, confuses a user, or makes the site visually unpleasant, it shouldn’t be implemented. Remember, your site is designed for customers, not search engine spiders. Util the web is served up in XML format only and interpreted differently by each user, your site needs to be aesthetically pleasing, and more importantly it needs to flow.

And that’s it! Follow those 3 rules, and your site will be fine. You may not be top 5 in Google for all your desired terms, but you won’t do bad for those that are actually related to your website.

Is that all there is to it? No, there are many other factors like coding style, layout, keyword selection, linking campaigns, and content management that can all affect rankings, but most of them will follow as a result of my 3 rules.

If I had to give a 4th rule, I’d say don’t concentrate all your efforts on SEO. Search is just one way potential customers can find your site. Paid search, advertising on high traffic sites, direct mail, email, and print are all other effective methods that all too often get overlooked. Seriously, does it really make sense to spend 80% of your time on a medium that only 40% of your customers use to find you?

About the author: About the Author: Ryan Jones is a University of Michigan graduate who is currently working as a web developer. He runs several popular websites (including his Internet Slang Translator [ www.noslang.com ], and has authored articles for many more. You can learn more about Ryan, his websites, and interests at http://www.thehockeygod.com

The Small Screen SEO!

Author: Deepesh Agarwal

First of all, What is SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is the art of making your pages efficient for search engine robots in order to get your site listed in the top of their results, preferably on the first page and within the top 10. We can easily achieve this if we know how the search

engine is reading our sites, so we can further tweak our pages and make it to the top.

There have been several SEO techniques but this one is a Brand New, unique method, I prefer call “The Small Screen SEO”. We will be using our mobile phone handset connected with GPRS to do this, if you don’t have a mobile phone you can use opera which has the capability to browse WAP sites, now the theory is that since mobile phones have very limited capabilities in terms of screen size and content support, the most important content will be given preference over all others.

And since we will be using our favorite search engine, Google to do it; the “Most important” thing will be decided by our very own Google. So you just have to launch Google’s mobile search page at:

http://www.google.com/xhtml either from your mobile phone or the Opera web browser, and enter the search term or your website address and keep browsing to discover the insides of your website and how Google perceives

it. The Google acts as a WAP proxy to visit your own site, you can then optimize different aspects of your website to get higher rankings in search engines.

About the author: This article was written by Deepesh Agarwal of http://www.freeware-alternative.uni.cc who is an expert in software development and internet related technologies . Deepesh has developed many Award-Wining Freeware Software’s which can be downloaded from his site.

Google Is Taking Descriptions From Alexa!

Author: Martin Lemieux

Google Is Taking Descriptions From Alexa! By: Martin Lemieux

In a recent study looking at the ""descriptions"" of website search engine listings, we have noticed that your main SERP listing is being manipulated by Alexa.com.

If you take your top key word search engine placement within Google and look at your website's description, you will notice something similar with other websites, the descriptions match those taken from Alexa.com!!!

Take a peek for yourself.

1 - Search for your top key word in Google (usually the first key phrase within your title tag). 2 - Now copy & paste this description in a note pad or word doc.

3 - Once you have this, go to: www.alexa.com

4 - Type in your ""url"" in the address bar

5 - Look at the description from Google and the description from Alexa, they should be an exact match.

NOTE: If you do not have a description in Alexa, Google will come up with its own version but in reality, wouldn't you want to be in control of your website's description within the SERP's?

Not having a description in Alexa - Could it directly affect your Google search engine results?

ABSOLUTELY ! ! !

I would suggest looking at your description in Alexa to make sure that it directly targets your top key phrase that you want performing well within Google.

Your Alexa description could very well determine better SERPS within Google! Google feeds results into Alexa which in turn updates information on website ranking. They are partnered up, why wouldn't they use each others results?!

Alexa's Description is the ""text book"" definition:

I don't blame Google for wanting to use these descriptions. Most descriptions in Alexa are the ""text book version"" of your company's description and are usually well written, and well thought out. This would give Google an advantage so that they can spend less time on delivering quality descriptions and more time delivering better results within their searches.

I really like this idea because if this were true across the board, Google would be giving the individual website owner more freedom to write a proper description for their SERPS without using it to spam or create false information. Again, it would have to be approved by Alexa's team anyways, they probably wouldn't allow key word stuffing for their site as it is.

About the author: About The Author:

Martin Lemieux is the owner of the Smartads Advertising Network who helps to increase your business online and offline.

Smartads Internet Marketing: http://www.smartads.info Smartads Canada: http://www.smartads.ca Web Designers Directory: http://www.3dimentionaldesign.com

Copyright © 2005 Smartads Advertising Network

Simple yet Powerful SEO with Content!

Author: Nathaniel Quest

Are you aware of how vitally important and valuable CONTENT is to your online business? In fact, content can do more to build your business and profits than just about any other resource or service available.

Following is a list of 5 key ways that content can help build your traffic, subscribers, and customers starting today!...

1. Boost your search engine ranking and daily visitor count by posting keyword rich articles and content on your web-site. For example, if your business involves offering products and services related to fitness, posting fitness related articles and content will attract unlimited prospective customers on a regular basis!

