Maintaining Ethical Standards In SEO

Author: Dana Goldberg

In all kinds of businesses, credibility is important. This is one of the primary principles that are being established by the companies. It must be prioritized above all other things because if not, they will surely loose their customers. In every country, there is always a provision that sets ethical standards when it deals about business.

Even on the SEO or the search engine optimization companies, they are also very concerned with the maintenance of their integrity. It is easier to attract customers if the company is able to sustain a good name. It will also ensure a good profit, because the more subscribers who will patronize the business the greater the gain that they will have.

The kind of employees that you have will reflect the totality of the company's management. This will reveal the manner on how you discipline your staff. It will also transpire to the people that will make them decide whether they will go for subscription in your company or not.

In SEO, there are various ways to maintain its credibility.

* Choose a trustworthy staff. Usually, chaos and controversies within the company starts when misunderstanding exists. Make sure that when you accept applicants as your future employees you are guaranteed that they have a good morale. Even though the task of the employees in SEO will be merely focusing on computer works but still it is very important since you will be making transactions within and outside your offices.

* Small things should not be made complicated. If there are little problems that arise in running the business, better discuss it immediately before it grows into a bigger problem.

* Problems arising in the company must be tackled within the office only. Avoid things that will likely worsen the situation, commonly this is the problem of the companies. Matters that deal on internal concerns must not reach the other offices. There are times that your opponent company may use the controversy against you that will lead to the obliteration of your name.

* Always appear cheerful towards your customers. In spite of the internal problems that you are probably encountering do not take it as burden up to the point that you will disregard the welfare of your subscribers already. You will lose a lot of them if you continue doing this, so always remain positive to them at all times.

Some of the noted unethical practices that are very known to search engine optimization are cloaking and issue, doorway pages or hidden links and sometimes hidden texts.

These malpractices are treated to be forbidden by various search engines. Beware about this because once they discover these strategies used in your website, you will surely be banned.

Sadly, once your site is ban you will not only loose your ranking but as well as the money that you have invested on it. Everything will turn into nothing so it is better to be honest at all times. Do not grab for profit in an immoral way because you will just suffer the consequence in the end.

So, ethical standards will be comprised of all the factors surrounding the entire management of the company. It is not a matter of questioning your manager's individual personality or even the staff but on their morale inside their work.

About the author: D. Goldberg is the owner of Easy Web Development . A Collection of articles, tips, guidelines and resources on how to increase web site traffic.

Organic SEO Through Content Distribution

Author: Gerrick W

Organic SEO (Search Engine Optimization) seems to be the buzzword these days. What is organic SEO? In its simplest explanation, organic SEO is publicity through content distribution. All your incoming links originate from content you created for your website or blog. And boy, search engines love this kind of linking structure.

Marketing through articles is organic Search Engine Optimisation. Your article and the link in your author's resource box generate incoming links from other niche websites related to yours.

Good quality original content will generate incoming links and drive targeted web traffic to your website fast. This is the kind of activity search engines love, and would in turn lead to higher web page ranking and increase in web traffic.

Writing Articles

This is an effective way of gaining publicity for yourself and your site. Write about your experiences, expertise, hobbies or passion. As a rule of thumb, keep your articles at about 400 to 700 words in length. The issue is not the length of the article. It is the quality of it. But for a start, it is good to adhere to the rule of thumb.

Tips on effective use of articles

Before you start to write, do a research on keyword phrases related to your topic of interest. There are a few free online webmasters' tools you could utilize (nichebot.com, wordtracker trial). Normally, the top ranked keyword phrases are highly competitively. A top ranked keyword with little or zero competition is a rare find these days. Go for the middle ranked keyword phrase. After all, your goal is to be found on the first page of SERP for your selected keyword phrase.

Include your keyword phrase in your article title and repeat your keyword phrase at least once or twice in the body of your article. You may also want to use sparingly and strategically a variation of your keyword phrase or terms related to it. You may notice in this article I use SEO and Search Engine Optimization, which are interchangeable terms but to the search engines they are variations. I also use search engines and webmasters which are terms related to SEO.

Using a variation of your keyword phrase and terms related to it makes your article more relevant to your topic. With such an arrangement, chances are you may score well at the search engines for more than one keyword phrase.

Post your articles on your site, blog and article directories. Spreading your content all over the web is a fast way to get website visitors. I submit my articles to ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and articlealley.com. These article directories work well for me. Their high rankings at the search engines give me good publicity.

Other webmasters related to your niche will pick up your high quality articles and link to your web page through your author's resource box. This is an organic way of growing incoming links. Major search engines like Google look favorably on organically grown one-way links, and reward you.

Most webmasters archived articles for 1 or 2 years because this is a quick way to increase content and the size of their websites. So you can be assured of incoming links for at least 1 or 2 years. It would be worth your time and effort to write or to hire someone to write keyword rich articles and distribute them over the web. The results can be astounding at times.

About the author: Gerrick W mailto:gw@1stinternetmarketingsolution.com Information and Software Tools You Need to Effectively Promote Your Online Business. Visit: http://www.1stinternetmarketingsolution.com

8 steps for successfull SEO !!

Author: Kreation Studio

1) Identification of Target Group & Demographics Locations

The initial step is the identification of your target group - who is the recipient of your message? The end user, or perhaps resellers? How is your target group expected to use the search engines? An experienced Internet user will search the Internet differently than a less experienced user. Once the target group is identified, we can decide in which market/country this group is most effectively targeted using SEO. The language on your website must be the language of the market in question.

2) Keyword Research Extensive

Keyword Research into choosing your target keyword list is essential to very search engine marketing campaign. Choosing the right keywords is the most important aspect of successful search engine optimization. Not only do you want to see your site get to the top, you need that high ranking to be on keywords that people are going to actually search for and who are interested in what your web site has to offer.

3) Search Engine Compatibility A web site architecture that is search engine friendly will improve both the search engine rankings and site traffic. Rank Visibility's search engine compatibility review results in a list of recommendations that are powerful and yet simple to implement. Depending on the complexity of a web site, a search engine compatibility Review may be required before we can accurately provide a quotation for the full search engine optimisation of your site. 4) Internal Link Structure Building Internal link structure is another important factor for good search engine rankings, Search engines like the internal structure to be theme based to determine the relevancy of a site. By having a good navigation structure you will not only make it easier for the

search engines to browse your website but, you will also make it easier for human visitors, too. A good internal link structure also helps share the Google Page Rank value equally among all the sub pages, meaning more of your pages appear in the search query results.

5) Manual Search Engine Submission Optimized pages are hand-submitted to the search engines and directories with detailed attention to unique submission guidelines. Some search engines levy a submission or inclusion fee, which is in-addition to our optimization fees.

6) Pay Per Click Campaign Management Pay per click advertising (PPC) is a search engine marketing technique that requires you to pay a fee every time someone clicks to your website from an ad you've placed in a search engine's results. The more you agree to pay per click (or bid) for a specific keyword and the more effective your ad, the higher your site will rank in the paid search results. Google and Overture Pay Per Click programs are the most sought after for Internet marketers for their sheer reach and excellent ROI.

7) Link Popularity Building

Link Popularity is one of the most important features of any search engine optimization process and it is the ""Off-Page"" Optimization of your website. We search the internet for relevant high ranking category websites and get you linked within them. Our Link popularity building services helps increase

Google Page Rank and Improve Search Engine Ranking.

8) Continuous Website Ranking Management Unfortunately, even if you have a top placement now on search engines there is no guarantee it will be there tommorow. Promotion on Search Engines and their ranking criteria constantly change. One year they are on top of the world and next year they are bought out or shutdown. The field itself is an ever changing world. Our strategies involve planning for search events so that your business sales improve and stay up ongoing over extended periods of time.

Also check these free SEO tools online

About the author: Kreation Studio run its business from India and now has expanded to Articles, Directories, Ads and Best FREE SEO Tools Available online Take advantage of these FREE SEO Tools. Submit links for FREE at Directory.Kreation studio.com

The Sandbox Effect

Author: Matt Colyer

What once many people thought they had a penalty, is now being called the Sandbox Effect and is causing new web sites not to rank very well in the search results of Google, not even for the least competitive phrases. Meaning that a filter is being placed on new web sites and cannot rank very high for most words or phrases for a certain amount of time.

This does not mean it's punishment for anything the webmaster did with their site, such as using Spam or anything like that. The probation likely don't apply to the web site, but instead to backlinks. After the link stays on the web site for a certain amount of time it will no longer be on probation and fully counted as a backlink to your web site. Even if your site is better than your competitors it will still be in the Sandbox.

