Optimize Your Website or Get Lost in the Crowd!

Author: Allan Gunneson

It used to be that designing an attractive website to promote your company and products was fairly straightforward. After you designed your site and built a few keywords into the code, you would simply submit the site to the search engines or a directory, grab an iced tea and wait for the traffic.

That model worked fairly well in 1996 but if you are still following this strategy in 2005, you are effectively non-existent on the internet. Why? There are now dozens of search engines and directories and somewhere in the area of 80 million websites on the www. Still think folks are finding you?

So how does the average consumer find your company? They type in a couple of keywords into a search engine and are then presented with thousands of your competitors' websites.

Let's say your company is Walt's Widgets. You have a pretty website with pictures of your widgets, a nice "about us" page, maybe some employee pictures and a picture of your beautiful building. It all looks good on the website but when Mr. Consumer types "widgets" into Google, poor old Walt's Widgets is on page 620 of the search results!

How can this be? Your site is not optimized for the search engines and is not being indexed by the search engine spiders and robots so you aren't being seen!

Research has shown that the average surfer will only review the first three pages of search results and will not drill down any deeper. If you are on page 62, you effectively don't exist!

Surfers and search engines view a website completely differently and for you to appear on the first three pages of search results is critical to your continued profitability. You must know what the search engines are looking for, what relevance they are placing on your keywords, what elements of your site have a "welcome sign" for the spiders and, most importantly, know what keywords the surfer is using in his search. Just because you sell widgets it doesn't mean that "widgets" is the term being used the most by surfers when looking for your product.

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is the process of analyzing keywords, reviewing search trends, analyzing link popularity, building code tags, analyzing your competition, optimizing pages within your website to be search engine friendly, editing web pages, submissions to directories and search engines, and reciprocal link building…just to name a few.

What you are after with SEO is not getting the highest number of website visitors. What you are actually seeking are qualified site visitors who have an interest in buying what you're selling. Professional SEO can help deliver a targeted audience to your business. After all, what would you rather have? 500 site visitors with a 1% conversion rate or 100 site visitors with a 10% conversion rate?

Professional SEO is critical to your company's web presence so if your site was designed by your summer intern in 2002 or your bookkeeper's son as part of his high school "media class", I assure you that you have some work to do.

Start with a good website design featuring good content and navigation. Then, utilize an SEO professional who can wring the most out of your website and deliver dollars to your doorstep.

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

An Easy Way To Include RSS In A Web Site

Author: Lil Waldner

RSS has become a very important issue for web site promotion. This method helps to update web sites daily. A web site will always look actual.

Why is RSS important?

Visitors like always fresh content on a web site. A web site is attractive, if there is always something new on it. RSS is a more and more important tool in the field of Search Engine Optimization. Important search engines and their crawlers prefer web sites that display fresh content periodically to web sites that remain static. A web site should be updated daily or at least weekly. Web sites that often show new content have a better chance of getting indexed and ranked high in search engines.

Definition of RSS and XML

The acronym RSS means either Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It is is a format for syndicating news and the content of news-like sites. It has been originally developped by Netscape. RSS is an XML-based format and XML means Extensible Markup Language.

How can RSS be used practically?

A web site owner can use RSS in order to import news, articles ore permanently refreshed marketing offers in a website. There are several sources in the internet to feed a web site with fresh content. Advanced webmasters who know XML can create and update their own content to their web site daily.

There is, however, a free tool that every web site owner can use easily and import daily fresh content to the web site.

RSS include

The site rss-info.com provides a simple form, where the URL of the feed of the news or articles can be typed in. There are some functions that allow to customize the appearance of the content on the web site. It's possible to integrate the content in three ways: JavaScript, IFrame or PHP. Then the Create HTML button has to be pushed and the source code can be copied and pasted in the source code of the web site.

You can see an example of such a source code in JavaScript:

You will get the news by yahoo with the above source code, but you can choose another RSS Feed of one of the several free services and replace yahoo with a news source of your choice. This simple tool allows web site owners with basic knowledge to update their web site daily.

About the author: Lil Waldner is a business economist. She is experienced in project management and marketing. She has worked as editor of newspapers and she has written booklets and essays with economic and public issues. Visit her web sites: Affiliate Programs Directory or AGM Home Business

SEO and the Title Tag

Author: Dave Felts

Overview

The Title Tag not only communicates the theme of your web page to the human visitors but is also considered very important by the Search Engine crawlers. The Title Tag is the most important of all Tags. Almost all crawler based search engines use the Title Tag to gather information about the page. Search engines use your Title Tag to evaluate the page's relevance to its content, inbound links, outbound links, alt tags, and a host of other factors. A carefully constructed Title Tag can have a large positive impact on your page's ranking with the search engines.

In addition, the Title Tag is the hyperlinked text title that is displayed in the search engine results page. This is the hyperlink a user clicks on to go to your web site. The Title Tag is also used as the text when you 'bookmark' a page or add a certain web page to your 'favorites' list in your browser.

Since the Title Tag plays a vital role in your site's ranking, you need to pay a lot of attention to the words that appear in the Title Tag and the order in which they appear. Put your important keywords at the beginning of the Title Tag. This can have the added benefit of making those words appear in bold in the search engines result pages. Develop a crisp Title Tag that includes your most relevant keyword phrases for that page. The keywords in the Title Tag are given a high value when it comes to the search engine trying to figure out what your page is about.

It's important to be highly focused. You should use the same keywords not just in your Title Tag, but also in your page content, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords Tags as well. If the keywords in your Title Tag don't appear in the page content, then avoid using them.

Specific Resources

From Google's Guidelines for Webmasters http://ww w.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html

Design and Content Guidelines:

Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link. Offer a site map to your users with links that point to the important parts of your site. If the site map is larger than 100 or so links, you may

want to break the site map into separate pages. Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it. Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn't recognize text contained in images. Make sure that your TITLE and ALT tags are descriptive and accurate. Check for broken links and correct HTML. If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a ""?"" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few. Keep the links on a given page to a reasonable number (fewer than 100).

From

MSN Webmaster Help

About your site description

As the MSN Search web crawler MSNBot crawls your site, it analyzes the content on indexed pages and generates keywords to associate with each page. Then MSNBot extracts page content that is highly relevant to the keywords (often sentence segments that contain keywords or information in the description meta tag) and constructs the site description displayed in search results. The page title and URL are also extracted and displayed in search results.

From

Yahoo Search Help

Yahoo! Search ranks results according to their relevance to a particular query by analyzing the web page text, title and description accuracy as well as its source , associated links, and other unique document characteristics.

Comprehensive article by Jill Whalen From HighRankings.com

Read the complete article at: http://www. highrankings.com/allabouttitles.htm

What Is a Title Tag?

The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings.

A title tag is essentially an HTML code snippet that creates the words that appear in the top bar of your Web browser.

The title tag belongs in the section of your source code, and is generally followed by your Meta description and Meta keywords tags. The order of these tags is not critical, so don't worry if your HTML editor places them in a different position.

Some Web site design tools and content management systems (CMS) automatically generate the title tag from information you provide. You may have noticed Web pages that are labeled ""Page 1,"" ""Page 2,"" or ""Home Page"" in the browser title bar. You'll often see titles like these being used by beginning Web site designers who simply don't know how to use their software or their title tag for maximum benefit.

About the author: Dave is a full-time Search Engine Marketing Manager. He also runs SyteSurge, a web site dedicated to search engine optimization and search engine marketing .

How I Increased my site traffic by 75% in 30 days

Author: Syd Johnson

1. Page Title – Google likes a good page name. If you look at the top ten listing for any search term you will see that the name of the page is often more important than the domain name. The page name is the unique factor that will prompt web surfers to click over to your site.

Most people don't spend their time sifting through the domain name and even the site description. Pick a good page name and it could make the difference in the order of your listing and whether or not you get that click.

2. Page Name – Yahoo seems to heavily favor the long page name route. I have had pages appear in the top ten searches with really long URLs. If the URL matches the exact search phrase that was typed into the search engine, I can usually get my page in the top 10 searches.

3. Content over SEO – Having good site content is a much better strategy than stuffing your pages with keywords. Too many keywords can get you penalized or banned from the search engines. Good site content will keep you in the engines and prompt people to make one way links to your website and internal pages.

4. Be useful – The most popular sites are consistently the ones that offer great tools, tips and advice. Offer free articles, web tools, how to advice, instructions, maps, phone numbers, insider tips etc. These are the things that will make your site sticky. You will become an important resource worthy of a bookmark and possibly backlinks.

5. Add a Blog – Blogs are a good way to get site traffic because your RSS feeds can be distributed all over the web with just a few site listings. You can increase your page rank by listing your website or your blog in the top blog search engines. This gives you another source of free traffic and links.

6. Content Structure – People don't read on the web, they scan. If you can keep this tip in mind and structure your website accordingly, you will get more visits for longer periods of time.