2. Generate double or even triple the number of newsletter subscribers you do currently, simply by offering content in the form of ""special reports"" or manuals as bonuses for subscribing to your publication. People love freebies, so give them what they want and watch as your results increase!

3. Create an automated cashflow by using content to formulate multi-part email training courses with related web-site or affiliate links ""sprinkled"" throughout each course. Use an autoresponder service to automate the delivery of your training course (such as a 5 part training course delivered over a 5 day period).

Training courses can also serve as excellent bonus offers for your prospective newsletter subscribers.

4. One of the most important keys to a successful online business is not JUST having a list of mailing list or newsletter subscribers... It's about building a trusting relationship with your subscribers (ie, ""cultivating"" your list)...

By sending informative articles (content) to your list on a regular basis you will establish yourself as an expert on your topic of business, as well as gain the trust of your subscribers over time. As a result, your subscribers will be EAGER to take advantage of your ""paid"" product and service offers. (Just make sure that you NEVER take advantage of the relationship you develop with your list by offering products or services of poor quality just to make a quick buck!)

If there is one ""constant"" in Internet marketing, it's this: A cultivated list of subscribers is as good as money in the bank. Write that down and never forget it!

5. Another excellent way to generate no cost traffic is by submitting ready-made articles to ""content hungry"" web-site and newsletter publishers with your ""resource box"" attached. A resource box is nothing more than a little 3-6 line ""bio"" about you and/or your web-site - including a link to your site (or even instructions on how to subscribe to your newsletter)...

When submitting or offering your article(s) for reprint purposes, just make sure to specify that each article is to be reprinted ""as is"" with your resource box attached.

...Even one article can go a LONG way towards generating no cost traffic and visitors for you. Just imagine your article being sent out to a newsletter subscriber base of 100,000 individuals - many of whom will be reading YOUR included resource box and clicking on your URL to learn more about what you have to offer!

Well there you have it, 5 sure ways to build your online business exponentially with the help of articles and content...

With the declining effectiveness of many of the online advertising methods that we've relied on in past years, content is only strengthening its position as the ultimate KEY to generating unlimited traffic, subscribers, and customers!

About the author:

OpportunitiesBlog.com > Post your ads as many times as you want, post as many ads as you want! You can even post your ads several times a day. Take advantage of the newest marketing craze. Blog contents are easily indexed by the major search engines. Get unlimited hits to your sites for free!

SEO - keywords - meta tags

Author: Lee Rixon

We have dealt with the categories of visible and sometimes visible text. That only leaves text that is not visible to the user. The two categories of entries here are meta tags and html comments.

Meta tags are largely historical in context. They have been so overdone by people practicing SEO on sites, that they are not given that heavy an emphasis by search engines. That being said, they still have a purpose and can add value. IF they support the visible and sometimes visible text, then there is every reason to believe that they add value. However, if there are keywords or description that don't support your visible or semi visible text, then there is every reason to believe they are ignored at best, or used to penalize your ranking at worst.

Html comments are a bit of an unknown. I have no positive evidence that they affect ranking one way or another. To that end - play it safe and add some that contain your search keywords but don't go overboard. If they are supported by visible or sometimes visible text, I don't see that it will do any harm. If anyone knows anything to the contrary - I would really like to hear from them.....

About the author: Lee is one of the principals at Spinnaker Systems which provides Web related services to the small business owner. Lee can be contacted at lee@spinnakersystems.com and is a regular contributor to the Spinnaker Blog

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Write for Search Engine Placement Without Irritating Your Visitors

Author: Hasaan A. Brown

We all want our web site to be number one in Google, Yahoo, MSN and any search engine we can find prospects.

We go through many tedious steps to optimize our web site for search engines. However, sometimes people overlook the end result of a page they are trying to optimize.

Have you ever seen anything as annoying as when someone repeats a targeted keywords over, and over, and over? Repeating a keyword in a nonsensical way may boost your search engine rankings, or it may not, but the bottom line is your web visitor has to read that nonsense. And if they have to read that nonsense, believe me, they will get frustrated quickly, and any chance of you converting that visitor into cash will disappear as quickly as they found your web site.

You can't build credibility if you can't write content that is clean and easy to read. Always write professionally before thinking about including your keyword multiple times. Make a positive first impression with your web content. Poorly written content will not hold a potential client's attention. Studies say you have 10 short seconds to make a positive impact.

Tips for Writing Content For Your Visitors and Search Engines

-Write for your prospects first, then for search engines later. To achieve a balance, follow these general rules:

-Focus on your target audience and secondary audience. Focus on the content you need to make a sale or generate a lead.

-Don't focus on too many keywords on a single page. Your content will lose it's target, and cost you potential clients.

-Write clear, easy to read headings. Include your keywords if possible. This will help a visitor scan through text on your site quickly. Keep in mind visitors read text on the Internet different than reading a magazine or a newspaper.

-If possible, keep your content short and sweet when writing content that you are trying to sell your prospects. You can save the detail for another page on your web site, or over a phone call. People want quick, organized information when searching for a product or service on the web.