There is a lot of debate as to why Google uses the sandbox filter. However, It is believed that this is attempt by Google to discourage web site owners that use SEO Spam techniques to rank high fast and make a quick buck before Google discovers they are using Spam. This is largely because Google uses link popularity so much to rank web sites in it's search engine.

There is no way to know for sure if a new web site is in the Sandbox, but the best way to determine if you are in the Sandbox is if your web site has a good amount of quality backlinks, quality content and a good ranking in other search engines, such as Yahoo!, MSN and Ask Jeeves, but still no where in Google's search engine results for your keywords.

It has been suggested by some that it can take up to 9 months before a new web site can get a high ranking in Google's search engine results and out of the Sandbox, but this does vary from web site to web site. This Also depends on how competitive your new web site's market and keywords are.

There is no known way of speeding up the amount time a new web site is in the Sandbox. Before you fully put up your web site you could get a few backlinks to it before you fully put it up, even though you will still be in the Sandbox this way, you won't waste much time. You could also buy a domain that's already being used, so you never have to be in the Sandbox.

About the author: Matt Colyer is the owner of the Superior Webmaster in 2004 as a source of articles and tutorials for Web site owners looking to improve their Web site.

Gain Search Engine Listings - and Customers: KISS!

Author: Lil Waldner

KISS is an acronym. It stands for Keep It Smart and Simple. This is what the search engines like, if you provide your web site with the META content for the title, description and keywords. They do not like lengthy texts. Quality counts, not quantity in order to get your site listed. Readers and potential customers want determine on one sight if they click on a web site.

You might produce and submit a series of smaller web sites and submit them to the search engines in order to gain link popularity for your main web site. Of course, your main web site has to be designed with the same care.

If you submit web sites with too long texts in the mentioned META tags, you only migth succeed in the mass of FFA search engines, but you will fail getting into the really great and important search engines.

Let’s scrutinize matters in the following paragraphes:

The title

It should be brief and descriptive. The best effect can be achieved, if the title of the web site as a whole and the title within the head of the HTML text is the same. It is recommendable to insert a link to your web site into the visible title of your website. The really big search engines like it, e.g. Google, MSN.

The title should not count more than 60 signs. AEIWI rejects submissions with longer titles.

The description

Some search engines allow up to 250 signs, others cut the text after 150 signs. It does not help if you type in a longer text in a submission form. The search engines take up automatically the content of the META description text. You cannot control matters, if you use one of the automated submission services or a bulk submission software. It does not look fine, if the text is cut automatically within a sentence. You are always on the safe side, if the description counts no more than 150 signs. Exactseek offers the opportunity of an enhanced description in their confirmation email.

You also might submit to directories. Unlike to the search engines, where robots crawl and pick up the web sites, human beings decide if a web site will be accepted for indexing in a directory. The description has to be well composed and decent. You need to avoid exaggerations, if you want to have a chance for a free listing in prominent, high ranking directories. By the way: Most of the people do not trust ads with exaggerated promises. They just skip them.

The keywords

AEIWI and others limit the META content text to 80 signs or 10 keywords. If you choose the right keywords, 10 keywords are enough. They should be derived from the title and description in order to achieve a favorable effect.

There is more space for keywords within the ALT IMG link tag of a graphic. You can insert hundreds of keywords, using the tag ALT=”keyword1, keyword2, keywordn,...” within the ALT IMG link tag. The keywords are hidden behind the graphic. The robots of Scrub The Web and sometimes also of Google crawl them.

Start practizing!

Now you may test how it works. The best way to find out the effect is by practising.

About the author: Lil Waldner is a business economist. She is experienced in project management and marketing. She has worked for public entities as well as for private companies. She has worked as editor of newspapers and she has written booklets and essays with economic and public issues. Visit her web site: http://affiliatechain.com

Playing By Googles Rules

Author: Wil Rushmer

As the undisputable leader in search engines, Google places a very high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search results, especially now that the company is public. The know that in order to keep the shareholders and users of the engine happy, the quality of returned results are extremely important. For this reason, doing the wrong thing, purposely or unintentionally could result in a severe penalty or even get you get you banned from the listings. Below is a short list of ideas to consider when drafting your search engine optimization campaign.

Hidden Links

Link PR is becoming a hot topic among seo firms, however whether or not incoming/outgoing links still play an as important role as they used to, it still considered a ”blackhat” technique that can and most likely will result in a ban or penalty from Google.

Hidden Text

Stuffing your pages with text to small to read, same color as the background, or using css to push the text of screen for the sole purpose of loading your pages with content rich keywords and copy will also get you awarded the same penalties as hiding links.

Page Cloaking

The practice of using browser or bot sniffers to serve the bots a different page then your human visitors may see. Loading a page specifically for a bot that a human user may never see will most certainly get you banned from the listings.

Multiple Submissions

Submitting your domain and pages thereof is also a big thing to stay away from. For example if I submit http://www.seohype.com and http://www.seohype.com/resources.html as two separate urls, I may be looking at a ban, penalty or at the least; a very long time before my pages get submitted. This is another reason to avoid auto submitters. Make sure you check if your domain is listed already in the search engine you are submitting too, if it is… move on to the next.

Link Farms

Be careful who and even what you are linking to. Links in to your site will not hurt, even Google knows you cannot control your links in. However you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a bad apple in Googles eye and should be avoided at all costs. Google also suggest that your own link pages should not contain more then 100 links, assume anything higher then 100 links on a single page will get you classed as a link farm and avoid doing it.

Selling Your Sites PageRank

Time and time again I come across sites selling there pr7 links or ONLY trading links with certain pr sites. This will cause a ban or penalty as well. Its okay to sell the advertising, or the gain the link, but doing so based on direct advertisement of your page rank is a sure way to get the bad end of the stick from Google.

Doorways

This is similar to cloaking pages. The practice of having one page loaded with your choice keywords that simply re-direct to another more “user friendly” page is also a big issue for Google. My clients get offers all the time from other seo firms offering these kinds of “services”. If you get these offers, avoid them at ALL costs.

Same Content on Multiple Domains

Google looks at domain IPs, dates they were registered, etc. Having multiple domains serving the exact same content is a no no as well. This also applies to serving the same content multiple times on separate pages, sub-domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Conclusion

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines. By following a mind set that you are building your pages for your human users and not bots, you can insure you will get the most important things from your site: Qualifying links, clicks and a higher ROI. For more information also see “Googles information for webmasters”, http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

About the author: This article was written by Wil Rushmer, founder of http://www.seohype.com. A resource for internet marketing and website promotion tutorials, including search engine optimisation techniques.

Five Times for Search Engine Optimization

Author: Jennifer Guinan

Search engine optimization sounds so daunting for most young companies. Who has time for dealing with metatags and keyword density when you're trying to get a company off the ground? Below is a simple list of five things you can easily do to improve your visibility on search engines.

1. You can afford free. Index your site with the Open Directory Project. It's free! The Open Directory Project powers core directory services for Google, Lycos, AOL Search, Netscape Search, and lots more.

2. Know thyself through thy customers' eyes. Remember that the words you use to describe your company are not necessarily the same ones that a prospect might use. Sometimes you need to go with the masses when it comes to keywords. Review your keyword list (if you have one), and see if your prospects would even think to search for them. You might even want to (gasp!) ask your customers about what keywords they use.

3. Stay on the up-and-up. Don't cram your keyword tag with dozens of keywords or repeating keywords. It doesn't work. Use 10 to 12 good, applicable keywords.

4. Put it in the Flash can. Don't let your web designer talk you into a Flash intro. Not only will everyone skip it because it's annoying and doesn't provide much in terms of information, it will stop the search engine spiders that crawl your site dead in their tracks.

5. Be more than a welcome mat. Develop unique titles for each of your pages. These titles appear at the top of the web browser window when your prospects or potential investors check out your site. So please, don't use, ""Welcome to XYZ Company."" This tells them nothing of value, except maybe that you have manners. Use the title to tell what you do, what problem you solve, and/or what the particular page is about. We're only talking about a handful of words per page (10 max), so it's not as painful as it might sound.