How do you make your site easy to scan? •Use subheadings •Bullets •Indented text •Bold text •Numbered text •Italics •Different types of fonts •Colors •Small paragraphs etc.

7. Link Freely – Don't be afraid to link to other websites including your competitors. If you consistently link to websites with a high google pagerank, your page rank will also increase. Google determines your site worth by association. Associate with the best, and soon your website will be one of the best.

8. Get more tips and tools on how to build a website at http://web-hosting.typepad.com

If you use a combination of these techniques on your website or blog, be prepared for a significant increase in site traffic within 30 days.

About the author: This article may be freely distributed as long as there is an active link back to http://www.rapidlingo.com

BOOST YOUR RANKING with Search Engine Optimization

Author: Rob Hoover

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION This article is for 'Newbie SEO' people to understand more about search engine optimization.

BOOST YOUR RANKING ON SEARCH ENGINES WITH ACCURATE, CLEAR AND RELEVANT CONTENT. For the Newbie, 'SEO' Search Engine Optimization advertising is an online advertising model whereby the advertiser creates pages to be indexed by search engines. Then, Search Engine Submission is the next step to ensure your pages are indexed by the search engines.

Search Engine Optimization TIPS! Pick Your Target Keywords Position Your Keywords Have Relevant Content Avoid Search Engine Stumbling Blocks Have HTML links Frames can kill Say No To Search Engine Spamming Submit Your Key Pages Verify And Maintain Your Listing Build Relevant Inbound Links

Search Engine Optimization In a nutshell you should Look for the keywords with the lowest Supply and highest Demand. Before creating pages.

I am confident your search engine positioning will increase with some research like a keyword assessment by targeting your most popular and least competitive keywords.

Supply (Competitiveness) - the number of sites which a search engine (e.g. Altavista, Google, etc.) displays when you search for that keyword using exact match search, that is with ""quotes"" surrounding the term. Rather than those web sites returned when entering the phrase only partially, that is without quotes.

Demand (Popularity) - The demand figured is the number of views in a month for that particular phrase as calculated by the Overture Suggestion Tool.

I have developed an Effective Index based on the logic of the Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) calculation that accounts for the Supply and Demand.

Pick Your Target Keywords

How do you think people will search for your web page? The words you imagine them typing into the search box are your target keywords.

For example, say you have a page devoted to marine engines. Anytime someone types ""marine engines,"" you want your page to be in the top ten results. Then those are your target keywords for that page.

Each page in your web site will have different target keywords that reflect the page's content. For example, say you have another page about the history of engines. Then ""engine history"" might be your keywords for that page.

Your target keywords should always be at least two or more words long. Usually, too many sites will be relevant for a single word, such as ""engines."" This ""competition"" means your odds of success are lower. Don't waste your time fighting the odds. Pick phrases of two or more words, and you'll have a better shot at success.

Position Your Keywords

Make sure your target keywords appear in the crucial locations on your web pages. The page's HTML title tag is most important. Failure to put target keywords in the title tag is the main reason why perfectly relevant web pages may be poorly ranked. More about the title tag can be found on the How HTML Meta Tags Work page.

Search engines also like pages where keywords appear ""high"" on the page, as described more fully on the Search Engine Ranking page. To accommodate them, use your target keywords for your page headline, if possible. Have them also appear in the first paragraphs of your web page.

Have Relevant Content

Changing your page titles is not necessarily going to help your page do well for your target keywords if the page has nothing to do with the topic. Your keywords need to be reflected in the page's content.

In particular, that means you need HTML text on your page. Sometimes sites present large sections of copy via graphics. It looks pretty, but search engines can't read those graphics. That means they miss out on text that might make your site more relevant. Some of the search engines will index ALT text and comment information. But to be safe, use HTML text whenever possible. Some of your human visitors will appreciate it, also.

Be sure that your HTML text is ""visible."" Some designers try to spam search engines by repeating keywords in a tiny font or in the same color at the background color to make the text invisible to browsers. Search engines are catching on to these and other tricks. Expect that if the text is not visible in a browser, then it may not be indexed by a search engine.

Avoid Search Engine Stumbling Blocks

Some search engines see the web the way someone using a very old browser might. They may not read image maps. They may not read frames. You need to anticipate these problems, or a search engine may not index any or all your web pages.

Have HTML links

Often, designers create only image map links from the home page to inside pages. A search engine that can't follow these links won't be able to get ""inside"" the site. Unfortunately, the most descriptive, relevant pages are often inside pages rather than the home page.

Solve this problem by adding some HTML hyperlinks to the home page that lead to major inside pages or sections of your web site. This is something that will help some of your human visitors, also. Put them down at the bottom of the page. The search engine will find them and follow them.

Also consider making a site map page with text links to everything in your web site. You can submit this page, which will help the search engines locate pages within your web site.

Finally, be sure you do a good job of linking internally between your pages. If you naturally point to different pages from within your site, you increase the odds that search engines will follow links and find more of your web site.

Frames can kill

Some of the major search engines cannot follow frame links. Make sure there is an alternative method for them to enter and index your site, either through meta tags or smart design.

Build Links

Every major search engine uses link analysis as part of their ranking algorithms. This is done because its very difficult for webmasters to ""fake"" good links, in the way they might try to spam search engines by manipulating the words on their web pages. As a result, link analysis gives search engines a useful means of determining which pages are good for particular topics.

Just Say No To Search Engine Spamming

For one thing, spamming doesn't always work with search engines. It can also backfire. Search engines may detect your spamming attempt and penalize or ban your page from their listings.

Also, search engine spamming attempts usually center around being top ranked for extremely popular keywords. You can try and fight that battle against other sites, but then be prepared to spend a lot of time each week, if not each day, defending your ranking. That effort usually would be better spent on networking and alternative forms of publicity.

If those practical reasons aren't enough, how about some ethical ones? The content of most web pages ought to be enough for search engines to determine relevancy without webmasters having to resort to repeating keywords for no reason other than to try and ""beat"" other web pages. The stakes will simply keep rising, and users will also begin to hate sites that undertake these measures.

Consider search engine spamming against spam mail. No one likes spam mail, and sites that use spam mail services often face a backlash from those on the receiving end. Sites that spam search engines degrade the value of search engine listings. As the problem grows, these sites may face the same backlash that spam mail generates.

Submit Your Key Pages

Most search engines will index the other pages from your web site by following links from a page you submit to them. But sometimes they miss, so it's good to submit the top two or three pages that best summarize your web site.

Don't trust the submission process to automated programs and services. Some of them are excellent, but the major search engines are too important. There aren't that many, so submit manually, so that you can see if there are any problems reported.

Also, don't bother submitting more than the top two or three pages. It doesn't speed up the process. Submitting alternative pages is only insurance. In case the search engine has trouble reaching one of the pages, you've covered yourself by giving it another page from which to begin its crawl of your site.

Be patient. It can take up to a month to two months for your ""non-submitted"" pages to appear in a search engine, and some search engines may not list every page from your site.

Verify And Maintain Your Listing

Check on your pages and ensure they get listed, in the ways described on the Check URL page. Once your pages are listed in a search engine, monitor your listing every week or two. Strange things happen. Pages disappear from catalogs. Links go screwy. Watch for trouble, and resubmit if you spot it.

Resubmit your site any time you make significant changes. Search engines should revisit on a regular schedule. However, some search engines have grown smart enough to realize some sites only change content once or twice a year, so they may visit less often. Resubmitting after major changes will help ensure that your site's content is kept current.

Beyond Search Engines

It's worth taking the time to make your site more search engine friendly, because some simple changes may pay off with big results. Even if you don't come up in the top ten for your target keywords, you may find an improvement for target keywords you aren't anticipating. The addition of just one extra word can suddenly make a site appear more relevant, and it can be impossible to guess what that word will be.

Finally, know when it's time to call it quits. A few changes may be enough to make you tops in one or two search engines. But that's not enough for some people, and they will invest days creating special pages and changing their sites to try and do better. This time could usually be put to better use pursuing non-search engine publicity methods.

Don't obsess over your ranking. Even if you follow every tip and find little improvement, you still have gained something. You will know that you may need a professional service to properly implement these specialized solutions. You can concentrate your efforts in more productive core business areas, that you are an expert in rather than wasting your valuable time.

About the author: Rob Hoover is an Internet marketing guru, with years or experience online. Search engine Optimization and Pay Per Click are just some of his expertise.

To Meta Tag or not to Meta Tag

Author: Dave Felts

Clients are always asking me about the value of met tag decscription and keywords. Usually it's along the lines of ""My (webmaster, IT team, Content Manager, Site Manage, 12 year-old nephew) told me don't bother with meta tags"".

The basic rule here is applicable to more than just SEO: better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. As long as you don't keyword stuff or otherwise spam these tags, you're not going to do yourself any harm, and you might just do some good.