If you follow the tips I have provided in this article, you will be better off providing readable content to your visitors and increase the chance they will become your new client!

About the author: Hasaan Brown runs a web site for

search engine optimization ,

internet marketing and

web development at OptimalWebsite.com

How To Become an SEO Expert - 5 Secrets That Will Allow You to Outperform 95% of All Webmasters

Author: Michael Turner

Becoming an SEO expert, or a search engine optimization expert, is something that is worth your while if you are interested in getting your web page noticed and increasing your traffic. It is not hard to become an SEO expert if you simply know what steps you need follow to take you there. As long as you follow these steps and are diligent, you will become the SEO expert you want to be. Read the following topics, then research them more to learn exactly what will put you above the majority of all webmasters.

Topic #1 Keywords

Keywords are a huge part of becoming a search engine optimization expert. The reason for this is that keywords are used by the search engines to find and rank their results. You must become an expert at using keywords that apply to your products and services in order to become a search engine optimization expert.

Topic #2 Links

Developing a link campaign is another important aspect of becoming an SEO expert. The reason for this is that links play an important role in how web pages are ranked by the search engines. The more links a website has present on the Internet, the higher weight and ultimate ranking it will be given by the search engine. If you want to be an SEO expert, you need to learn all you can about links and the role they play in the search engines.

Topic #3 Pay per Click Advertising

Pay per click advertising is another important topic that relates to an SEO expert. This type of advertising is used on search pages when particular keywords are searched for. Your website only pays for this type of advertising when someone clicks on your ad, hence the name ""pay per click"". The PPC advertising element is important to the success of many websites and results in increased traffic. As an SEO expert, you need to know all there is to know about pay per click advertising.

Topic #4 Directories

Directories are another aspect of getting websites optimized for search engines. Submitting your site to directories not only provides valuable incoming links to your website, it also sends you targeted visitors from those particular directories. To become an expert on search engine optimization, you will need to study and learn everything about directories and how they can be used by a website to build business and drive traffic.

Topic #5 Expert

You should strive to be an expert on something. It is fine to learn all about the different tools to become a search engine optimization expert, however you will also need to be an expert on specific topics and have certain niche topics where you are viewed as an expert.

About the author: Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

If you build it, they will come?

Author: Phillip Harrison

Building a new website can be a lengthy task. From scratch to the clients specification and then implement additional features and/or changes the client usually has. Sometimes far too much attention is put to the development of building the website and then on launch day expect the massess of visitors to flood in. This simply is not the case, unless you have traffic from another of your sites streaming over to the new one.

Time and again i see decent looking websites with no traffic. Even when the designer offers to promote the website, the client most likely refuses on the grounds of cost. In my opinion for a website to succeed in bringing in the masses, a effective promotion and search engine optimisation has to be in force. This costs money, but if you dont get the visitors, you dont get the sales. Making the site pointless and something for the client to look at now and again and admire how nice it looks.

Search engine optimisation, although vital, is only one step to the road to success. Once the website is complete, the site promotion should begin. Infact this stage should be considered while the designer is building the site. Creating the site with search engine optimisation in mind.

Far too many times does a designer create a site, only for the client to go elsewhere for the site promotion. Falling into the trap of paying someone who claims to submit their site to a ridiculous high number of directories and search engines, for instance eight hundred thousand. Fact is, there isnt that many decent search engines and directories. In my opinion only google, yahoo and msn are the only good search engines to get any traffic from.

For a site promotion to work, a plan is required to maximise the best places to get traffic. This would not only involve submitting manually to the top search engines but also advertising in the best and most appropriate places. Also gaining links to your site from popular sites is important. This all takes time and money.

About the author: http://www.onestop-webdesign.com One Stop Web Site Design uk specialises in creating the complete web site without the buyer having to understand all the jargon. Simply sign up to our low cost monthly plan, and give us an outline of what your website should be about and what products to sell. You can then sit back as we organise everything from hosting, web site development to setting up your shop and web site ready for going live.

Can Someone Please Define Internet Marketing!

Author: Melih Oztalay

Back in 1994 after you created a website for your business, marketing was fairly simple. Generally you would make changes to your HTML code for search engine optimization and for the most part promoted your website through offline methods. These may have included business cards, letterhead, print advertising and other such methods. Whether or not your site was listed on the only search engine, Yahoo, at the time was purely based on how well you optimized our web pages. If you did a good job then multiple pages of your site would be listed consecutively for a search.

Twelve years later in 2006 the entire perspective of marketing your site on the web has become a science requiring a degree. Although, we are all eager to market our website on the web we are somewhat unclear how to accomplish this task through a maze of policies set by the Big 3 search engines - Google, MSN and Yahoo. Most businesses would first seek out professional advice. In the process of seeking professional Internet Marketing advice, your story may look something like this.

""By now I had heard about pay-per-click, something called Ad Sense, link exchanges, banner advertising and it all sounds quite confusing. After all as a business owner, my forte is to run my company, not try and figure out how to market a website on the Internet. As I seek out professional advice I get quite a variety of different stories. One person calls themselves Internet marketer and the only thing they provide is Pay-Per-Click advertising campaigns. The next person I speak to also consider their business to be in Internet Marketing, yet the only service provided is Search Engine Optimization. Even that term was somewhat vaguely defined to me. I continue to hear about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but it seems to vary from changes to our website to advertising on the web. I am most definitely puzzled at this point. Can anyone describe what Internet Marketing is actually about?""