About the author: Jennifer Guinan, president of Sage Strategic Marketing, offers 19 years of experience in marketing, communications, Internet and search engine marketing, and PR for companies and organizations large and small. Guinan’s background includes national and international marketing and communications executive management and strategy, PR and media relations, and consulting. Contact at www.sagestrat.com

Search Engine Friendly Design

Author: Karl Ribas

Search engine consultants and website designers are often called in at different times to work on a website development project. Rarely do the two ever work together, which is very unfortunate. With this being the case, many search engine marketing consultants have seen their client's rankings plummet without hope after a website redesign. Vise versa, many designers have seen their exceptionally created and beautiful website designs destroyed by an SEO-focused optimization. This does not have to happen!

The ongoing argument between search engine optimizers and website designers has always been focused around one simple question… who serves the greater purpose? The search engine optimizer will argue: what good are great looking, flash-enabled, and graphic-heavy websites if no one will ever find and appreciate them. The website designer will counter with: what good are websites capable of attracting 1,000 new visitors a week if not one visitor sticks around long enough to convert. The fact is that the search engine optimizer and the website designer are both correct and are both equally important in the website development process.

The process is simple. When an Internet searcher enters a keyword or key-phrase into Google, Yahoo!, or any other search engine, they demand that the search engine provide them with adequate and relevant results. That same Internet searcher, when entering a website, expects certain website characteristics, such as a design and layout that best represents the products or services it provides, an easy-to-use and understandable navigation, and a complete fully functionally website. Nothing less should be expected. So, if both are equally important than where does that leave us… with something I like to call “Search Engine Friendly Design.”

A search engine friendly design is nothing more than a well-balanced combination of both, search engine optimization and professional website design. In addition, a search-engine friendly website should also be in tune to the average visitor. It is very important that every page of the website be designed and written with its visitor's best interest in mind. Let’s face it, if you’re not appealing to your website's average user, than all efforts, including design and promotion, are lost.

A savvy designer, one who knows what search engines are looking for, can design websites without compromising their appearance and usability. Here are a few examples of how:

Text vs. Images - Its common knowledge within the search engine marketing community that search engines are blind to layout and pictures. Often website designers, trying to add creative elements to their website, will implement large graphics and flash files, not realizing that their actions may actually be inhibiting the website's promotion.

Seeing as search engines will most likely be the primary source of any website's traffic, I would highly suggest adding a search engine marketing consultant to your development team, especially during the beginning stages of your website design. As a good search engine marketing consultant already knows, it is very important to develop and maintain a website that has plenty of content, enriched with relevant keywords.

Navigation Menus - Website navigation schemes, such as JavaScript drop-down menus or Flash banners, can really help to create a unique and visually pleasing website design that is sure to help it stand-out amongst all other websites. Unfortunately, these same creative elements also make it extremely difficult, and in some instances impossible, for search engines to properly crawl the website, therefore limiting the website's search engine exposure.

There are, of course, solutions to this that will appease both the website designer and search engine optimizer. As a suggestion, consider using standard rollovers and/or CSS formatting to develop a graphically pleasing navigation menu. Unlike most JavaScript menus, neither standard rollovers nor CSS will ""hide"" your website's links, allowing search engines to freely crawl and index your websites pages.

If a JavaScript navigation menu is truly needed to attain the desired look and feel of your website, than consider adding text-based links elsewhere on your website's pages, such as the bottom. Bottom navigation schemes consisting of text-based links are becoming very common now-a-days, as they ultimately provide your website's visitors, and search engines, with another source for navigating. Another suggestion would be to develop and allow access to a sitemap containing all of your website's pages.

Flash vs. HTML - Flash is a pain in the sides of all SEO consultants... but it doesn't have to be. It is possible to mix Flash with HTML to create a search engine friendly website that still allows for a rich media experience.

My suggestion for when developing a website using Flash is to create separate pages, those in Flash and the others in HTML. Not only will you be giving your website's visitors a choice of which version he or she would like to view (which most will appreciate), but you will also be giving your website the chance to be indexed and ranked through your HTML versions. A very good compromise if you ask me.

Dynamic Websites - Depending on how your particular system is configured and how your website's dynamic pages are created, the use of dynamic websites can either be a great thing or a very terrible thing. Because dynamic web pages are data-based driven and are created on the fly, they are usually assigned URLs containing very large and strange looking parameters. These parameters, amongst other reasons, are needed in order to sort products and generate a central navigation for your website's visitors. At the same time, these parameters make it very difficult for many search engines to crawl, follow, or index your website's pages.

My suggestion to this problem is to consult with your development team, and your search engine marketing consultant, and have them consider developing your content management system using either ASP (Active Server Pages) or CFM (Cold Fusion). Either one of these ""dynamic scripting languages"" has the possibility of converting the URL's query string from ""?"" (which will usually stop a search engine from indexing the page) into ""/"". This process, and a few others, maybe all that is needed in order to give your dynamically driven web pages the opportunity to be indexed.

In my experience, designers who understand these and other common search engine friendly design issues are perfectly capable of designing around them, without sacrificing their design or future search engine rankings. As long as the designer and search engine optimizer come together in the very beginning, as opposed to after the website has been created, than finding a compromising solution to each of their needs should not be a problem.

Karl Ribas - Search Engine Marketing Consultant

About the author: Karl Ribas provides up-to-date, valuable, and effective search engine marketing consulting to a wide range of small, medium, and large-size businesses. Besides being the owner and operator of his website, Karl Ribas.com, Karl is also the Project Manager at All Web Promotion , an industry-leading search engine marketing firm.

Fresh Content Improves Search Engine Optimization

Author: Matt Foster, CEO, Arteworks Business Class

Many search engine optimization companies will sell you a search engine optimization package that addresses many of the major aspects of search engine optimization. These aspects include, but are not limited to, use of file names, alt tags, h1 tags, keyphrase density, meta tag optimization, link analysis and the like. These are all key aspects of a good search optimization.

However, one problem is that the major search engines (especially Google) not only rank pages upon relevant content (which is determined by the factors listed above, and more), but by fresh content as well. What this means to you is that, even after your site has been ""optimized to the max"", your rankings will increase to a certain level and then not go much higher. To get to the top and stay there, your site should deliver fresh, relevant content on a regular basis. Depending upon the nature of your business, your competition, and targeted keyphrases, the rate at which you should add content to your site can vary from monthly to daily.

The delivery of fresh content to your site, in a form that is readable by search engines (i.e. not through the use of javascript, iframes, or the like) requires a dynamic, database driven content management system.

The most cost effective way to achieve this is through the use of a weblog that sits on your server and resides under your domain name. Updating the weblog with rich articles or commentary, broadcasting this information to the internet, and allowing users to post comments, achieves the following:

1) Increases the number of inbound links to your website 2) Increases the frequency at which major search engines will spider or crawl your site 3) Increases interactivity for the web user 4) Improves your search engine ranking

For further information, you may contact ArteWorks toll free at 877-336-8266, or visit http://www.arteworks.biz.

posted by Matt Foster, CEO, ArteWorks Business Class | 2:26 PM

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Optimum SEO Keyword Density - A Real-Life Case Study

Author: Glenn Murray

So you've built your website, you know what keywords you want to target (i.e. what words your customers are searching for), and you're ready to write your copy. You've been told that you should use your keywords frequently so that you appear in search results for those words. But what does ""frequently"" mean?

How many times should you use your primary keyword? This case study helps answer that question. Some background on ""Keyword Density""

In order to understand optimum keyword usage, we first need to have some way of measuring keyword frequency. In the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) world, frequency is actually referred to as density. Keyword density is a measure of the number of times your keyword appears on a page expressed as a percentage of the total wordcount of that page. For example, if your page has 100 words, and your keyword phrase appears 5 times, its density is 5%. So when you hear someone say ""keyword density"", that's normally what they're talking about. ( TIP: You can automatically check the keyword density of your page at

LiveKeywordAnalysis.com .)

However, there is another, more complex measure of keyword density which takes into account the text components in the HTML of the page (i.e. the meta tags: Title, Keywords, Alt Text, Description, and Comments). When using this measure, you don't just count the words your visitor sees; you also count the words in your meta tags. For example, if you have 100 words on your home page, 10 words in your Title tag, 20 words in your Description tag, 70 words in your Alt tags, and 10 words in your Comments tag, your total wordcount for the page is 100 + 10 + 20 + 70 + 10 = 210. Similarly, when counting keywords, you don't just add up the number of times a visitor will see your keyword, you also count the number of times that keyword appears in your meta tags. For example, if your keyword appears 5 times in the home page copy, 3 times in the Title tag, 5 times in the Description tag, 30 times in your Alt tags, and twice in your Comments tag, your total keyword count is 5 + 3 + 5 + 30 + 2 = 45. So with a total wordcount of 210 and a keyword count of 45, your keyword density is 45/210 x 100 = 21%. It is argued that this measure of keyword density is more relevant as the search engines measure density in this fashion. ( TIP: You can automatically check the keyword density of your page using this more complex measure at

GoRank.com .)