Meta Keywords: no more than 15 terms with the most relevant terms first. Don't use terms that don't occur in the page. Avoid repetition.

Meta Description: Keep it short, direct, to the point, and page specific. No longer then 25 - 30 words. Some engines (Temoa) use the meta description as the blurb that goes under the link. So write an accurate description of the page: ""All about Joe Schmoe Widgets.""

MSN

They haven't taken an official position in their Webmaster Help section, but the general consensus seems to be that MSN does place some value on these tags.

Yahoo

I couldn't find anything ""official"" but the consensus seems to be that Yahoo uses them, especially the description tag.

Google

The industry opinion is that Google doesn't bother with meta keywords at all, and that it MIGHT give some credibility to meta description. However, while good meta tags probably won't help in Google, bad ones can hurt. If Google sees words in the meta description and keywords that it doesn't find on the page, that can have a negative affect.

The Bottom Line

Better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it!

About the author: Dave is a full-time Search Engine Marketing Manager. He also runs SyteSurge, a web site dedicated to search engine optimization and search engine marketing .

Search Engine Optimization is not Marketing

Author: Dave Felts

One of the account reps is dealing with a client who's interested in SEO on their site. Niether the rep nor the client has a firm grasp on exactly what that involved. This is how I explained it to her:

SEM is search engine marketing. Like any marketing function, it involves paying for the delivery an advertising message in an attempt to gain customers to make sales or to promote brand awareness. You take how much you spend, figure out how many sales derived from your effort, bump that up against how much you made, and figure out if that campaign was effective. Marketing is typically conducted to promote a service or product that already exists and is immediately available.

SEO doesn't work like that. The best time to optimize your site is pre-production. Do good SEO as you build your site and you won't have to do anything more except a tweak here and there from then on out. It's a lot easier to do SEO up front than go back and redo it later.

The concern marketers have with SEO (at least the concern they've expressed to me) is that it's not easily measured and there's no guarantee. I tell my clients, ""Do what I say, and I guarantee you'll rank higher in 6 months than you do now for the terms you target."" But I can't guarantee number 1 on Google or any other provider. And SEO provider who does is either a liar or has a bag of black-hat tricks up their sleeve that are just as likely to get you banned as ranked.

SEO is not marketing! SEO is building a site so that it's easily found, crawled, indexed and ranked by the search engines. You don't see results in a week, or even a month. You can't directly calculate a return on investment.

If you're thinking about SEO, do a baseline analysis of your traffic to determine:

1. The average number of unique visitors per day over the last three months

2. The average number of page views per day over the last three months

3. Your position in the organic results for they key terms you want to target in Google, Yahoo, and MSN

Now do your SEO, wait 6 months, and repeat the above. If the results are the same, or only a little bit above where they were, then your SEO wasn't effective. But if there's a significant difference, and you've got a good deal more traffic than you did before, it probably was.

search engine optimization and Internet marketing .

Clean up Your Code for Good SEO

Author: Dave Felts

Do you have lots of JavaScript coding in the header section of your web pages? Do you re-list your CSS styles at the top of every page? Do you have JavaScript coding spread throughout your web pages? If you answered yes to any of these questions your site may be driving away search engine spiders and losing search engine position ranking.

More often then not, when I view the source code of a client that's asking for search engine optimization help, I see gobs of JavaScript and Style Sheet stuff, especially in the header and oftentimes sprinkled throughout the page.

All this extraneous code has the effect of diluting your content, and thus your message, and makes it harder for a search engine to figure out what your page is really about. It has to wade through all this JavaScript and Style stuff before it gets to the meat of the page.

A search engine spider will only read some much code off a page before it gives up. On-page code like JavaScript and Style commands have the added disadvantage of bloating your page size, causing some search engines to bail before they've captured the whole page.

That's why it's important to get your 'real' content and primary keywords as close to the top of the page as possible so the serach engine will encounter it as quickly as possible. If you need to use JavaScript, move it off page into an external file.

<script language=""javascript"" src=""TheScript.js"" type=""text/javascript""></script>

Do the same thing with your Style Sheet(s) too:

<link href=""TheStyleSheet.css"" type=""text/css"" rel=""stylesheet"">

By getting this code off the page, you make your pages smaller so they load faster, enable your 'real' content to stand out better and be more easily crawled, and end up with a more efficient site design that will come in handy as you expand in the future.

search engine optimization and search engine marketing .

Finding Profitable Keyword Phrases

Author: Michael Lawrence

So you have a site concept developed that you are ready to start writing great content for. So what's the next step? It's time to develop your "" master keyword list "" which you will use to craft your WebPages. These are the words or phrases you would like to get ranked high in the search engine's for and get the free targeted traffic that this will bring to your website. It is not enough to simply ""pluck"" words from the air and start writing your web pages. You need to carefully select which words and phrases to target.

Food for thought: -------------------------------------------------------- What if there are already 10 billion web pages about your chosen keyword(s)? --------------------------------------------------------

Do you think a small business owner can compete with large companies who invest millions of dollars into their SEO strategies for highly competitive, high traffic keywords?

Obviously the answer is no but there is a bright side to the equation if you are willing to invest time into researching your keyword phrases carefully. You will want to choose ""niche"" keywords that offer a combination of high traffic and low competition.

This of course is easier said than done but it can be accomplished as long as you use some of the help that is available on the internet.

Here are a couple of first steps, tips and tools you can use to put together a list of niche keywords for the website topic that you have developed.

1. Keyword Brainstorming and Research

Think of throwing out a ""wide net"" here and try to write down as many keywords and phrases (consisting of 2-4 words) that are related to your Website Concept as you can.

Take each one of these words/phrases and visit:

http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

Type the first keyword phrase into the "" Get suggestions for :"" box and hit the search button.

This will return you a list of words and phrases that are similiar to your keyword phrase and also provide you with the number of searches for each of these results on the Yahoo-Overture network for the month.

Copy all of the keyword phrases that you think best suit your site concept along with the search data into a text file or spreadsheet. Save this file as your "" master keyword list "".

Note: Some of the results will be totally unrelated to your site concept you do not need to copy these into your ""master keyword list"".

Repeat this process for all of the keyword phrases that you initially brainstormed. By the end of this process you should have a ""master keyword list"" of several hundred or thousand words and phrases.

Google provides a free keyword research tool as well but does not provide the search statistics that Yahoo-Overture does. Augment your keyword list with any results that you find relevant using this tool.

http://adw ords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

2. Refine Your Keyword List Part 1

You need to shorten your keyword list to a tightly targeted and highly profitable subset of your master keyword list. These are going to be the words you use when crafting your web pages for the search engines.

Start by performing searches for each keyword phrase in your master keyword list at:

http://www.google.com

Google will tell you the total number of sites it has indexed for the keyword phrase that you are searching for. Copy this number into your master keyword list for each keyword phrase.

You will now have the data for the number of searches on the Yahoo-Overture network for the month and the number of competing websites for each keyword phrase in your list.

Think of these numbers as supply(websites) and demand(# of searches) . Finding the supply/demand number for each keyword phrase will help you decide which one's you want to target.

You will have to use your own judgement here depending on your goals and the amount of traffic you would like to generate. Make sure you have a nice mix high traffic and niche keyword phrases in your master keyword list.

It's not that useful to be ranked #1 for a keyword that only gets 5 searches a month. Similiarly, it is very hard to achieve high rankings for high traffic keyphrases because there is going to be a lot of competition.

Trim your keyword phrase list down to 50-100 entries and get ready for step 3.

3. Analyze the Competitor's Backlinks

There are 3 purposes to this analysis: analyzing whether a chosen keyword space is too competitive, identifying potential link partners (to be used in a later lesson), and to trim your ""master keyword list"" down to 15-20 keywords that have a reasonable level of competition.

To get started take the first term in your master keyword list and perform a search for it at:

http://www.google.com

-------------------------------------------------------

Note: we are only going to be interested in the ""top 10"" results for each keyword phrase since our goal is to get listed on the first page of results for our target keywords. --------------------------------------------------------

Our goal from this analysis is to find out how ""established"" your competition is in your chosen keyword marketplace. An analysis of the number of sites that link to your competitor should give you an initial indicator of how important their website is to the world. If a lot of websites are linking to your competitor they must be providing valuable content or a useful tool/service.

To find out who is linking to your competitor visit:

http://www.uptimebot.com

and enter the first domain from the Google Search results into uptimebot's search bar.

Uptimebot will then query all of the major search engine's and return a report showing the number of links the domain has pointing to it. A site with a lot of backlinks to it must be an information hub and therefore very important .

Perform this uptimebot search for all of the ""top 10"" competitors from your initial Google search results.

If you are finding that the sites in the search results have several 1000 backlinks to them you will know right away that you are going to have a hard time getting a high ranking for that keyword since a large number of links suggests that the site is already a well established information hub in that keyword marketplace.