Advertising and Marketing has always been handled by professional firms that have college educated individuals and understand the difference between Advertising and Marketing. In case you are wondering, here are the definitions of Advertising and Marketing.

- Marketing is the process or technique of promotion, selling and distributing a product or service.

- Advertising is to make your product or service publicly known; an announcement to call public attention by emphasizing qualities to arouse a desire to purchase.

One of the primary issues of advertising and marketing on the Internet is that you may not necessarily reach someone educated in the field of advertising and marketing. Instead it is someone that has educated themselves about a particular area of Internet Marketing. For instance they may have specialized in Affiliate Marketing or Pay-Per-Click campaigns while another individual may know more about making changes to your website for search engine optimization. Currently these types of services are fragmented and they do require someone with the appropriate skills to manage an entire Internet marketing campaign.

If we take a look at all the different areas of Internet marketing you will find the following in your list:

Research, Analysis, Planning and Strategy We need to research key phrases and look at the data to determine our title and description.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I believe it is safe to say that SEO is not advertising on the web. SEO is strictly modifications to your HTML code and website. Making sure your website is HTML validated, density checks, the keywords, phrases, content, alt descriptions, anchor titles and so on are in place for the entire website.

Internet Marketing This is the actual process of promotion as the definition of marketing was described earlier. Some would call this Natural Propagation Marketing, others will call it Organic marketing. With this form of marketing you can rest assured the shelf life of the efforts put forth can be measured in years.

Internet Advertising Although, the shelf life of Internet advertising can be measured in seconds and can hemorrhage a business financially, there are three areas of Internet advertising. The first would be to utilize an Internet Advertising Network (IAN) to submit a variety of banners through out a variety of websites in order to narrow your advertising to an area with the most response. Another area is Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns such as Google Ad Sense or Yahoo Search Marketing. Lastly, you may consider direct advertising on websites that you have found to be of value to your business with high page ranking.

Management & Reporting It is necessary to monitor all the various activities you are pursuing on the web. Internet marketing gives us the ability to measure almost all aspects of our advertising and marketing campaigns with the push of a button. You will want to keep an eye on your website statistics, check your Google page rank, your Alexa traffic ranking, and your link popularity overall to name a few.

If we consider all the various parts that are required for proper business Internet marketing, you will find the industry moving towards consolidation in the future. Equally, we will find that advertising and marketing on the web will eventually fall back to educated professionals who not only understand advertising and marketing, but will now include their education in Internet marketing as well.

About the author: Melih Oztalay is the CEO of SmartFinds Internet Marketing. Internet marketing is not only about knowledge and experience, but also about imagination. Visit SmartFinds Internet Marketing.

RSS feeds...Just got better!

Author: Terry Till

We all know that in the world of online internet marketing we need our sites to get good quality targeted traffic on a daily basis. Whether we are just trying to improve our web site traffic just in general or as a specific need to increase our revenue from affiliate programs and adsense the life blood of our business is and always will be quality laser targeted visitors.

So in order to produce high quality web sites we all needed to fill our web site pages with good content rich features and articles, this being a two-fold strategy. Not only do we need high quality content to please our visitors and hopefully get them to return to our sites in the future, good quality content also seduced the major search engines into sending their bot crawlers to our sites on a daily basis and thus ensuring that our web sites were placed and ranked well in their search results. After all, well-ranked web sites in search engine results equals more high quality laser targeted visitors and the cycle continues.

In our quest to fulfil the needs of this web content rss feeds came to the rescue, known by some as Rich Site Summary, rss feeds offer a means of placing a link on your web site from a feature source of interest and this will usually be updated daily by the owner with new features and articles. This was a giant leap forward as far as web content was concerned and enabled many web site owners to produce high quality web sites with fresh daily content of interest to their visitors.

However nothing on the internet stays for long without some improvement and rss is no exception to the rule as web site owners now have the opportunity to offer their visitors and the search engine bot crawlers an even more advanced form of rss feed.

Powerrss now offers feeds that can be randomised, shuffled and archived daily to make web pages even more appealing and yet give each web site owner an individual appearance of what might have been a good but widely used basic rss feed.

So now you can.

Automatically retrieve and displays keyword-rich (relevant) content on your web pages - without you lifting a single finger!

Eliminate the software footprints from your site by randomizing the RSS feeds before displaying them.

In addition, it allows you to automatically perform basic SEO page optimization by highlighting (e.g bold) the keywords, automatically inserts backlinks to your webpages (keyword is used as the anchor text) and the option to turn on the ""nofollow"" attribute to conserve the page rank.

Use an automated archive system that builds your website for you - by adding a new (theme-related) page on your site each day - 24x7!