As you can see, you need to be very aware of which measure you're talking about when you're talking ""keyword density"". But let me reiterate; mostly when people talk about keyword density, they're talking the simple measure. What is the optimum keyword density

And now down to business... What keyword density (of either kind) should you be targeting on your website?

There's a lot of debate surrounding this issue because the search engine companies don't disclose the details of their algorithms (as that would allow people to abuse the system). Instead, people working in the SEO world are left to figure it out based on their experience.

A recent article by respected SEO and Blog expert, Wayne Hurlbert, (see

Keyword Density: SEO Considerations ) suggests that Google sees pages with a keyword density of greater than 2% as spam. It was this article which prompted me to analyze the keyword density of my copywriting website.

CASE STUDY

The Website: This case study analyzes the website for my advertising copywriting and SEO copywriting business, Divine Write - http://www.divinewrite.com . For my primary keyword, my site is now on page 1 of Google.com (out of approximately 900,000 search results).

Number of pages on site: At the time of writing, my website contained a total of 53 pages.

Primary keyword phrase: ""copywriter""

Average keyword density: Using the simple measure of keyword density discussed above, the average keyword density of my copywriting website is 1.9%. Using the complex measure it's 4.9%.

Keyword density range: Using the simple measure, my density ranged from 0.4% to 7.6%. Using the complex measure it ranged from 1.6% to 17.5% Some comments on the keyword density figures The figures and corresponding ranking detailed in this case study may not be directly relevant to every site. There's a lot I don't know about the algorithms and there are bound to be other factors at play which I don't know about. With regard to Wayne Hurlbert's article, it would seem that he is referring to keyword density as calculated using the simple method discussed above. The range figures are noteworthy because they suggest that you don't need to be paranoid about having some pages with a very high density and some with a very low density. Conclusion

A simple keyword density of 1.9% can be enough for a first page ranking in Google.com (assuming you have enough quality backlinks - see SEO for CEOs and

How to Top Google by Writing Articles for more information).

Happy SEO writing!

You're welcome to publish this article free of charge provided: - you include the byline - byline includes a functioning link to http://www.divinewrite.com - you don't change the article in any way - you provide a courtesy copy once published - in doing so you agree to indemnify Divine Write and its directors, officers, employees and agents from and against all losses, claims, damages and liabilities which arise out of its use

About the author: * Glenn Murray is an SEO copywriter and article submission specialist . He is a director of article PR company Article PR and also of copywriting studio Divine Write .

Banned from Google and Wondering Why?

Author: Matt Colyer

There are those that get on the computer one night and find that all of their Web pages have disappeared from Google. While, others are still in the search engine index, but don't rank high for nothing, not even for their Web site's name. It's a Web site owners worst nightmare, getting kicked out of the search engines.

Ultimately, many webmasters had little or no warning that this was going to happen. Many webmasters are left with no idea why they were kicked out and are left wondering how to get back in Google's search engine. There could be any number of reasons why a Web site is banned by Google. The most common reasons for being banned are listed below in this article.

1. Duplicate Content This is when multiple Web pages have the same content. Usually Google will just give a penalty to the Web page for this, where the page won't rank very high for the keywords in that Web page, but there have been cases where complete Web sites were banned because they had to much duplicate content. You should make sure there is no other Web site using your content.

To check for duplicated content simply search with unique phrase on your Web page. If you find a Web site that has stolen your content you should contact the site owner and tell them to take it down or face legal action. Also, for copyright violations visit www.google.com/dmca.html and notify them that someone is infringing on your site's copyright

2. Cloaking This is Web pages created just for search engines, where it delivers one version of a page to a Internet user and a different version to a search engine. Cloaking Web pages are created to do well for particular keywords. There are various ways to deliver cloaking Web pages. Each search engine's spider has an agent name, the cloaked page is than only delivered to the spider with the user agent name that was chosen.

You can also deliver cloaked pages to the search engines by IP address, but Google and other search engines say they can detect cloaking. There are other reasons to use cloaking, such as custom language delivery and geotargeted advertising.

3. Hidden text or hidden links This is text or a link that is invisible to the naked eye on a Web page, but are seen by spiders. Search engines use to have a hard time spotting this technique, but now days you should avoid doing this because Google and other search engines can spot this easily. Even if a search engine doesn't spot your hidden link, a competitor might find it and report your site. Sometimes this can be done without even knowing, so you better double check each Web page that you have messed with in the past few weeks.

4) Keyword stuffing Keyword Stuffing is when you load a Web page up with keywords in the Meta tags or on the Web page's content. The General techniques today for keyword stuffing are repeating the same word(s) over and over again in the Meta tags or on the Web page's content or using invisible text, as we talked about up above in this article. If the word is repeated to much it will raise a red flag to the search engines and they likely will place a Spam filter on the site.

5) Linking to bad neighborhoods Bad neighborhoods are designed to increase your Web site's ranking or is Web site's using Spam techniques to increase search engine ranking. You should not link to any Web page that uses Spam techniques to increase ranking. You also should not join link exchanges that are designed to improve ranking or Page Rank. If you are not aware of linking to any Web site like this, you should check each outbound link on your Web site.

6) Buying links for Search engine ranking This where a Web site owner buys links just to increase his or her ranking. This is also used to increase Page Rank. Google and other search engines still have a hard to detect this, but they are starting to catch on to this technique. If Google is aware of the site, they can just discount the Page Rank, so they can't pass Page Rank on.

7) Machine Generated Web sites This is a site that generates hundreds of web pages that are basically the same page repeated hundreds or thousands of times, but with a few unique lines of text and unique title. Often times, search engines can't spot this, if done right by the site owner. However, if a spider doesn't spot your machine generated Web pages, a competitor might find it and report your Web site.

What to do after you are Spam clean? Once you have cleaned up your Web site, you can try contacting Google by visiting http://www.google.com/contact/. Tell them that you made a mistake and won't do it again. Even if you do contact Google, they most likely won't let your Web site back in and if you happen to get back in, you better keep your Web site squeaky clean because I doubt you will get other chance.

If you can't get in touch with Google, I suggest that you wait for a few months after Google's spider visits your Web site and see if you get your ranking back or at least where you can see that your ranking is going up in the search results. During this time you should not change your Web site around much and give the search engines time to spider your Web site.

I really don't think that many Web sites have dropped because Google is penalizing them. Instead, I think Google has changed the factors or adds more weight to a factor(s) that they use to rank Web sites in the search results. All search engines make periodic changes to the way they rank Web sites in the search results, so don't be surprised if one week you rank number one and the next week you rank 30TH.

About the author: Matt Colyer is the owner of the Superior Webmaster , which provides free webmaster tools and resources. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.

Is Your Website Provider a Search Engine Optimization Expert?

Author: Bill Cook

Selecting an auto dealer website provider knowledgeable in aut omotive search engine optimization can give your automotive dealership the competitive edge it needs to be successful online. Many website providers choose to completely forego this essential aspect of website creation because it requires in-depth knowledge of the various search engines and their proprietary algorithms. In addition, the process of properly optimizing a site is ongoing and requires constant revision and careful maintenance. The simple solution for many providers has been to outsource this painstaking task. The question then becomes

Should I go with a provider that out-sources SEO?

Should I use one that builds websites with SEO in mind?

The latter will always prove better results in the long run. Simply put, a third party company will not be able to edit your auto dealer website's framework as easily as your web site provider and therefore is not as effective in giving your site high placement in search engines.

These questions require careful consideration when choosing a website provider. Below are a few ideas to help you make the right decision.

Keyword Research

An immensely important part of the optimizing process is the identification of relevant keywords and key phrases. An auto dealer website provider should cultivate the right list for your automotive dealership website in the setup process taking into account your market and franchise. This is a highly specialized and time consuming process requiring industry expertise. Once your website provider has identified a good list of terms, they should provide them to you for a review and update.