Uptimebot also provides you with a link to the search results showing you the actual websites that are linking back to your competitor. Visit as many of these sites as you can and try to identify which ones have complimentary content to your site. You may want to consider contacting the owner's of those domains to request a link to your site.

4. Refine Your Keyword List Part 2

After performing this analysis for each keyword phrase in your master keyword list eliminate the keywords that you identify as having too much competition (i.e. too many well established ""hubs""). We will use this list in the next lesson to start writing your first web page

Using these tips you should now be able to tell which market's you will be able to compete in and which one's already have too many established information hubs to make it worth your while. You will also have a list of ""complimentary"" websites that you may want to consider requesting links from in the future to help boost your website's ""link popularity"".

About the author: --

Michael Lawrence is the webmaster for

Cobrasurf.com

You can view his financial website filled with articles related to credit cards at:

http://www.credit-cards-online.biz

Search Engine Optimization - A Complete Idiot's Guide

Author: Chris van der Walt

Most of us know by now that having a website doesn't mean much if nobody knows about it. There are many ways to market your website online, including pay-per-click advertising and banner ads on other websites. But by far the most effective and comparatively speaking cheapest way of getting your website ""out there"" is to optimize the content so that search engines enjoy ""crawling"" your website and therefore rank your website highly compared to your competitors.

A very quick crash-course in search engines: Search engines like to show their users the most relevant content for a specific keyword. They make use of so-called ""spiders"" to automatically visit your website to see what your site is about. Only in rare circumstances will a human user from a search engine company actually visit your website. You can imagine that for human users it would be impossible to physically go through millions and millions of websites on a regular basis to check what they're about.

Therefore, the search engine spider will see which words are repeated frequently throughout the content of your website. If your website is about vacuum cleaners, but you often refer to the term ""lawnmowers"" in your website's content (more than ""vacuum cleaners""), the spider will incorrectly assume that your website is about lawnmowers.

But wait, there's much more to it than just that. It's also about how you use the keyword. If you use the keyword ""vacuum cleaner"" six times on your page, but you are using ""lawnmower"" in a header to a page or in italics or bold text, the search engine might still think that your site is about lawnmowers instead. The proper use of keywords in the title of your website, as alternative text on images (that pops up when you move your mouse over it), the distribution of your keyword throughout your page (top, middle and bottom), the use of your keyword in text-links to other pages on your website as well as the use of your keyword in headers, are all important factors that search engines look for.

No, that's not it, yet! This covers probably only around ten percent of search engine optimization. The next item would be keyword popularity. By keyword popularity I mean to say you should investigate how popular your targeted keyword is among search engine users. For example, I might be very impressed with myself for optimizing a site for the term ""blue socks"" so that my site shows up as number one in each and every search engine when you type in the term ""blue socks"" and hit Search. But if on average only two people worldwide searches monthly for the term ""blue socks"", will I get the necessary traffic from search engines? The answer is a very clear ""NO"". If I instead see that 2500 people worldwide are searching for the term ""sock suppliers"" monthly, I would be much better off optimizing my site for this term, right? Correct, but also bear in mind that more popular search phrases normally brings with them more competition. In other words, it might take more of a constant effort to optimize a website for the term ""property"" than for the term ""cape town property"", because you are competing with others who are also trying to be number one for that keyword.

What we've learned so far: We need to make a website more than just user-friendly, but also search engine-friendly by using keywords properly throughout our site, and thorough keyword research is very important.

And now for the most important bit, namely link popularity. A search engine such as Google (the biggest and therefore most important search engine in the world) places an incredible amount of importance on how many sites link to yours (reciprocal linking), the quality of those sites as well as the way in which they link to your site. In other words, it is very important to exchange links with other sites with similar content to yours. That is, you put a clickable link to their site on your site, and they do the same for you. It is also important that they link to your site with the correct phrase in the link text (the text that you click on to follow the link). If you want to optimize your site for the keyword ""clothes hangers"" but others link to you with the keyword ""baby diapers"" in the link text, the search engines will once again incorrectly assume that your site is about baby diapers instead. As far as the quality of the other sites linking to yours (your link partners) is concerned, this is a vast and complicated topic that we'll have to cover on its own.

There are actually many other factors that also determine your website's rankings in search engines, but these are the basic ones. I hope this helps you somewhat (yes, I know it's complicated and daunting), but if I only succeeded in confusing you more, then don't worry - there are many search engine optimization specialists out there. And yes, you'll find that the best ones are normally at the top of the search engine results pages! And if they are worth the money you pay them, you should see an exponential return on investment within the first year. It might also be advisable to have them monitor your web site's search engine rankings on an ongoing basis so that the goose doesn't suddenly for some reason stop laying those golden eggs!

* This article was originally published on h ttp://www.ajcconsulting.co.za/content/search_engine.asp

About the author: Chris van der Walt is a freelance writer of self-help articles for all kinds of subjects. He has a passion for Jesus Christ, beach volleyball ( savolley.com ), computers and the internet. He is also owner of AJC Consulting - Affordable Website Design .

SEO for beginners

Author: Lee Rixon

I had a learned marketing friend of mine comment that the information on SEO on our blog was ok for a propeller-head, but didn't really help a business owner, so this article is intended to set the stage for information contained in the related articles.

Firstly - what is SEO? Well - its short for Search Engine Optimization, and its the process of tuning up your web site so that it ranks better on search engines.

Why is that important? - well think of your web site as a book. It is sitting in the very large library called the Internet, and the only people that know about it are friends and current business acquaintances. They know the title of the site and where it sits on the shelf.

What you are trying to do through SEO is to get your site listed in the equivalent of the Internet catalog. That way people that are not intimately acquainted with who you are and what you sell will find you…..

Not only that - you are also trying to get your site listed at the top of the index for a particular subject. There are millions of sites out there on every conceivable subject. If you sell widgets, then it won't do you very much good if your site is the 1543th listed under 'widgets'. It would be like having a Yellow page advertisement where your business is listed in very small print at the back of the book!

There are two ways that you can get your site listed highly - the first is through paying for a listing - Google Adwords is one program that will help in that. These are the paid listings that you will see on the right side of the page when you do a Google search. The second method is through Search Engine Optimization, which will raise your rankings in the main listings.

What Search Engine Optimization does is make your web site more appetizing to the search engines, and make your site more important to them.

How is it done? That is a long subject that is addressed briefly in the other articles:

SEO Keywords SEO Keywords Continued SEO Keywords Continued 2 SEO Keywords Continued 3 SEO Keywords Continued 4

Can you SEO your own site? Yes of course you can. Follow those articles and I'll guarantee your rankings will improve, but my recommendation is to leave it to an expert. Doing it yourself is like trying to build a deck armed only with a screwdriver and a knife. You can get there, but its going to be a frustrating experience.

An SEO expert can save you an immense amount of time, trial and error and frustration, as they have the right tools for the job.

Oh, one more piece of advice. If you see an organization promising to get you a top ten listing for $10 a month……RUN! It can't be done ethically for that amount of money, and the search engines are just as likely to ban your site as to list it highly - you have been warned!!

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

An Ideal home business Home Page

Author: Purva Mewar

From my personal experience of around two year as home business website operator as well as owner, I have spent enough time learning and unlearning. Observing other sites and constantly reading and contributing in online forums about managing a website. Having a website is all about being able to draw targeted traffic to you site. The more the traffic- betters the sales- improved commissions. This is everyone's ultimate goal behind running a home business website!! Striking a balance is the key - understanding visitor's psyche & the algorithm the spiders follow. Here, we will discuss a few important aspects of visitor's psyche; we will concentrate on home page only, considering it's the first impression. Home page is also called index page. Point 1.An uncluttered home page is the most important criteria of all. Let the home page be clean, simply formatted with readable font and suitable background color. Consider all these aspects. Unusual fonts, however attractive, should be avoided to play safe. Point 2. You should make sure you are not filling up your home page with all and sundry affiliate links. Google will, in all possibilities not rank the page as well as you want it or expect it to. Google values content. Let your home page have information about main theme of the site. Try to cover as many aspects or points connected with your main theme on your front page. This way you will attract targeted traffic and move up the search engines faster. Google will visit your site more often. Point No.3 Keep the visitor in mind: While you are designing your home page or writing content for it, keep your visitor in mind. His background, his interest, his benefit. Instead of your designing skills, your control over the language and so forth. Check other websites from a layman's point of view and see what kind of content holds your interest. Apply the same principal for your own. Point No 4. Body copy of the home page should sound easy and interesting to read. Your headline, your punch line – everything should have an effect. At the same time - don't exaggerate. Don't lie. Don't over emphasize. A chunk of people anyway look at any kind of activity done on internet as scam. Be simple yet convincing. Point No.5. Let your home page have clear cut paths. If your main theme is fitness let the pages directly connected to your home page be directly related to fitness. Like Diets, aerobics, fitness chart, yoga etc but when visitor clicks on diet page – on this new page, along with info on aerobics, you can have a link that's talking about free music download – to do aerobics at home. It's connected and yet sort of diversifies. But you have to be careful. Excess of these things will mar your main theme. This will affect your SE ranking. Besides the above – here are a few quick tips: Don't change your home page too often. Neither the layout, design nor the key phrases you are optimizing it for. While exchanging links, make sure your anchor tags contain your main keyword. Optimize one keyword per page. Googlebot treats each page is a separate website. So try to take time with each page. Let each page be well optimized, interesting and informative and complete in all respects.