About the author: Find out all the facts about Power-rss now at:

http://www.trafficgt.com/powerrss.html

Copyright 2005 Terry Till

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Meta Tag Tactics - Give Your Website Traffic a Boost with the Meta Tag Basics

Author: Michael Turner

Getting your site noticed by the search engines and rewarded with top rankings is most webmasters main goal, however there are a lot of different factors that play into what the search engines are looking for, including Meta tags. So, if you don’t know anything about meta tags but are interested in learning about them so you can use them to possibly increase your rankings, then read the following basic tips regarding meta tags. The more educated you are about what search engines are looking for, the better you will be able to respond and rise in the rankings.

Basic #1 - Information

When it comes to your Meta tags you want them to contain key information about your website as well as your top keywords. Make sure they keywords are in the title as well as in the body of the text. The point of this is when someone searches for particular keywords that are in your Meta tag, this information will be displayed on the search page giving searchers a bit of in depth information about your site which they can use to make a more informed decision about whether your site is worth visiting.

Basic #2 - Description

Make sure you write a description about your page using specific information and keywords, but keep it short and sweet. That way, when your keywords are searched for this description will be displayed.

Basic #3 - Search Engines

Some search engines support Meta tags while others do not. So, you will need to keep this in mind when you are trying to get your website in as many search engine directories as possible. Make sure you write Meta tags for certain search engines and then use other tactics for the search engines that do not support Meta tags.

Basic #4 - Outdated

Meta tags are not used by many search engines any more and some people even believe that in just a short amount of time Meta tags will have no relevance whatsoever. However, for the time being they still can play a part in your rankings and traffic in some SE's so until the time comes where Meta tags are completely extinct, you should still use them to your benefit.

While Meta tags might be going out the window with other forms of older, outdated technology, you should still optimize your web page with Meta tags until that time has arrived simply because it will take you almost no time at all to create a meta tag and it could have a serious impact on your search results with the smaller search engines. However, do not listen to the hype that Meta tags are the answer to increasing your traffic overnight as this is simply not the case.

About the author: Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Is my Search Engine Optimization working?

Author: John Krycek

You’ve just built a website and can’t wait to start popping up in the top listings of search engines. After all, you’ve paid this company even more money to create “optimized, search engine friendly pages, start building links and add lots of fresh content.” If it takes weeks and months for the search engines to notice me, do I have to wait that long to see if the money was worth it?

No! It’s true that it takes time…weeks, even months to build up your web presence, but there are ways to follow your progress. It’s important to note that if you already have an established Internet presence and wish to further optimize your site, it usually happens much faster than a site that is brand new with a brand new domain.

If you are already listed in various directories and your existing website has been up and running long enough the search engines have probably already indexed your site and those linking to it. (to see if your site is indexed with a particular engine, in the search field type “site:www.yourdomain.com”). As you modify your pages and add new content the process of moving up in search rank is much swifter than starting from a brand new, un-indexed site. ? The ranking process has an inherent unchangeable variable of time. Sponsored search listings are one of a few ways around this hurdle to get you to the top instantly while the search spiders dig through your new site. But for the long haul, while you wait for that big chuck of cash you just paid your SEO to start returning, here are some ways to tell if he or she did you justice.

Ways to keep tabs on your progress:

Monitor Search Engine Positions If you’re a brand new domain name the first step is to watch for yourself to be indexed. Chances are that your optimizer submitted your site to the most prominent search engines at the very least. While the search crawlers will ultimately find you on their own, there is some merit in submitting your site manually. It may take some weeks before a check of site:www.yourdomain.com reveals any activity though. Take care not to be over anxious and resubmit your site. That will only hurt your efforts.

Once you find yourself being listed by particular keywords in a search engine, monitor how your rank moves every week or so. (Frequently, the more you add fresh content, the sooner the crawlers will return to your site.) Change the preference settings in search engines to speed up your research efforts.

Google will display up to 100 results per page, MSN up to 50 in “advanced search.” This makes it much easier to find yourself if your down in the 300th position. Don’t be discouraged though! Being listed even at 300 is an accomplishment. And as you optimize you will see your listing move up in the ranks.

Visitor Tracking The best, and easiest way to see who is reaching your site by search engine and particular keyword phrase is to implement some sort visitor tracking system. These are not complicated and can cost only a few dollars a month. Take a look at a company like www.webstat.com for example.

A small piece of code is placed on each page you want to track. When you log into the online service, you can tell the exact word and phrase someone used to reach you and from what search engine... not to mention scores of other useful data about your site traffic. This quickly gives you a snapshot of which keyword phrases are most successful and in which engines. This data is invaluable to further optimize your pages.

Are your top search engine rankings on par with the industry percentages? Again using visitor tracking you can see if the people reaching you by Google are close to the percentage of people that use Google compared to MSN or AOL. If the industry shows that overall 25% of searchers are using MSN and 5% Lycos, your results should be similar. If they’re not, it’s a sign that some modifications might be in order.

Monitoring these processes will show you that there’s actually quite a lot of activity. And there’s nothing more exciting than watching that 300th position search climb to the first page!

About the author: As the owner and creative director of theMouseworks.ca Read more articles on the insights and secrets of website development and search engine optimization in easy, non-technical, up front English!

World Domination-Get The Facts...