Site Review

This is an important consulting task where the site is evaluated from a technical aspect. In order for an auto dealer website to be given high placement in search results, the site needs to be indexed and analyzed by the search engine. Search engines accomplish this by sending out small computer programs, called 'Spiders' to compile this data about your website. The website needs to be built in such a way that it can be easily accessed by these spiders. For instance, search engine spiders do not like flash, heavy graphics, and frames. The proper website provider should use these elements as strategically as possible.

Manual Submission

It is important to manually submit to major search engines and directories, as well as having a website provider that will send you the submission confirmations. Submission alone does not guarantee good positioning; it's the optimization of pages that determines high rankings due to good content and properly coded pages.

Paid Inclusion

These are fee based listings, available in various search engines and directories. Overture's SiteMatch service will get you listings in Yahoo!, AllTheWeb, AltaVista and other portals for $10-$49 USD per URL. Another important paid inclusion for commercial sites is the Yahoo! Express listing for $299 USD per year.

Link Popularity Strategies

What's important here is to get high traffic sites to link to you. This is not easy to do these days, and the proper website provider knows how to get quality links without resorting to unethical linking strategies.

Pay Per Click Options

Many times, a good balance between paid and organic search is required to meet site goals, and a good auto dealer website provider will utilize paid search and paid inclusion.

The main advantages of choosing a website provider with SEO expertise is that you will get better results when experts do it for you. SEO is a complex process that requires proficiency to maintain long term results. SEO work requires a lot of trial and error and has a steep learning curve because of ongoing changes in search engine algorithms.

Reviewing the above information while interviewing a website provider should help you choose an auto dealer website provider that will make the most of your online marketing efforts with effective automotive SEO and SEM.

About the author:

Bill Cook is the SEM Director for DealerOn, Inc - an Automotive Dealer Website Design Company providing Online Automotive Marketing Services to Auto Dealership nationwide.

What In The World Is This Google Sandbox Theory Thing? And How Do I Beat It?

Author: Brad Callen

Ok, so over the past month or so I've been collecting various search engine optimization questions from all of you. Today, I'm going to answer what was the most frequently asked question over the past month.

You guessed it... What is the Google Sandbox Theory and how do I escape it? When you finish reading this lesson, you'll be an expert on the good 'ole Google Sandbox Theory and you'll know how to combat its effects. So, pay close attention. This is some very important stuff.

Before I start explaining what the Google Sandbox theory is, let me make a few things clear:

The Google Sandbox theory is just that, a theory, and is without official confirmations from Google or the benefit of years of observation.

The Google Sandbox theory has been floating around since summer 2004, and has only really gained steam after February 4, 2005 , after a major Google index update (something known as the old Google dance).

Without being able to verify the existence of a Sandbox, much less its features, it becomes very hard to devise strategies to combat its effects.

Almost everything that you will read on the Internet on the Google Sandbox theory is conjecture, pieced together from individual experiences and not from a wide-scale objective controlled experiment with hundreds of websites (something that would obviously help in determining the nature of the Sandbox, but is inherently impractical given the demand on resources).

Thus, as I'll be discussing towards the end, it's important that you focus on ‘good' search engine optimization techniques and not place too much emphasis on quick ‘get-out-of-jail' schemes which are, after all, only going to last until the next big Google update.

What is the Google Sandbox Theory?

There are several theories that attempt explain the Google Sandbox effect. Essentially, the problem is simple. Webmasters around the world began to notice that their new websites, optimized and chock full of inbound links, were not ranking well for their selected keywords.

In fact, the most common scenario to be reported was that after being listed in the SERPS (search engine results pages) for a couple of weeks, pages were either dropped from the index or ranked extremely low for their most important keywords.

This pattern was tracked down to websites that were created (by created I mean that their domain name was purchased and the website was registered) around March 2004. All websites created around or after March 2004 were said to be suffering from the Sandbox effect.

Some outliers escaped it completely, but webmasters on a broad scale had to deal with their websites ranking poorly even for terms for which they had optimized their websites to death.

Conspiracy theories grew exponentially after the February 2005 update, codenamed ‘Allegra' (how these updates are named I have no clue), when webmasters began seeing vastly fluctuating results and fortunes. Well-ranked websites were loosing their high SERPS positions, while previously low-ranking websites had gained ground to rank near the top for their keywords.

This was a major update to Google's search engine algorithm, but what was interesting was the apparent ‘exodus' of websites from the Google Sandbox. This event gave the strongest evidence yet of the existence of a Google Sandbox, and allowed SEO experts to better understand what the Sandbox effect was about.

Possible explanations for the Google Sandbox effect

A common explanation offered for the Google Sandbox effect is the ‘Time Delay' factor. Essentially, this theory suggests that Google releases websites from the Sandbox after a set period of time. Since many webmasters started feeling the effects of the Sandbox around March-April 2004 and a lot of those websites were ‘released' in the ‘Allegra' update, this ‘website aging' theory has gained a lot of ground.

However, I don't find much truth in the ‘Time Delay' factor because by itself, it's just an artificially imposed penalty on websites and does not improve relevancy (the Holy Grail for search engines). Since Google is the de facto leader of the search engine industry and is continuously making strides to improve relevancy in search results, tactics such as this do not fit in with what we know about Google.

Contrasting evidence from many websites has shown that some websites created before March 2004 were still not released from the Google Sandbox, whereas some websites created as late as July 2004 managed to escape the Google Sandbox effect during the ‘Allegra' update. Along with shattering the ‘Time Delay' theory, this also raises some interesting questions. This evidence has led some webmasters to suggest a ‘link threshold' theory; once a website has accumulated a certain amount of quantity/quality inbound links, it is released from the Sandbox.

While this might be closer to the truth, this cannot be all there is to it. There has been evidence of websites who have escaped the Google Sandbox effect without massive link-building campaigns. In my opinion, link-popularity is definitely a factor in determining when a website is released from the Sandbox but there is one more caveat attached to it.

This concept is known as ‘link-aging'. Basically, this theory states that websites are released from the Sandbox based on the ‘age' of their inbound links. While we only have limited data to analyze, this seems to be the most likely explanation for the Google Sandbox effect.

The link-ageing concept is something that confuses people, who usually consider that it is the website that has to age. While conceptually, a link to a website can only be as old as the website itself, yet if you have don't have enough inbound links after one year, common experience has it that you will not be able to escape from the Google Sandbox. A quick hop around popular SEO forums (you do visit SEO forums, don't you?) will lead you to hundreds of threads discussing various results – some websites were launched in July 2004 and escaped by December 2004. Others were stuck in the Sandbox even after the ‘Allegra' update.

How to find out if your website is ‘Sandboxed'

Finding out if your website is ‘Sandboxed' is quite simple. If your website does not appear in any SERPS for your target list of keywords, or if your results are highly depressing (ranked somewhere on the 40 th page) even if you have lots of inbound links and almost-perfect on-page optimization, then your website has been Sandboxed.

Issues such as the Google Sandbox theory tend to distract webmasters from the core ‘good' SEO practices and inadvertently push them towards black-hat or quick-fix techniques to exploit the search engine's weaknesses. The problem with this approach is its short-sightedness. To explain what I'm talking about, let's take a small detour and discuss search engine theory.

Understanding Search Engines

If you're looking to do some SEO, it would help if you tried to understand what search engines are trying to do. Search engines want to present the most relevant information to their users. There are two problems in this – the inaccurate search terms that people use and the information glut that is the Internet. To counteract, search engines have developed increasingly complex algorithms to deduce relevancy of content for different search terms.

How does this help us?

Well, as long as you keep producing highly-targeted, quality content that is relevant to the subject of your website (and acquire natural inbound links from related websites), you will stand a good chance for ranking high in SERPS. It sounds ridiculously simple, and in this case, it is. As search engine algorithms evolve, they will continue to do their jobs better, thus becoming better at filtering out trash and presenting the most relevant content to their users.

While each search engine will have different methods of determining search engine placement (Google values inbound links quite a lot, while Yahoo has recently placed additional value on Title tags and domain names), in the end all search engines aim to achieve the same goal, and by aiming to fulfill that goal you will always be able to ensure that your website can achieve a good ranking.

Escaping from the Google Sandbox

Now, from our discussion about the Sandbox theory above, you know that at best, the Google Sandbox is a filter on the search engine's algorithm that has a dampening influence on websites. While most SEO experts will tell you that this effect decreases after a certain period of time, they mistakenly accord it to website aging, or basically, when the website is first spidered by Googlebot. Actually, the Sandbox does ‘holds back' new websites but more importantly, the effects reduce over time not on the basis of website aging, but on link aging.