About the author:

The author is Purva Mewar webmaster of Work at Home Based Business websites, www.yesearnfromhome.com and

www.work-at-home-earn-extra-income.com

Search Engine Optimization by AirPing

Author: AirPing

Complete Search Engine Optimization starting with Keyword Analysis, Competititor Analysis, Search Engine Submission and Link building are one of the core competencies of Airping.

AIRPING has a team of professionals working on Search Engine Optimization. Our Top class services give you guaranteed results. We have tailor made solutions to cater your specific needs and to deliver the desired results. We will modify the visible and invisible content of your website, submit your site to major search engines and relevant directories, increase link popularity for your website, reduce the size of your web pages (for faster download), and make other subtle changes to improve traffic and business to your website.

About the author: Webmaster of AirPing.net

Five Simple Steps to Getting Links to Your Site

Author: Matt Colyer

Today if you want your site to survive in the search engines your going to need backlinks. Almost all the major search engines rank sites based on the number and the quality of backlinks. Besides getting a good search engine ranking with links, it also one of the most effective ways to increase a site's traffic. So, how do you build your link popularity? In this article I'll show you 5 simple steps that will help you build your site's link popularity.

Step 1 - Determine the type of sites you want to trade links with. Focus on sites that are related to your site's market, don't go after sites that are not related, it won't help your ranking that much. To locate link partners search with your main search phrases in the search engines. Example, if your site is about cars, you could search with phrases such as car repair, tires, etc. The sites you see on the first few web pages of the search results should be your main targets. Remember to stay away from direct competitors.

Maybe the best way to Locate quality link partners is by visiting Yahoo's directory or the ODP because all these web sites were reviewed by humans before being listed. If you decide to use a directory visit the category that's most related to your web site, if your web site's subject is popular enough you should find more then one category that's related to your web site.

Step 2 - Review each web site you found carefully, check to see if they are using spam, if they are using spam, stay away, this will only hurt your web site in the long run. Remember to aim for the big money and not a quick dollar. Look to see If they have a links or some call it a resource page. If they don't have a links page, you should most likely move on and forget about it.

You should also review their content and resources they provide. Would their content or resources be useful for your visitors? Do you feel that it's a good resource? Is it a web site that you feel good about recommending?

Step 3 - After reviewing the web sites, you'll need to gather information about them. First, find out the owner of the web sites name. Sometimes the owner with list his or her name on the site, usually located on the about us page. Otherwise, you can get their name is by doing a WHOIS search. There are several available you can use, just search with the phrase WHOIS lookup.

Find out their email address. Remember to get the right one, you don't want to contact them through their support email address, instead search for their marketing or partnership email. Also find something on their web site that is unique and useful, this could be an article, an online tool or a service, use this to compliment them.

Step 4 - Create a list of all the web sites you have found related to your web site. You can list these web sites however you prefer. Personally I always rank them based on their link popularity, ranking and Page Rank. This allows you to have a good idea which ones you should target first. If your web site is new you should go after the web sites that don't have the highest link popularity or Page Rank.

Step 5 - Finally, we are nearly done. It's time to put all the information you have gathered into action. Send a custom e-mail to each site requesting to exchange links. Remember not to use generic e-mail link exchange request, half of the time these are deleted without ever being truly considered. State the webmaster's name, this will show that you have at least looked at the web site.

Next, you need to mention something you liked about their web site. Who doesn't like a nice compliment every once in while? I know I like them and you are probably the same way. Compliments can help seal the deal, they not only make the webmaster like you more, but also show that you took the time to look over their web site.

Tell them about your web site. What is offers and how it can benefit their visitors. Unfortunately many webmaster no longer care about offering a useful resource and only care about money. So, you'll need to tell them how much traffic you get and how it can benefit both of you. Tell them exactly where you think your link should be placed on their site. Also tell them URL of where you'll be placing their link on your web site.

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.

How my page rank went from 0 to 5 in one update. How yours can too.

Author: Joe Balestrino

Increase Your Google Page Rank!

This article will put a damper on web sites that sell information which will supposedly increase your page rank. I may make some enemies here, but this is already common knowledge. In fact, to make sure it worked, I designed a new site just for this purpose. Before you shell out money for an ebook, software, or CD telling you how to do this; read this article. If you achieve great results after following my advice and feel it was worth some money, feel free to write me a check for any amount you choose. I 'll add my own zeros.?

Page Rank. We all know what is. We all want to rank higher. Higher rankings mean a lot of things to a lot of people. To web masters it means achievement. They have accomplished a move in the right direction. A high page rank to a website owner is money in the bank. It is also an impressive accomplishment. To other website owners your page rank may be a source of envy.

To Google your page rank means quality, importance and relevancy. It lets Google know you are a viable resource and a valuable asset. Google takes your Page Rank and combines it with their text-matching techniques. This, combined with a page's content and the content of the pages linking to it, determines if your site is a good match. So, a higher Page Rank will certainly help you on Google.

As for surfers. Most of them could care less about your Page Rank. In fact, many of them don't even know what it is. However, those that do use it in a different way. Some use it as a way to unofficially gauge your credibility.

Ok, I am sure you've been wondering when I was going to tell you about how to achieve a ranking like I did. I went from a 0 Page Rank to a 5. Now, mind you, I did not purchase any links from high ranking sites, or any sites for that matter. I did not launch a link exchange program. I did exchange links with about five directories related to my site's topic, but that was it. Actually, 97% of my links are all one-way links (links pointing to my site).

So, how did I do it? Any ideas? If you know SEO you may already know the answer. Link Farms? Of, course not. We know Google will frown on that method. Did I design or optimize sites and add my URL? Hmmm..Yes! However, that is a small percent of the success. SEO companies don't usually add their URL to sites they have optimized. Ok, so what else?

Content? Yes, content is king as always. Content is what was used to help boost my ranking. But how?

I create articles. These are quality articles, just like the one you are reading now. These articles were not generated from any program. I authored the content from my own knowledge and researched over 100 web sites that accept articles in my area of expertise. SEO happens to be a very popular topic. These sites agree to post my articles on their site, along with my url(s). Many of these sites have a decent Page Rank of their own. Their rank will transfer over to my site. Also, as time goes by, those articles will have a PR effect of their own which will transfer to my site(s). Don't forget, other people may pick these articles up and use them on their site as well. They will also include my URL(s) on their sites. Now, if I do 100 sites a week times four articles a month, that's at least 400 articles a month. The last Google update was 86 days, the longest has been 111. That could lead to 1200 or more links between updates. What will Google think about all these links at once? They'll love it! Content, quality, one way links. I also promoted my blogs and my website in some of my articles. This way, they too have their own PR generating effect. They also link to my site and my site to them. This, in turn, increased the PR to them as well. At the time of this article and the most recent Google update, one of my blogs went from 0 to 3 and the other 0 to 4 all in the same update.

These tips should help you increase your page rank. The hardest part will be creating content related to your field and finding sites that will post your work. You can always hire writers and/or article submission services. Here's to the next Google update. Cheers!

About the author: Joe is owner of http://www.mr-seo.com check out his site for a FREE SEO site Evaluation. You can read the latest SEO news on his blog http://mrseonewz.blogspot.c om/ to read more of his articles visit http://mr-seo.blogspot.com/

How Search Engines Work: Crawlers, Spiders and Bots; Oh My!

Author: Mary E. Archer

Keeping track of billions of web pages isn't easy , yet today's search engines continue to strive to serve up the most relevant search results no matter what you're looking for. Have you ever wondered how they do it? If you want your website to be well-positioned in the search engines, it's important to understand the basics of how they work.

Crawlers, Spiders and Bots; Oh My!

When you enter a search term into a search engine, that search engine doesn't scan the entire Web right then and there to find your search results. That would take several weeks. What the search engines do is search their index or database of web pages to find those pages that are most relevant to your search terms.

To build these indexes or databases of web pages, most of the popular search engines regularly deploy automated utilities ""called crawlers, spiders or robots"" to find web pages on the Internet. These crawlers ""crawl"" the Web seeking new and updated web pages to add to their search engine's database.

Algorithm Who?

Now that you're beginning to understand, here comes the term ""algorithm"". An algorithm is nothing more than a program containing a particular set of rules. Each crawler-based search engine defines its own unique method of how web pages rank in its listings in a program called an ""algorithm"". In order to protect themselves from competitors and those who wish to spam them, search engines do not reveal exactly how their algorithms work. That's what makes optimizing websites for top rankings so much fun!