Author: DocStuey

""Being an achiever in anything you do, is little more than the focussed execution of a learned skill set. Achieving dominance, requires the achiever to have passion, perseverance, an open minded willingness to learn and adapt, as well as the ability to have and hold on to a vision.""

H.Brett, 2005

Dominating the World Wide Web, is not as difficult, costly, and nerve racking as many Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts and self proclaimed ""Web Marketing Gurus"" would lead you to believe. It does however require the ""focussed execution of a learned skill set"", combined with ""an open minded willingness to learn and adapt, as well as the ability to have and hold on to a vision."" If you don't have the latter, STOP... go no further... this article is not going to help you! If you have the ""open minded willingness to learn and adapt, as well as the ability to have and hold on to a vision"", and would like to add a few tools to your skill set, keep reading...

First step on the path to dominance is to become an achiever. To become an achiever, requires learning a skill set, applying it daily in an effort to perfect it. ""Perfection is an ongoing process which never ceases... there is always a better, more efficient method of executing any skill set... Evolution is the living proof.""

There are several ways to acquire and perfect any chosen skill set. Well, there is the obvious method of accumulating theoretical knowledge through reading and having a somewhat experienced textbook teacher sharing their experiences, which for you equate to additional theory. Then there is the most important part of actually doing, repeating, improving, and so on... Ideally, for this part you'll get a coach, or better yet, a mentor. Easier said than done. Truly successful SEO masters, are too pre-occupied with learning and practicing, perfecting their skills, and becoming more successful, to donate their time to you. Most publicly proclaimed so called SEO ""Gurus"" are better at taking your money than they are at SEO... they are just out to sell you a $37, $97 or $147 course on SEO, offering a 30-90 day satisfaction guarantee, knowing full well, over 95% of customers don't end up requesting refunds even when they feel like they've been had. Well I have no interest in marketing SEO courses. And to be totally honest, I don't have the time to mentor anyone on any topic... and frankly, if it were not beneficial to me, I wouldn't even be sharing this info... so appreciate the fact that this is therefore truly of mutual benefit... I will explain.

Now before I get you to blindly invest anymore of your valuable time, let me give you a quick background on how and where I developed the skill set I am about to share with you... this way you can judge whether or not you wish to continue along this path.

My name is Howard Brett, this for the record, is my real name, not a stage name to hide behind. I am a real person, sharing real results... No BS. Please note, I am publishing this article on the DocStuey account, because I am legally entitled to do so, although I am not DocStuey. A good friend of mine recently required my services to help launch a monumental project. Part of this effort required developing a grass roots web presence.

""DocStuey "", For Diets Health and Wellness Facts You Can Trust , born out of the need to dispel the half truths, false promises, and downright lies, perpetrated by the diet/ weight loss, nutritional supplement, fitness and food industries.

Without a single web site submission to any of the Search Engines, DocStuey achieved indexing on all the major search engines within weeks of launching (actually, Google and MSN found us within days).

Although being a new site and likely sitting in what seems to be known as the ""Google Sandbox"", preventing first page appearances on most of our important (or the most competitive) keywords, most of our pages have a page rank of 3 or 4 and we have many times more relevant inbound links than outbound or reciprocal links.

MSN has given us first page listings on most of our primary keywords, as well several rank #1. Even our secondary keywords and phrases rank well, often on the first or second page.

All 5 articles published on GoArticles.com have been wildly successful, achieving The Top 5 Most Downloaded Articles in a 30 day period... this one will be the next to top the charts... I know this will happen, and I will explain in detail how to achieve these results, and the benefit to doing so.

Ok, so you've made it this far... you're still with me... so here we go. Let's start with a little ""warm up"" exercise.

Think for a moment... Why do we optimize web sites and web pages for Search Engines? What importance should be placed on meta tags? Why do we calculate keyword density? Why do we, or should we, perform ""back flips"" to entertain Google? How important is page rank anyway? What importance should be placed on reciprocal links, inbound links, overall link structure? Do doorway pages work for or against us? Are RSS feeds the answer? What's in a ""Blog""? How about press releases? Article submission sites? Is there anything else? ...Yes, there are so many new software programs designed to give us the edge... to ""trick"" the Search Engines, or simplify the process of adding or modifying RSS Feeds, or exchanging links... But, do these tactics really work? I've tried them all on different sites over the last few months...

Now, before I reveal what I have confirmed has created the best results for DocStuey, as well as several other sites that I have worked on, I'll give you the definitive answer to all the ""What"" and ""Why"" questions, then we'll review the ""How"" and ""Do"" questions in more detail. ""Targeted Traffic"".

SEO is all about getting ""targeted traffic"" to flow to your web sites, without incurring costs. If you have to pay an SEO company excessive or ongoing (monthly) fees to supposedly assure you first page listings for your keywords, you may as well use ""pay per click"" advertising (perhaps I'll get into this some other time). A one time nominal fee to optimize your web site for meta tags, overall linking structure or ""flow"", and incorporation of an automated ""content page"" using ""RSS feeds"" or ""web logs"" (""Blogs""), is prudent and money well spent.