This means that the time that you spend in the Google Sandbox is directly linked to when you start acquiring quality links for your website. Thus, if you do nothing, your website may not be released from the Google Sandbox.

However, if you keep your head down and keep up with a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and keep adding inbound links to your website, you will be released from the Google Sandbox after an indeterminate period of time (but within a year, probably six months). In other words, the filter will stop having such a massive effect on your website.

As the ‘Allegra' update showed, websites that were constantly being optimized during the time that they were in the Sandbox began to rank quite high for targeted keywords after the Sandbox effect ended.

This and other observations of the Sandbox phenomenon – combined with an understanding of search engine philosophy – have lead me to pinpoint the following strategies for minimizing your website's ‘Sandboxed' time.

SEO strategies to minimize your website's ‘Sandboxed' time

Despite what some SEO experts might tell you, you don't need do anything different to escape from the Google Sandbox. In fact, if you follow the ‘white hat' rules of search engine optimization and work on the principles I've mentioned many times in this course, you'll not only minimize your website's Sandboxed time but you will also ensure that your website ranks in the top 10 for your target keywords. Here's a list of SEO strategies you should make sure you use when starting out a new website:

Start promoting your website the moment you create your website, not when your website is ‘ready'. Don't make the mistake of waiting for your website to be ‘perfect'. The motto is to get your product out on the market, as quickly as possible, and then worry about improving it. Otherwise, how will you ever start to make money?

Establish a low-intensity, long-term link building plan and follow it religiously. For example, you can set yourself a target of acquiring 20 links per week, or maybe even a target of contacting 10 link partners a day (of course, with SEO Elite, link building is a snap). This will ensure that as you build your website, you also start acquiring inbound links and those links will age properly – so that by the time your website exits the Sandbox you would have both a high quantity of inbound links and a thriving website.

Avoid black-hat techniques such as keyword stuffing or ‘cloaking'. Google's search algorithm evolves almost daily, and penalties for breaking the rules may keep you stuck in the Sandbox longer than usual.

Save your time by remembering the 20/80 rule: 80 percent of your optimization can be accomplished by just 20 percent of effort. After that, any tweaking left to be done is specific to current search engine tendencies and liable to become ineffective once a search engine updates its algorithm. Therefore don't waste your time in optimizing for each and every search engine – just get the basics right and move on to the next page.

Remember, you should always optimize with the end-user in mind, not the search engines.

Like I mentioned earlier, search engines are continuously optimizing their algorithms in order to improve on the key criteria: relevancy. By ensuring that your website content is targeted on a particular keyword, and is judged as ‘good' content based on both on-page optimization (keyword density) and off-page factors (lots of quality inbound links), you will also guarantee that your website will keep ranking highly for your search terms no matter what changes are brought into a search engine's algorithm, whether it's a dampening factor a la Sandbox or any other quirk the search engine industry throws up in the future.

by Brad Callen Search Engine Optimization Expert Learn How To Get A Top Google Ranking In Under 28 Days With This Breakthrough New SEO Software! http://www.seoelite.com

About the author: Search Engine Optimization Expert

Search Engine Marketing with Blogs

Author: Joe Balestrino

Blogs are fast becoming the SEO tool of choice by many webmasters. Why? Content. Search engines love content. The more content your blog can provide on a steady basis, the better your ability to increase traffic. Blogs are easy to start and anyone can for more effective SEO management.

What content do you place in your blog? You can place any useful information or articles about your product or service. If, for example, you are a wedding planner, you should write about tips future brides may not be aware of in relation to planning their wedding. You might talk about wedding scams, catering faux pas, honeymoon hotspots etc... Let the readers know you have something more to offer then just a simple service. People who feel comfortable about a person or organization are far more likely to buy from them. Let your readers know who you are and what you are capable of doing for them.

Now that you have your content, you need to get it into the reader’s hands. The advantage of using a blog is that you can syndicate your content. Rich Site Summary or RSS is a format used to syndicate your content instantly. In other words, people can have your content posted on their web site or sent to their email. Most blog sites will give you your own special URL to submit to sites that syndicate content. These sites will then contact your URL for the content. The more you update your site the more your site will be indexed or PINGED by RSS feeds. To help ensure your RSS feed is being indexed, enter the RSS tag into the of your site. Just enter your site title and the URL with your special URL for RSS. This and other tags can be used in most blogs. Take advantage of them.

Creating a blog will allow your content to be syndicated which in turn will increase traffic to your web site as well as build your link popularity through RSS and blog directories. This will give you and your products or services recognition. The knowledge and personal insights that you share will help build your business and your customer relations. The RSS feeds and blog directories will also help build your page rank on search engines. Blogs have all the ingredients to be one of the best free advertising tools the Internet has to offer. Why aren’t you taking advantage?

About the author: Visit Joe’s blog at http://mr-seo.blogspot.com/ You can also visit his other web sites http://www.jnb-design.com and http:// www.mr-seo.com for more information on SEO and to try out his services.

New site and Sandbox: How to get rid of it.

Author: Amitabh Shukla

You have put lot of sweat in making your site. Now you want it to engender revenues and only source of traffic is search engines. You have completed your seo optimization well but there is no precursor of any traffic. Yes Google places new sites in ""Sandbox"" and this means that your site would not rank well for high traffic keywords for a certain period. This phenomenon is called as ""Sandbox"". What if your site is in ""Sandbox"" or on hold? Should you hang around or is there any way out. Lets look at few of them:

Have a slow and sturdy link campaign (taking Google new patent into consideration)

Google's new patent indicates some of the point clearly why many sites are thrown into sandbox for long. By keeping below points into consideration, you could shorten the time span of sandbox for your site.

# Go for everlasting link exchange. Don't buy links, which will evaporate once you stop payments. # Have a slow and steady enlargement of links. Don't do it fast. # Have a permanent anchor text in your links. Think well before you make use of one. # Use multiple anchor text # Have links from the pages, which are updated regularly

Start a PPC campaign

Get traffic from PPC campaign starting from Google Adwords and you could get instant traffic from the day you launched your site. You could work on your budget and come up with a figure where you could make some money after spending on Pay per click. In the mean time, you could make the list of keywords, which works, for you in the Adwords campaign and incorporate them into your site.

Add new pages

Get into habit of adding minimum of 1 content rich page to your site every day. This will not only prepare your site for higher traffic but also get your site crawled by search engines regularly. This could bring your site out of sandbox faster.

About the author: Amitabh Shukla Personal blog for the author is at Seo Expert India

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Fix Your OffPage!

Author: Farid Aziz

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware of before creating a site. Make sure you've done careful researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!

Besides Onpage Optimization, to rank well in search engines you must optimize your OffPage factors too. What you have to do is basically creating many links pointing to your site and getting links from different IP Addresses.

When you have many links pointing to your site, that means you have many votes. The more votes you get, the more popular you are to the search engines.

To create many links pointing to your site, the first thing you can do is exchanging links with other sites. But, make sure you are linking to good websites! There is a free service in the net that will make this task easier. Simply go to:

http://www.LinkMetro.com

Here, you can exchange links with related-content sites and you will be notified when a certain website is no longer exist.

Another way to get those links is by buying text links. Or, if you want the free technique, you can always post some articles and comments in online forums containing your site's URL in the signature.

Improve your OffPage and the search engines will love you!

Copyright 2005 Farid Aziz.

About the author: Farid Aziz is a full-time Internet Marketer. Reveal more of his FREE tips and strategies on Internet Marketing and get a FREE Course on How to Make Money Online with Your Hobby at >>>

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Fix Your OnPage!

Author: Farid Aziz

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something you should be aware of before creating a site. Make sure you've done careful researches on the best keywords to use. Using the wrong keywords would eliminate your site from search engines forever!

This keyword-tweaking game for a site is often called OnPage Optimization. In order to rank high in search engines, make sure you execute these tasks:

1. Include your keywords in the domain name 2. Include them also in the page title 3. Use ""h1"" and ""h2"" header tags 4. Type some keywords in bold, italic and underline 5. Put your keywords at the beginning and end of your webpage 6. Named all the images or graphics after your keywords

A wrong thing to do is performing unnecessary keyword-filling! This could make your site banned by search engines. An example of unnecessary keyword-filling is by putting hidden texts all over your webpage. Did it ever cross your mind? Well don't do that silly thing!

Also don't fill your meta tag, alt image tag, or title tag with keywords. You will get caught and your site will be banned for this!