The Human Touch

Many crawler-based search engines give you the option of submitting web pages to their indexes manually as well. This is a great way for new websites that are virtually unknown to get indexed.

There are some search directories that do not use automated crawlers at all. Instead, their topic-based categories and ranking criteria is defined by human beings. Some search directories charge a fee to be included in their indexes. Pay for inclusion fees do not affect the placement of your website in search results, it only assures that your site will be listed in the index.

Play or Pay

OK, now let's mix it up a little. You can also pay for specific placement with many of the search engines by purchasing ad listings for specific keywords or search terms. These ads are listed in the paid or sponsored area of the search engine results page.

The most popular type of pay-for-placement program is called pay-per-click. Pay-per-click programs typically allow advertisers to bid on keywords for a specified amount per click. You decide what you are willing to pay for each ad click-through to your site. The higher the bidder, the better ad position they rout-bid. If you outbid your competition by a penny, you ad is listed above theirs on the search engine's search results page. You pay only when a user clicks on your ad listing.

Achieve Your Online Potential

No search engine is like another; they all have their own set of rules and processes for obtaining and ranking website listings. Whether its crawlers and algorithms, human categorization, or bidding for ranking, it's all about positioning your website where your prospects will see it.

You can play the optimization game and create a site that is ""search engine-friendly"", pay for search engine advertising or try your hand at both to reach top rankings. But one thing is for sure; if you don't do either, your website is far from achieving its potential.

About the author: Mary E. Archer is president and founder of Strategic Ranking, LLC , a national search engine marketing consulting company located in the greater Richmond Virginia area. Visit us on the Web at www.strategic-ranking.com

Search Engine Optimization of Dynamic Web sites

Author: John Dyson

As websites have grown larger and more complex, companies have begun using dynamic publishing systems to help them manage sites that contain hundreds or thousands of web pages. Popular programs by companies like Vignette, Microsoft, and Broadvision turn a web site into a database driven application capable of publishing and managing large amounts of content. When websites use dynamic publishing, a web page isn't built until it is requested from a user, guaranteeing that the content is up to date.

When these content management programs deliver information back to a web browser the links they create often contain many of the snippets of code they are using to assemble a page on the fly. This might include characters such as ""?, $, @, %, &"".

When a search engine tries to read a dynamic link, it often stops when it encounters the characters that dynamic publishing systems use to deliver a page. This means that a search engine cannot easily crawl and index the website. This means that fewer pages of your website will be indexed by a search engine. This in turn means you will show up in fewer search results.

One thing that many people fail to realize is that search engines create multiple entry points into your website. While your home page may be the one that people find most often, websites that have lots of pages indexed will begin driving traffic to pages located deeper within the website. You must have at least 25 static pages targeted to search engines other than having suitable SEO strategy

These interior pages often draw much more qualified users because they are looking for information specific to a certain topic. Because they are looking for very specific information, they are also more likely to convert on a sale or action that you have prepared for them.

If dynamic publishing is keeping your content from showing up in the search engine database, these more qualified visitors often won't find your website. It's very important that as much of your website is visible to the search engines as possible if you hope to drive traffic from search engine marketing. Good link architecture can solve this problem in many cases.

Paid inclusion programs like Inktomi Search Submit or Index Connect guarantee that the pages you want search engines to index are included in their database. This means they don't have to crawl your site and guess at what information is beneath the surface.

Instead, you are telling them the pages you want them to include and re-crawl on a regular basis. This even includes dynamic pages because you provide Inktomi with a list dynamically generated URL's which it then knows will contain content and information specific to your website.

Dynamic publishing systems should never hinder the ability of your users to find you. If your website uses dynamic publishing, you need to understand if search engines are able to see deep within your website. A good way to find out is by using the following tool. This tool will show you the number of pages that your website has indexed by each of the major search engines. Once you see how much of your website is being indexed today, you'll know how much of an issue dynamic pages are for your website.

About the author: Search Engine Expert Web Design Company

Why Our Site Was Removed from the Open Directory Project

Author: K.D. Wiseman

Our website, www.bestofthehome.com has been listed in the Open Directory Project for over a year. Recently, I conducted a search of the ODP for my site, to update it, and found that it was no longer listed in any category.

I went to the ODP forums http://resource-zone.com to try to obtain information as to why this had happened. The editors and moderators of the forum informed me that websites that sell products via the drop-ship method do not get listed in the ODP, "because the content of these websites are not unique and the sites are just "order takers" for the wholesalers." ODP will gladly list the wholesalers if they meet the ODP guidelines.

The guidelines for a site to be listed in the ODP Shopping/Home and Garden/Furniture Category are listed below:

"Submission guidelines include that the web site itself actually be a means of selling the Furniture products. Thus, appropriate product images and descriptions, specific product pricing and a means of ordering from the web site itself are required to qualify as a ""Shopping"" site."

As you can see, the guidelines say nothing about the fact that if the website uses the dropship method that they will not be listed. Even the category descriptions, Sites which sell Furniture used in the home are listed in this category. Please note that web sites listed in this or any Furniture Shopping category must be the ""means of selling"" the furniture, and therefore must properly display and describe the products for sale, give specific prices and provide a means of ordering the product from the site itself." does not mention anything about dropship websites not being listed.

In our own case, our website meets all of the requirements above, we list the products for sale, we have pictures and descriptions of all the products we sell, give specific prices and provide a means of ordering the product on site, but since we do not design and manufacture the products we are considered a drop-shipper for the wholesaler.

The OPD, by their own admission, looks at dropship websites in this fashion, and these are direct quotes from some of the moderators on the forum,

"Let's call the real businesses ""mom-and-pop businesses"" and the other ... oh, I think ""pseudonymous fright wigs for anonymous faceless giant corporations"" pretty well covers the relevant facts."

"drop shippers are a variety of affiliate operation, they don't offer anything unique, and they act merely as an extension of the marketing department of the corporation they are affiliated with. Therefore we don't list 'em. Renting storage space in someone else's warehouse to store your own goods, using an independent courier to deliver, etc. don't make someone a drop shipper. But then again the independent distributor of mass market stuff is unlikely to make it in if we already have sites selling the same mass market stuff listed. Unique content is king. In addition, a site's placement in the directory is subject to change or deletion at any time at our sole discretion. "

"A drop-ship order taker isn't information, it is disinformation. ""I claim to be doing this for money, but I won't tell you who actually does it."" It's a lie, pure and simple……….That is just flat not honest. If it is not outright criminal fraud, still, the mere fact that society tolerates that kind of deception -- that shoppers aren't taught from birth to avoid it like an Ebola outbreak -- gives unlimited unquenchable opportunities for outright criminal fraud. No, there are surely thousands of genuine little shops out there, providing their own unique goods and services, and depending on the net to find customers. The Vstore spammers try to bury the real little guys in doorway spam. Who wouldn't sympathize with the little guys? Who WOULD sympathize with the bully with a thousand fright masks (each claiming to be a ""little guy"")?"

As you can see, the folks at the ODP do not think much of websites that use the dropship method of selling products, regardless if it a cost effective method for the website. It comes down to this, "if a company designs and manufactures something, then obviously they are offering both unique services and unique goods. Such a company has ample scope for creating a website containing an authoritative description of those goods and services, and that would indeed be listable." By their very nature sites which promote someone else's wares neat don't provide unique content, simply another way of purchasing the same thing."

If the ODP thinks otherwise then you are considered a drop shipper and will not get listed in the ODP.

My advice to all the websites out there that use the dropship method to sell products on your websites, even if your site is one of a kind, do not bother trying to get listed with the ODP, because you will not. If you're already listed, check periodically to see if your listing is still there and be thankful if it is, because if an ODP editor happens across it, chances are it will be deleted.

About the author: K.D. Wiseman is the owner of DMJ Enterprises and creator of Best Of The Home and DMJ Enterprises. Best Of The Home and DMJ Enterprises are popular home and garden websites featuring products for every corner of your home and garden.Please visit both sites for your entire home and garden needs. www.bestofthehome.com www.dmjenterprises.com

Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal - Part 2

Author: Herman Drost

Part I of this article discussed some of the points that should be included in a search engine optimization proposal. Visit the resources section at the bottom of the page if you wish to get a copy of the whole article.

Part 2 will discuss the following topics:

Creation of Meta Information Site Map Creation Link Popularity Building Web Site Load Time and HTML Validation Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages Browser Search Engine and Directory Submissions Compatibility and Resolution Checking

Creation of Meta Information (title, description, keywords)

Meta information is used to provide additional information about HTML documents so that the search engine crawlers are able to index the information more accurately.

There are 3 important types of Meta tags as far as search engine optimization is concerned:

Title tag:

The Title tag is not a Meta tag. However title tags play a vital role in your site's rankings. It is these words or phrase that appear in the title of your page in the hyperlink listings on the search engine results. I include the most relevant and specific keywords or key phrases in the title tag that best describe the contents of the page.