Don't waste time or money submitting to Search Engines... Don't buy or pay for software, or pay others to submit to Search Engines on your behalf either... Any Search Engines worth your time, will find your web site if it is worth finding. Make your web site worth finding and it will be found. How? Content!

Content rules... content is king! Relevant, keyword dense content articles will get your site noticed by the Search Engine spiders. Regularly updated content will get your site crawled often by the Search Engine spiders, this will get you indexed quickly. You are not a writer. You don't have enough expertise on the topics needed to sell the kinds of products you wish to sell on your web site, etc... How do you get the kind of Content you need on a regular basis? ""RSS Feeds"" to professionally written articles, that's how.

RSS Feeds will get you the quantity and quality of content you require on any topic available on the World Wide Web and it is content that won't cost you a dime. Sounds like a quick and simple fix? It is, although unless using one of these new software programs to automate the procedure, it still requires some work on your part. One of my preferred recommendations is "" RSS Equalizer "", I've included a live link in my resource box below, in case the ""anchor text"" link in this article has been turned off by the webmaster of this web site on which you are reading my article. I'd appreciate you using my links within this article or my resource box, as this is one ""benefit to me"" as mentioned earlier... remember? ...I get paid an affiliate fee on the sale of the programs that I recommend... please remember, I only recommend the programs that I have tested and benefited from. My blatant advertisement of an ""affiliate program"" was not the intent of writing this article however, and the true benefit has yet to be revealed...

Ok, ever heard of ""saving the best for last""? Well that is exactly what I've done...

Before I take you there, we'll need to review Google page rank, links, reciprocal links, inbound links, overall link structure, and what role RSS feeds play in this relationship. Once I tie this all together for you, I'll drop the ""domination bomb"" right in your plate!

Without going into a full discussion of Google page rank, there are numerous quality articles you can find on the web, here is a quick detailed summary...

Page rank is a value Google attributes on a page by page basis to every page the Search Engine indexes. Page rank is a measure of importance Google attributes to a page based on the quantity and quality of votes the page receives from other web sites. A link from any other page equals a vote in favour of the page being ranked. The weight, or importance (number of points) carried by this vote, depends on the quality and/or relevance of the vote. Relevance is determined by ""content"" to ""content"" relationship, as well as the relevance of the anchor text used in the link to the page being ranked. Relevance as well as the page rank of the page linking to the page being ranked, determines the overall points bestowed on the page being ranked. All inbound links whether relevant, or not, still count as a vote in favour of. Internal links from one page of a web site to another page on the same site, count as a vote in favour of, as well as share page rank. Outbound links to completely unrelated sites seem to ""bleed"" page rank, although not confirmed. What is of concern though is code within Googles page rank algorithms that penalizes web sites for massive link exchanges with completely unrelated sites in an attempt to boost page rank by fooling the search engine into thinking a site is important because it has a large number of links, or votes. This penalty seems to also affect web sites using outbound links to link exchange or link farm pages hosted on a server other than that of the web site itself.

With this summary of page rank, please head these words of caution...

Don't waste your money and time on any service providing access to link farms, link exchanges, link clubs, link hosting, FFA (Fr** For All) pages.

If you want to do any link exchanges, although too time consuming for my liking, this does offer mutual benefit to the sites involved, visit sites on page 1 or 2 of Google for the keyword searches that are important and related or complimentary to what you do... write to the webmaster respectfully requesting to exchange links with them, once you have already posted a link to them from your site. This method doesn't cost you anything, and is the most effective way of building a relevant reciprocal link structure.

So what is the relationship created with using RRS feeds to get your content? Simple, you win as you get relevant content, the author wins as he/she gets your vote, which equates to a non reciprocated inbound link... there are no penalties to you, and there is obvious benefit to the author. Wow! A win/win situation. What could be better?

Ok, you've been patient long enough... time to drop the ""domination bomb"" right in your plate!

The single most efficient way to create exposure, importance, targeted traffic, unlimited non reciprocal inbound links and consequently Google page rank, followed by regular page one placements in the major Search Engines for all your keywords is... Become a highly published ""Web Author"" Sounds so simple... NOT!

Ok, settle down... I know you feel you can't write... most people can't... that's why RSS feeds to content articles are such valuable tools. If you can write professionally, you are ""home fr**"". Bottom line is the greatest rewards are reaped by the authors, provided they become highly published (we'll get to that in a moment). First let's deal with your lack of literary skills, if you can't be a writer, how do you become one? Once again, a simple no BS answer... go to your favourite major Search Engine, I find MSN to produce the most relevant results, and type ""ghost writer"", this should produce over 2 million solutions on ""Any Given Sunday"".

A ghost writer creates professionally written original copyright literary works with your name or any trade mark or given name which you hold title to, for a fee. Now we've turned you into a professional author. So, how do we get you highly published? Again... simple... Sorry, I've reached the space limit for this article. You can find many of our most successful resources at

http://hit-fre nzy.v-forceinternational.com/ .

Contact me for these final words of wisdom. You'll find my contact info in the resource box following this article. If it is missing, the webmaster of this site is in violation of the Terms of Use Agreement with GoArticles.com. Please report this to ""webmaster@goarticles.com"". You can find me at GoArticles.com by doing a search by author, type in ""DocStuey"".