After all, there is another important factor that has a huge impact on your site's ranking in search engines. It's the OffPage Optimization. I'll write about it in another article!

Copyright 2005 Farid Aziz.

About the author: Farid Aziz is a full-time Internet Marketer. Reveal more of his FREE tips and strategies on Internet Marketing and get a FREE Course on How to Make Money Online with Your Hobby at >>>

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What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO?

Author: Dominic Lachance

What is Search Engine Optimization or SEO? What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a series of activities undertaken to improve the ranking of a web site when using web search engines such as a Google or Yahoo. It is not simply about registering web sites with search engines and loading web pages with meta data. Why is SEO important?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is as important as choosing the right print or electronic media to promote your product or service. Creating a web site without SEO is like buying radio ad time without consulting the the market information provided by the radio station. How do you know that your money is being well spent? How do you know whether you are reaching your target audience?

SEO is a critical part of web development . Without effective SEO the resources dedicated to web development may be wasted because that information is not reaching its intended audience. Common mistakes made

So we've established that SEO may be a good thing, then how do we go about it? First lets look at some common mistakes that people make:

•  Build it and they will come – Simply uploading your web site to a web server won't put your site in Google's top ten.

•  Loading up on meta tags – Meta tags are pieces of information such a keywords, description, author, location, etc. that are added to the head of a web page to improve web searches. They are a useful addition to any web page and will help your site with search engines, however many people rely on them too heavily as THE solution.

•  Missing or poor page titles – A page title is part of the head of a web page and can be seen by the user in the title bar of the web browser. It is a really important piece of information that helps search engine robots index your site and is visible in a search engine search results page. Page titles like “Home”, “Welcome to Adobe GoLive 6” , or “Welcome to our Web site” are not going to help you very much.

•  No content – Contrary to popular belief, the hardest part of developing a web site is putting together the content. Web sites consisting of slogans and catch phrases and short on content won't be as effective. Meta tags don't replace well written content.

•  Search engine registration – Some people may register their site with Google or other search engines. This is only a start.

•  I hired this firm that guarantees our ranking! – Most of the firms that promise top placement will optimize your site for keyword phrases no one would look for. Of course they can promise top position for that precise keyword phrase; but will anyone ever search for exactly that phrase? Not likely!

•  Don't use Heading tags – With the common use of cascading style sheets (CSS), many web designers stopped using the heading tags such as h1, h2, etc. to structure their web pages. What they don't know is that when a search engine robot indexes the text on a web page it places greater importance on text found within a heading tag. This is just one example of how the structure of web page can affect a web site's ranking . How do we optimize a web site for search engines?

Effective search engine optimization involves a number of steps. The following is the approach that Documédia uses when advising our clients: Step 1: Keyword analysis and creation

•  Customized keyword analysis to define the best suited key phra ses for your business

•  Creation of targeted, optimized META tags including title, keyword and description

•  Keyword difficulty analysis Step 2: Web site analysis

•  Web site review and optimization to identify possible content trouble spots

•  Analysis and report on web technology usage for developing the site

•  Web site spidering analysis

•  W3C XHTML and CSS testing

•  Page optimization analysis

•  Web site auditor report Step 3: Search engines performance analysis

•  Link popularity inv estigation

•  Search engine ranking review to find out where your site ranks today

•  Analysis of competition and their methodology with similar implementation where needed

•  Sandbox report

•  Competition analysis Step 4: Design recommendations

•  Complete design recommendation report

•  On-going coaching

Step 5: Design implementation

•  Creation of a search engine friendly site map

•  Addition of robots.txt file so the search engine spiders are able to “crawl” your site with ease Step 6: Search engines and directory submission

•  Hand submissions to the top search engines & directories

•  Submission to secondary engines and targeted directories

•  Detailed ranking reports showing your new positioning (allow 3 months after submission is completed)

To conclude, SEO can be mastered, but it isn't something that can be learned overnight. Also, search engines continue to become more and more sophisticated in order to provide optimal service which then effects optimization work that may have already been completed on a web site. This means that the learning curve and optimization work is ongoing. How can Documédia help?

Documédia has assisted numerous public and private sector firms with its SEO services . Our clients have seen dramatic improvements in their web visibility and their web sites now play a key role in improving their bottom line. They also gain the long term benefits of adopting our SEO strategy so that they can maintain their high visibility in the future.

For more information about our SEO services, please visit: http://ww w.documedia.ca/english/services/seo.htm

About the author: Dominic Lachance, Vice-President

Dominic is the Co-Founder and Vice-President of Docum?dia a company specialized in the integration of technology as well as digital media training for the web, print and digital video industry .

Website Promotion- Valuable tips to promote a website

Author: Gagandeep Dhaliwal

Website promotion is the basic requirement to attract more visitors to a particular website. Website promotion helps you to promote your website on Internet. Some fundamentals to promote a site are search engine optimization, search engine submission, or content development. With the help of these three techniques you can easily attract higher search engine traffic to a site.

Search engines play an important role in the art of website promotion. So one of the basic things to promote a site is high ranking in search engines. You should submit your website to the major search engines because these are the best way to bring more visitors to the site. Add more keywords in the content of the site to get higher ranking in the search engines. You should regularly check the search listings for your keywords.

High ranking in major search engines is not sufficient to attract heavy traffic. Your website should be search engine optimized that will surely help you to get good ranking. Best technique of search engine optimization is to get inbound links. Inbound or back links connects your site to another site that is also very useful to the visitors. Add your most important keywords in Meta tags and give a different color to your link text. You can also make it bold or italics just to differentiate from others. Use some anchors that give the path to your site. It is also useful to promote your website efficiently.

Mostly the people search for the information according to keywords so to get keyword-targeted traffic you should use pay per click search engine. Proper use of keywords provide good ranking in the search results. Sometime press release feature is also good for some big companies or organizations because after writing a business press release they can add their URL in the end. They can also include a back link for their website.

About the author: About Author: The author owns a website on Website Promotion http://www.gmwebsitepromotion.com/ . Website provides useful information to promote a site on Internet. Also offers some tips on how to promote a website. Get useful information about website promotion from his site http://www.fastwebsitepromotionplan.info/

5 Critical Pay-Per-Click Tips

Author: Michael Murray, VP of Fathom SEO

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a good supplement to natural search engine optimization, IF you keep a few tactics straight. 1. Choose the right search terms. If you go after the broad phrases and terms, you'll pay top dollar. Strive for more descriptive and specific search terms that reflect your products or services. 2. Map out a strategy. Don't go after every possible keyword or phrase. Target your online ads around business priorities--such as seasonal purchases, your most profitable products and services, etc. 3. Use bid management software. Software can regulate your bids and turn off keywords. You might be interested in clicks during business hours; you might not want to pay for those clicks at 1 a.m. (There’s less of a chance that it's a business prospect at that time of night). 4. Write effective ads. Google, Yahoo! Searching Marketing and other services have limits on characters per line. With Google, it's tough not to push the limits because space is so narrow. With Yahoo! Searching Marketing, focus on getting your message across without consuming every character. Long ads may discourage people from reading them. 5. Test. Test. Test. Try different keywords, ad copy, landing pages and calls to action. Put your budget - whatever size it is - to the best use after effective evaluation. The Search Engine Marketing Industry is estimated to reach $23 billion by 2010. The vast majority of SEM investment in the coming years will involve pay-per-click. We applaud the SEM vendors and companies who can prepare a coherent plan that produces outstanding conversions. But for all the clicks and conversions via pay-per-click, many SEM players will miss the lead generation that natural SEO offers through greater Internet acceptance and traffic. The fact is, people are far more likely to click on a natural listing. Studies show that about 60%-70% of the links people click on are organic, not the PPC variety. Again, be careful how you spend your online advertising dollars. Make them work for you!

About the author: Michael Murray is vice president of Fathom SEO , a Cleveland, Ohio-based search engine marketing (SEM) firm. A member of Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), he also authored the white paper, ""Search Engine Marketing: Get in the Game.""

Is Ontology the Next Big Factor in Google's Algorithm?

Author: Bobby Heard

When the ax comes down at Google, there are always big winners and big losers. Recently, we’ve seen the first big algorithm change of the year and many web site owners and their respective sites have fallen, much like the proverbial tree. What was it about their site that was simply too much for the new algorithm to allow anymore searchers to see? Taking a look at their sites (if you can find them) as well as the sites at the top, gives us great insight into the mind of the Google boys and the evidence is clear; the word ontology is not getting the attention in deserves.