Meta description tag

This gives a short and concise summary of the content of your web page. The description appears in the SEs just below the title tag. I ensure that the meta description tag is brief but includes some of your top keywords. The words used must inspire the visitor to check your site out further. Each page must be customized so all your web pages will not have the same meta tag descriptions.

Meta keywords tag

Although not as relevant as the other tags mentioned above, the Meta keywords tag is still recognized by some SEs. I include a number of meta keywords for you that are relevant to the content of your web pages.

Site Map Creation

The creation of a site map page enables SE spiders better crawling of your site. It also helps visitors to quickly scan your whole site for relevant information. A link and a short description of that link is created for each page of your site. The site map page is then added to your main navigation menu.

Link Popularity Building

Link Popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your site, from other sites on the web. There are other terms used for Link Popularity, such as Link building, In Bound Links, Back Links, etc The Search Engines consider your site important and rank it higher if other sites link to your site. There are two types of links you can establish on the web. One type is to trade links (Link Exchange), where you give a link from the links Page on your site to the partner sites. The second method is to establish only ""incoming links"" also called 'one-way links' or 'non-reciprocal links". With non-reciprocal links, you do not need to link back to them.

There are several ways of developing Inbound links.

Some of the techniques I follow in one way link building are:

a) Submitting to Free Directories

b) Writing articles and submitting to various sites for publishing to increase the link popularity of your site.

c) Press releases

d) Sending requests to established sites explaining the site quality and asking for links. In the link exchange process, you trade links with prospective partner sites by offering a link to their site from your own site. I provide reciprocal link building services to increase the link popularity of your site.

Web Site Load time and HTML Validation

Search Engines don't like sites which take a lot of time to load. They sometimes ignore these sites and place them lower in their index than fast loading sites. Some reasons for slow load times include html errors and bad image optimization. Sometimes sites are coded badly which can be a big block for visiting search engine crawlers. I will check your site's load times and make the necessary changes to the html where necessary.

Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages

To make the necessary changes to your site, web pages will need to be downloaded to my computer. After changes are completed the pages will then be uploaded to the server.

Search Engine and Directory Submissions

Your site is submitted by hand to all the major search engines, directories and some specialized directories. Not all SEs and Directories have the same rules for submission, therefore care will be taken to submit to the appropriate search engines by following their specific guidelines.

Browser Compatibility and Resolution Checking

People view sites in different browsers and at different resolutions. I make sure your site can be viewed in all the major browsers and in the most common resolutions. Adjustments will be made to the site's code where necessary.

Resources Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal - Part 1 & 2 http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-services

Why You Need a SEO Maintenance Plan http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-maintenance-services

About the author: Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com.

To choose a Search Engine Optimization Plan or SEO Maintenance Plan that fits your web site, visit: http://www.isitebuild.com/sitepromotion

Google's AdSense Soon To Have New Rival?

Author: Michael Cheney

A large part of Google's multi-billion dollar annual turnover comes from its nifty AdSense advertising program. The software enables website owners to drop in a piece of code to their pages that then serves advertisements provided by Google.

How Does Google AdSense Work?

It all works dynamically and the adverts that are displayed based on the content of the page. So if a website owner places the Google AdSense code on a page about holidays then holiday ads are delivered onto the page automatically by Google.

Everybody wins because when people click on one of the ads - the advertiser gets a visitor, Google can charge a rate for the clickthrough and the website owner who is serving the ad gets a share of this revenue.

It's been an excellent model for all parties concerned and especially as Google has enabled even small website owners to take part which means accumulatively Google's advertising real estate is absolutely vast.

Is The Monopoly Over?

But there may be trouble ahead for Google as, according to sources at CNETNews, Yahoo! is planning a very similar service to challenge Google's.

The two search giants have been up against each in the search advertising arena already but it is only now that Yahoo! seems poised to launch a monopoly-breaking attempt on Google's AdSense program.

This is all great news for smaller website owners as it means the two search goliaths will be vying to provide the best service and offering the best rates to compete for the lucractive ad space.

When Should You Accept Advertising On Your Website?

Well it's a difficult call. Do it too soon and you risk deterring visitors from staying on your website. Do it too late and you'll find that when you DO finally implement it people might not have seen it coming and they may leave your site in droves!

The best policy to adopt is, just like Google, to focus on RELEVANCE. Don't bombard your visitors with advertisements that are totally unrelated to their needs or interests or totally separate to the content you provide on your website.

And remember - often times it can be better to foster relationships and trust with your visitors with one eye on the longer term view rather than hit them with ads to make a small amount of cash in the short-term.

About the author: Michael Cheney is Author of The Website Marketing BibleTM. Take the Free 7-Part Course ""Internet Marketing Made Easy"" and get your free sampler of 'The Bible' here: http://www.websitemarketingbible.com/marketing/

Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal - Part 1

Author: Herman Drost

You can easily get confused by all the search engine optimization companies and SEO experts that offer SEO services. It's hard to know who to trust or what should be included in a SEO proposal. I will endeavor to clarify some of these points for you in this article, so that you can make the best choice when looking for SEO services. I don't profess to be a search engine optimization expert but have attained top rankings for my own site plus some of my web site design clients.

What a SEO proposal should include:

SEO objectives Site Analysis Keyword Research Competitive Analysis SEO Copywriting Creation of Meta Information Site Map Creation Link Popularity Building Web Site Load Time and HTML Validation Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages Browser Search Engine and Directory Submissions Compatibility and Resolution Checking

THE PROCESS

The process will differ for new sites versus established sites. If a new site has been built with SEO in mind, many errors can be avoided. An established web site may already contain SEO or design errors that need to be repaired so it can attract visitors and make sales.

SEO objectives

Increase your search engine presence, rankings, number of visitors and ultimately the sale of your products.

Site Analysis

An overall analysis is first done on your site, to assess what is needed to best optimize it for the search engines. Based on this analysis the proposal is adjusted to include the necessary work to be done. This may include: design, layout, navigation, colors, background, fonts, images, broken links, meta tags, web copy, html validation, browser and resolution compatibility, loading times, search engine rankings, site statistics and creating error pages.

All of the factors listed above have some influence in attracting search engine spiders and visitors to your site.

These factors are already taken into consideration (which makes it much easier) if I design your site from scratch.

An established site already indexed by the search engines will need to be thoroughly analyzed for errors before optimization can begin.

Keyword Research

One of the basic steps in search engine optimization is keyword research. Here competitive keywords relating to the site and unique to your domain are found. Keyword research is done to maximize the impact of search engine optimization. When your site ranks well, more relevant customers come to the site leading to an increase in conversions and hence income for the site. The accurate identification and careful selection of these important keywords and key phrases can literally make or break any web site or online business.

Competitive Analysis

This is for better search engine ranking performance. I study the sites of all your competitors who have high search engine rankings and find out the keywords for which they are ranked. I analyze your current meta tags and recreate them based on the keywords I have researched. I also analyze your recent web site stats (if you give me access). I can then see how many visitors you are getting, where they are coming from and what keywords they are using.

SEO Copywriting

SEO copywriting is rewriting the text on your site in such a way that it becomes search engine friendly while remaining appealing to the surfer. Keywords relevant to your site are optimized so that your site ranks high when search engines crawl your site. I direct targeted traffic to your site, ensure they are provided with the specific information and hence increase sales for you. My copywriting services include modifying your site headings, HTML text, layout, design and even images where needed. Some pages may only require a small amount of editing or none at all, whereas others may need a more extensive rewrite.

Part 2 of "" Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal "" will discuss:

Creation of Meta Information Site Map Creation Link Popularity Building Web Site Load Time and HTML Validation Downloading and Uploading of Web Pages Browser Search Engine and Directory Submissions Compatibility and Resolution Checking

Resources Increase Web Site Sales with a SEO Proposal - Part 1 & 2 http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-services

Why You Need a SEO Maintenance Plan http://www.isitebuild.com/seo-maintenance-services

About the author: Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com.

To choose a Search Engine Optimization Plan or SEO Maintenance Plan that fits your web site, visit: http://www.isitebuild.com/sitepromotion

Website Submission to Open Directory Project - DMOZ

Author: Paul Cody

Why is it important to get listed in the DMOZ Directory?

DMOZ is a popular free open source search directory edited by human volunteers. With a PageRank™ of 9, it should be on your priority list when it comes time for site submission to directories.

As an authorative hub a link from a DMOZ directory category to your website will give your site a boost in PageRank™ and may assist in getting search engine spiders to crawl your site faster and more often. Google also uses DMOZ data for its Google directory.

What does this mean? It is well known in seo circles that by having a site listing in DMOZ you will also get a listing in the Google directory, effectively creating two high PageRank™ backlinks. Hundreds if not thousands of smaller sites also use Dmoz directory data. Check my

search engine relationship table for who DMOZ supplies directory data to. So from a single listing in DMOZ the potential for hundreds of backlinks can stack up quite substantially.