Here is an example of what we've done with DocStuey over a 6 week period... every single article has dominated the Top 5. I can do this for you as well if you need a Ghost Writer that knows how to get results. GhostWriter@V-ForceInternational.com

About the author: H.Brett is a veteran web marketing consultant, author/publisher. Current assigment, ""DocStuey"". Producing Top Ranking results consistantly. Offering Ghost Writing services: GhostWriter@V-ForceInternational.com. Recomended resources ""http://rss-equalizer.v-forceinternational.com/"" and http://hit-fre nzy.v-forceinternational.com/

Ten Critical Website and Search Engine Promotion Mistakes

Author: Michael Turner

When it comes to promoting your website, you might think that anything you can do to get people to your website is worthwhile. However, you should think again because some shady practices will actually hurt you. Also, other SEO tactics could reduce the amount of potential visitors simply because you do not have a clear understanding of how the Internet and search engines work. Read the following tips on what not to do when promoting your website and if you are doing some of these things stop immediately and learn how to effectively promote your site.

1. Too Many Images

Search engines search for text, so if your website is composed mostly of photographs your results will be significantly lower if ranked at all. It’s ok to have good photos, just make sure you have really good content as well.

2. Keyword Phrases

Keywords phrases are a great way to get more traffic. However, if you are unaware of the importance of keyword phrases or unsure how to use them effectively then you might be doing yourself in. Learn about the importance of keyword phrases and how to get them to work for you.

3. Excessive Keywords

Using too many keywords with no clear understanding of how those keywords influence search engine rankings can also cause you problems. Before you start listing hundreds of keywords in your content, learn how to properly utilize this tool to get it to work for you and not against you.

4. Links are Difficult to Find

Make sure your website is clearly laid out and any links to other pages are obvious and easy to get to. Too many times links are hidden and people cannot find them, so they simply leave.

5. Information is hard to find

Another significant problem is if information on your products or how to buy them is obscured or difficult to find. Make sure everything is out in the open and obvious.

6. Frames

Search engines do not return websites with frames very well because all of the pages link to one URL. If your website has frames, remove them as they'll certainly have a negative impact on your search engine ranking efforts.

7. Spamming Search Engines

This is a very bad idea because if you are trying to trick the search engines regarding the true content on your page, you may be doing yourself more harm than good because the search engines may blacklist your site. Avoid doing this at all costs, especially on a domain that is important to you.

8. Website Should Work In all Browsers

Not everyone uses Internet Explorer, so make sure the web page opens in any browser. If not, you will be eliminating a lot of potential users.

9. Wrong Optimization

Often times people work hard on optimizing their web pages using certain keywords. However, you must be sure the keywords you are using are relevant to your market and your products. There are programs that will help you make sure you are choosing the right keywords for your web page. If you optimize wrong, you won’t get visitors.

10. Over-submitting Pages

Do not submit too many pages to the search engines in one day. The reason for this is if you submit too many pages they may be simply ignored, and in fact many search engines only accept one page per day. So, submit one page per day and be patient. An even better idea than submitting is building up your incoming links as search engines will find these and follow them to your website.

About the author: Michael Turner reveals his foolproof way to increase website traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it free right now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Search Engine Optimization Strategies Guaranteed to Skyrocket your Rankings

Author: Michael Turner

The point of optimizing your website is so that you will get ranked higher in the search engines and receive more visitors to your site. As a result, you will increase sales and revenue. Consider the following tips so that you will be able to optimize your site and be returned as a higher result in the search engines.

Strategy #1 - Keywords

Finding the appropriate keywords for your website and market is very important. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of software programs that will help you determine the appropriate keywords for your industry so that you will be able to include them on your website. All search engines take keywords into account when crawling the web and ranking results, so if you utilize your keywords effectively it will help you get higher positioning. However, you can misuse keywords as well which will ultimately only cause you problems. Make sure you know the correct keywords for your market as well as how to use them correctly on your website.

Strategy #2 - Links

Links are another very important aspect of increasing your rankings. The reason for this is many search engines are crawling the web and looking for the amount of sites that are on the Internet linking to your website. The more links you have, the more weight is given to your website. So, you should put a lot of effort into getting links to your website distributed throughout the Internet. Not only will your traffic increase because more people will be exposed to your site via links, but your search engine rankings will be increase as well.

Strategy #3 - No Frames

If you want to skyrocket your rankings you need to be sure you are not using frames. The reason for this is that frames cause problems with a lot of search engines and if you are using frames, you may not get indexed. Obviously, achieving top search engine rankings is pretty difficult if your website isn't even listed!

Strategy #4 - No Spamming

Another important tip is to be sure you do not spam the search engines. The reason for this is that the majority of all search engines do not support spammers, so if you are doing anything that can possibly be considered as SE spamming you should stop immediately to avoid being blacklisted by the search engines.

There are many other things you can do as well to focus on increasing your rankings with the search engines, but the best advice is to follow the above tips and also research online what different search engines are looking for. Doing so will give you a better chance of meeting the search engines expectations.

About the author: Michael Turner shows you exactly how to increase web site traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it today at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/