What is ontology? The quick answer is that it is words that are related to the keywords that you are targeting. However, it’s a bit more complicated than just dusting off the old Thesaurus. The way it works is that it is an undetermined amount of words that most frequently appear on the same pages throughout the internet as the keywords you are targeting. I would assume that more weight is given to the words on pages that rank well than those that don’t. So now that we know that, how is it affecting today’s SERPs? Logically, ontology makes a lot more sense than keyword density, which is clearly a thing of the past. Of course, Google needs to know what your site is about, and you need to tell them, but not in the way that some sites have in the past. This is a lesson learned for the site owners who have been axed from Google’s rankings. I have taken a look at a few that have been talked about in the SEO “underworld” and while it’s been obvious in the past that keyword density is nothing more than spamming the search engines, it is now clear that Google has made the necessary adjustments in it’s algorithm to avoid sending it’s users to spammy sites.

Not only is it important to have related keywords so that you can rank well for the keywords that you’ve targeted, but if you do your homework properly you can actually generate quite a lot of traffic from strategically placed ontological words. If you think about it, it is a situation that will help you in more ways than one. Forget just dropping in a word here or there, make sure that you have a nice array of words that relate to your keywords. Don’t hesitate to include them in your your meta tags and page titles. The underlying though behind Google’s change is the removal of spam. As long as you keep that in mind while writing the content of your web site, you will be fine.

If there’s one thing that we all hate when it comes to the internet, it’s spam. Now, Google has stepped up and insured it’s searchers that, while Gmail is still a work in progress, they at least won’t have to deal with spam in their search results.

About the author: Bobby Heard (bheard@abalone.ca) is the Vice-President of Abalone Designs an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada , which offers great SEO results at affordable prices.

The Business Case for SEO

Author: Scott Smigler

It’s interesting how potential clients have preconceived notions about which aspects of search engine marketing have the most value. In fact, they tend to fall into two camps that are 180° apart. The first camp believes completely in the value of pay-per-click marketing (PPC). It’s easy to understand why. PPC provides immediate and measurable benefits. The ROI of PPC marketing is obvious. This group doesn’t understand why it’s necessary “to bother” doing SEO. The second camp believes the only way to go is SEO. Clicks are free and the branding benefits of high rankings have been well documented.

The right answer is that they are both valuable. Each has its benefits and when you can afford to, you should implement both.

Pay-per-Click

PPC makes sense if you want immediate benefits and like the idea of paying for performance. SEO provides branding benefits and longer-term will provide an ROI that is compelling. But unlike PPC, SEO revenue results aren’t as directly measurable and manageable.

Pay per click (PPC) gives you the ability to have complete control over your search traffic. With PPC programs you select the keywords and write the listings. You control where you’re listed and what the listing says. You decide what your budget is and can adjust your spend rate based on results or events (e.g. announcements, promotions).

By tracking results from a PPC campaign, you can build up a knowledge base with respect to your business, including which messages perform the best, which search terms have the best conversion rates, and what destination URL is best for specific users to land on. Over time, this knowledge can help you to improve and define your business.

One of the greatest attractions of PPC is the ability to easily track clicks and costs allowing you to understand your ROI from a specific marketing initiative. This gives you confidence to spend money and drive volume. You may have thought that spending $5,000 a month on a PPC campaign is way outside your budget, but once you measure the ROI, you may realize that it’s well worth the investment.

Search Engine Optimization

So, if PPC is so great why bother with SEO? Basically, because you will be missing out on a large number of potential clicks. How large? A number of recent studies have demonstrated that there are still a lot of users that do not click on the ""paid"" listings but rather will search through the regular editorial search results. One study shows that 60% of the search users prefer (some exclusively) organic over paid listings. The only way to get optimized (high) rankings in these regular editorial results is through an effective SEO program. In most cases, once you have good positioning in the regular search results, you will continue to receive “free” traffic. Again, based on data from a number of marketers the increase in traffic due to SEO averaged 73%. Consider search engine optimization the same as you would word of mouth advertising or public relations. It’s exposure that comes with a very high degree of credibility and trust. Traffic coming from traditional search listings tends to have high conversion rates.

There’s another advantage to traditional search listings. They are considered unbiased and non-commercial. Traditional search performs very well at certain points in the buying process. When consumers are gathering information about a purchase, they show a marked preference for traditional search listings. When they are ready to buy online, they seem to have less bias against paid placement listings and their likelihood to click on one of these listings increases.

The Dollars and Cents of SEO

Perhaps the most compelling reason not to exclude SEO from your online marketing strategy comes down to dollars and cents. In an attempt to quantify the business case for SEO I have gone back and done some analysis on three recent SEO engagements and the results they achieved. I chose ecommerce clients that we had optimized and reviewed their average sales before and after SEO was implemented. In two of the situations the only change made was the optimization of the site. In another the optimization occurred at the same time we implemented a PPC campaign. In the first two cases the store sales rose 64% and 75% after the SEO was implemented. In the third case the store revenue actually went up a staggering 169%, but if you back out the sales that were a result of the PPC campaign, the store revenue that could be attributed to SEO improved by 49%. In other words, the average improvement in store revenue that was apparently due to SEO was 62%.

Can we be sure that all of this was a result of SEO? No. There could have been product, seasonal and other effects that contributed. But I think it's safe to say that there was a significant increase that resulted directly from the SEO. The bottom line: search optimization has a real and measurable impact on traffic, conversions and revenue (or lead generation) improvement. Given that these clicks begin to approach “free” after amortizing the cost of SEO over time, the ROI for SEO is compelling. Added to the branding benefits no marketer or business owner should doubt the value of search engine optimization.

About the author: Scott Smigler has been an evangelist for a serious, ROI-based focus on the online channel since he founded Exclusive Concepts (www.exclusiveconcepts.com) in 1997. Exclusive Concepts provides integrated online marketing strategies, brand consulting, search engine marketing campaigns and results-oriented web sites.

Search Engine Visibility - The Mantra of Corporate Profitability by Arun Tibrewal (www.arun.info)

Author: Arun Tibrewal

The corporate fundamentals are par excellence! The product is unsurpassable and the website is a web designer’s dream in creativity and design – but there is a vacuum – of potential online customers! – The website lacks the basic ingredient of success –

Search Engine Visibility! – which is what search engine optimization is all about.

Increasing the search engine visibility is vital to any online business. To illustrate Google alone gets as many as 250 million searches a day – visualize the magnitude of the potential market out there if one were to get the all important visibility factor right!

Search engine visibility is not merely about obtaining top positions in search results – rather it is about designing, writing, conceptualizing and creating a website. This is done exclusively for the site visitors and helping them find what they are searching for using the modality of search engines – the basic navigation tool over the internet.

The concept of building the site first and focussing on the visibility factor later is like building the car first and worrying about the quality index later! This fallacy can translate into a financial loss to the Corporate amounting to thousands of dollars.

Web designing should be executed with in - built user and search engine friendly parameters.

The reason to exist for any business enterprise is profitability both financial and social. The cornerstone of financial profitability is predictably maximizing profits, which is governed by an array of management and marketing tools.

The exponential growth of the web into an ocean of information has ushered in the era of the potential online customer turning to exploring the websites.

The corporate of today then is anonymous without a corporate website. The website provides an insight to the corporate profile, information and services. A strong website without search engine visibility is an untapped potential, which can only hurt the corporate bottom line and the stakeholders. Consequently, a strong website coupled with high search engine visibility is a near invisible weapon in the hands of a dynamic corporate.

The search engines are the basic navigation aids for the potential online customer and are entrusted with the daunting task of selecting from millions of web sites and pages when responding to online queries. The search engines undoubtedly favor “search friendly” sites and this is where search engine visibility comes into play.

Search engine optimization and increasing the visibility is then the order of the day if the corporate visibility is to sustain and co – exist.

The search engine centric approach cannot be utilized in isolation. It should ideally strike a delicate balance between being a search engine friendly and a user-friendly website.

Increase that Search engine visibility and watch the queries pour in, then work on the conversion index for without the potential customer queries there will be no conversion Index!

About the author: Arun Tibrewal is an online marketing promotions specialist since 1998 and owner of www.i-wayhost.net and its network sites. I-wayhost is dedicated to provide top class hosting services with there straight forward plans. Permission is granted to reprint this article as long as the resource box should keep intact with the following links. http://www.i-wayhost.net http://www.arun.info http://www.siplnet.com