Unlike Yahoo! with it's paid inclusion via Yahoo! Express, you may submit your site freely to DMOZ for inclusion into their database. This can be a harrowing and traumatic experience for some as the DMOZ directory submission requirements are very tight and strict.

DMOZ prides itself on listing websites with high quality content, culling bad and garbage sites. Hopefully I can lay to rest some of your DMOZ submission fears.

Prior website checks before submitting to DMOZ

A peek at the site suggest guidelines at DMOZ gives a few clues as to what DMOZ editors look for when processing site submissions.

I don't know how many times I have read on forums and message boards webmasters complaining they have submitted their site/s to DMOZ over and over again only to be rejected.

You can bet their site either doesn't conform to the submission guidelines, was submitted to the wrong category or was just complete crap with no quality content.

Here is the DMOZ submission guidelines list taken from their site. Follow it to the 'T' and ensure your site conforms.

Do not submit mirror sites. Mirror sites are sites that contain identical content, but have altogether different URLs. Do not submit URLs that contain only the same or similar content as other sites you may have listed in the directory. Sites with overlapping and repetitive content are not helpful to users of the directory. Multiple submissions of the same or related sites may result in the exclusion and/or deletion of those and all affiliated sites. Do not disguise your submission and submit the same URL more than once. Do not submit any site with an address that redirects to another address. The Open Directory has a policy against the inclusion of sites with illegal content. Examples of illegal material include child pornography; libel; material that infringes any intellectual property right; and material that specifically advocates, solicits or abets illegal activity (such as fraud or violence). Do not submit sites under construction. Wait until a site is complete before submitting it. Sites that are incomplete, contain Under Construction notices, or contain broken graphics or links aren't good candidates for the directory. Submit pornographic sites to the appropriate category under Adult. Submit non-English sites to the appropriate category under World. Don't submit sites consisting largely of affiliate links.

A good tool for checking inbound and outbound links is Xenu Link Sleuth , it does a great job and of course it's free. The reason I have focused on site link checking is the DMOZ editor will most likely run a similar program on your site when reviewing it.

Submission Time

Ok your site is set, you conform to the DMOZ submission guidelines, Let's do this thing! Surf to DMOZ and perform a search using a broad search term that relates to your site. You will be presented with a category full of sites that should relate to your site theme. At the top of the page should be sub-category links.

At this point ask yourself two questions; 1. Does my site fit this category? 2. Is there a Suggest URL link on the page for this category?

The idea behind this is to find the closest category match to your website. If you answer no to any of the previous two questions drill down further using the sub-category links at the top of the page until a suitable category match is found.

NOTE* Something to note when finding a category is region. If your website is regional submit using regional categories first before drilling down.

If you think you have found the right category visit some of the sites that are listed to be sure they are similar to yours.

Suggest URL

Congratulations! You have found your niche category that best fits your site. Click the Suggest URL link and let the fun begin.

Titling Your Site

This is an area where most webmasters come unstuck by using promotional words in their titles. DMOZ editors don't take kindly to it. Use your real site title. If your official website title is Tech Law, then that is the title to submit.

As stated in the DMOZ submission guidelines, don't use all capitals in your title.

Site Description

When describing your site common sense should prevail. As with writing page descriptions for meta description tags, write a compelling, brief, and descriptive overview of your site. Don't be overly promotional and keep the site description free flowing.

Always describe your site from a third person view. If DMOZ editors write a description for your site they will use third person view.The idea is for your site to be listed with your description. So make the DMOZ editors task as simple as possible. If you write from a third person view and give an accurate description the editor may not make any changes to it. Using correct grammar and spelling is a must.

One way to get help for an accurate description is to ask friends to view your website or ask people from forums to view your site. Use their feedback to write a compelling, accurate and non-promotional description.

The long wait

DMOZ is free submission and edited by volunteers. There is no paid express directory inclusion and from what is stated at the DMOZ directory website, nor shall there ever be.

Processing of site submissions will take a while, even up to six months, sometimes longer. Don't focus on this but instead continue to build quality content for your site. As one of my mentors recently stated in his ebook.

"I usually submit and forget about it."

About the author: c)2005 Paul Cody

Paul Cody has for the last six years studied website design and search engine optimization. Paul is active in a number of webmaster forums and has recently launched his new site http://www.auswebdesigns.net focusing on seo resources for webmasters new to this area of site design.

Earn with Fun by simple SEO (search engine optimization)

Author: Ravz D.

It all happened 3 months back, I have a blog & 1 fine day i saw my blog was ranking on top 10 position for a keyword which is less targeted, but was excited to see that & planned to promote it. Now watz the catch before promoting i placed Google Ads on my page.

I started promoting my blog by simply making submissions to blog directories, Search Engines & General Directories in related categories.

I was real amazed with the results, My position improved in search engines this resulted in good traffic & was able to see flow of $$$ in my Google Ads account. It took me 43 days to reach $99,

I have learnt lot & will be working more on that, if I have to suggest some 1 how can any individual earn $100 & more by simple seo my answer would be

#1 Create a blog (google blogs are not ranking good in google but has good ranking in yahoo.com) Make sure you create a blog in the topic where you I have deep interest so that you can post more about the topic & share information.

#2 Start Submission for your blogs net presence. You can start submitting to blog directories & general directories in relevant categories.

#3 Keep posting regularly....

I bet by this simple task you make more than 100$ I understand its a small amount but its worth in proportion of the time you spent & fun you have posting something you would love to talk about.

Ravz..! http://expertseo.rediffblogs.com

About the author: Ravz is into research & analysis of online marketing. SEO India site http://expertseo.rediffblogs.com which offers Search Engine Optimization at affordable prices.

Search Engine Updates vs. SEO

Author: Bruce Zhang

Webmasters always anxiously wait for a search engine update. Those who rank well want to see their sites get even better. Those who didn't do well expect a major boost. Those whose sites get de-indexed anticipate a major comeback. Those who just started new sites bet on their sites will make into the first page of search engine result pages (SERPs) for their targeting keywords. Of course, not everyone will be happy about the results of search engine updates. After all, search engine traffic is a zero-sum game - someone loses and someone gains. Then, the webmasters start preparing for next update.

The Business Reasons Behind The Major Updates

All major search engines claim that they strive to present search results to users with the highest quality. But the business of search engine is business. What they won't tell us is that there're many business reasons for every major search engine updates. Search engine traffic is hot commodity - it's free and has higher conversion rate since the searchers are very close to make their buying decisions. The downside of the search traffic for webmasters is that they don't have control at all. Your sites may be ranked #1 today, but nowhere next day.

Search engine companies will, no doubt, use the search engine traffic to maximize the values for their stakeholders. Google's Feb. 2 update (allegra update or Superbowl update) once again shocked the webmaster community like last Florida update. The noticeable change in Superbowl update is that well-established sites rank well even for specific keywords that aren't even highly relevant to their pages. You may think the move is to fight spams and improve the quality of SERPs. That's only part of the story. The results of the update is that the websites of well-established corporations (with never ending press releases) will get a major traffic boost from Google. Google does this by algorithm changes, not manual manipulations.

If we think search engine traffic from Google is really an incentive to try it free before you buy. This time, Google decides to lure the major corporations to test the benefits of search traffic. Major corporations will likely increase their spending in online advertising and those news agencies may even drop their law sues against Google if they see the traffic from Google justifies that their sites benefit from including in Google index database.

Is this the real driving force behind last update? Only Google knows. If you own Google, however, you will do the exactly the same.

Will this negatively impact the user experience? - maybe and maybe not. What is the real difference between the #1 spot and the site that ranks #100? - the backlinks. Backlinks don't alter the quality of a page at all.

When they say technology, they mean business. Major technology changes are always driven by business needs. It has nothing to do with ""good"" or ""bad"".

Strategies to Cope with search Engine Updates

The Internet and the Web was once hailed as the new medium and the new opportunity for small business and site owners. They will be disappointed as big three peek into fortune 500 companies's deep packets. There're strategies they can use to cope with the search engine updates, however.

1. Create a portfolio of website using different SEO techniques. If some of your sites get hammered in a update the rest may benefit from the update. 2. Generate traffic from all major search engines. 3. Use the search traffic to build loyal user bases. 4. Build sites similar to the sites of well-established companies. The tags, on-page, off page optimization techniques will become less and less important as major corporations aren't interested in those types of things that geek webmasters are interested.

About the author: Bruce Zhang operates a website http://www.4th-media.com that automatically aggregates and categorizes SEO news, new articles, and forum threads from over 50 sources daily ( http://www.4th-media.com/newsbot/ ) to help webmasters and SEO professionals to keep up with the latest development in search engine marketing. The website also offers original thoughts on SEO.